Remote Work is Officially Dead, Says the World's Largest Recruiter (fortune.com) 93
The great return-to-office battle has effectively concluded and a clear pecking order has emerged, according to Sander van 't Noordende, the CEO of Randstad, a staffing giant that places around half a million workers in jobs every week. Remote work is becoming a status symbol reserved for star performers and those possessing rare skills. "You have to be very special to be able to demand a 100% remote job," van 't Noordende told Fortune. "That's increasingly the story. You have to have very special technology skills or some expertise."
The equilibrium appears to be settling at a hybrid model of three to four days in office for most workers. Van 't Noordende noted that apart from some banks in major cities, the five-day office week isn't returning as the norm despite hardline mandates from companies like Amazon and JPMorgan. Korn Ferry predicted this "hybrid hierarchy" at the start of 2025, forecasting that flexibility would become a perk reserved for top talent. At some companies, high performers are already being offered flexible schedules as a bonus while mid-range employees don't get the privilege, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The equilibrium appears to be settling at a hybrid model of three to four days in office for most workers. Van 't Noordende noted that apart from some banks in major cities, the five-day office week isn't returning as the norm despite hardline mandates from companies like Amazon and JPMorgan. Korn Ferry predicted this "hybrid hierarchy" at the start of 2025, forecasting that flexibility would become a perk reserved for top talent. At some companies, high performers are already being offered flexible schedules as a bonus while mid-range employees don't get the privilege, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Which country is this talking about? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Which country is this talking about? (Score:5, Funny)
Checked with HR. Turns out that in your case, it has more to do with your hygiene than your talent.
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Re: Which country is this talking about? (Score:2)
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A person can be both foul and brilliant at something. All the same, it was a joke. Lighten up.
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There's a whoosh in here also...
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At this point, a "whoosh" would be appropriate. Yeah I know, old Slashdot meme that has become extinct shortly after the sense of humor became so scarce that the whoosh became necessary in the first place.
Anyhow, I know it is tough to laugh at a joke at your own expense. But sometimes, it may be a better idea to just say nothing, I guess.
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Can confirm, but I'm my case at least they would need to pay me a lot more to come to the office. Transport costs, time spent commuting, worse work/life balance, worse health, more expensive housing, and so on.
Re: Which country is this talking about? (Score:2)
My wife was hired remote. Has never met another employee in person. Her office is more than 500 miles away. I hope they don't mandate she works in their office.
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Oh, for a mod point...
Re: Which country is this talking about? (Score:2)
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The same magic that makes unproductive people suddenly become productive when standing in a different building , rather than just being properly monitored for performance.
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'properly monitored for performance' meant, at my last opportunity:
- Being given goals and/or tasks...
- Achieving goals...
- Or accomplishing tasks...
- Being helpful when appropriate...
- NOT being negative or impeding work...
- Communicating with the team and manager...
- Smiling and shaking the hand of the VP when they come to explain why your team is being displaced...
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I think they're mainly talking about large companies. Among people I know who work at small companies, fully remote has become the norm.
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These people are ghouls (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:These people are ghouls (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget that they also have investments in office space that they are keen to justify.
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investments in office space
Were you attempting to say "expenses?"
Re: These people are ghouls (Score:5, Interesting)
"The C-Suite that you rail against is entirely profit motivated."
You're not wrong, you're just thinking small. That is, not like a member of that clan of jackals.
They are worried about THEIR personal profits, they don't give two fucks about any given corporation. And if you do, you're stupid, because corporations don't have hearts or souls and are literally not capable of caring about you.
As long as they come out looking competent, they will be able to get a job at the next corporation, and secure THEIR profits.
Re: These people are ghouls (Score:2)
Not sure if ifs leftist so much as the bleating of aspies being forced to endure the horrors of actually being in the same room as other humans. Because their brains are missing a crucial piece of functionality they simply dont understand how social interaction works or its benefits for most people so they think it's some kind of conspiracy.
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It doesn't. The fact of the matter is that in-office is a better use of payroll dollars than WFH/remote for most positions. Always has been, as some of us have been telling y'all for years now.
The difference is now it makes you a second rate company to work for, whereas before it didn't. It will be reflected in your pool talent pool in due course.
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If WFH was the magical productivity fairy everyone swears it is
You don't understand the argument, which is that refusing WFH when competitors offer it is an anti-productivity "fairy"
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If WFH was the magical productivity fairy everyone swears it is, you'd think something—anything—might have flickered across an actual spreadsheet by now. And yet crickets. I’ve personally stared into my own datasets long enough to go cross-eyed, and spoiler alert: there’s no signal. Not even a cute little noise. Just the sound of nothing happening.
Firstly, you are moving the goalpost. Nothing would imply no difference, and if there is no difference then you are admitting forcing employees into the office is not about productivity at all. This actually makes it worse, because people know you are just being petty. I'm sure you think you are a great employer though. Most people think they are better at most things than they actually are.
And as for the crickets, they are your own colony. That is fine to look at your own data and not look at anyo
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Be angry about it all you like, but let's not pretend your tantrum matters at all to the universe.
Did I hurt your fee-fees?
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The C-Suite that you rail against is entirely profit motivated. They don't care about your freedom, or crushing your dreams, or even knowing that you exist. They want maximum profit.
Profit motivated: yes. But it's their own personal profit, not the company's. This means they may make some dumb decisions if they feel that they will personally benefit from them.
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One of the worst rackets I've ever encoutered, and I've encountered it at multiple companies, is the whole board salary thing.
The way it works is this;- Say I have some shitty acronym-as-a-service startup, no path to profitability, not even a minimum viable product, but lots of buzzwords. Seems like a way of accruing a lot of debt with no way to pay it off. Well.... Retirement funds to the rescue! It doesnt matter if I'll never be a good investment, as long as I can offer investors a $250K "job" on the boar
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No, they don't.
No they aren't. They are human beings, and as such, they have many motivations including emotional and outright irrational motivations, including their own sense of pride and power. Furthermore, they suffer from ignorance and cognitive distortion just like all other humans, so they are driven by many false beliefs about what will maximiz
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My past opportunity, we were given WFH options before the Covid. This, however, was after the clustering/open office/picnic table redesigns.
The office redesigns were, after 3 years, admitted to be a pure real estate play, reducing square footage by 40% and allowing for one of 3 buildings to be closed and renovated completely. That and 2 day WFH changed the needed space. But the redesign was presented as a collaborative enabler, for software engineering a team blender, and that of course was something of a f
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You can be a princess and throw a tantrum all you like, but the facts of the matter is that WFH is far more inefficient for most positions than having your employees in the office.
Point of fact, this behavior right here is one of the major reasons inoffice positions are preferrable ( from a productivity standpoint ); the childish nonsense is more acceptable in a WFH environment than in the office.
Your two paragraphs contradict themselves, princess.
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Re: These people are ghouls (Score:2)
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WFH is far more inefficient for most positions than having your employees in the office.
While being able to walk across a room to get an answer to a simple yes/no question instantaneously may be more efficient, having to wait several hours -- if not days -- to receive the same answer makes one feel like they really earned the answer. One needs a sense of accomplishment.
(plus there's no challenge doing one's job at 9am after a good night's sleep. Doing it at 3am ripped on weed and adderall is far more interesting)
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Hey there AC, you seem to be confused about the difference between the words "fact" and "belief."
You believe that WFH is inefficient for most positions, but the available evidence show otherwise. Therefore, your belief is not a fact.
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It's to make sure you're not a North Korean [slashdot.org] trying to steal [slashdot.org] company secrets [slashdot.org].
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Too many people made a very visible point of doing the minimum to remain employed. They are why we can't have nice things.
If you want to work from home, negotiate for it: it is a perk like any other. If you are as good as you think you are, you will get it.
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"clutch back pieces of your own freedom"
LOL. I wish I could invest in hyperbole stocks.
You know what? The middle class has - more or less since there was one - gone "to a place to work" and then gone home. Let's remember this has been normal for CENTURIES.
When covid hit, and we'd all suspected for a few years that working remotely was POSSIBLE, there was suddenly a high demand for it. Companies spent PILES of $$ on mostlyshitty remote systems that have by and large gotten better up to "ok". And we wor
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My favorite bit is that companies - who are on supposedly universally seething with unadulterated greed, mind you, are now somehow uninterested in the $millions per year they could save on commercial real estate letting people work from home, using their own kitchens and offices (for free) rather than the $140 persqft downtown office space?
And this is because, let me see, they somehow get off on flexing on the peons who (supposedly) are just as effective from home?
Maybe roll through that narrative in your head again, see if it makes sense this time: ... they can wander around the office with a stale cup of coffee, ogle the secretary's tits, and force the peons to genuflect?
- allegedly workers are really JUST AS EFFECTIVE from home (according to them)
- they could work entirely from home, easily saving businesses $millions/year
- and yet the pointy-heads don't want this just so
Of course. Makes perfect sense.
This conflict is real, but it doesn't make the problem fake. What you didn't account for is that unadulterated greed is not perfectly smart and rational greed: PHBs are real, and they don't take perfectly rational paths to what they see as maximizing profits. See how they try to replace workers with LLMs to disastrous results for one quick example from recent history. Likely the biggest irrational factor is that they've spent a lot of money on flashy corporate real estate that feeds their egos as a status s
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Yes, clutching back the freedom that tech workers were offered with WFH that you, dear noble boss, don't trust the broader population with even if you do trust your own workers. But it doesn't stop at corporations fighting WFH, there's also the arrival of 9-9-6 work culture in tech and possibly other industries as well. After all, the entire disposition of these companies is replacing labor entirely. Child labor discussions are right around the corner once more desperation sets in.
As others have said, your
Money in motion (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Article written by staffing agency
2. Staffing agency gets paid for recruiting and placing new employees and contractors with a company
3. Staffing agency "reports" that worker location changing from WFH to the office
4. Turnover of staff due to WHF to office transition
5. Staffing agency gets more places to profit from this WFH to office move
This is the staffing agency "talking its own book" and promoting "money in motion" again.
No "money in motion", or stability with little change means all the companies who profit from change cannot make those profits.
Re: Money in motion (Score:2)
Yup. Exactly that. Self-promotion. That's all.
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This isn't mutually exclusive. The people who often are most interested in a topic are those who make a business of knowing how it works. It stands to reason that a staffing agency will be among the most clued on in the current trends of staffing. It stands to reason that they know the conditions for employment, they get paid to do it after all.
But 4 and 5 do not follow from 1, 2 or 3 in your argument. Just reporting on what is doesn't make something happen, in fact they explicitly note that we're not going
Quality of work (Score:5, Insightful)
Several studies have shown that remote workers do just as good a job as in-house. Whatever metrics were used, no significant difference was found. But they found that management tended to do less well. Their metrics were down slightly. Mainly in helping the employees training for better jobs.
I have a conservative friend that thought this was bullshit and talked about a friend that he claimed took advantage of work from home to work less.
He was wrong. He was seeing the guy during the day, walking his dog. But the guy ended up working longer hours to make up for the mid-day walks.
But even if he was right then that lazy guy should NOT be sent back to the office; he should be sent to the unemployment line.
Working from home is also essential for certain disabled people. A blind person can get to work - but it might take 20% more time. There own home could be much easier to deal with. Do not get me started on wheelchairs and navigating work.
This impacts quality of life tremendously and does affect your qork.
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In my individual experience - managers thrive on soft power - being in office and navigating conflict they themselves create. Running around heads on fire, highly visible, but low output of any kind. I'm not saying this in ragey tone - C level folks don't produce anything, not even powerpoints as they have folks doing all that work for them.
The skills and status they worked very hard to attain were less valuable in a remo
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Great point on data. Part of the disconnect is that managers perceive soft value. In my individual experience - managers thrive on soft power
More to the point, they only care about things that make themselves look good. They want you to work slower so they can have an excuse to hire more people. The more people you manage, the more power you have.
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If for whatever reason managers and owners value ass-in-seat (AIS) more, why don't they simply offer a bonus for AIS jobs? They could pay maybe say 5% less for a full WFH employee. This would increase hiring choices. Right now The Suits don't care because the job market is slow, they mostly get what they want, but eventually the AIS bonus will probably become the norm.
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Good workers do good work in spite of their work environment. They will do good work from home, in an office, in a corner of the conference room, or anywhere else. They may perform better from a home-office due to less interruptions and the freedom to work overtime without anyone noticing.
Bad workers do bad work. They need to be fired. You can't fix them by having them work in an office or from home.
Average workers do better while working in a structured environment with enforced rules to keep them on t
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Several studies have shown that remote workers do just as good a job as in-house. Whatever metrics were used, no significant difference was found. But they found that management tended to do less well. Their metrics were down slightly. Mainly in helping the employees training for better jobs.
Sounds that instantaneously, a comparable worker is equally efficient at work and at home. But if the training doesn't work so well remote, then the same team working from home will fall behind the in-office one eventua
Photo accompanying article is AI generated (Score:2)
They couldn't even find a real in-office employee to photograph.
Butts in seats.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've become convinced that there are simply two types of management out there. One type is comfortable with the idea that an employee or contractor can get work done from anywhere. Physical location is irrelevant in a world where we have high speed Internet plus tools like overnight shipping/delivery. The other type tends to run businesses where physical presence is key to the core of the business model. (EG. Transportation or Logistics companies, where the meat and potatoes involves people who show up. Trucks go nowhere without their drivers, and boxes don't get unloaded or loaded if dock workers aren't there to do the work.) It's difficult for some of the later group of execs and middle managers to wrap their heads around the idea that they can remote mange somebody who is getting just as much work done for them as if they were there in person, able to be watched.
And in all fairness? I've been on both sides of this, and been pretty frustrated with co-workers who work 100% remote and just don't stay focused on the work I'm stuck handling because I came into the office. So some blame needs to go to the people who want to work from home because it lets them slack off. They didn't do much to preserve a standard of allowing WFH.
Ultimately though? What I've observed is that management types really just prefer having their people come in to a central office because it's more comfortable/easier for them that way. If the keyboard or mouse suddenly stops working or their OneDrive stops syncing, they can just demand so-and-so walk over to their desk to assist them with it. They like that a lot better than scheduling time with some remote worker to do a remote session in to their PC, or to be told, "You'll need to go round up some batteries for that keyboard." instead of making some I.T. deskside support guy change them out. If they ever feel compelled to hold an impromptu meeting, they can just walk over and demand everyone meet them in the break room in 15 minutes. You're a captive audience for them.
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If the keyboard or mouse suddenly stops working or their OneDrive stops syncing, they can just demand so-and-so walk over to their desk to assist them with it. They like that a lot better than scheduling time with some remote worker to do a remote session in to their PC, or to be told, "You'll need to go round up some batteries for that keyboard." instead of making some I.T. deskside support guy change them out. If they ever feel compelled to hold an impromptu meeting, they can just walk over and demand everyone meet them in the break room in 15 minutes.
These scenarios that you cite result in the worker getting back on task, and not slowing the corporate output, much sooner than the WFH scenario where they have to schedule a time(next day?) and are unable to function for an extended period of time.
You have literally proven, with your own "counter argument", that the overall efficiency of the company is increased when "you're a captive audience" in-office.
Need to see and influence (Score:2)
A different take.
There are people who are used to influence, charm, direct or order people. Those people want to see the effect of their own interactions in person with subordinate employees.
Remote work and meeting via video conference call removes many of the social advantages of attractiveness, charm, and ability to intimidate via title, physical size, and verbal ability.
Nonsense (Score:2)
I'm involved in two companies after leaving Intel.
Everyone works remotely. There are no office costs to pay. We meet online.
If you're starting a company today and you want to be free to employ people for their skills rather than their location, this is the way to do it. Subscribe to one of the many online conferencing services and get to work.
Gee, I had no idea ... (Score:2)
... that I was so special (eye roll).
Or, just maybe, you aren't counting everybody, just large companies.
*WRONG* (Score:2)
"You have to be very special to be able to demand a 100% remote job," van 't Noordende told Fortune.
That's a load of bullshit, and shame on Fortune for not calling him out on this CEO's fever-dream of workers huddled at desks in a big, ugly office. He *wishes* it was going away, but it's not.
Remote work is not going away, it's actually increasing, and nothing some shareholder-glazing CEO says is going to change that.
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I guess I'm very special then! Aren't you?
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I guess I'm very special then! Aren't you?
I'm not special but somehow I'm still remote.
In-office work is a necessity for some (Score:2)
If you've ever worked retail, in service jobs, in most offices - pretty much anywhere except in tech - supervision is a necessity. Techies forget that there are a LOT of jobs where you can get away this doing literally nothing unless someone is monitoring you. Thera are also a LOT of people will gravitate to the least effort necessary to draw a paycheck.
I get that our industry chafes at 40 hours in the office, and for us it's stupid and counterproductive, but tens of millions of people need someone
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You don't have time to sit around without anyone noticing in retail unless there's not a business case, in which case there's no customers. That business has (at least) two problems.
If there's work to be done, it's immediately noticeable when you aren't doing it, to anyone who understands the job. No one else is qualified to manage people doing it.
It really shows how little power you have (Score:1)
And a few dozen men decided fuck you.
It really does show how weak and powerless you really are against the people who are really in charge.
The funny thing is you put them there. And every time so
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Remote work benefited absolutely everyone.
Yes and thanks to scammers like yourself pretending to work while posting on Slashdot 3 dozens times a day all day long plus reddit etc. , we can't have that anymore.
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Remote work benefited absolutely everyone.
OMG what.
If you were somebody who got to work from home multiple studies showed you were more productive and happier and save the bunch of money.
I can 100% assure you there is not a single study out there which shows that. Not everyone is a hermit who craves a complete lack of human interaction. Not everyone lives in a car dependent hellhole where the act of going beyond your front drive is an exercise in misery.
When the pandemic started to lift, the company I wor
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Engineering's a team sport, and I'm an engineer, not a basement dwelling code monkey.
The GP asserted that for everyone WFH was an improvement. Even when I was flying completely solo I paid for an off site office because I didn't like working from home for extended periods. And even in that case random mixing with other random inhabitants of the shared office exposed me to useful things I didn't otherwise know about.
These days I absolutely lean on others to help me because we are what is called a "team" not
i mean wtf (Score:1)
Are we really going to let them... the ugliest word i can think of is *monetize* it this way? slot it into the meritocracy, disregarding the obvious benefits it brought? this is contemptibly dystopian. I mean seriously, fuck everything. the empire's collapse probably traceable back to 2001 but who'd have thought fascism would be so immediate a result.
Recruiters are not needed to fill remote openings (Score:2)
I didn't know (Score:2)
So according to the article, I'm a superstar employee.
Never went back to the office after Covid. Have no plans of ever doing that again.
Who wrote this? (Score:2)
Which CEO paid to have this "survey" article posted exactly? We already know the RTO mandate is solidly centered around corporations having long-term lease commitments and not wanting to look stupid having expen$ive office space mostly empty.
To be honest, a smaller, full office isn't so bad. But when you have a big, sweeping office with all the 'collab' spaces and it's a ghost town, yah, that's depressing.
Being realistic, companies are happy to dump the commute time/cost burden back on employees - why not
Press X to Doubt (Score:2)
I don't know a single person who still works in an office. Maybe we're all extra special? Or maybe because paying for office space and forcing and international team to all fly into a single city to work less effectively is a non-starter.