Study Finds a Quarter of Bosses Hoped Return-To-Office Would Make Employees Quit (theregister.com) 119
An anonymous reader shares a report: A study claims to have proof of what some have suspected: return to office mandates are just back-channel layoffs and post-COVID work culture is making everyone miserable. HR software biz BambooHR surveyed more than 1,500 employees, a third of whom work in HR. The findings suggest the return to office movement has been a poorly-executed failure, but one particular figure stands out - a quarter of executives and a fifth of HR professionals hoped RTO mandates would result in staff leaving.
While that statistic essentially admits the quiet part out loud, there was some merit to that belief. People did quit when RTO mandates were enforced at many of the largest companies, but it wasn't enough, the study reports. More than a third (37 percent) of respondents in leadership roles believed their employers had undertaken layoffs in the past 12 months as a result of too few people quitting in protest of RTO mandates, the study found. Nearly the same number thought their management wanted employees back in the office to monitor them more closely. The end result has been the growth of a different office culture, one that's even more performative, suspicious, and divisive than before the COVID pandemic, the study concludes.
While that statistic essentially admits the quiet part out loud, there was some merit to that belief. People did quit when RTO mandates were enforced at many of the largest companies, but it wasn't enough, the study reports. More than a third (37 percent) of respondents in leadership roles believed their employers had undertaken layoffs in the past 12 months as a result of too few people quitting in protest of RTO mandates, the study found. Nearly the same number thought their management wanted employees back in the office to monitor them more closely. The end result has been the growth of a different office culture, one that's even more performative, suspicious, and divisive than before the COVID pandemic, the study concludes.
Shocked! (Score:3)
Re:Shocked! (Score:4, Funny)
Headline accurate but first line not [Re:Shocked!] (Score:2)
Headline's accurate, but first line
isn't. Should be "A study claims to have proof of what some have suspected: some return to office mandates are just back-channel layoffs
Re:Headline accurate but first line not [Re:Shocke (Score:5, Insightful)
Should be "A study claims to have proof of what some have suspected: some return to office mandates are just back-channel layoffs
Knowing the plural of "anecdote" is not "data", the company I just got laid off from also implemented a RTO mandate. The scuttlebutt (recently reiterated to me by a senior director) was the company was being told by highly paid consultants to cut total headcount by 25% and RTO was one tool to do that.
Hard to say what the C-suite is actually thinking. I have no doubt at least some executives realize RTO will result in some resignations. Seems kind of an imprecise way to go about it. All your good people will leave because they know they can find something better and you'll be left with the dregs.
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Yep. Such a surprise!
Obvious from the start (Score:5, Interesting)
Interest rates not making money "free" (or just very cheap) made investors demand return on investment, tech companies used RTO mandates as a way to force attrition. It was never about the money. There's been plenty of examples of sources from tech companies in internal meetings asking to quantify the RTO, it's all non-quantitative stuff about "how we work more collaboratively in-person".
25% of those surveyed stated the truth. Most of the rest gave a different reason, forced attrition without layoffs was the real motivation.
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If you speak of US companies then you must also consider the economic effects of those "pandemic payouts" made by the US Federal Government. And yes, the low interest rates at the time did help to "juice" the economy.
Add those payouts to what people saved by not having to commute, less frequent vehicle maintenance, not having to dine out (or grab & go a sandwich) while at work and many other money-spending events.
The end result was a general increase in people's savings and available cash to spend on wh
Re:Obvious from the start (Score:4, Informative)
Surveys show that most people used their covid stimulus checks to pay down debt
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People weren't paid enough via those stimulus checks to pay down any real debt.
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In fact, it just got them and their children into even more debt.
Listen to all the people complaining about food prices and the price of goods in general due to inflation.
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At least they could pay down the debt caused by being delinquent on rent when they got laid off.
Losing your home in the US (and Canada) can lead to a death spiral that's impossible to get out of. Lose your home because you failed to pay rent because you couldn't find a job, or lose your home and you very well can end up losing your job for various reasons. Either way, you're homeless and jobless, and getting a new job is basical
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I know that's what I did but in retrospect, I should of invested all of it into an index fund. The 5 year spread on, I think, the NASDAQ is up like 105% over that time period. That averages out to 20% a year in return on investment. Not to shabby.
But no, I used my stimulus to pay down debt instead. Silly me.
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"pandemic payouts"
The amount paid to people was in all seriousness TINY. If the total issued was paid monthly it would have been $110 per month over the time period. But that's not even a drop in the hat when you compared it to the service industry direct income loss impact due to COVID. That was close to $1100 per month per capita! Also about 1.5 million extra people died extra during the pandemic and at least half of those were working age people, all that income was also lost. (Actually I suspect th
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"pandemic payouts"
The amount paid to people was in all seriousness TINY. If the total issued was paid monthly it would have been $110 per month over the time period. But that's not even a drop in the hat when you compared it to the service industry direct income loss impact due to COVID. That was close to $1100 per month per capita! Also about 1.5 million extra people died extra during the pandemic and at least half of those were working age people, all that income was also lost. (Actually I suspect the government's numbers of total lost income included those people in addition to the service industry and others directly impacted, so the $1100 is probably inclusive of their lost income.)
So companies got zero intrest loans, the FED flooded the market with QE cash and real people got paid less in salaries.
I largely agree, but there are two things to consider.
One, the marginal cost impact of giving everyone an equal amount of money all at once is higher than you'd think. The supply of services aren't elastic enough to expand instantly... so what happened? Many vendors just raised their prices by, coincidently, a similar amount to the amount of money people got. So the money almost instantly concentrated. That's not to say it did no good, but it did far less good than, say, small consistent payments would have
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The $1100 wasn't anything special, but a lot of people in California got unemployment +$600 per WEEK extra on top of that. People were making more on unemployment then they were at their jobs.
For me, it was ever so slightly more beneficial to keep working but damn it would of been nice to enjoy a staycation making basically the same as working. Essential worker here, so yeah, bleh. We didn't get squat for putting our lives at risk while the rest got to enjoy sitting on their butts.
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Your post is confusing.
FB doubled in size.
Productivity went up.
Everyone made more money.
Everyone was happy.
If all those things are true then why would they want to cut headcount? Did FB not make > 2x money by doubling in size?
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To make more money. Fewer people = less expenses (salaries + benefits). If your revenue stays the same but your expenses decrease, you've made more profit.
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But he strongly implied revenue doubled because headcount doubled.
If headcount doubled and revenue did not roughly match then they over hired.
No? Yes?
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Give a greedy person a million dollars and they'll still lie cheat and steal to make a million and ten.
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Interest rates have been insanely low for years. When interest rates are low, people are more
Conformation (Score:3)
That's a leap. (Score:5, Insightful)
These bosses probably care (and have compassion) for their own families, and their own personal friends. Some of them might not have either of these, but your evidence doesn't justify the assumption that none of them do.
Just to give some context, most people have very little concern or compassion for the terrible suffering being endured by distant foreigners.
A lack of compassion for some groups of people is quite common among "normal" people. Really most of us are hypocrites on this front, expecting compassion from everyone but only giving compassion to a select few. And, for the most part, this is a practical necessity. Too much compassion for everyone in the world will drown a person.
So, in sum, many bosses probably care about a lot of people, they just don't care about you. Nor about most of their employees, who they consider fungible. The wise response is not to try and elicit compassion, nor replace them with compassionate people, but rather, adapt to a world in which one's superiors lack compassion for one's self.
Re:That's a leap. (Score:5, Informative)
So, in sum, many bosses probably care about a lot of people, they just don't care about you.
To add to this; stop looking at your workplace as somewhere to build essential relationships. Your boss isn't really your friend. Your co-workers aren't really your friends either. Go out and cultivate friendships elsewhere.
Sometimes the person you'd take a bullet for ends up being the one behind the gun.
Re:That's a leap. (Score:5, Insightful)
THANK YOU
This is something I've told people for decades.
I've create my co-workers as just that CO-WORKERS. While I'm friendly, helpful...I don't share personal experiences or stories really with them, I don't socialize with them outside of work.
And these days, with #MeToo and more....I just do what I have to with work...intereact as needed, and leave for the day (when in office).
I keep these people at arms length as far as personal issues, thoughts and emotions go.
I do, however, try to make good contacts....and I do, that helps job hopping for both W2 and 1099.
But these are not my friends....not people I confide in or depend upon.
I have real friends for that. Most of my friends I've known since college, some even back from before High School.
I don't do social media...but I do keep in touch and see in person the ones living close enough and those far away I text, phone, email, etc.
These are people I trust with keys to my house.
As the saying goes:
"Friends help you move......
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Amen
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I am sorry, but you have a social problem. Your co-workers are people you spend time with 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, possibly more than your family. You go to lunch together, perhaps listen to same music source and so on. It is natural to share personal experiences.
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I don't do social media.
Technically ..... you are posting on Social Media right now.
But I do understand what you meant. Words are weird that way.
Re:That's a leap. (Score:5, Insightful)
Call me a 'special case', but i imagine this is probably the way it is for most people.
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I second this! Do you know any, ANY, officemate of yours who you can call up at 2 am with a flat tire and a dead spare to come out and rescue/deliver a spare to you? If you do, I would imagine that of all your officemates, that is the ONE that actually is a friend. Me, I have worked places where friends have worked, I have made work friendships, but that is far and few between compared with how many people I have worked with.
Call me a 'special case', but i imagine this is probably the way it is for most people.
Yes,
Work is where I met most of my friends who have stayed friends with me throughout my adult life.
Especially as I've moved country.
I really have to feel sorry for people who think they cant have friends at work... I have to wonder if they have any friends at all as work is where I spend most of my time and the people I work with tend to be the most likely to share similar interests to me. You spend 1/3 of most days at work, why do some people consider it wrong to want to like the people you work
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I can never trust those people like I can my actual friends though I have indeed made a couple of friends at work, but they are always few and far between. Where I
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In my experience, albeit it's limited, the best teams are teams of people who can trust one another. That doesn't mean you need to be friends but it does mean you need to care about one another in some sense. Why would I trust someone who doesn't care about me? So I find these teams of people who just treat each other like "co-workers" tend to deliver subpar products because they don't really.. care.
That doesn't mean you need to take a bullet for them but maybe just treat them with respect and dignity. Sort
Re:That's a leap. (Score:5, Insightful)
So let's qualify that just a bit.
34 years ago, I married my coworker. It was the best move I ever made. I've also made many friends of coworkers along the way, some of whom remained friends for many years after our work together ended.
And that's the refinement. If your work "friend" is somebody you'd hang out with even if you don't work together anymore, there's no problem with that. But if an integral part of your "friendship" is your work together, then you're thinking of friendship wrong.
Re:That's a leap. (Score:4)
Meh.
I reject your reality and substitute my own.
I had some friends to stay recently, one for a week, the other for half that. Former co workers I've now known for 20 years.
I'm going to the wedding of a friend (former co worker direct report) in summer.
And there's a few more friends, also former co-workers and reports who I meet up with as regularly as can be expected given life circumstances.
It'd be perverse to miss out on so many that friendships due to notions of separating parts of my life. If only got one of those and work takes up a lot of it. May as well make the most of that.
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Meh.
I reject your reality and substitute my own.
I had some friends to stay recently, one for a week, the other for half that. Former co workers I've now known for 20 years.
I'm going to the wedding of a friend (former co worker direct report) in summer.
And there's a few more friends, also former co-workers and reports who I meet up with as regularly as can be expected given life circumstances.
It'd be perverse to miss out on so many that friendships due to notions of separating parts of my life. If only got one of those and work takes up a lot of it. May as well make the most of that.
This is normal... Just not on /.
Like you I've met friends through work who've become life long friends, I've been to their weddings and one of us will attend the others funeral.
Work is the single most time consuming activity in most people's lives and if you like what you do, you're likely to run into others who have similar interests to you. It's perfectly normal to become friends with people like that.
That being said, the boss is never your friend. Same with company loyalty, the company will show
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To add to this; stop looking at your workplace as somewhere to build essential relationships. Your boss isn't really your friend. Your co-workers aren't really your friends either.
This is probably good advice for those entering 100+ employee companies, but there are also still a lot of smaller companies where colleagues do indeed know and care for each other, and not seldom become true friends, beyond just working together. And you can even stay friends after leaving for a different company, as I have personally experienced.
Given what large part of one's live most spend working, it is just sad when you have to consider your working place a hostile environment.
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I've been in the same job for nearly twenty years, and some of my co-workers have around as long as I've been, or nearly.
I have mutually beneficial relationships with many of them, and some of them have even become my friends.
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It is quite a leap from saying some people may not have compassion for people in far off lands that they have never and will never meet to saying it is OK people don't have compassion for people that work directly for them. Part of your job as a manager should be to take care of the people under you. It is to help them thrive and get better, because that helps you look better. If you don't have any compassion for the people working directly under you, you are failing as a manager.
Re:That's a leap. (Score:4, Interesting)
Really, no.
I mean, the world sure would be nice if managers truly cared about their employees. But that's not the way it is in most places.
Maybe there are some smaller/younger businesses where that sort of thing goes on. They grow out of it if they wind up succeeding, though.
For example, I know a guy who worked as a manager for a hospitality-based business. One of the policies imposed on him, as a manager, was to assign blame and write-up at least one of his subordinates any time something went wrong. He pushed back and pointed out cases where the thing that went wrong was really nobody's fault. He wound up losing his job over that. And yes, the business is still around.
The cold hard truth is, sometimes incompassion is necessary for success. Sometimes exploiting employees (maybe just a little) is better than taking good care of them, when it comes to keeping the business profitable. Sure, this ruins the business if it is overdone. And it could backfire someday. And it really makes people unhappy. But it also makes businesses defeat the competition and get rich (in most cases, as is plainly obvious from the briefest review of the most successful businesses in the world today). This is not moral justification. This "but it makes more money that way" does not make incompassion ok. But it sure does motivate employers! So, money talks, and that's that.
Humans are predators. That's why we are at the top of the food chain. So why wouldn't we prey upon each other? It's our instinct to do so. It's the reason that people who are good at exploiting the talents of others tend to be wealthier than the people who have talents to exploit. Its just part of the cruelty of reality itself.
Utopian visions of a more compassionate world always sound appealing....and rarely come true.
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I have had more thoughts about this.
We used to exploit workers through slavery. And man, that was awful. So, if worker exploitation is so profitable, why doesn't every successful business have a labor force of outright slaves working for them?
Obviously, because slavery is illegal. But those laws weren't passed because all the wealthy elites in the world united in compassion to make the world a better place. It was a huge protracted violent battle that took place all over the developed world! It was als
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You will have to fight for what you want, one way or another, because those who have it will (generally speaking) not give it to you out of compassion.
Well, part of growing up is realizing that those above you don't care about you
True
Are we ready to go to political war over this
Thus why we are are at political war and have to prepared for it because that's the option. Thats what defeated slavery, obtained workers rights, Women's Suffrage, The New Deal, Social Security, Medicaid, OSHA, these are all the spoils of political war.
When you say fight for what you want unless you are talking actual violence this is what it has to be if the workers cannot affect change themselves and it's difficult as our economic system gives the employer a pretty decent sized power imbalance. Poli
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A company can still be successful despite its policy failures. The money can be that good.
Blaming someone when it's no one's fault isn't a smart move at all. That's like putting the innocent in jail. It just creates more demoralised workers, which in turn breeds more distrust and more backroom disloyalty from more yes-men.
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The cold hard truth is, sometimes incompassion is necessary for success.
Absolutely NOT. If your priorities are in order, you can show compassion without making an utter mess of your goals. The world is not binary where you have to choose, with no context, on whether or not to be compassionate. Meh.
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how many PHB need to do BS just to justified their (Score:2)
how many PHB need to do BS just to justified their own jobs?
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So, in sum, many bosses probably care about a lot of people, they just don't care about you. Nor about most of their employees, who they consider fungible. The wise response is not to try and elicit compassion, nor replace them with compassionate people, but rather, adapt to a world in which one's superiors lack compassion for one's self
Well, most people depend on their work for their living. If some uncompassionate asshat terminates someone, they've put their former employee into unemployment which we've created as very problematic place to be in.
Like this is super easy to say, but incredibly difficult to execute. If you're someone whose ability to maintain a roof overhead is tied directly on the whims of some narcissist, well then you're less incline to call that narcissist out on their bullshit. Or at least that was the thinking a lo
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Employers cannot hire people based on how badly they need the job. There are plenty of bums on the street who need a job very badly, but have no relevant skills and probably no social skills, plus mental diseases and/or drug addictions. If we hired based on need, the workforce would be full of people who simply can't do the job, and nothing would get done. Then nobody would have anything they need.
Employers must hire based on competence and business needs. When the economy is tight and they need to scal
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Employers cannot hire people based on how badly they need the job
Nowhere in my comment did I indicate that. You are literally putting words where there are none.
Employers must hire based on competence and business needs
And what I indicated is they need to value that appropriately. Which the issue at hand is not this made up argument you present of "need" but "value your fucking employees correctly".
That doesn't make anyone happy, but it is not practical to do otherwise
But they did NOT do it in a practical manner. Managers CAN fuck up, that's what you need to understand here.
Well, it's been that way for a long time and was way worse before that, so it seems like it's working just fine
That is a massively poor argument. "It's been this way for X years, ergo it should BE this way for X more years." That's
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It isn't always easy to read the tone of a post online, but you seem angry about having been misunderstood. In particular:
Well, you DID say:
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If some uncompassionate asshat terminates someone
So randomly RTO as a bypass for direct hire/fire is compassionate? I think where there's a misunderstanding is you believe I'm speaking in general and not specifically to the context of this research.
Lots of people make their livelihood through their job
Yeah, the ones selecting RTO are coming through on the bluster from the PHBs. The skill is leaving.
implying that management needs to be more motivated by compassion because people need their jobs
No the opposite. Only the ones motivated by the paycheck stay. Those with skill know they have the skills to leave.
I was saying that managers are not going to be swayed into more compassionate talent retention policies by threats of their business going under, because they know darn well that these policies work
They work on the ones who buy into the paycheck argument. That's what the study is pointing o
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The wise response is not to try and elicit compassion, nor replace them with compassionate people, but rather, adapt to a world in which one's superiors lack compassion for one's self.
Pets have to do this. They have no choice. We are not pets. In fact, we can kill people who try to treat us as no more than pets.
Face it, in the depths of their soul, everyone, absolutely everyone, desires Freedom. Many are too scared to take on Freedom and prefer the comforting simplicity of slavery, but there is a significant portion of people who will fight you to death for their Freedom. You can take your economic bondage and stuff it up your ass.
Re:Conformation (Score:5, Interesting)
I finished that task, and was called into the Bosses office, I figured it was to lay me off, because, I only had a contract to do the weather sat sims, nothing else, So I went up there, happy that I had had the opportunity and I had enjoyed the work. The boss looked me in the eye and said something like, "Hey, Lazarus, I know you are probably aware that we are pivoting away from NOAA work to focus more on the Air Force work we do? (that was actually a lie) well, that is true, BUT we still need you, let's talk about you helping us with Air Force weather satellites. (Yes, NOAA and the Air Force each had their own constellations of weather satellites, maybe/probably they still do). Don't worry, we have a plan to keep you here for years to come. We will always have a place here for you"
"Since i have you here, and you are fresh off of the NOAA project, could you develop a similar set of simulators for the Air Force weather satellites?" I said sure, no problem, when would you like my preliminary design? And he said, something like, "I don't know, when can you have it ready?", I replied it would just need to change the data inputs and outputs, as every thing else is the same, probably the end of the week? If the same technician and software developer are still available they can probably get started once my design has gone through review. "He said, well, listen, how about you have it thursday next week, just in case some hiccup comes up? And if you need more time, we can discuss that too." So, I said sure, and worked on modding the previous simulators to use with the different messages, transmission rates, modulation schemes, and had it on his desk wednesady, he said that it was great...
Friday he called me to his office and told me that he felt 'terrible' because he "Had" to lay me off, 'business had changed' and he no longer needed my services, he actually had two armed guards there because he was afraid I would go ballistic. He said he was 'so sorry' he had lied to me two weeks before about they would always have a place for me, but he needed those Air Force weather sat sims.
He felt so bad that he gave me 6 weeks of severance pay (I was owed two). The guards, they carried all my junk from my desk out to my car, they knew I was no threat, I was actually no threat, it had been a contract job, I had another one lined up already, and I actually didn't care... The boss, he couldn't understand that, of course, to keep those 6 weeks of pay/my severance, I did not share with him that i was starting another job in a couple of weeks.
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For some reason he thought I was going to go berserk and kill everyone in the room... Hence the two armed guards. I get that a lot for some reason. Maybe he figured if he came clean I wouldn't be so angry as if he lied about it? But, like I said, I wasn't angry one bit, I mean, come on, they paid me a good salary to do a job, every day I was there, sure, they lied about how long the job would be, but I was a consultant, I know what the deal is,
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Yeah, given that you were a consultant, I don't understand why he didn't say something like, "would you mind extending your contract to do this one additional thing that I think will be pretty easy? Because it's important to our future business, we'll pay you an extra two week's severance, but you can leave as soon as it is done."
I guess he misread you by a wide margin, and because the additional work was vital, was afraid you would just walk.
Definitely a case where being up-front, and using a carrot rathe
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Many bosses have no humanity, no compassion, no soul at all.
That's why they're a "boss" and not a leader.
Stupidity as an art form (Score:5, Insightful)
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They don't care, the purpose of every executive group is to behave like locusts. They take over succesful startups filled with talent engineers, extract all the value they can, destroy it, and move on to the next. There is no loyalty. There's no advantage in retaining important engineers. They are used and discarded by those who just want to make money.
Perhaps this is more a loyalty test? (Score:5, Interesting)
While it is true that employees quit when impopular measures are taken, it is also true that the most experienced employees leave first. Any boss who used this trick literally threw away the company's talent.
That has not been my experience at all, unless you're working at a very unstable startup. The least experienced and least loyal leave first. The ones who provide the least value know they're the most likely to get laid off, especially if they're new. I have worked for a few shitshows and all are kept alive by a core of really really talented people who can't leave for one reason or another...workers who it would be a dream to recruit. Typically they have things going on in their personal life that mean it's very difficult to move...also, the more experienced and more promoted you are, the harder it becomes to replicate that elsewhere. So if you're just a software engineer...very easy to get just as good of a job anywhere else...even the same is mostly true of team leaders....but once you're at director level?...well, less jobs available, higher standards, and your skills are less transferrable that those of a JavaScript coder.
Also, talent doesn't always equal success. I have been very unsuccessful at jobs I was overqualified for. Some jobs, especially in larger companies, require little talent and a lot of diligence. The coding is easy, but you have to be thorough and have good people skills and organizational saavy. I've written amazing apps I was very proud of that pushed the envelope of modern technology...then there was 1 small bug in an unreported edge case and a very disappointed customer. The customer would have been happier with 10-year-old technology written by someone who can read minds and know things they don't tell you.
For many divisions, you need loyal workers who NEED their job. You need people who will show up and do the paperwork and get things done. The things that matter to technologists don't always matter to customers.
I've seen many talented people from elite schools flame out because programming is boring. Most of us don't change the world. Most of us don't invent novel technology. Most of us just make sure that customer input is processed properly. There's a lot more value derived from routine work than innovative mind melters.
Most staff of profitable companies are tasked with keeping things running smoothly. So a RTO may make sense. You want people who will answer the phone at 11PM when there's a customer issue. Or put cynically, for most roles, the best person is someone who...when the company says "JUMP" they say "HOW HIGH?" Obviously if they need the world's greatest talent, they'll be much more flexible...but if your role is to validate user input and make sure it's saved correctly....maybe you're not that special?
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And they don't want to go through the experience of finding another job when they've just landed the best one they could find.
Perhaps, though work from home can be a pretty good incentive that wasn't available before covid.
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The people most valuable to other companies might not be the same as the people most valuable to your company. But then, giving all your employees a big fat middle finger doesn't just get some to leave, but the ones who stay won't be "giving their 110%" anymore.
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My boss did this with one of my coworkers. Made the guy quit, then took his salary and hired 16 Indians out of Hyderabad and still had leftover cash to burn.
a fifth of HR professionals (Score:5, Funny)
Looking at the summary, I misread "a fifth of HR professionals" as "a filth of HR professionals", and thought "filth" was what a group of HR employees are called:
filth /flth/
collective noun
Any group of HR employees that can be represented by a positive integer.
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I doubt it (Score:2)
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> that would be a terrible way to reduce staff.
but a cheap one.
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... you would expect to lose your best people, not your worst, so that would be a terrible way to reduce staff.
Management have no clue who the best and worst people are anyway.
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Don't ever make the mistake of believing that anyone at a mega corporation is important.
Literally no one from the parking attendant to the CEO is important. Every single one is easily and quickly replaced.
Mega corporations run on procedure, metrics, policy, standards, and so on. There are no super stars. Having some standout 'needed' genius at those place is bad. Geniuses can not be replaced. You can not rely on the existence of a single genius for your trillion dollar company. Everything has to be re
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That guy was probably the only honest exec at your company.
and what happens some puts in for relocation to mo (Score:2)
and what happens some puts in for relocation to move to near where an still open office is?
Say with remote they shut down alot of the office space they have and now per their rules they will need to shell out big $$$ to move people who are told they now need to be in office?
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They'll provide a few grand from the budget they already allocated for that purpose. It's been accounted for.
what about people who are on field work and don't (Score:2)
what about people who are on field work?
that don't have an office? or if they had an office the trip costs to go from the office to the client will be very high?
What? Dogbert is not nearly so evil as the PHB? (Score:2)
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She never believed me until she had been working ten years or so, she just thought I was being cynical.
Now she knows the truth.
Not one cause (Score:3)
The mistake we too often make is to assume a policy is adopted for a single reason. The reality is that RTO has been implemented for a variety of reasons, with the mix at any one company being different from that at another. These reasons will include the desire to lose staff, to address problems of accountability of some employees, pressure to fill the space available, managers' desire to be able to see their slaves, a belief that face to face interactions are better, and local and not so local governments' desire to support the city centre economy and to reduce the imminent crash in office rentals, setting off bank crashes.
The main lesson for the average serf in a cubicle is to believe what their organisation's approach has revealed about its real concern for them and respond accordingly. If it is obvious that it has no real concern for its workforce, then it's clearly time to think about moving...
PHB brilliance (Score:3)
"Let's get rid of the people talented enough to have options, while keeping the people who aren't and don't"
Far better to use traditional layoffs where you have more choice in who stays and who goes.
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Nope. Helps find those who are too lazy to do their job. They're the ones running off to Home Depot on company time to pick out their supplies to do home remodeling on company time. The ones who are grocery shopping while on a conference call. The ones who are whiners because they think they're special.
Not to mention those who had been around forever. Getting rid of those people cuts exp
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They're the ones running off to Home Depot on company time to pick out their supplies to do home remodeling on company time. The ones who are grocery shopping while on a conference call.
Every owner of every small business I've worked for has done shit like this. Nearly (a few honorable exceptions) all of them would lose their shit if an employee was caught doing the same. Do as I say, not as I do, pleb, now get back to work! I have a new car to pay for....
I'd have more sympathy for the argument if I didn't spend so much of my work life in unproductive meetings/phone calls. I basically already work a 32 hour week if you subtract all of the mandated unproductive time baked into my sched
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You think RTO gets rid of deadwood because they would prefer to goof off without pay, rather than them coming into the office to goof off with pay because they're deadwood and will have trouble landing their next job. And that those who want to WFH and have the resume to jump to a new employer easily will meekly come back to the office because you say so.
Ok. Good news, you're, you're insightful enough to be one of the PHBs we mock on Slashdot.
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Those lazy WFH people only get away with it because their managers are incompetent. As a WFH manager of an all-remote team, I know what each person is able to produce, and I can tell when they're not producing. Heck, I don't even care if they run to Home Depot during work hours, as long as they keep the output coming!
My own observation is that WFH teams know they have it good, and they don't want to jeopardize that arrangement. In general, they tend to work harder, and longer hours, without even being told
Now they need to go back to the previous method (Score:5, Insightful)
Tired of being surprised (Score:2)
The 20% are just the ones dumb enough to admit it (Score:2)
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It's why Interest rates stay high even though the only thing bumping inflation right now is landlord collusion & billionaires buying up all the houses to rent.
Ah, there's your same old bullshit. Almost forgot I was reading rsilvergun's keyboard droolings.
Florida would like to have a chat with you.
Could read it another way... (Score:2)
"Study finds that 25% of bosses think a portion of the workforce is superfluous or unremarkable, but lacks a way to divest themselves through normal channels without legal action, and wouldn't be disappointed if a whole bunch walked."
And some of them would be right. I think almost any large organization could lose 1/4 of the workforce and be fine - if it's the right 1/4.
Could we get some statistics on how they fared? (Score:4, Interesting)
I would really love to see how the companies fared that actually succeeded with this tactic and got people to quit. Because let's face it, who quits? The go-getters with projects to point to, with github accounts brimming with proof of their abilities, who will easily be hoovered up by other companies? Or the duds that didn't improve their skills since they have been hired, are working to spec and not even a bit more, work 9-5 while spending the last 30 minutes watching the clock to make sure they punch out on time and who thus know they have to grin and bear it because nobody in their right mind would hire them if they get fired?
Is that always true? (Score:2)
Isn't it always true that any given manager would like to get rid of the lower tier of his reports? Wouldn't he be a bad manager if that weren't the case?
So, why all the hate here?
Managers can't manage, and RTO helps them fake it. (Score:2)
I worked from home through the whole pandemic before my company just cut staff outright. They'd talked about RTO many times, but there was so much resistance that I think they were afraid to lose more people than they could afford to.
I've since worked one gig that was in-office, and heard that their WFH period was very, very short - they did their RTO in 2020, because management felt that they couldn't function at all if they couldn't walk around and see people working. Sure enough, several managers spent
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Power.
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It has nothing to do with sexual pleasure and everything to do with having to compensate people who are let go vs not compensating those who leave on their own.
(Okay, there may be a bit of sexual pleasure too...)
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In English we have a German loan word to describe it: schadenfreude.
No shame in enjoying people getting their comeuppance. Karmic debt payment is satisfying to observers.
It's when you enjoy it regardless of whether or not it's earned that you become one of the bad people.
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I don't know. I've had to fire people who 100% deserved it and it still bothered me a lot. I think you have to be a bit of a sociopath, which also helps with office politics.
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I didn't misuse the word. I have a degree in English. Thanks.
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Writing professional of 25+ years here to inform you that "phenomena" is a plural noun, and "causes" is a singular verb.
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Subject-verb only applies if I am collecting the subjects and the verb agrees with all of them. Don't lecture me on writing. I have a million words in print and readers in ten countries. Move along.
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I mean, I've probably typed a million plus words into Slashdot posts and I'm sure we have people on here from at least 10 different countries... :)