Are Return-to-Office Mandates Killing Workers' Trust in Workplaces? (thehill.com) 125
The Hill published the thoughts of Gleb Tsipursky, Ph.D., who serves as the CEO of the future-of-work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts:
A recent EnhancV survey of 1,000 full-time U.S. workers subject to new or stricter return-to-office policies found that 72% suspect these mandates are really a voluntary attrition strategy — a strategy by their own employers to make them quit their jobs. A full 46% admit to the practice of coffee-badging. Thirty-six percent have applied for a new job while sitting at their current office desk. Thirty-six percent have started a side hustle since the mandate was announced, in anticipation of being let go or quitting. Those numbers do not prove that employees reject collaboration. They show that many employees no longer trust the official story...
The central mistake in many in-office mandates is the assumption that proximity automatically produces commitment. It does not. A worker who spends two hours commuting to sit on video calls with colleagues in other cities is not experiencing culture. That worker is experiencing theater. When executives describe the office as a cure-all, many employees experience lost time, higher costs and lower autonomy. The policy's defining feature becomes its credibility gap. Research keeps undercutting the belief that more office time automatically means better performance. A University of Pittsburgh analysis of S&P 500 firms found that return-to-office mandates reduced employee satisfaction without improving firm performance or firm value....
Baylor University's reporting on office mandates and brain drain found that firms with mandates faced greater turnover among women, senior employees, managers and high-skilled workers, while job vacancy duration increased and hiring rates declined. In other words, the people with the most options are often the first to leave. The employees who remain may not be the most committed — they may simply be the least mobile... Attendance can be mandated, but commitment cannot. When leaders confuse the two, they do not rebuild workplace culture. They create a room full of people planning their exit.
The central mistake in many in-office mandates is the assumption that proximity automatically produces commitment. It does not. A worker who spends two hours commuting to sit on video calls with colleagues in other cities is not experiencing culture. That worker is experiencing theater. When executives describe the office as a cure-all, many employees experience lost time, higher costs and lower autonomy. The policy's defining feature becomes its credibility gap. Research keeps undercutting the belief that more office time automatically means better performance. A University of Pittsburgh analysis of S&P 500 firms found that return-to-office mandates reduced employee satisfaction without improving firm performance or firm value....
Baylor University's reporting on office mandates and brain drain found that firms with mandates faced greater turnover among women, senior employees, managers and high-skilled workers, while job vacancy duration increased and hiring rates declined. In other words, the people with the most options are often the first to leave. The employees who remain may not be the most committed — they may simply be the least mobile... Attendance can be mandated, but commitment cannot. When leaders confuse the two, they do not rebuild workplace culture. They create a room full of people planning their exit.
Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
They show that many employees no longer trust the official story.
Why did they ever trust the official story? Lying has been standard in SV for a long time [nickoneill.com]. Obviously longer, but I can't find older links. A lot CxOs lie for no reason, in a transparent way that kills morale. I'm starting to think they intentionally kill morale. [youtube.com]
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Im sure the reason ranges from flexing, to ego, to wanting to validate their concerns about employees productivity.
All of this is validated by stories of extreme oversight, narcissistic bosses, and bad excuses they come up with for anything they do that is suspect.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
Leaders equating line-of-sight supervision with effectiveness found themselves without their primary management tool [forbes.com]
having well-trained, well-motivated managers leads to massive boosts in productivity from hybrid and remote working models. The data support this argument from the flip side, too. Among companies that reported struggles with remote work, this issue was concentrated in firms in which leaders fumbled the management and coordination of their remote teams. [lse.ac.uk]
Remote and hybrid workers are struggling with leadership gaps that were never addressed when companies shifted out of the office. Many management habits remain rooted in on-site visibility rather than clear expectations and outcomes. [natlawreview.com]
And most damning of all, The study concludes that narcissistic leaders oppose virtual work primarily because it threatens their access to power and status, rather than out of concern for organizational productivity. Shandell, Elliott, and Grant write that "leader narcissism is a critical but neglected source of resistance to remote work." [hrreporter.com]
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, The study concludes that narcissistic leaders oppose virtual work primarily because it threatens their access to power and status, rather than out of concern for organizational productivity.
It's not narcissism, it's entirely rational: we are all working because of self interest, not because we care about the company.
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In my opinion, that's still drastically different than working because it gives me a captive audience of people highly motivated to kiss ass. Loyalty or not, I am invested in my work (as opposed to my job) - Doing it reasonably well is directly conducive to the company remaining solvent and me continuing to draw a salary.
Am I merely deluding myself by thinking doing the job well because i
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I agree with you overall - I work because I need income to live, not because I give the least damn about my employer.
Of course we need income to live, but I don't think it's that black-or-white. At least some of us also factor in wanting to work in an environment where we feel like we're making a difference (e.g. non-profits, educational institutions), which typically means a relatively lower salary than is the industry norm.
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the Bill Lundbergs of the world have realized to their horror they're utterly irrelevant to my productivity.
What I mean is, they are incentivized to reduce productivity. They are rewarded for it. If they are merely irrelevant to productivity, then they are not likely to be promoted, or have as good a position if they change companies.
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What?
Isn't increasing shareholder value one of your core beliefs? How else do you get up in the morning?
Next you'll be telling me you don't thrive in a high paced, even changing environment!
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Perhaps not narcicism so much as short-sighted self interest. Either way, it would be in the company's interest (and the shareholders) to give THEM the heave-ho and leave the workers remote. The workaround for their ineffectiveness costs millions a year.
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Perhaps not narcicism so much as short-sighted self interest.
It is definitely self-interest instead of company interest. You can learn from this: don't let work stress you out, nothing there matters anyway.
Either way, it would be in the company's interest (and the shareholders) to give THEM the heave-ho and leave the workers remote.
It is true, but the CEO is one of them. This is a main reason why corporate bureaucracy sucks. If any single manager starts becoming more efficient/effective than the others, he is painting a target on his back. The other managers will backstab him to keep him down.
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It's the same reasons that CEOs who wreck multiple companies one after the other seem top find a golden parachute and a new job waiting for them.
Relax and then read them again, completely. (Score:3)
- The forbes article is an opinion piece stating that remote work exposes weak managers. It argues that WFH needs _better_ managers.
- LSE argues that well-trained managers _boost_ productivity for hybrid/WFH.
- National Law Review is also arguing for better trained managers (specifically communications) because they also make hybrid/WFH more effective.
All them state what has a
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You'll argue "If I'm doing my job, I don't need managers." A good manager should be taking care of the sh*t you don't need or want to be doing. Either doing it themselves or seeing that someone else is taking care of it and not blocking you.
And also ensuring that what you're working on is the right thing to be working on. A good manager should have some idea of what direction product development is going in the short, medium and long term and what other teams and projects are doing that may effect the manag
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Yes, those articles all say we need better managers. Why? Because the current crop largely suck at the actual task of managing, conflating oversight with line-of-sight. And some aren't even interested in managing in the first place, only in maintaining their micro-fiefdom to stroke their egos. What part of that disagrees with my stance?
If you're taking issue with my choice of quantifiers, yes, I'll readily admit good managers can absolutely make most jobs easi
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All them state what has always been the case, effective managers who communicate tasks and objectives well and then step back and let employees actually do their jobs improve things
Citation needed.
Middle management is a late 19th century invention, and there are other ways to organize work. Why do we have to organize into "departments" and "teams" all while being told by the highest paid person in the "department" what to do, when to do it, and how to do it?
WFH revealed many of the fallacies and inefficiencies with the middle-management model, and instead of trying a different, more efficient model, companies have doubled-down by removing the thing that exposed the inefficiencies i
Re: Relax and then read them again, completely. (Score:2)
You're responding to a thread that literally has 4 citations in support of your point, already. What more do you want?
Re: Relax and then read them again, completely. (Score:2)
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There's that and the bean counters trying to justify why they have thrown money at long-term commercial real estate leases that would be mostly money down the toilet if they admitted that productivity of a remote workforce was "just as good" as forcing people into commercial office space.
The bean counters plus senior narcissists....that's a powerful adversary.
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Yeah... I lost trust in my first full time employer decades ago when they tried to outsource my work to cheap Indian labor.
I then lost trust in my second full time employer when they tried to outsource my work to cheap Costa Rican labor.
For my third and fourth full time employers, I lost trust in them because they were giving me annual 2 1/2% "raises" that didn't even cover inflation while the companies were making record profits. I'm pretty sure they would have loved to outsource my job overseas as well, b
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I had to take an organizational behaviour course as part of my CS degree in the 90s. "Organizational behaviour" is basically how to get your employees to work harder without actually paying them more. This kind of lying was standard practice back then too, and certainly not just in some little part of California.
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Potemkin (Score:2)
> A worker who spends two hours commuting to sit on video calls with colleagues in other cities is not experiencing culture. That worker is experiencing theater.
It's Potemkin all the way up.
In my case attrition indeed was the goal. We all knew it. 15% of my team left, including both Linux devs. Apart from one person, all my peers were in other offices. RTO was just being on videocall in a room far from home.
Fortunately labour law was on our side, and they couldn't force me as remote work was written in t
ffs (Score:2, Interesting)
Hard yes. We'd spent the better part of a decade trending towards WFH, open concept office, etc etc... now, there's not even enough seats. If we hit 100% compliance about a third of us would be sat on the floor.
The dumb sluts are still pushing for it.
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I spent the day at a client's (very nice) office the other day. It was mostly just to go say hello to a couple of people I work with, and it was nice to get out of the house.
At first I thought it was great - it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. There were meeting rooms all over the place, and some of those little 'pods' for one person, so it looked really decent. The desks were all height adjustable and the chairs were comfy. My colleague had a vertical monitor on his desk because he prefers it that w
I get the sentiment but... (Score:2)
I get the sentiment, but this article has very clearly been written by AI
"coffee badging" ? (Score:2)
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Are you trying to enroll for the next semester? That's not how you enroll.
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Filed under Duh... (Score:2)
"the people with the most options are often the first to leave."
Obviously.
My commute was 35 minutes each way, two hours would have been a real show stopper. Working remotely wasn't really an option at a chemical plant.
3 days a week at my place... but... (Score:2)
Whilst it is officially 3 days per week at my place there is clearly some shadow policy that HR aren't sharing. Firstly there is never a definitive answer about whether leave (regular, bank holiday or medical) counts. There are people signed off sick after surgery who get grief from HR for not attending the office FFS. And there is some peculiar 12 and 26 week average attendance that gets reported even though the policy that we can see doesn't mention those timescales at all.
But it gets worse. It's not jus
where AI tangent? (Score:2)
I find it significant in the RTO debate of late, that I have not yet heard something along the lines of "Return to office or we'll give your job to AI!" (Perhaps with the argument added that any sufficiently digital artifact-based job that can be done remotely, can also be done by LLM.)
Perhaps this says more about the current state of AI than it does about this article's topic. Or perhaps not. Thoughts?
AI has not (yet) delivered sufficiently. (Score:2)
If/when it does there will be mass layoffs because the ideal business has no human employees.
The purpose of AI is to replace humans by facilitating legal constructive dismissal. Businesses are willing to invest enormous sums to be rid of workers.
Who cares? (Score:3, Informative)
Return to office was about commercial real estate property values so that a couple of billionaires who are heavily invested in it didn't lose their investments. Every single credible study has shown that work from home improves productivity and is universally beneficial because it gets people off the roads so if you are somebody who genuinely has to go into the office you have less traffic and cleaner air.
Nobody is going to care whether employees are happy or not anymore. Not broadly. Automation has been devouring jobs since the late 70s and by all accounts the pace is going to accelerate. So employers don't need to be nice to you anymore.
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Return to office was about commercial real estate property values so that a couple of billionaires who are heavily invested in it didn't lose their investments.
That seems implausible. Too many disparate organizations have RTO policies for it to be driven by a cabal of real-estate owning moguls.
I can imagine some C-level types saying "we own these building, we have to do something with them." But, since they're flinty hearted greedy bastards (they are, right?), I can more likely imagine them saying "great, we can sell a bunch of real estate and/or terminate our leases and use the proceeds to give ourselves a bonus."
I wish UK employees would push-back like USA (Score:3)
Quite sad that in the UK, the company and HR have won with forced return-to-office mandates, and there's been very little or no push-back by staff.
It's almost impossible to come across any job which is fully remote in UK now, unless it's a job from USA or a European company.
My employer... (Score:2)
...does not need this to kill workers trust. Years of bad management, employee control and monitoring, and careers stopped for unknown reasons did this since a long time. We have a record resignation amount among professionals and young employees, and in a few months a new early retirement plan starts: I hope to be in the lucky ones to get this opportunity.
I love this stupid world (Score:2)
an article advocating for better working conditions that you can hear Claude's cadence in, truly a masterpiece
Nope. (Score:2)
Most folks who WFH enjoy the perks and don't want it to end. No commuting. Naps. Playing with the dog. Basically doing nothing other than scheduled meetings.
Then they go to the office and pretend to work for a day
They know what game they are playing. Play the game.
Always a consideration (Score:2)
I have a friend who's pet theory was HR's main goal was to tune compensation to keep the attrition level where the company wanted it. If too few people quit, you're paying too much. If too many, you're not paying enough.
I doubt anyone in HR would put it in quite such cold blooded terms but I think it's at least partly right. Any company needs to think about what type of employees they want and what compensation/benefits/physical environment/work culture will get them that. The right answer isn't always "pay
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I have a friend who's pet theory was HR's main goal was to tune compensation to keep the attrition level where the company wanted it.
Your friend's pet theory is predicated on HR being both really smart and working in complete lock step with management.
Perhaps they don't consider the costs (Score:2)
Micromanagers gonna micromanage (Score:2)
"If you prove your ability to get shit done without being babysat, I'll be out of a job because that's literally my only 'skill'."
Re: Pretty simple (Score:2)
iâ(TM)m not tracking why you think wfh is somehow necessary or even just better fir the enterprise in the current environment. it is it just resentment among coworkers?
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Workers want or even need a cost of living adjustment. Employers do not want to and may not be able to afford to increase payroll. For that reason, the COL increases are often several years in arrears as it is. WFH gives the employees an effective raise by eliminating their commute costs and an opportunity to save even more by living somewhere with a lower COL.
As an additional incentive, the employer saves on office space.
Re: Pretty simple (Score:3)
Re: Pretty simple (Score:2)
So your point is nor that WfH is in any way inferior for the company, but that anyone who believed it would become the norm was wrong.
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Put another way, employers who gave everyone an effective raise due to exigent circumstances and suffered no harm as a result are now mystified as to why their employees are reluctant to accept an effective pay cut now for no apparent benefit. Given the latter part, they rightly suspect some sort of malfeasance somewhere in management.
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I don't get why you think there is any "conundrum". WFH, or better, WFE = from elsewhere was a trend way before COVID, I went to 90-95% WFE by 2012. Sure there are some tasks that are better solved on-site, but they are few, and some planning wrt visits does it.
2012 was the year I just went for summer from the same city as the office was in to some village 800km away and did not even told anyone, it was already that seamless and expected.
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Yeah, IT is the low-hanging fruit here; but we now know virtually all white collar work can effectively be done remotely; and going further, unless your job specifically requires direct interaction with the product or customers, there's little legitimate reason to burn an extra 20% of our waking lives commuting. And that just to hang out in a noisy and disruptive environment full of people more interested in being
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but we now know virtually all white collar work can effectively be done remotely;
Do we know that? I sometimes have to interact with some particular people in a non IT white collar profession. They ain't good at replying to emails and so I phone them yet "lunch break" now seem to extend from about 11 to 3. Those fuckers need to be back in an office with someone actually watching over their shoulder so that they are actually at their desk and actually answer the phone if it rings. Oh and I only ever have to
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but we now know virtually all white collar work can effectively be done remotely;
Do we know that? I sometimes have to interact with some particular people in a non IT white collar profession. They ain't good at replying to emails and so I phone them yet "lunch break" now seem to extend from about 11 to 3. Those fuckers need to be back in an office with someone actually watching over their shoulder so that they are actually at their desk and actually answer the phone if it rings. Oh and I only ever have to call because of paperwork that hasn't been done for too long.
I note the response time is based on whether I need something from them, or they need something from me. 8^)
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Any task that doesn't require physically interaction with product or customer can be done from anywhere on the planet with internet access.
OB car analogy: Some people really shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a steering wheel but the rest of us drive 10-20k miles per year just fine.
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Observing that some people aren't responsible enough to work without someone breathing down their neck is a wildly different claim than saying the work itself couldn't be done remotely.
I don't think it's that simple. Sure, if you're talking about physical possibilities for single instances. But those aren't anything other than a bound because you have to have people to do the tasks. Once you've got low to mid skill people in a dull, dead end job, you have a problem. For certain kinds of job, I reckon it bec
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When I say "virtually all white collar wo
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My original statement, just a statement without anything incendiary in it, has ignited a firestorm of profanity, personal insults and general anger. Because people disagree with me, their rage is somehow appropriate.
I have encountered much the same. I think on a previous thread I stated that I tried WFH, hated it and even though I was a solo contractor, paid for a desk in a co-working office so I could be out of the house and have other people to talk to, and that actually proved incredibly and let to me d
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My original statement, just a statement without anything incendiary in it, has ignited a firestorm of profanity, personal insults and general anger. Because people disagree with me, their rage is somehow appropriate.
I have encountered much the same. I think on a previous thread I stated that I tried WFH, hated it and even though I was a solo contractor, paid for a desk in a co-working office so I could be out of the house and have other people to talk to, and that actually proved incredibly and let to me doing a startup
Exactly - And there is the interesting part. The typical angry response does not allow for any deviation from the idea that people who work from home are the most competent, most productive employees who will have the world beating a path to their door. And seem to believe this is universally true.
Certainly some people do work better alone. I've met a number of people who flounder if not supervised. I had a very talented employee once, who if you gave him a task, would say he was going to get a soda b
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Exactly - And there is the interesting part. The typical angry response does not allow for any deviation from the idea that people who work from home are the most competent, most productive employees who will have the world beating a path to their door.
Yes this is true. There are of course some good remote jobs, but not enough. The first part is obviously true. So why not the second part? Well it must be an army of incompetents and quislings like you and I not just standing in their way but actively fighti
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I have also been WFH for years before covid. I don't believe my circumstances are the same as everybody's, but I do know I am far from the only person whose duties almost exclusively involve working with people and things that are in another region anyway.
Re:Pretty simple (Score:5, Informative)
Those that do not earn an income off of physical labor, as you pointed out, waste personal time on daily travel that adds nothing of significance to the job. Is work being completed? Is there a concern with performance? Then address them, dont be scared to talk with the employee.
But they are scared, otherwise they wouldnt lie, they wouldnt worry about talking with the employee, and they wouldnt try some convoluted excuse.
There is nothing new here, except that the general public realized that the unnecessary bits were imposed upon them by Executives who are in charge of buildings they have a stake in or own, and freaked out when companies were re-evaluating the need for the physical presence.
The really good analysis was that WFH doesnt take away from the business. That was stated multiple times, and still is a valid point.
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Im going to let you know that it was already allowed for introverts with high production to work from home. Before COVID WFH was allowed for quite a few people, including executives.
I find it fascinating they my post pisses off so many people.
Yeah, there have always been careers that are not working in an office. This isn't about those. They aren't being asked to return to office. I'm speaking from the point of what happened in 2020 for a few years. If the job was performed onsite once, the employer will likely want that again.
This is utterly simple. If you have a personal requirement of never stepping in an office, that is just a personal requirement. Not one thing wrong with tha
Re: Pretty simple (Score:2)
> I find it fascinating they my post pisses off so many people.
I find it fascinating that you interpret disagreement as pissed off.
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If companies had to pay for your commuting time instead of just stealing it from you, they'd be way more interested in having as many employees as possible work from elsewhere.
I live 15 minutes from work - Are y'all forced to live 40 miles away from the workplace?
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If companies had to pay for your commuting time instead of just stealing it from you, they'd be way more interested in having as many employees as possible work from elsewhere.
I live 15 minutes from work - Are y'all forced to live 40 miles away from the workplace?
No, you could always either change jobs or sell your house and take a huge property tax hit every year for the rest of your life.
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If companies had to pay for your commuting time instead of just stealing it from you, they'd be way more interested in having as many employees as possible work from elsewhere.
I live 15 minutes from work - Are y'all forced to live 40 miles away from the workplace?
No, you could always either change jobs or sell your house and take a huge property tax hit every year for the rest of your life.
Those are tradeoffs. I could move from my small city, and out to some of the poor areas near here. Yes, I'd pay less taxes, and probably have a much cheaper house, I'd also have a 40 minute commute, have to drive almost that far for groceries and shopping, and a long ambulance ride because of the remoteness.
I choose to live 15 minutes from work, and it is not my employers responsibility. I choose to work onsite half the time, home the other half.
And while you might consider your demands to be somehow
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Those are tradeoffs. I could move from my small city, and out to some of the poor areas near here. Yes, I'd pay less taxes, and probably have a much cheaper house, I'd also have a 40 minute commute, have to drive almost that far for groceries and shopping, and a long ambulance ride because of the remoteness.
That's not what I meant about taxes. What I meant is that in California, your property tax assessment is set at purchase time. If you move to a new house, your new property is assessed at the new purchase price. That tax situation can easily create a five-figures-per-year disincentive towards moving closer to your job when you change jobs. It may not be your employer's problem, but it absolutely affects where people choose to work.
The corollary of that statement is that if employers truly want the best
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Those are tradeoffs. I could move from my small city, and out to some of the poor areas near here. Yes, I'd pay less taxes, and probably have a much cheaper house, I'd also have a 40 minute commute, have to drive almost that far for groceries and shopping, and a long ambulance ride because of the remoteness.
That's not what I meant about taxes. What I meant is that in California, your property tax assessment is set at purchase time. If you move to a new house, your new property is assessed at the new purchase price. That tax situation can easily create a five-figures-per-year disincentive towards moving closer to your job when you change jobs.
Yikes, that sucks!
In what I guess is a reverse corollary, I was offered a job in DC some years ago. The pay was significantly higher.
Problem was, it was DC. A lot higher cost of living. Housing, taxes, the commute is a nightmare. One time I had to leave at noon on Friday. The normal 5 hour trip to home (Pennsylvania) took ten hours. And yeah, the wife was not thrilled (she was already the VP in her company)
Even if she found new work at similar pay, we'd end up with less money after living expenses.
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Easy to read "Prop 13 (1978)" between the lines, which is California specific. IIRC[citation needed], Prop 19 (2020) while eliminating inheriting the assessed value (Prop 58 (1986)) make it possible to transfer the assessed value to another property statewide (previously available only where individual counties had made agreements). Why Modoc isn't being bought up in order to transfer the assessments to Beverley Hills is a mystery.
The main impact of prop 19 is making it possible for the elderly to not be forced to move to another state if they decide to downgrade to a smaller home. It likely has minimal impact on people's ability to move closer to their jobs, because it is limited to people 55 and older, so less than a quarter of California's workforce qualifies for transferring the cost basis to a new property.
More to the point, the people most likely to change jobs are younger workers, and none of them qualify.
As for Modoc to Beve
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If companies had to pay for your commuting time instead of just stealing it from you, they'd be way more interested in having as many employees as possible work from elsewhere.
Boss gets a dollar, you get a dime, that's why you shit on company time!
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While some companies allowed employees more ability to work remote due to Covid, some companies had those policies before Covid as they did not have enough office space for their employees. Now those companies are mandating workers make long commutes just to fight for desks.
Which companies? Regardless, while I'm triggering everyone, I might as well restate, if you are opposed to going to an office and consider it a non-starter, it's time to look for a job that will give you the happiness you deserve
I'm just stating some facts that should be pretty obvious. https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/v... [bls.gov]
I'm also stating why some people don't want to return to onsite, including FTA things like a 2 hour commute.
What is sort of funny is that while your post isn't angry, some are pretty
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Disney. Even before COVID, a lot of folks did WFH at least on Fridays.
Prior to COVID, office space was tight. They did a bunch of "let's turn the conference rooms into cubes" move to try to make up for it. Former offices for executives became 2-4 person rooms. But even then, the chance that the majority of the attendees for any given meeting were in the same building was nearly zero. In FL there were at least a dozen different building each miles from the other. Add in CA and WA and most of your meeti
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I think you misunderstood my intention. I don't really care what you want / prefer. The question was asked, "Which companies?" and I answered with one as well as the history and background around it.
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Dell for one. I am sure you heard of that company. Before Covid Dell had generous remote work policies. So people moved to places they wanted to live rather than near a Dell office. Now they might have to travel hours to an office that will not hold everyone. Also Dell has many offices so team members may not be geographically located near each other. I know a few employees who have to drive hours into work so that they can attend Zoom meeting with their team who might be in another state or even country.
Well, what manner of person who thinks ahead decides to live hours away from teh workplace? I know - people who don't plan ahead. If you don't want to go back because you live several states away, that is definitely a you problem. Y'all have so many excuses. Do a risk/reward analysis. Then if you want to live in Alaska, or wherever you want to live, and find employment there.
And let's say we get that universal no one in the workplace Utopia. The cheap housing that is so tempting will just go up in price.
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Well, what manner of person who thinks ahead decides to live hours away from teh workplace?
What part of "Before Covid Dell had generous remote work policies" is unclear to you?
I know - people who don't plan ahead.
The people I know worked remotely for Dell a decade before Covid, and Dell had no issues with them living hours away from an office .
If you don't want to go back because you live several states away, that is definitely a you problem.
Wow you really don't understand the point. Team members live several states or countries from each other. When you have a large global company like Dell, that will happen.
. Y'all have so many excuses. Do a risk/reward analysis. Then if you want to live in Alaska, or wherever you want to live, and find employment there.
WTF are you talking about "risk/reward" analysis. I'll say it again: Before Covid Dell had generous remote work policies
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> If people have to be onsite while some programmer for the same company lives in some really low cost area
Absolutely no difference to one lucky on-site employee not paying rent or mortgage while others do.
> The conditions that made WFH the best path forward have changed.
Yeah, a C-level dick measuring contest appeared wherein company culture strength was measured by office attendance. Our CEO bragged about having better attendance than some friend of his.
Then they made attendance an inter-office compe
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This utter hatred of going to an office has its roots in Covid.
Even in the article, it notes a 2 hour commute. Before the WFH situation grew people lived far away from their workplaces. During Covid times, many chose to look for cheap living expenses, and often lived much further away than 2 hours.
Now this was nice, rather like having our cake and eating it too. But a sober assessment would tell a person that it was not going to be permanent.
Why isn't it permanent?
In many ways, it benefits the companies as much as the employees. Two companies I've worked for have been able to reduce their real estate footprint. Changing mandatory in-person weekend work to offsite saved thousands of dollars per day.
WFH employees who are sick are - by definition - already staying home. Myself and others have been able to choose to work while feeling iffy, rather than costing the company an entire day of productivity. Whole offices getting sick aren't an issue wit
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This utter hatred of going to an office has its roots in Covid.
Even in the article, it notes a 2 hour commute. Before the WFH situation grew people lived far away from their workplaces. During Covid times, many chose to look for cheap living expenses, and often lived much further away than 2 hours.
Now this was nice, rather like having our cake and eating it too. But a sober assessment would tell a person that it was not going to be permanent.
Why isn't it permanent?
Because the conditions that caused it went away. Because only a subset of job positions can be WFH only. Because those employees who have to go onsite might have a good reason to expect to be paid more. While I do 50/50 WFH - Onsite, if there was a person working only offsite and paid as much as me, I'd demand extra compensation for wearing suits, and work travel. They'd have to deal with it.
In many ways, it benefits the companies as much as the employees. Two companies I've worked for have been able to reduce their real estate footprint. Changing mandatory in-person weekend work to offsite saved thousands of dollars per day.
I see - you appear to be saying that I claim that onsite work is a panacea for companies, I am not. But I will say sp
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Why isn't it permanent?
Because the conditions that caused it went away. Because only a subset of job positions can be WFH only.
For the overwhelming majority of roles in tech, the pandemic proved not only that those workers could be WFH, but that the company's efficiency on average went up when doing so. Yes, some workers' efficiency went down, usually because of having kids who were also at home, and struggling to manage that, but once that condition went away, there was even less reason why those workers needed to be in the office. This leaves only the people for whom physically commuting to the office was necessary to avoid dis
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If your skills are in demand, being in the office demands a premium. I'd expect to be paid for the time commuting, and the cost of commuting, and some on top for the hassle. I don't really want to work more than 37.5 hours a week, so that costs a lot extra.
Re: Pretty simple (Score:2)
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If your skills are in demand, being in the office demands a premium.
I agree. WFH only people probably think they should be paid the same.
I have a rather unique skillset. But application of that skillset requires onsite. I'm paid accordingly.
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has its roots in Covid.
It exasperated it, but the hatred of going into the office has been a thing for far, far longer. Ever watch Office Space? (Interestingly, the number of software engineers who actually say Office Space, in spite of being a comedy, accurately reflects the hell they feel trapped in surprised me.)
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There is no reason to bring jobs back to the office, that ever left the office.
I'm lucky to have worked for two companies that saw the logic in this, and ended their real estate contracts after realizing the only job that needed to be in the offices were the front desk people(they got giant severance for their trouble, don't
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You contradict yourself. Covid WFH showed us, explicitly, most jobs can be done in your underwear at home. The few jobs that can't? Those did not transition to WFH in the first place.
So tell us, why would employers want people coming back to work, when they can pay them less, eliminate the workplace, and reap the rewards of not having a them at work. I hear weird stuff about how this is some sort of C-Suite "dick waving" when fine - It dopeasn't cost any where near as much when your business can run well with only 10 people in it. Why would they want to be around you?
Eschew solipsism, where you believe everyone has your job. Might as well avoid the Slashdot echo effect as well, where
The Hatred of an Office - A History Lesson. (Score:5, Informative)
This utter hatred of going to an office has its roots in Covid.
The Remote Desktop Protocol and 128+ bits of entropy protecting a VPN tunnel, has existed for 20+ years now.
The same Remote Desktop Protocol that enables grown-ass professionals to not waste upwards of a fucking fiscal quarter** every calendar year sitting behind a steering wheel commuting to a job that could be done remotely.
The utter hatred of going into an office, has existed for a LOT longer than COVID-era investors refusing to degrade the 10x premium on dirt invested into your 401k and pension funds as "business" grade dirt, and a LOT longer than No Moron Hired Behind DEI laws and practices that also destroy remote work policies because they cannot be trusted to actually work remotely.
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** - An hour-long commute, equates to 2+ hours a day sitting in traffic behind a steering wheel, wasted. 10+ hours every workweek, wasted. 40+ hours a month, wasted. 480+ hours a year, wasted. A fucking fiscal quarter of your salaried employees time, wasted sitting behind a steering wheel. You're damn right it adds up. CEOs should fucking learn the true value of Trusted Staff and RDP.
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grown-ass professionals to not waste upwards of a fucking fiscal quarter**
You mad bro?
Perhaps I come from a different group, one who has no issue being around other humans, and does not feel the need to get that angry if someone doesn't agree with them.
I'm not angry - I'm not even disappointed.
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Mad? No need to assume quite that hard.
I've logged over 800,000 miles under my commuting ass. I'm not mad. I'm feeling rather fortunate I've been able to survive 30 years of mandated ass-numbing drive-torture. Unlike thousands of other VPN-capable employees who are killed every year commuting pointlessly to a job.
Are you mad about the Go Green hypocrisy "justifying" millions of tailpipes pointlessly polluting a planet and killing employees to justify real estate greed? Because you probably should be.
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Mad? No need to assume quite that hard.
I've logged over 800,000 miles under my commuting ass. I'm not mad. I'm feeling rather fortunate I've been able to survive 30 years of mandated ass-numbing drive-torture. Unlike thousands of other VPN-capable employees who are killed every year commuting pointlessly to a job.
Are you mad about the Go Green hypocrisy "justifying" millions of tailpipes pointlessly polluting a planet and killing employees to justify real estate greed? Because you probably should be.
I wonder how the "I only work at home deals with say, the job I retired from. Oh - I traveled - by plane, across time zones, to places we had work, millions of miles not counting the commute. I traveled many hundreds of thousands of miles of driving.
Don't feel sorry for me though, the pay was very good, I could retire at 55 on 6 figures. But if you don't want to travel, then don't travel. You do you. The people I worked with that although they didn't WFH, in many cases refused to travel (they were a g
Re:Pretty simple (Score:4, Interesting)
Every employer I've had in my 30yr professional career did not care if its programmers came into the office. This included fortune 500 multinationals, mid size regional companies, and small LLCs. WFH has only become an issue since it became a political rallying cry in the culture war.
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This utter hatred of going to an office has its roots in Covid.
Even in the article, it notes a 2 hour commute. Before the WFH situation grew people lived far away from their workplaces. During Covid times, many chose to look for cheap living expenses, and often lived much further away than 2 hours.
This might be true for some, but it's rather simplistic.
We've lived in the same house for 30+ years. My commute, both pre- and post-Covid, often runs 1.5 hours. When Covid hit I was getting ready to file my retirement paperwork because I thought I was tired of working.
What Covid actually taught me was that I still enjoy my job, quite a bit. What I HATE is the commute.
Post-Covid, I've been able to still work from home three days a week. Those two commute days are still wearing, and I probably am going to ret
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This utter hatred of going to an office has its roots in Covid.
Even in the article, it notes a 2 hour commute. Before the WFH situation grew people lived far away from their workplaces. During Covid times, many chose to look for cheap living expenses, and often lived much further away than 2 hours.
This might be true for some, but it's rather simplistic.
Well yeah, but people already accuse me of posting walls of text! ;^)
We've lived in the same house for 30+ years. My commute, both pre- and post-Covid, often runs 1.5 hours. When Covid hit I was getting ready to file my retirement paperwork because I thought I was tired of working.
What Covid actually taught me was that I still enjoy my job, quite a bit. What I HATE is the commute.
Post-Covid, I've been able to still work from home three days a week. Those two commute days are still wearing, and I probably am going to retire in a year or so - but I was absolutely sick of the commute before Covid was a thing.
Yeah, People can have differing thoughts on where they live related to work. A woman I worked with lived about 50 minutes from work. I asked he if that was a nuisance for her. She said that by the time she got home, she was relaxed, and in a much better mood. Granted, she had a pretty scenic drive, but she had a point and she enjoyed driving. Others utterly hate driving. Either outlook is valid.
Now, what is my takeaway from all this? A l
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On the other hand, WHF was a win-win for employers too. The employees got an effective raise by lowering their cost of living and a reduction in unproductive daily aggravation and wasted time. The employer didn't have to actually pay them any extra to make that happen and could even save on expensive office space. It just wasn't a win for the managers who could no longer hide how bad they were at their jobs.
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Workers simply do not want to satisfy the job requirements, which includes set hours and physical presence. I also want to get paid without showing up or producing, but that's not the job.
TEr... not wanting to go to an office isn't "not producing," work from home is still working. You're combining two statements (one that is Captain Obvious-ing that people are taking issue with some of the office requirements, and then misconstruing them (while also, I'd argue, missing that the requirements ARE the point of contention and some can be out of date depending on the job).
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These people aren't able to think with nuance. They're disposed to parrot the corporate line. They're not capable of considering anyone but themselves, their situation, and whatever sad sack they worked with that one time - and painting everyone with that narrow brush.
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I'll have you know I waste just as much time in the office as I did while working from home.
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Cuz you're a true professional. One that will remain employed and employable.
The bitch-ass whiners, not so much.
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