Yeah but we wanted to work from home not hybrid bullshit. This story is pandering like we won but they are still forcing me to go to an office every week for no good reason. This is just propaganda. The whole conversation in the thread has even shifted from talking about working at home full time to hybrid being ok. Insane
Yeah but we wanted to work from home not hybrid bullshit. This story is pandering like we won but they are still forcing me to go to an office every week for no good reason. This is just propaganda. The whole conversation in the thread has even shifted from talking about working at home full time to hybrid being ok. Insane
The comment I'm replying to needs to be upvoted much more than it is.
I don't know why you think that's all propaganda, i personally like hybrid work a lot more as well. I like my office, i like being able to go for a coffee with my colleagues and so on. I do like working from home as well - but i'm totally okay with being 1-2 days in the office. However, we do have people working 90% from home - they have to come in to the office though for various things they have to do. Printing large format plans, etc, etc.
You can't just assume 100% home full time works for everyone and shift the goalpost.
I think it should be a choice not 100% at all. I'm personally upset because I was told it was ok to be fully remote so I adjusted my life then once it wasn't convenient for my company anymore they changed the rules on me and everyone else and gaslighted us all about the real reason.
Going to the office once a week is one thing the Indian guys can't do. Love it don't fight it, unless you have a workable solution to end capitalism or globalism.
Going to the office once a week is one thing the Indian guys can't do. Love it don't fight it, unless you have a workable solution to end capitalism or globalism.
Going to the office once a week is one thing the Indian guys can't do. Love it don't fight it, unless you have a workable solution to end capitalism or globalism.
Going to the office once a week is one thing the Indian guys can't do. Love it don't fight it, unless you have a workable solution to end capitalism or globalism.
the place I work has tried RTO policies several times now - with very limited success. well over 90% of all white collar jobs can be done from wherever you can get internet so your VPN software will function. the customer facing part of the business has to be there 100% of the time, they dont have a choice, that's how the business model is designed. I go in a few days a week but honestly dont ever actually need to be there. maybe 2 days a month, tops, is my presence absolutely required.
the really interesting bit, which the article didnt touch on (not much of an article to begin with) is that there is a commercial real-estate bubble. the big buildings in the downtown business district/cores of most cities, that real-estate isnt worth much if there's no one renting the space. businesses that used to rent the space no longer need to because all of their employees work from home now. the people who invested in those big buildings are not seeing a return on their investments - and they are unhappy. that is, imho, a big driver behind the RTO movement.
the people who invested in those big buildings are not seeing a return on their investments - and they are unhappy. that is, imho, a big driver behind the RTO movement.
And those people are largely of the same class as the corporate executives and shareholders pushing RTO policies which ties a nice little bow on top of the whole situation. Rich people are losing money when employees work from home and so WFH has to go.
Those two are not as related as they at first seem.
For one, the plumbing required is different, as in literally offices don't tend to have bathrooms with toilets and showers inside every office space. Also the lighting would be cut off for all the inside units. Communal bathrooms and no windows works for work but not as good for home.
For another, a lot of the varying housing crises (there are multiple types) relate to affordability bc of being bought up by corporate interests. Another type relates to weird zoning laws of what types of homes are allowed to be built in certain areas - and for these at least, there's nothing stopping good homes from being made except again profits.
So it's not impossible, but there are challenges. Mainly, how can already rich people find a way to make even moar monay? Oh yeah and something something the poors get whatever too.
Unfortunately only like 10% of them are viable for conversion. Office buildings and residential buildings have very different needs and it’s expensive as fuck to add all the extra shit needed for residences.
Those residential units will be worthless too if all the offices close. Why live in the big city and pay huge rents if you work remote? Just move to a cheap area and buy a nice house.
well over 90% of all white collar jobs can be done from wherever you can get internet
This means over 90% of all white collar jobs can be outsourced/globalized. Just a matter of time unless there really is a meaningful reason to stay in the US and pay US wages.
yeah, my last job was offshored to India. from what my ex-coworkers told me, problems I could fix in a few minutes would take the new group weeks to do - and that was 6+ months after I got let go. maybe they got better but I seriously doubt it. just because a job is capable of being outsourced it doesnt necessarily mean that it'll happen.
I offered to work from home yesterday because I have bronchitis and no voice, so I told my manager it was that or I go off sick and stay there until I deem I feel better, that half a loaf was better than none, and she said "well I don't want to set a precedent", so I told her that I was sick then and won't be back until I feel better. I'm the only one who can do my job, so she's right fucked. She's like an alien wearing a skin suit trying to pretend to human.
"I don't want anyone to realize they can work just as effectively from home. Sure it saves them gas and commute time, but it just doesn't pump my ego if I cannot micromanage in person."
The manager doesn't get to make the decision. She's probably going to have to go argue with her manager that also likely has no control. Stand your ground, they don't want to fight on this hill. -source, a people manager of hybrid teams at a company that insisted on on-site.
I've had a personal policy of not working from home when I'm sick, even before the pan. I want solid recovery time because experience has taught me that doing anything else just keeps me sick longer. Take all the time you need, even if you only need it a little bit but could otherwise power through. She put herself and you in this situation. Reap all the recovery time needed to return at 100%.
She has understaffed us to a criminal degree all because she gets a bonus if she comes in under budget. You are correct, I will take all the time I need. I had to go to urgent care last night for a nebulizer so I'm definitely still not well, it's actually resolving pneumonia it turns out.
Which leads to the question, and its an honest question and I would benefit from the honest answer: If I can do the job hybrid, why can I not do the job remote? Is it because you needed me to move some paper boxes to the printer?
In my 20 years of working in the office and an additional 4 working 100% WFH, I'll throw my worthless internet opinion out there as to why: It comes down to the culture of the company.
Some companies see a real benefit from water tank conversations, face-to-face meetings, and the ability for managers to ask someone in person on a moment's notice to do things. There is also a lack of trust in the employees being able to perform correctly without physical oversight in many companies. Granted and aside from the trust issue, there is some truth to that, but can in fact be realigned with the exact same benefit by retooling communications. It's up to each company however to formulate the best course of action to remedy that and many sadly fail, resulting in RTO mandates.
Some companies see a real benefit from water tank conversations
There are real benefits to water cooler spontaneous talk. However, they don't overcome the detriments to having all your staff commute all the time on the off chance one will occur to produce a positive result.
face-to-face meetings, and the ability for managers to ask someone in person on a moment’s notice to do things.
These are largely dead in hybrid scenarios, because those that would be meeting face to face don't work in the office on the same day. So the practical result to hybrid is the worker loses productivity from the commute to come into the office for one or two days an sits at a desk alone all day in video meetings with their coworkers just like they'd do at home. The next day their coworker does the same while the original worker is WFH that day.
Water tank conversations really fuck with remote workers because they are always missing something, but if you can manage to redirect all work talk to happen in whatever communication tool the company uses, everyone tends to work better in the end, as nobody misses anything. But the only way I've seen companies successfully do this is by adopting remote-first approaches - when people only go to the office like once a month if even that.
Coaching newbies doesn't work that well remotely, so you'll have to be at the office more for them to ask you questions, otherwise they're stuck in the simplest things for days.
That's the line my CEO used, but we had plenty of hires join during COVID that have excelled while here, with lots of talented engineers that had to leave because they were forced to an office hundreds of miles away.
I thought this until I've actually done it a few times, and been that newbie at a remote first employer.
The difference in being on boarded at a company which embraces remote vs one that is still hedging, is massive.
It can be done well.
Yes the extroverts might get fidgety, but they can schedule a meeting or body doubling session or something. We introverts have had to adjust to office work for the last century; let's see y'all do a bit of that labour for another, better way to do info work now :p
When the company where I was managing a small team went full remote during COVID, I had 0 issues with my existing staff, but when I had to hire, that was definitely less than ideal for onboarding. We still made it work but it was nothing like the in-office onboardings from before. There are solutions though, you can do virtual sit-togethers, and if you're reactive to slack/etc you can be even more present for them than in-person, but it felt uneasy for sure the first times. Left all corporate behind now and running a one man business so don't need to care about this.
I think that might depend on who you're hiring though. That's the same line our boss told me when they pushed me back to the office. But in the time since then, we have hired several new staff who actually prefer to communicate digitally. They will email, teams, phone, or text me with questions before actually seeking me out in person.
There are some aituations for some roles where meeting in person is necessary for trust and connections to be established. Being in person lets a lot of people feel a better connection with teammates, because humans are animals and that is just how it works.
This is nit true for every role, and is mostly for roles that have to work with people whose primary jobs are interpersonal or connection making like executives and leadership.
It does not really apply to roles where deliverables are already spelled out and information exchangenis formalized and you don't need to convince someone to do something ad hoc. Plus some people do just fine doing all of those things remotely, but they have to work with people who don't.
Tax breaks from cities saying they have X employees working in city Y and they bought a bunch of commercial real estate that is worthless or needs to be converted to residential. They gambled and lost and now want to either say they didn't lose or subsidize their losses to employees & taxpayers.
Hybrid is a compromise that makes no sense to either party. The company still has to maintain an expensive office while being limited to the talent pool within commutable distance. The employee still has to waste countless (albeit fewer) hours travelling while being limited to job opportunities within ~20 miles of their residence.
We have hybrid and it actually really works. We hire countrywide and if you don't live near an office you are fully remote. But if you do live near an office you can go in anytime. I don't like going to the office, but if I need to print or ship, or need to meet a client or coworker it's nice to have the option. Also anytime I have an issue, I can pop in the office to check out new hardware, or work if my home is unsuitable due to whatever ( power outage, noisy maintenance, over 90 degrees since we don't have AC, sick kid). However, I think hybrid only works if there is no minimum requirement on time in office. If it is at the teams discretion the home office becomes an amenity. We also downsized from something like 200 cubes to around sixty, so that helps too.
Hybrid does make sense. There are people who work better in an office ( like myself ) and there are people who are better working from home ( like my coworker ). The company i work for believes hybrid is the way to go so that you can supply an office for people like me, but also hire people who work remotely. However, nobody is saying you need to have an office that can house 100% of you employees. 60% is good enough as not everyone will be in the office at the same time. Money saved!
That said, some meetings are better to have in person so once in a while a required in person meeting is needed.
I believe in the words of my company : everyone, everywhere. And that includes an office or, which has happened, from working from spain, germany or thailand which are all remote locations in no way connected with the company. These were people who legit lived abroad or were looking after a vacation home of a friend
Hybrid is always worse than either fully remote or fully in office. You end up with people coming into the office and sitting on Zoom or posting on Slack, and people at home missing out on conversations that don't happen there. So you have to do twice as much work to keep everybody on the same page.
You can rent smaller offices with fewer fixed desks and some open ones free for anyone to use for whenever people needs to pop in. Hybrid offers benefits too.
For perspective, I was 100% WFH for about 10 years. A couple of years ago I got a new job (huge compensation boost, and massive perks boost).
Lucky for me, which was one of the reasons I looked into it, my work is a 15 minute bike from where I live, they offer free breakfast and lunch every day, and a gym. So there are plenty of personal incentives for me to go into the office.
But what I find so surprising is that virtually everyone in my office thinks that hybrid is the best for productivity. Literally every person I've talked to about this agrees (quietly, of course, they don't want to lose it) that the spontaneous meetings, the overhearing what other people are talking about (and jumping in with your own knowledge), the ability to quickly turn around and chat with another person, makes collaboration, and by extension productivity, way higher.
My biggest thing is that, as a senior software dev, the junior devs come to me for help quite frequently. When we're in the office, I would say the average is about 3 times a day. When one or both of us is WFH, it probably doesn't even average to one. There is something about sending a message or an email or requesting a zoom meeting that seems to be enough of a hurdle to ask what is a simple question. So they end up spinning their wheels a lot longer.
Now, don't get me wrong, I get that WFH is a huge benefit to the employee. Which is why I did it for so long, with two young kids it was a god send to be home all the time if they needed to come because they were sick or if I needed to run out to the doctors with them. And, of course, commuting just absolutely blows (I think that's the biggest drawback of any non-FWFH schedule). So I do support it.
However, I think we need to be realistic about its benefits. Companies want people back in the office because, generally speaking, people are more productive.
There are a lot of great ones in here, but there's another perspective I think should be added. For a long time, employees have been commoditized. We're resources. Interchangeable. And that gives companies tremendous power.
WFH puts us on more even footing. There are entire cities supported by a single industry or even company. Now we aren't limited geographically in who we can work for. If you're toxic to work for, we can leave. It saps the power of the leadership to say "my way or the highway."
I don't think this is the secret underlying reason. I agree it's real estate values that are mainly driving it, but I think this is absolutely part of it. Toxic leaders (and every company has them) are finding people are less willing to tolerate their bullshit because they aren't over a barrel to the same degree. Still need universal healthcare to really break their back.
Yeah for quite some time I have been saying labor is priced artificially low. All of the barriers to finding a new job while working. All the risks of even short-term unemployment. Workers are already fucked by the power imbalance but without any liquidity in the labor market it's so much worse. WFH adds liquidity, they hate it.
We do need universal healthcare absolutely, take that out of the labor package but WFH I think will only be beneficial in the short term (for employees - I do think it beneficial for the environment) it's a shorter step from WFH to outsourcing to get the cheapest labor cost. I see this happening even at my company, an event management company so we are all about in person stuff - we lost an accountant and they wouldn't let us get a replacement, already we have the infrastructure to work from home so they said "no but you can have a consultant who works in India, she can do it cheaper."
Not that they couldn't have done this anyway, but in this particular case, they wouldn't have done. WFH opened that door for this company.
That sort of move has been threatening the tech sector since the early 2000s and it hasn't happened yet. Yes, some jobs moved overseas, but the timezone and language differences mean the ROI isn't as big as a spreadsheet that accounts for salary says. Having to stay at work until 8pm and meet with the team in India at 8am their time isn't going to be nearly as productive as meeting with people within a couple timezones.
but WFH I think will only be beneficial in the short term (for employees - I do think it beneficial for the environment) it’s a shorter step from WFH to outsourcing to get the cheapest labor cost.
I hate to break it to you, but as someone who was self-employed and doing contracting work throughout most of his career, I can't tell you how many times I was replaced by remote/offshore Indian programmers, over the decades, for cost reasons. Was definitely going on way before Covid and WFH, and should not be a reason why to fear/stop WFH.
I worked hybrid 18 at home, 22 at the office and it sucked.
It showed me three things:
• It showed me that I was far more productive when I was at home and I was comfortable and not distracted.
• It showed me that I was coming into the office for absolutely no logical reason (even while there, all discussion was via Slack and Zoom).
• It showed me that the company's leadership was incompetent.
This wasn't even a 'we paid for the space, we have to use it' issue. This was an office job at a light industrial facility where no one had to be in the office. If they didn't have us come in, they could have knocked down the office area and put in another line or two. Just incompetence.
I treat office days as social days for exactly this reason. I know I'm not getting anything done, there are too many distractions, so I MUST be being forced to come into this disaster zone for one reason - to recharge. So that's what I do.
I told my boss that I get less done in the office. The temperature is always wrong. The monitors aren't as good as what I have as home. There's distractions. So many distractions. Sales guys are loud. People walking up to you. You can't ignore a person standing next to you like you can ignore a slack message.
I told him I'd go in, but it would be a day of bullshitting and not doing much work.
Fortunately, he hasn't really pushed the issue since. If the CEO gets the idea in his head again it's going to be conflict.
What I'd really like to do is form a union, but labor in the US is extremely weak.
The only way I got anything done in the office was to wear noise-canceling headphones all the time. At which point, why bother coming in? I couldn't hear anyone anyway.
I’m pretty lucky, in my industry, remote work has become the norm, so much so that my previous employer ended up closing the local office where I worked when I first started because [1] most of our colleagues were all over the country and [2] nobody thought there was a point to going back. I’m looking for a new job, and every prospect I’ve checked out so far is doing the same, almost fully remote. It just doesn’t make any sense to do otherwise.
The problem is they signed long office space leases and breaking out of them is very expensive, plus they get tax breaks for driving foot traffic to commercial areas. Not that they would ever admit that is the reason instead if a bullshit “team spirit” diatribe excuse.
Did we actually believe any of them at the time? I think they already knew that remote work was going to continue, and they were trying to get as much money out of the transition as possible.
One problem was that they had wasted real estate, and they had to justify it to shareholders. So they pretended that they were going to bring everyone back to the office.
If you think about it from a medium run perspective, of course employers are going to want more remote work because then they don't have to pay for utilities or parking or rent or buildings. Of course this depends on the exact setup, but for many businesses it was clear from the beginning of the pandemic where things were going to go. And if we want to get even more cynical, we can point out that when your labor pool spans the country or even the world, you have a greater ability to underpay employees.
If you can do your job from home and your job can be taught under 5 years. Then 5 indians guys can do it together for 10 times less total than you cost. And that will be the case until what happenned to China happens to India, which should take roughly 40 years.
My wife works in a large suburban office park off a major highway. The company designs hardware so obviously they have people in the workshop on-site etc, but you could remove three of their office buildings and keep those people at home. She also flies out from the east coast to the west coast twice a year just to sit in a conference room for two days straight.. it's like no one has ever heard of Zoom.
I've been working from home for nearly a decade and a half now. It has enabled me to keep my job after moving halfway across the country. I have dinner ready when the wife and kids get home, the laundry done, and can go for a jog at the local park for a few laps when I want to and yet I still get shit done and do a great job.
It just absolutely baffles me that CEOs aren't chomping at the bit to downsize their office space footprints, get off those leases or sell off their properties, and let everyone work from home.
I have dinner ready when the wife and kids get home, the laundry done, and can go for a jog at the local park for a few laps when I want to and yet I still get shit done and do a great job.
You are so much more not-lazy than I am. Going for a jog after work? I salute you.
“we lied and tried to force RTO because we wanted people to quit so we could avoid the bad-press of layoffs.
They didn’t quit, we had to do layoffs to keep the stock price up because as a ceo I’m paid in shares.
We’re done the layoffs for now and we enjoy skipping out on rent for office space.”
It seems like they pushed and there was nothing there to push because everyone had left. This is a case where the worker had options and it's nice to see them use that to their advantage and encourage changes.
Whilei agree with you wholeheartedly, I don't know how without risking job security. I've been interviewing for any position that matches my qualifications and is listed as remote even if the pay is reduced, but what message does one person send? Without a concerted effort, the message is weak if it is even heard. At least in my job sector, the C-suite is fully sold that AI will allow a reduction in the workforce and therefore costs and they're hedging their bet now by reducing the workforce to pay for AI. Unionize? I can't even sell the idea within my whole family, how could I sell it to a majority of my work peers? I'm not that charismatic. I'll be the second one to sign up if I do find talk of it at my employer.
They're not "defeated". They got exactly what they wanted. People leaving without having to lay them off through attrition.
Now that they think they have "right-sized" their workforce at no cost, they nicely offer to concede hybrid working to keep the rest of their employees.
Worked for a multinational where they pushed their shared services centre into a 3 day/week RTO from fully remote, thinking this would improve things. It only exacerbated the staff turnover rate which at its peak hit 95% in some departments (I worked in Accounts Payable.)
When strategies like lengthening contractual notice periods, buying pizza on crunch weeks, extending RTO further and even a payrise (that was still below market rate) didn't work... They outsourced hundreds of jobs to India and laid tonnes of people off.
I escaped redundancy and went into a higher commercial finance role (internally) with a considerable pay rise. It's almost fully remote. The culture shock is baffling.
The most cynical view is likely the right one when trying to understand management decisions. They come with disingenuous anecdotes rather than hypotheses that can be falsified by data and real measurable transparent business outcomes.
It’s great that office workers get this benefit, but it hurts to see as a person who has to be onsite for their industry. Or just any increase in the benefits of my job.
this should also lead to better benefits and pay for on-site workers. many people will start looking for office jobs which increases demand for on-site.
I literally said it’s great to see them get a benefit.
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting when you see other industries seeing improvements, while your own is constantly treated like shit. And I work in early childhood education, if we all just left that would fuck over the children and risk their lives.
As it should be. Hybrid is the correct answer. Not full time RTO, not full time at home, Hybrid. The negotiation is in how hybrid should look, and will vary from situation to situation
Hybrid is the worst of both worlds, you don't meet your collegues when you're at the office because they choose to be in on a different day, and you can't live where ever in a similar timezone because you still need to be able to get to the office in a reasonable time.