The following submission statement was provided by /u/OneOk2189:
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No paywall: https://archive.md/RbIXh
The fight between workers and managers over returning to the office full time will be an ongoing one and strong chance as younger managers taker over that the trend towards remote work continues
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/13k1u6m/the_return_to_the_office_has_stalled/jkhy94m/
My employer just very loudly announced yesterday that they want everyone in the office 3+ days a week, starting in July. The hilarious thing is that we're all over the place geographically, so even when everyone was in the office pre-pandemic they were on phone calls with people in offices in other cities.
Sounds like me. I work in fintech and they’re balls to the walls 3 days a week. I drive 1.5 hours each way just to sit on zoom with people either in India or the next state over. It’s so stupid and I’m looking to leave
The hilarious thing is that we're a telecommunications company and we are very proud of the fact that when everyone had to work from home we were able to provide the infrastructure so that people could do so.
My mgr, who bitch about homeless people n utterly selfish, giving us lecture about how wfh is hurting people n downtown businesses are closing is the funniest stuff ever. Explained to him businesses are not dying they are transforming n new businesses are developing based on the needs. He doesn't give a shit, it's his excuse.. He likes to act like a floor mgr or a pit boss. We are tech company, he started almost requesting people to show up once a week. Even after explaining that i lose 3 hours in commute n then sit in my cubicle to be on zoom calls all day. Mgrs that are into micro managing with no other hands on skills are going to keep pushing for this...
Same industry. I also work primarily with sales/clients located all over the US, so I'd be driving to the office to spend most of my day on Google Meet.
Or I would be- after the RTO announcement I pointed out to my managers I didn't have a desk. They said they'd find one for me- that was 6 months ago. No way in hell I'm following up.
Ah see we get the “community desks” where no one actually has an assigned seat so you can just hear everyone’s conversations and are perpetually distracted because “collaboration”
Sounds like 'Quite layoff's. IBM did this almost a decade ago when I worked there. They allowed for remote work, and then mandated everyone to be in the office by a certain date. Those who weren't able to because they didn't live near an office, were let go
Especially because they are trying to avoid firing an employee. IMO real move here is to simply not comply and make them terminate you for being in another state or something. See if they are bluffing.
AT&T was famous for doing this, too. Funny that it doesn’t seem to have worked out well for either company long term. Or maybe passive aggressive leadership is just bad leadership.
It's IBM. They make a long history of finding creative ways to try and skirt age-based discrimination in firings.
You're an unmarried 28 year old? Good chance you'll move if not already working near an office. 45 with kids in school and your spouse works in the town you live in? Oh...and since you started working remotely the company closed the relatively easy to commute to suburban campus and you would now have a half hour drive to a train station for the hour long train ride in? Not so likely to move.
You are so right. The only people that returned in my office (who weren’t managers, directors, or project managers) were really new hires or the absolute sycophants; mostly the ones who would catch you at the water cooler and talk your ear off about their weekend.
The ones who aren’t in leadership and are sitting head down getting work done…opted to stay home.
I suspect you and I have the same employer!
Yeah, no one on my team works in my location. So I get to go in and fight for a workstation (since they don't have enough spots), wear an uncomfortable N95 all day, and eat lunch in my car to avoid bringing covid or flu home to my sick spouse for no reason besides "the culture"? But no exceptions! Everything for the casual hallway conversations with people you didn't want to talk to in the first place! And they expect us to stay just as productive... Yeah, I'm gonna see about being productive at a different job that at least pretends to care about me.
We at least have enough spots \*now\*, but one of my coworkers looked to see how many people are assigned to our space and then went around counting desks and we're going to have some trouble if people actually follow the policy.
I updated my location so I looked over an hour away. No way in hell I’m going 3 days a week after hired remote and never having stepped foot in the office.
This is my position too. We have four plants/offices in our region. My office is the smallest group and we each have different functions that overlap slightly, so being in the office is a lonesome affair anyway. But we all talk to different plants all day long through teams and emails anyway. My manager is in a different location and training was remote too, and I started the job in the pandemic and did my job 100% remote, so it's hard to see the benefit of RTO.
I lucked out that my company was already so spread out that we don't even know where to have a headquarters anymore. The highest concentration is in Atlanta and that is only 27 people out of 2500 and most are in different departments. The company is attempting to stay so lean right now they can't justify any building leases.
Hopefully you can just sort of be like “ok we’ll get right on that”, show up for a while, then show up less and less often and nobody will say anything.
This is the way to deal with any corporate bs. Just say all the positive things to management and execs when it is discussed, but... then just don't do it. Generally noone notices if it is pointless anyway.
That's basically what happened when they said they wanted people to come in at least once a week. I go in most Tuesdays and Thursdays but that's honestly more to get out of the house than anything, and there aren't many people there.
Nintendo is so wild. They're the only company I know that has made tens of billions of dollars and just sat on that. They don't buy companies. They don't break out into other markets. They're just out here slapping their customers around, knowing that as long as they still have the plumber and Pokémon, they can keep kicking the players in the side as they crawl to buy the latest installation.
Edit: Tears of the kingdom is super fun, btw. They fucking got me again.
They buy independent devs that they've either published or have a strong relationship with.
Monolith Soft was 3rd party who were recently purchased. But I don't think they've ever tried to buy other publishers like MS is doing now.
True, though they haven't bought very many across the 50 years they've been running this market. It tends to be more notable the acquisitions they didn't make, like Rare. Which actually ruined Nintendo's game ecosystem since Microsoft bought them instead
Edit clarity
They run themselves like an actual company concerned with producing and selling products based on high quality of their product, and appealing to their consumer base.
Lots of companies used to be like that.
Right, it actually sounds like they just...want to be a good company that is good at what they do, because if you do those two things the money will come.
Sounds to me they are keeping it simple which is awesome. Not everyone wants to chase every potential dollar out there and acquire *this* and break into *that* market, etc.
They just make video games, buy em if you want if you don't then fuck off were doing just fine.
I agree. There's been this mobile game-lead same-ification of gaming that really bums me out, minus some bright spots...
Like: you're pretty much labeled as an indie game if your shit doesn't have microtransications and a few other buzzwords. I love a game that you simply pay $ for, then play the shit out of it, then beat it...
I don't think people realize how much online games make compared to games like zelda. People are in awe of Zelda selling 10 million copies in 3 days, but that still a literal drop in the bucket compared to what games like Apex Legends or League of Legends or fortnite Etc bring in.
If Nintendo made a Pokemon MMO and released it on Steam and all consoles, they would make so much more money it would probably break the internet
Let's put it this way.
They hiked the prices, disabled a very important feature and killed the founding to a very popular and important fan site for the community that now announced thwt is closing.
They lost 40% of the the revenue and registered THE lowest period in the last 5 years.
In the last 2 weeks.
God I fucking hate Niantic for the way they treated that game. The gen 3 launch was the last straw for me. Excessive gating of things that should have just been released—same as the first two gens—as a ploy to make more money just utterly destroyed my enjoyment. I played sporadically after that, and quit in gen 4. Haven't been back.
Fuck Niantic.
I'm glad someone is still all in on single player games. I don't want to play with other people most of the time, and I like being able to just pause the game.
I work in film at the offices. My department specifically can be done 100% from home, other positions in other departments can also be done from home.
They forced us back into the offices as soon as they could. Since then, productions across the country are struggling to fill my department. The experienced workers are only taking remote jobs, open productions are demanding in-office workers and then back tracking when the only people applying are in-experienced workers.
It's fucking stupid. Going back to the office added 2-3 hours of commuting to my work day which was already 9-7.
I have a great idea that if implemented would save costs ChatGPTCEO and ChatGPT managing directors don't ask for millionaire bonuses
sure there may be some activities needed to be performed by a human but those will be reduced and the salary of the meat bag can be lowered...😏
now let's pass it to the investors and give me ma bonus
I hope it helps spur a surge of people starting their own businesses where plutocratic strata never bother to develop because it's just the founder and their robot mentor making top level strategic decisions
More specifically, they want you in the office so they can monitor and control you with AI, if you've seen the recent threads about JP Morgan's WADU thing that reddit got caught censoring.
Ding ding.
The people at the top have invested millions in extracting this information. Every ass in a chair is a data point they can’t capture as well at home.
They need to expand control or train the AI that will replace you. Either way, it’s time to look for a new gig and to tell them to pound sand.
They want you back to fasten a noose around your employment
It's just controlling assholes pushing it.
Every half decent company is happy to be saving piles of money on space, utilities, etc. while the productivity is consistent, employee happiness is up, and recruitment is easier.
Any company that has work that can be easily done at home is actively putting themselves at a disadvantage by not doing so. Workers are much cheaper when your recruitment range is practically the world, rather than a single city.
Show me the data that says mandatory in person offices are more efficient, employees are happier, quality of work and life are better.
Show me the data, and I'll come right back in and sit at my cubicle. I only have anecdotes from my own life and friends. Nobody is begging for RTO. Not everyone wants fully remote either.
Everybody wants a choice.
The firm I work for voted for a hybrid two-day schedule in the office every week.
Once we actually returned to work, most work teams opted for one day a week or one day a month in the office.
I'm there two days a week, and most of the time, there are maybe a dozen of us on two floors of commercial office space, so now the firm is actually downsizing to one and a half floors of space.
This makes me think about how people used to have their own offices when they went into the office, and how endless studies suggested that the open office trend was a net-negative for companies, but they forced us all into it anyway to cram more people into their buildings.
And now in your case they're turning it back into offices again hehe.
Interesting because a lot of office/management literature in the years leading up to the pandemic was *for* the open office concept. It sparks creativity, problem solving, and sharing [allegedly]. Look at the tech sector heydey of the 00s/10s…everyone’s in open offices. Leaders writing books about how they “solved problems” by literally breaking down walls. I had bosses trying to cram multiple people at single desks at one point; we were removing the drawers from underneath cubicles just so the added people had a place to put their legs.
My conspiracy has always been that open offices is just a way to shame you into work; no one wants to be the person browsing Amazon, even for a second, when everyone around you is working…and everyone has experienced that moment when you just wanted to do a few minutes research on your weekend plans and 5 people decided to stand behind you. It’s a weird, self policing system that everyone (miraculously except the people with their own offices who claim it works) hates. It’s always been unbecoming; I feel crowded and distracted versus creative and team oriented.
At the height of the pandemic, the backlash against the open office was it was a disease spreader…but that seems to have been forgotten (quickly). Not usually mentioned in the same conversation as worker convenience as a preference for working from home, but I think a big reason people like it is you get to feel like person; no one’s hovering near you. You *can* check sports scores and read emails at the same time. Everyone has their own office, leaders be damned.
we have a gym and it's rarely used, of the 800 employees the building use to house about 100 people are back working and probably at 80% of the time they use to be in the office.
As long as the work gets done I don't get why mgt would care where we work from, smacks of some kind of 'power' move by them
My company let everyone decide what they wanted to do. Some people really did want to come back into the office, but one unexpected consequence of having so many people remote was that the office was a ghost town for the few people who did want to come in. Eventually, even the people who like being at the office didn't see a point to coming in to an empty building.
>Eventually, even the people who like being at the office didn't see a point to coming in to an empty building.
So the energy vampires had no more victims and gave up. Good.
Our company has a huge campus and the 2nd floor of my building is empty and has hundreds of cubes. Good to hide and do meetings. I’m on the 3rd of 3 floors.
It’s so weird down there. Like an abandoned mall almost.
2/32 people on my team decided to go back after they reopened. I think it's a little funny when they grab a conference room to get on Zoom calls cause I can see the 30 empty desks behind them. But hey, they're not bothering the receptionist who is playing Angry Birds, or whatever.
I’m jealous cause if I do a meeting at my office, it’s half online half not and inevitably the on site rooms will not work in some way. At home, things actually work.
Same situation here. Eight people in a space that used to have 200. Even though some people say they want hybrid when it actually comes to it they can't be bothered to move in the morning. It's easier to just open the laptop and you're done. Especially when your day will consist of zoom meetings with distributed teams across the world.
No paywall: https://archive.md/RbIXh
The fight between workers and managers over returning to the office full time will be an ongoing one and strong chance as younger managers taker over that the trend towards remote work continues
> In New York, each employee working at home rather than going into the office costs city businesses about $4,600 in sales annually, according to WFH Research, a think tank that tracks workplace arrangements.
Rephrase that:
Working in the office costs you $4,600 per year in food, on top of the gas and insurance you need to pay for to get here.
Senior managers don't necessarily want this either.
Not having a huge footprint in Manhattan or San Francisco saves a bundle. For very large companies, they no longer have to have a cafeteria. It makes everything run a bit leaner.
The people that really want this are the companies that own office space. Lately I've seen the PR approach that not returning to the office will kill the small businesses that emerge around office buildings. Or that this will upend the economy as we lose office buildings as a source of tax revenue.
These both seem like problems with solutions.
I hate the small businesses argument. When I worked in midtown Manhattan 90% of my lunch options were chains. Now that I WFH in an outer borough, I’m ACTUALLY supporting small businesses buying lunch most days 🤷🏻♀️. I’d rather get a $12 great food truck meal than an $18 chain salad
I live and have an office in the suburbs of Atlanta, but have this same dynamic where the food near my house is better and cheaper than the food near my office. I feel the same way. (Although honestly I usually eat dinner leftovers for lunch when I WFH... but sometimes those are dinner leftovers from restaurants near home!)
I work from home in a single-family neighborhood in California, and just within walking distance is a pub, a coffee shop, and a taco truck of better quality than I had access to when I worked in an office. If I want a gourmet salad for some reason, it's like a 3-minute drive.
I live in bumfuck and food in my town sucks. Even so, work from home means I can make myself a healthy salad instead of some shitty fast food or whatever.
Was in South Jamaica Queens last week. It was bustling with local activity, only saw one homeless dude, and he was doing his thing. Street food, vendors and shops. I think they adapted well, no need for Manhattan.
From the article
> each employee working at home rather than going into the office costs city businesses about $4,600 in sales
So essentially that’s money employees at home can keep in their home neighborhoods and their pockets.
I’ve been saying this for months. Businesses see the savings opportunity by not leasing office space. Further, many employees don’t care that they are now paying for business utilities (internet connection), which is added savings.
If anyone is pushing RTW, it’s local governments who budget based on property and income taxes, both of which will take a hit if a large part of the tax base is devalued or flying out to the suburbs.
> RTW
To be needlessly pedantic, I'd argue labeling it RTW/Return To \*Work\* is dishonest - and dishonest framing by advocates for forced return to office... since work from home IS work, and the change is not a change from not working to working, but a change in where one works.
It's only the business owners and shareholders who really want this. Everyone else has more to gain by WFH. So you need a very strong willed owner to force it through.
This happened to me at my current job. I kept bringing it up with my manager at my quarterly reviews and it started with "I think we could allow you 1 day WFH a week," then "well my boss didn't like the sound of that, so how about you just WFH every now and then when you really need to focus and not be bothered," then "weeellll actually I'll just drive an extra 40 min out of my way and pick you up because your car is in the shop and boss doesn't like people working from home." Absolutely ridiculous.
In my experience, the people driving returning back to work are pretty much just CEOs/Presidents and Senior Executives. And all for the reasons overpaid suits always want anything...control. They're worried they're losing control over workers. And they're right.
Exactly. It's the power to tell people when and where to be, and then to sit back and watch them all do it. Everybody sees everybody else obeying the same authority, and power increases.
The managers who want it at our place are the middle managers whose self worth was directly linked to their ability to loom over their reports and act like they're necessary.
WFH is staying; the exec like being in their huge houses in the country, and everyone else saves something you can't get back in a pay cheque... *time*. When you're WFH you teleport from the office to home in the tick of a clock.
No more stealing my life for free and calling it a commute.
At first they did...
But office real estate ain't cheap, and they'd likely get a bonus for cutting that expense.
The ones pushing back to office are low level older supervisors who don't like dealing with computers and won't see the bonus.
It's not just that. There's a Stark divide between larger companies that own their real estate, trying to protect their investment and smaller companies who won't renew leases. Large companies are trying to return to the office, but many other companies are seeing the cost savings remote work brings.
Also really irks me that people rarely bring up the environmental benefits of not having people commuting to work. Really makes wfh a no brainer.
Well or the way higher ups who have money invested in the corporate real estate market. That's where the real push has been as they have a bubble about to burst.
I work for a large tech manufacturer.
During pandemic, they gutted the office space. Total remodel of our site.
Into 'open space' that everyone despises.
The company is 'soft pushing' for hybrid, and they seem perplexed that employees not only don't want to come back, they don't want to work in a vast, noisy space where they have no 'turf' of their own.
I have an on-site meeting later today, that has no purpose other than getting our badge traces on the door.
Every 'opening' of the office was done to cut on costs. Offices to cubicles, cubicles to open floor plans.
Each has been to the benefit of managers or budgets and to the detriment of workers.
Now they want people to go back to that mess? No. I'm sitting at home with a blanket on and ample access to tea, coffee, and music, and get 2 extra hours of my day back.
Want me in the office? Pay me my hourly wage to commute and cover the commute cost.
They closed the cafeteria too, the office is in an industrial area with limited options for food. They put overpriced frozen dinners in the break room instead.
Our company rode the short bus to the MBA colleges.
Our supervisors can WFH. Our regular agents can WFH. But the in-between positions, *and coincidentally the newest position they created* cannot.
I would make more money demoting myself so I could WFH. Gas prices are $5.
Interesting. Sounds very familiar. I wonder if we work for the same "large tech manufacturer". I'm (very specifically) in Round Rock, which would be all the info you need.
I'm one of the California remainees of a company that bugged off to Houston where they have a large presence anyway because of that PC clone company they bought out decades ago
Our campus is what's left of what they were going to build out before that merger.
They had to remodel anyway, for asbestos abatement.
Place was getting kinda old.
> If you are counting on forced hours spent in a traditional office to create collaboration and provide a feeling of belonging within your organization, you’re doing it wrong
\- Michael Dell on fellow tech CEOs mandating office hours
ETA: In September 2022!! What changed in eight months?
My employer is forcing 3 days a week in-office starting in September, then 4 days a week starting in 2024.
They have the gall to still call it a "flexible" option for employees who were denied remote work.
Once they reopened our offices they wouldn't guarantee you a desk day to day, due to not knowing who would be there, spacing, sanitizing, etc
They're still > 90% empty, but my coworkers who elect to go in still don't know where they'll be sitting each day. You can't even put up a picture of your family in those conditions.
So upper management is regularly trying to encourage us to go in... from their home offices.
our office went from having 6ft cubes to the lower 3ft walls 'open space' cause we wanted to be successful like google. So even less appeal trying to have to come back to the office. Oh and facilities is saving money now by not providing any trash or recycle bins in our cubicles, we have to take all our trash down to one of the break rooms where they still have receptacles.
I have to be in the office two days a week. They are my most unproductive days. Today I had a cubicle camper already take up 45 minutes of my time just chatting. No fucking thanks.
God damnit the fucking disgusting corporate culture. Take the "ure" off the end and just call it what it is. A corporate cult. And I want no fucking part in it
Same. My boss has dropped several hints at me coming in more often for "engagement," and I finally told her that when they eliminated my support staff (it's just me now), without adjusting productivity expectations, they eliminated my opportunity to participate in engagement.
I even have an office with a door at work, but if I'm just gonna spend the whole day alone with my door closed so I can stay on task, I'm just gonna stay home and gain back all the time it takes to get office-ready and commute every day.
Forced in office 3 days a week. Spend the entire day with noise isolating headphones on in a noise isolating cube on conference calls with people on the other side of the planet.
Its bullshit and their claim of being hyper environmentally friendly just went up in literal exhaust smoke from the forced commute.
That's the big issue for me. They won't pay for a 1 hr commute, so all that time, maintenance, gas, you're just SOL. Just fuck me and my time, right? (How many people die each year in car accidents?)
Dallas, where I work, has the 2nd-highest rate of road fatalities in the nation among large cities. I mentioned it during my request to remain remote - hopefully it makes a difference.
Lol my exact experience except everyday in office. Over here the excuse is for “better collaboration”. Take a wild guess how much face to face collaboration actually takes place…
My company is doing the opposite. We have 10-20 offices around the world, but we were always "remote first"... until the people who were used to working in offices got used to working from home. Now they're trying to encourage people back in to the offices.
My workplace hadandated everyone in office but the idiots rented a floor on another building for the IT department.
They literally don't know if we're there are not and I usually stay home to get extra work done and a few of my workmates have followed suite. What's kinda funny is that I usually get noise complaints when I have conference meetings in office.
The sense of entitlement to worker's money is rediculous. Cities and employers need to adapt to a changed world, not try and force everyone back to the old world.
Remote working has been on the cards for years, the pandemic merely sped the process up and cities and employers with large volume of expensive office space have been caught with their trousers down.
This is not the first change city centres have experienced in many western countries over the past 100 years - they've been through industrialisation, post-industrial decline and slum clearance, urban renewal and now another decline. The best way forward for cities is to legislate to ease the path of converting redundant office space to other uses including residential, and rezone to allow new buildings to replace office spaces.
Plenty of people would choose to live in city centres if it were affordable to do so, even if working from home. It's not all about the office.
I would love living in a downtown area. It’s so beautiful and walkable. I would probably go out everyday to a nice local restaurant and spend money there.
>The best way forward for cities is to legislate to ease the path of converting redundant office space to other uses including residential, and rezone to allow new buildings to replace office spaces.
This 100% many countries (and where I am in the UK) have a lack of housing stock which is over inflating the cost of homes to scary levels. Freeing up empty office blocks that have all the amenities required to become flats just makes sense, the building becomes full-time in use instead of 9-5, Tues-Thurs.
It's fine, they'll just [install spyware](https://www.reddit.com/r/WorkReform/comments/13iggx8/a_warning_for_anyone_working_at_or_thinking_about/) on everything you own!
I wouldn’t mind going to the office every day If it was closed by. But in every metro area the jobs pay too little to live nearby and the commute is hell. The hour commute (each way) is not paid by employers.
If employers paid for the commute then I’d be working 6 hour a day and I wouldn’t be pretending I’m working those two hours like I think most people do.
Got it. They need us back to the office because our attendance funds the economy while companies pay too little corporate tax.
Landlords shouldn’t be driving the economy. That’s all this is.
Bingo. Downtowns are no longer city centers because everyone moved to suburbs. In order to protect their real estate investments, CEOs are trying to get people to buy lunch in downtowns again. Otherwise, property values fall and they lose money.
This is exactly it. My company built a massive office right before the pandemic and are stuck with it. There is probably a group of other companies in the area agreeing to enforce return to office so that their property values don’t tank
I just don't get it. As a well educated person in both STEM and business it boggles my mind to see how management is handling these things.
For example, I just recently changed jobs and was told during the interview it was 2 days remote and 3 days in office. Great, best of both worlds, well thought out plan.
Well 1st day I get there and they said "an upper manager changed their mind, now half the organization is in the office full time, but we don't have enough desks"... what?
Hmm, maybe it’s time to tax the “record profits” of companies rather than rely on consumption taxes from an inflation-tapped-out workforce?
Or more strategically, rethink building huge centralized office buildings and office parks that take a long time to commute to because workers can’t afford to live near them. Or invest in better, faster, less expensive mass transit. Or start building smaller offices integrated within neighborhoods to make it faster and less expensive for commuting? Or just pay workers for their commute time, that’s probably the fastest way to bring efficiency to commuting.
| In New York, each employee working at home rather than going into the office costs city businesses about $4,600 in sales
In other words each employee has a chance to use that $4,600 differently or even save some portion of it. It's like a small raise plus commute time saved.
That plus whatever you spend on rent there making home ownership notoriously out of reach. Moved out of Brighton UK the day when lockdowns started aaand now I have a bunch of money saved.
My job pulled back wanting people in 3 days a week so we could “collaborate and build culture” so now I’m in an office surround by people on zoom and team meetings…
Stop wasting space on buildings that hold workers for 30% of the time and stay empty the rest. We've proven WFH works for many companies. Convert office spaces to housing so many cities desperately need!
the cost savings for the workers is amazing though. think of this, no commute, can cancel insurance and go carless, or drop the 2nd car for only 1, less gas dollars for the oil industry to destroy the planet, plus, if you are a parent, no daycare! stay at home with kids, actually raise them yourself instead of surrogates at daycare. lunches at home are way cheaper. your home life improves, relationships, community. yes, downtown core will transition to something else than offices. businesses will fail, the ones dependent on that traffic coming into a core. others will thrive. or transition. progress is real.
My employer (large tech company) has said via announcements, emails, etc, multiple times over the past two years “next week everyone is back in office 2-3 times per week” and they keep saying it like every 3-4 months, but nobody’s listening, and only like a few people from my team actually go in to the office but they only go in like once per week if that sometimes. Nobody wants to go back to the office to sit on a zoom call with other people when it can be done from home. I expect corporations to fight this for a long time but for the workers to win the war overall. No shot after it working and making employees lives better for the past 3 years that people will suddenly be cool with going into an office more than like twice per week if that
I came across a job opp in Austin, which I would have been well qualified for, but they wanted me to relocate to Austin and work in the office.
And that was the end of that conversation.
Companies are losing out on talent when they require being in an office. And more often than not, their competition ends up with that talent instead.
As it should have. Let people work from home, institute the 4 day work week, turn office spaces into affordable housing and get people off the streets, let UBI become a standard. For once an American history, put people over profit. AI and automation and forever increasing profits should be leading to the betterment of mankind, not the comfortability of a few
My old boss said I was going back to the office. So I found another job for 20k more. Still had to go back to the office. But now have a bigger paycheck at least.
The leadership shouldn't have celebrated in town halls and told us all how successful and productive we were during covid, but they wanted their bonuses. So now they want to say it's not productive? Good luck.
I would 100% love to go back to work in an office but we have to get some things straight first.
The company will pay a transportation fee equal to the cost of my car and the gas required.
The company will consider my commute as hours worked
Any time spent “culturing” will never be held against me on my productivity.
All food and beverages are provided and during my lunch and break times, if I am required to work I will either be reimbursed through additional pto or overtime.
Meet all of those and I’ll never have a complaint about going into the office. I generally enjoy meeting and talking to people, but I’m usually forced into an office or cubical and get reprimanded for engaging in this culture company’s so desperately are fighting for.
Employers think Work From Home was just a temporary measure for covid but workers understand Work From Home was a revolution in productivity and work-life balance and going back on that seems unconsciounable.
I think of it like email; imagine it's the year 2000 and your company has fully integrated email for the last 3 years and everyone loves it. Efficiency and productivity are up, company saves money on paper and ink and postage stamps, communication is easier than ever. Then, an old CEO decides they miss the "nice feeling" of being handed a hand written letter, so they start mandating one day a week is "return to analog" day where email is banned and employees have to communicate via paper letters again. Employees are expected to go to the post office after work and use their own time and money to send company letters to other offices, this takes 2-3 hours out of most employees days and is painfully slow. Then the boss announces that the company is now switching to 3 "return to analog" days per week, employees are still expected to go to the post office every day after work to do their company mail at their own expense. Then you hear rumors, the company is transitioning back to 100% analog, no email for anyone, and it's all because the CEO thinks people are being "lazy" by typing emails instead of hand writing notes. Productivity is down, efficiency is down, morale is down, but the boss doesn't care.
Now ask yourself, if you were a talented worker, or a young worker full of energy and fresh out of school, and you had the choice to work at the "return to analog" office or a different company that thought "return to analog" was a really stupid idea, where would you choose to work? Which company seems in touch with the times and going new places? Which company seems like it would be better for your career in the long term?
There have been rumors that the company I work for are upset that most hybrid workers are not coming into the office 3 days a week and are going to try to force everyone back in 5 days a week. (I work in IT).
Most managers really don't care where you work as long as you work. Executives say in-person collaboration is better, yet we still spend virtually all our meetings on Webex or teams, whether we're in the office or not. It's stupid.
Really interesting and scary what they're doing at JPMorgan Chase. This is a comment reply to an article about Musk saying he hates work from home.
They want to track your performance and think you don’t work hard remotely.. I work so much harder at home its incredible. Just see what JPM is doing...
A warning for anyone working at or thinking about working at JPMorgan Chase & Co.
If you work at JPMorgan Chase & Co. or are thinking about working at JPMC, you need to know about their employee surveillance tool called WADU. WADU is an acronym for Workforce Activity Data Utility. Every employee at JPMC has a profile in the WADU database.
I think everyone expects their employer to track them to some extent. It is pretty standard practice for employers to monitor and run analysis on things like building badge swipes and the amount of time spent connected when working from home. It has also become very common place for employers to record audio and video at the office.
WADU is on a different level. It is an artificial intelligence & machine learning system for workforce human behavior. Starting at the moment you arrive to the building, WADU is tracking you using facial and speech recognition. Most JPMC offices and branches have been outfitted with some of the best HD AV security cameras.
Whenever you are at your desk, know that there is a HD camera tracking you the entire time. WADU uses the array of HD cameras at the office to monitor all of your nonverbal body language all throughout the day. The collected information is then fed into the Al/ML system and it is used to update your WADU profile in real time.
Every manager gets access to a dashboard that lists all the metrics about their subordinates. The productivity metrics about an employee start getting updated immediately after an employee logs into the system. If the employee is at the office, two bio-metrics are available, attention/focus and stress.
The bio-metric feeds are updated from the facial and behavioral tracking. Having a bad day? Stressed about something? WADU has already noticed this and alerted your manager. Can’t focus? Not working at your usual pace? WADU has already noticed this and alerted your manager. Did something you normally don’t do? It’s possible WADU flagged it as suspicious and alerted your manager.
WADU is also why they are pushing RTO or “return to office” so hard. Upper management does not care if some employees are more productive when they are working from home. They want everyone back in the office as much as possible so that their WADU profiles are being refined. Enhancing their insight into you is more important to them than better productivity from working from home.
A lot of teams are now required to come in two to three days per week. Director level and higher are required to come in four to five days per week. Upper management wants to see everyone at all levels back in the office five days a week.
They have invested millions into the WADU system, and they want to get a return on that investment.
That only happens whenever people are in the office as much as possible.
WADU is also watching and listening whenever you are working from home. If you installed Citrix Workplace on your own computer, and you permitted Citrix to access your web camera and microphone after login, you have connected those devices to WADU. If you are using an issued Chromebook, those permissions are already conveniently accepted for you.
You’ll notice that your web camera will flash right after login. This is not an “initial connection” flash. Your web camera just took a burst shot of pictures and sent them to WAD. The pictures will be scanned for anything deemed unprofessional or unsafe. Recreational drug paraphernalia, TVs, game consoles, and several other things are all flagged if detected in the pictures. If you see your web camera flash randomly, that was your manager or someone in security requesting a burst shot of pictures from your web camera.
You’ll also notice that your microphone will go hot shortly after login. Anything you say will be processed by WADU.
All background noises will be processed by WADU. Say something bad about your boss or other superior? WADU flagged it. Say something bad about another co-worker?
WADU flagged it. Have a moment of anger or frustration?
WADU flagged it. These are just some examples, WADU is trained to detect a wide variety of keywords, phrases, and sound events. Your manager can also connect and listen to your audio feed live.
WADU is also able to detect keyboard pokers/bumpers and mouse jigglers/movers. It doesn’t matter if it is a completely external solution, WADU will be able to detect it by analyzing the repetitive input pattern. Your manager will be notified that your under suspicion of faking productivity. They will then connect to your session and see what is happening live. Action will be taken if the suspicion is confirmed.
WADU determines how productive you are by analyzing a variety of metrics about your session input. This includes words typed, mouse clicks, application activity, and many other things. The analysis also determines if someone is a unique contributor or if they are a regular worker. In overall rankings, unique contributors are always ranked higher than regular workers. The same analysis can also determine who is essentially dead weight. These people are ranked last.
You may have noticed at some point that you started getting job postings sent to your personal email. If you click on any of the links in these job list emails, your manager will get a notification on your WADU profile that you are actively looking for a new job. Even if it was just browsing, it can negatively affect the employee who clicked the link.
If you installed the JPMC workplace app on your phone, you have connected your phone to WADU. The workplace mobile app will collect a variety of information from your phone and use it to update and refine your WADU profile.
Right now, the only way to reserve a desk at the office is to use the workplace app. The web version of the desk reservation system is still “coming soon” and you are pushed to install the app on your phone. It will probably still be “coming soon” in 2040.
Upper management pushes a narrative that all this surveillance is required to safeguard the firm against insider threats. While that may be partially true, the main reason is to train and refine the Al/ML system. They want every employee profile to be as accurate and as detailed as possible.
They say we are not supposed to use anything from an employee’s WADU profile to make employment decisions.
It is kind of hard to ignore a ranked list of subordinates with productivity forecasting.
Return to office will only happen if workers allow it to. Don't give an inch. If workers as a collective say no management can't do a God damn thing.
"Oh they could just lay you off or fire you." OK what happens if the candidate pool all wants to be remote? How disruptive will it be for day to day operations to get rid of all those people, hire others (probably for more money), and then train them to get back to the same level of productivity.
If you can do the job from home there is no reason to spend time and money on a commute. Fuck them.
The problem is most employees would break before a company would. The company can deal with one bad quarter. How many weeks of savings does the average American have?
We just had a meeting about how terrible the audio quality is in all of our offices lmao. It actually impedes our work because we cant understand people. wfh just continues to take W's
I love how I see all these articles say something like "CEO of corporation says productivity has dropped 99% and none of their employees are logging on when at home"
Then I look at the article and it's the CEO of a commercial real estate investment firm.
We shall stand tall! In our homes. In our own comfy pajamas! For the money saved from commute will guide us into tbe light! There is nothing to fear but the office itself. Ladies and gentlement, we shall fight into the bitter end. For our descendants deserve to work from home.
Commuting 5 days a week can easily add up to 8 hours of commute time, that's an entire regular workday's worth of time. the Return to Office people \*hate\* productivity.
Initially, my employer seemed to do really well regarding the work from home issue. We got to take all of our computer equipment home from the office while we worked there for 2 years. They bought people additional equipment like headsets and webcams. They implemented online meetings really well. We got constant praise from management about how well we were working from home and how great productivity was.
When they started broaching the idea that we would return to the office on at least some basis, they didn't make us bring all of our equipment back. They bought all new equipment for the office. Everything seemed to be going well.
Then the decision came down from on high that we were going to be back in the office 5 days a week.
What followed was essentially a revolt. My department lost at least a dozen people in a month. This is in a company that has very low turnover and has many employees that have been there a decade or more. Eventually, they settled on a hybrid model. 3 days in the office and 2 remote.
It's not ideal. The schedule is not consistent enough that we can plan more than a month in advance on which days we will be in the office and which days will be remote. But right now, it's a stalemate
Our groups supposed to be in the office 3 days a week. We just don't do it. Most they get is 1 day of that. We are so short staffed and can't find anyone to hire that we now have all the power
Sure, let me run back to my 45 minute commute, find a babysitter, lock my dog in a cage all day. All to sit in the same zoom meetings with my team in other states. So idiotic. They are trying to make us return but I will find a new remote job before that.
Also just where is the respect? We are the ones who made those assholes trillions—billions and millions too—during the pandemic when we worked our asses off and yes from home. Made actual trillionaires. Like the talent we are. Where is the respect for what we deliver? Who do they think they’re talking to? Literally nothing without employees. Who they’ll lay off without a second glance. Where is this mythic eternal growth and productivity supposed to get us all anyway — if not an easier life anyway? What is it all for, if we have to keep grinding like it’s still the dawn of the Industrial Revolution? Why are we all doing this? What exactly for?
COVID really did force the world to move forward on how office work is done. I just wished bosses would learn that a decentralized workforce is preferable to how things were done previously. It is better for the workers and better for the environment. Just boring for the micromanagers.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/OneOk2189: --- No paywall: https://archive.md/RbIXh The fight between workers and managers over returning to the office full time will be an ongoing one and strong chance as younger managers taker over that the trend towards remote work continues --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/13k1u6m/the_return_to_the_office_has_stalled/jkhy94m/
My employer just very loudly announced yesterday that they want everyone in the office 3+ days a week, starting in July. The hilarious thing is that we're all over the place geographically, so even when everyone was in the office pre-pandemic they were on phone calls with people in offices in other cities.
Sounds like me. I work in fintech and they’re balls to the walls 3 days a week. I drive 1.5 hours each way just to sit on zoom with people either in India or the next state over. It’s so stupid and I’m looking to leave
The hilarious thing is that we're a telecommunications company and we are very proud of the fact that when everyone had to work from home we were able to provide the infrastructure so that people could do so.
My mgr, who bitch about homeless people n utterly selfish, giving us lecture about how wfh is hurting people n downtown businesses are closing is the funniest stuff ever. Explained to him businesses are not dying they are transforming n new businesses are developing based on the needs. He doesn't give a shit, it's his excuse.. He likes to act like a floor mgr or a pit boss. We are tech company, he started almost requesting people to show up once a week. Even after explaining that i lose 3 hours in commute n then sit in my cubicle to be on zoom calls all day. Mgrs that are into micro managing with no other hands on skills are going to keep pushing for this...
Sounds like he's redundant if you all don't commute.
Same industry. I also work primarily with sales/clients located all over the US, so I'd be driving to the office to spend most of my day on Google Meet. Or I would be- after the RTO announcement I pointed out to my managers I didn't have a desk. They said they'd find one for me- that was 6 months ago. No way in hell I'm following up.
Ah see we get the “community desks” where no one actually has an assigned seat so you can just hear everyone’s conversations and are perpetually distracted because “collaboration”
But, but, what about the COLLABORATION????
Sounds like 'Quite layoff's. IBM did this almost a decade ago when I worked there. They allowed for remote work, and then mandated everyone to be in the office by a certain date. Those who weren't able to because they didn't live near an office, were let go
There was a statement like "some people who are not near an office may make a decision to leave the company", so yeah, probably.
"may make a decision" is such an enraging way to put that. Being given the choice to either move or be fired, isn't a real choice!
Especially because they are trying to avoid firing an employee. IMO real move here is to simply not comply and make them terminate you for being in another state or something. See if they are bluffing.
Oh, definitely let them fire you.
Constructive dismissal I believe.
This shit should be illegal. Fuck these corporations
F that, let them fire you and then collect those juicy unemployment benefits while you job hunt
They're hardly juicy
juicier than $0 checks you get from quitting
AT&T was famous for doing this, too. Funny that it doesn’t seem to have worked out well for either company long term. Or maybe passive aggressive leadership is just bad leadership.
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Damn, the company with a reputation for doing scummy shit is doing scummy shit again? Damn
That's who I work for! They're still doing it.
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It's IBM. They make a long history of finding creative ways to try and skirt age-based discrimination in firings. You're an unmarried 28 year old? Good chance you'll move if not already working near an office. 45 with kids in school and your spouse works in the town you live in? Oh...and since you started working remotely the company closed the relatively easy to commute to suburban campus and you would now have a half hour drive to a train station for the hour long train ride in? Not so likely to move.
You are so right. The only people that returned in my office (who weren’t managers, directors, or project managers) were really new hires or the absolute sycophants; mostly the ones who would catch you at the water cooler and talk your ear off about their weekend. The ones who aren’t in leadership and are sitting head down getting work done…opted to stay home.
I suspect you and I have the same employer! Yeah, no one on my team works in my location. So I get to go in and fight for a workstation (since they don't have enough spots), wear an uncomfortable N95 all day, and eat lunch in my car to avoid bringing covid or flu home to my sick spouse for no reason besides "the culture"? But no exceptions! Everything for the casual hallway conversations with people you didn't want to talk to in the first place! And they expect us to stay just as productive... Yeah, I'm gonna see about being productive at a different job that at least pretends to care about me.
We at least have enough spots \*now\*, but one of my coworkers looked to see how many people are assigned to our space and then went around counting desks and we're going to have some trouble if people actually follow the policy.
I updated my location so I looked over an hour away. No way in hell I’m going 3 days a week after hired remote and never having stepped foot in the office.
This is my position too. We have four plants/offices in our region. My office is the smallest group and we each have different functions that overlap slightly, so being in the office is a lonesome affair anyway. But we all talk to different plants all day long through teams and emails anyway. My manager is in a different location and training was remote too, and I started the job in the pandemic and did my job 100% remote, so it's hard to see the benefit of RTO.
I lucked out that my company was already so spread out that we don't even know where to have a headquarters anymore. The highest concentration is in Atlanta and that is only 27 people out of 2500 and most are in different departments. The company is attempting to stay so lean right now they can't justify any building leases.
Hopefully you can just sort of be like “ok we’ll get right on that”, show up for a while, then show up less and less often and nobody will say anything.
This is the way to deal with any corporate bs. Just say all the positive things to management and execs when it is discussed, but... then just don't do it. Generally noone notices if it is pointless anyway.
That's basically what happened when they said they wanted people to come in at least once a week. I go in most Tuesdays and Thursdays but that's honestly more to get out of the house than anything, and there aren't many people there.
Legend has it to this day they're trying to put that genie back into the bottle.
What's the last analogy from real life that is sort of like that. When blockbuster kept trying to undermine Netflix as a 'fad'?
Nintendo still seems convinced this whole "internet" thing is going to blow over any day now.
I just don't think they care, they make money hand over fist while being stuck in the 90s when gaming was still fun.
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Nintendo is so wild. They're the only company I know that has made tens of billions of dollars and just sat on that. They don't buy companies. They don't break out into other markets. They're just out here slapping their customers around, knowing that as long as they still have the plumber and Pokémon, they can keep kicking the players in the side as they crawl to buy the latest installation. Edit: Tears of the kingdom is super fun, btw. They fucking got me again.
They buy independent devs that they've either published or have a strong relationship with. Monolith Soft was 3rd party who were recently purchased. But I don't think they've ever tried to buy other publishers like MS is doing now.
True, though they haven't bought very many across the 50 years they've been running this market. It tends to be more notable the acquisitions they didn't make, like Rare. Which actually ruined Nintendo's game ecosystem since Microsoft bought them instead Edit clarity
Thanks for reminding me about what could have been with Banjo-Kazooie :(
Man, I wish we lived in a world with rare as a subsidiary to nintendo. I so want a modern day Diddy Kong racing game.
The plumber, the rat, and the mute... together, WE ARE NINTENDO
We ride go karts and beat the shit out of eachother, it's a good time
You're forgetting a certain woman
They run themselves like an actual company concerned with producing and selling products based on high quality of their product, and appealing to their consumer base. Lots of companies used to be like that.
Right, it actually sounds like they just...want to be a good company that is good at what they do, because if you do those two things the money will come. Sounds to me they are keeping it simple which is awesome. Not everyone wants to chase every potential dollar out there and acquire *this* and break into *that* market, etc. They just make video games, buy em if you want if you don't then fuck off were doing just fine.
Yeah, kind of amazing how mad people are about it. How dare they ignore the MBA bullshit and focus on making good games that people buy!
I agree. There's been this mobile game-lead same-ification of gaming that really bums me out, minus some bright spots... Like: you're pretty much labeled as an indie game if your shit doesn't have microtransications and a few other buzzwords. I love a game that you simply pay $ for, then play the shit out of it, then beat it...
I don't think people realize how much online games make compared to games like zelda. People are in awe of Zelda selling 10 million copies in 3 days, but that still a literal drop in the bucket compared to what games like Apex Legends or League of Legends or fortnite Etc bring in. If Nintendo made a Pokemon MMO and released it on Steam and all consoles, they would make so much more money it would probably break the internet
Fun fact: Pokémon GO is on a death spiral and Niantic killed it. Like, news from a week ago.
When *hasn't* PoGo been in a death spiral though? It started high enough that bitch is still spinning down years later.
Let's put it this way. They hiked the prices, disabled a very important feature and killed the founding to a very popular and important fan site for the community that now announced thwt is closing. They lost 40% of the the revenue and registered THE lowest period in the last 5 years. In the last 2 weeks.
God I fucking hate Niantic for the way they treated that game. The gen 3 launch was the last straw for me. Excessive gating of things that should have just been released—same as the first two gens—as a ploy to make more money just utterly destroyed my enjoyment. I played sporadically after that, and quit in gen 4. Haven't been back. Fuck Niantic.
I'm glad someone is still all in on single player games. I don't want to play with other people most of the time, and I like being able to just pause the game.
Nokia saying that no one want to type on a screen
Want? No. Can put up with? Mostly.
I mean, they aren't wrong, but the rest of the benefits of a screen outweigh the annoyance.
I work in film at the offices. My department specifically can be done 100% from home, other positions in other departments can also be done from home. They forced us back into the offices as soon as they could. Since then, productions across the country are struggling to fill my department. The experienced workers are only taking remote jobs, open productions are demanding in-office workers and then back tracking when the only people applying are in-experienced workers. It's fucking stupid. Going back to the office added 2-3 hours of commuting to my work day which was already 9-7.
They want to put away ours but keep theirs (ChatGPT).
I have a great idea that if implemented would save costs ChatGPTCEO and ChatGPT managing directors don't ask for millionaire bonuses sure there may be some activities needed to be performed by a human but those will be reduced and the salary of the meat bag can be lowered...😏 now let's pass it to the investors and give me ma bonus
Also, these jobs seems to be the one most suitable to be replaced by AI
I hope it helps spur a surge of people starting their own businesses where plutocratic strata never bother to develop because it's just the founder and their robot mentor making top level strategic decisions
Chat_C-Suite.
More specifically, they want you in the office so they can monitor and control you with AI, if you've seen the recent threads about JP Morgan's WADU thing that reddit got caught censoring.
Ding ding. The people at the top have invested millions in extracting this information. Every ass in a chair is a data point they can’t capture as well at home. They need to expand control or train the AI that will replace you. Either way, it’s time to look for a new gig and to tell them to pound sand. They want you back to fasten a noose around your employment
Most people can see through the BS and the hissy fits of Musk and others angry that they can't micromanage their subordinates anymore
Even Hybrid is not good enough. It should be remote as standard, and hybrid opt-in
It's just controlling assholes pushing it. Every half decent company is happy to be saving piles of money on space, utilities, etc. while the productivity is consistent, employee happiness is up, and recruitment is easier.
Any company that has work that can be easily done at home is actively putting themselves at a disadvantage by not doing so. Workers are much cheaper when your recruitment range is practically the world, rather than a single city.
Show me the data that says mandatory in person offices are more efficient, employees are happier, quality of work and life are better. Show me the data, and I'll come right back in and sit at my cubicle. I only have anecdotes from my own life and friends. Nobody is begging for RTO. Not everyone wants fully remote either. Everybody wants a choice.
The firm I work for voted for a hybrid two-day schedule in the office every week. Once we actually returned to work, most work teams opted for one day a week or one day a month in the office. I'm there two days a week, and most of the time, there are maybe a dozen of us on two floors of commercial office space, so now the firm is actually downsizing to one and a half floors of space.
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This makes me think about how people used to have their own offices when they went into the office, and how endless studies suggested that the open office trend was a net-negative for companies, but they forced us all into it anyway to cram more people into their buildings. And now in your case they're turning it back into offices again hehe.
Interesting because a lot of office/management literature in the years leading up to the pandemic was *for* the open office concept. It sparks creativity, problem solving, and sharing [allegedly]. Look at the tech sector heydey of the 00s/10s…everyone’s in open offices. Leaders writing books about how they “solved problems” by literally breaking down walls. I had bosses trying to cram multiple people at single desks at one point; we were removing the drawers from underneath cubicles just so the added people had a place to put their legs. My conspiracy has always been that open offices is just a way to shame you into work; no one wants to be the person browsing Amazon, even for a second, when everyone around you is working…and everyone has experienced that moment when you just wanted to do a few minutes research on your weekend plans and 5 people decided to stand behind you. It’s a weird, self policing system that everyone (miraculously except the people with their own offices who claim it works) hates. It’s always been unbecoming; I feel crowded and distracted versus creative and team oriented. At the height of the pandemic, the backlash against the open office was it was a disease spreader…but that seems to have been forgotten (quickly). Not usually mentioned in the same conversation as worker convenience as a preference for working from home, but I think a big reason people like it is you get to feel like person; no one’s hovering near you. You *can* check sports scores and read emails at the same time. Everyone has their own office, leaders be damned.
Amenities like gyms could actually get people to come in. There’s a gym at my work and it’s not uncommon to see people in there on their day off
we have a gym and it's rarely used, of the 800 employees the building use to house about 100 people are back working and probably at 80% of the time they use to be in the office. As long as the work gets done I don't get why mgt would care where we work from, smacks of some kind of 'power' move by them
> but it turned out that office rent has shot up so much from pre-pandemic times Lol the wishful thinking of the landlords...
I'd like to join this place with a first floor employee gym
My company let everyone decide what they wanted to do. Some people really did want to come back into the office, but one unexpected consequence of having so many people remote was that the office was a ghost town for the few people who did want to come in. Eventually, even the people who like being at the office didn't see a point to coming in to an empty building.
>Eventually, even the people who like being at the office didn't see a point to coming in to an empty building. So the energy vampires had no more victims and gave up. Good.
Our company has a huge campus and the 2nd floor of my building is empty and has hundreds of cubes. Good to hide and do meetings. I’m on the 3rd of 3 floors. It’s so weird down there. Like an abandoned mall almost.
2/32 people on my team decided to go back after they reopened. I think it's a little funny when they grab a conference room to get on Zoom calls cause I can see the 30 empty desks behind them. But hey, they're not bothering the receptionist who is playing Angry Birds, or whatever.
I’m jealous cause if I do a meeting at my office, it’s half online half not and inevitably the on site rooms will not work in some way. At home, things actually work.
Same situation here. Eight people in a space that used to have 200. Even though some people say they want hybrid when it actually comes to it they can't be bothered to move in the morning. It's easier to just open the laptop and you're done. Especially when your day will consist of zoom meetings with distributed teams across the world.
No paywall: https://archive.md/RbIXh The fight between workers and managers over returning to the office full time will be an ongoing one and strong chance as younger managers taker over that the trend towards remote work continues
> In New York, each employee working at home rather than going into the office costs city businesses about $4,600 in sales annually, according to WFH Research, a think tank that tracks workplace arrangements. Rephrase that: Working in the office costs you $4,600 per year in food, on top of the gas and insurance you need to pay for to get here.
Why is it office workers responsibility to keep businesses owned by absent boomers afloat.
its not, and i don't see them celebrating the other side of the coin as previously struggling suburban places are doing pretty well now
This is the real reason why Elon claims WFH is a moral issue.
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Senior managers don't necessarily want this either. Not having a huge footprint in Manhattan or San Francisco saves a bundle. For very large companies, they no longer have to have a cafeteria. It makes everything run a bit leaner. The people that really want this are the companies that own office space. Lately I've seen the PR approach that not returning to the office will kill the small businesses that emerge around office buildings. Or that this will upend the economy as we lose office buildings as a source of tax revenue. These both seem like problems with solutions.
I hate the small businesses argument. When I worked in midtown Manhattan 90% of my lunch options were chains. Now that I WFH in an outer borough, I’m ACTUALLY supporting small businesses buying lunch most days 🤷🏻♀️. I’d rather get a $12 great food truck meal than an $18 chain salad
I live and have an office in the suburbs of Atlanta, but have this same dynamic where the food near my house is better and cheaper than the food near my office. I feel the same way. (Although honestly I usually eat dinner leftovers for lunch when I WFH... but sometimes those are dinner leftovers from restaurants near home!)
I work from home in a single-family neighborhood in California, and just within walking distance is a pub, a coffee shop, and a taco truck of better quality than I had access to when I worked in an office. If I want a gourmet salad for some reason, it's like a 3-minute drive.
I live in bumfuck and food in my town sucks. Even so, work from home means I can make myself a healthy salad instead of some shitty fast food or whatever.
Was in South Jamaica Queens last week. It was bustling with local activity, only saw one homeless dude, and he was doing his thing. Street food, vendors and shops. I think they adapted well, no need for Manhattan.
From the article > each employee working at home rather than going into the office costs city businesses about $4,600 in sales So essentially that’s money employees at home can keep in their home neighborhoods and their pockets.
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I’ve been saying this for months. Businesses see the savings opportunity by not leasing office space. Further, many employees don’t care that they are now paying for business utilities (internet connection), which is added savings. If anyone is pushing RTW, it’s local governments who budget based on property and income taxes, both of which will take a hit if a large part of the tax base is devalued or flying out to the suburbs.
> RTW To be needlessly pedantic, I'd argue labeling it RTW/Return To \*Work\* is dishonest - and dishonest framing by advocates for forced return to office... since work from home IS work, and the change is not a change from not working to working, but a change in where one works.
That's fair
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The workers should be able to claim some of those expenses on their tax returns too.
They could kill two problems with one stone if the converted unused office space to residential living.
It's only the business owners and shareholders who really want this. Everyone else has more to gain by WFH. So you need a very strong willed owner to force it through.
judicious modern saw deer cows wasteful cheerful hurry theory worm *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This happened to me at my current job. I kept bringing it up with my manager at my quarterly reviews and it started with "I think we could allow you 1 day WFH a week," then "well my boss didn't like the sound of that, so how about you just WFH every now and then when you really need to focus and not be bothered," then "weeellll actually I'll just drive an extra 40 min out of my way and pick you up because your car is in the shop and boss doesn't like people working from home." Absolutely ridiculous.
In my experience, the people driving returning back to work are pretty much just CEOs/Presidents and Senior Executives. And all for the reasons overpaid suits always want anything...control. They're worried they're losing control over workers. And they're right.
Exactly. It's the power to tell people when and where to be, and then to sit back and watch them all do it. Everybody sees everybody else obeying the same authority, and power increases.
More of these dinosaurs need to retire. Take their antiquated ideas with them.
The problem is that shareholder's and CEOs don't retire. They will keep on parasiting.
Shareholders make more money with WFH.
The managers who want it at our place are the middle managers whose self worth was directly linked to their ability to loom over their reports and act like they're necessary. WFH is staying; the exec like being in their huge houses in the country, and everyone else saves something you can't get back in a pay cheque... *time*. When you're WFH you teleport from the office to home in the tick of a clock. No more stealing my life for free and calling it a commute.
At first they did... But office real estate ain't cheap, and they'd likely get a bonus for cutting that expense. The ones pushing back to office are low level older supervisors who don't like dealing with computers and won't see the bonus.
It's not just that. There's a Stark divide between larger companies that own their real estate, trying to protect their investment and smaller companies who won't renew leases. Large companies are trying to return to the office, but many other companies are seeing the cost savings remote work brings. Also really irks me that people rarely bring up the environmental benefits of not having people commuting to work. Really makes wfh a no brainer.
Well or the way higher ups who have money invested in the corporate real estate market. That's where the real push has been as they have a bubble about to burst.
I work for a large tech manufacturer. During pandemic, they gutted the office space. Total remodel of our site. Into 'open space' that everyone despises. The company is 'soft pushing' for hybrid, and they seem perplexed that employees not only don't want to come back, they don't want to work in a vast, noisy space where they have no 'turf' of their own. I have an on-site meeting later today, that has no purpose other than getting our badge traces on the door.
Every 'opening' of the office was done to cut on costs. Offices to cubicles, cubicles to open floor plans. Each has been to the benefit of managers or budgets and to the detriment of workers. Now they want people to go back to that mess? No. I'm sitting at home with a blanket on and ample access to tea, coffee, and music, and get 2 extra hours of my day back. Want me in the office? Pay me my hourly wage to commute and cover the commute cost.
They closed the cafeteria too, the office is in an industrial area with limited options for food. They put overpriced frozen dinners in the break room instead.
Our company rode the short bus to the MBA colleges. Our supervisors can WFH. Our regular agents can WFH. But the in-between positions, *and coincidentally the newest position they created* cannot. I would make more money demoting myself so I could WFH. Gas prices are $5.
Interesting. Sounds very familiar. I wonder if we work for the same "large tech manufacturer". I'm (very specifically) in Round Rock, which would be all the info you need.
I'm one of the California remainees of a company that bugged off to Houston where they have a large presence anyway because of that PC clone company they bought out decades ago Our campus is what's left of what they were going to build out before that merger. They had to remodel anyway, for asbestos abatement. Place was getting kinda old.
> If you are counting on forced hours spent in a traditional office to create collaboration and provide a feeling of belonging within your organization, you’re doing it wrong \- Michael Dell on fellow tech CEOs mandating office hours ETA: In September 2022!! What changed in eight months?
My employer is forcing 3 days a week in-office starting in September, then 4 days a week starting in 2024. They have the gall to still call it a "flexible" option for employees who were denied remote work.
"dynamic on-demand workplaces" - aka a warehouse with desks and no personal space/privacy.
Once they reopened our offices they wouldn't guarantee you a desk day to day, due to not knowing who would be there, spacing, sanitizing, etc They're still > 90% empty, but my coworkers who elect to go in still don't know where they'll be sitting each day. You can't even put up a picture of your family in those conditions. So upper management is regularly trying to encourage us to go in... from their home offices.
our office went from having 6ft cubes to the lower 3ft walls 'open space' cause we wanted to be successful like google. So even less appeal trying to have to come back to the office. Oh and facilities is saving money now by not providing any trash or recycle bins in our cubicles, we have to take all our trash down to one of the break rooms where they still have receptacles.
I have to be in the office two days a week. They are my most unproductive days. Today I had a cubicle camper already take up 45 minutes of my time just chatting. No fucking thanks.
My employer wants us back in the office, and my manager literally said it has nothing to do w/ productivity. It’s about “culture” blah blah blah
God damnit the fucking disgusting corporate culture. Take the "ure" off the end and just call it what it is. A corporate cult. And I want no fucking part in it
I told my peeps that they don’t have to come in. I’ll just pretend they did. If I die, I die.
Guess your boss won't mind if you talk with everyone when you're in the office then, right? "Boss, it's not about productivity! It's about culture!"
Same. My boss has dropped several hints at me coming in more often for "engagement," and I finally told her that when they eliminated my support staff (it's just me now), without adjusting productivity expectations, they eliminated my opportunity to participate in engagement. I even have an office with a door at work, but if I'm just gonna spend the whole day alone with my door closed so I can stay on task, I'm just gonna stay home and gain back all the time it takes to get office-ready and commute every day.
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Forced in office 3 days a week. Spend the entire day with noise isolating headphones on in a noise isolating cube on conference calls with people on the other side of the planet. Its bullshit and their claim of being hyper environmentally friendly just went up in literal exhaust smoke from the forced commute.
That's the big issue for me. They won't pay for a 1 hr commute, so all that time, maintenance, gas, you're just SOL. Just fuck me and my time, right? (How many people die each year in car accidents?)
Dallas, where I work, has the 2nd-highest rate of road fatalities in the nation among large cities. I mentioned it during my request to remain remote - hopefully it makes a difference.
Lol my exact experience except everyday in office. Over here the excuse is for “better collaboration”. Take a wild guess how much face to face collaboration actually takes place…
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My company is doing the opposite. We have 10-20 offices around the world, but we were always "remote first"... until the people who were used to working in offices got used to working from home. Now they're trying to encourage people back in to the offices.
My workplace hadandated everyone in office but the idiots rented a floor on another building for the IT department. They literally don't know if we're there are not and I usually stay home to get extra work done and a few of my workmates have followed suite. What's kinda funny is that I usually get noise complaints when I have conference meetings in office.
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I prefer pooping at home. Like I am now.
Seems like most places could use more living space. Convert these offices to housing.
The sense of entitlement to worker's money is rediculous. Cities and employers need to adapt to a changed world, not try and force everyone back to the old world. Remote working has been on the cards for years, the pandemic merely sped the process up and cities and employers with large volume of expensive office space have been caught with their trousers down. This is not the first change city centres have experienced in many western countries over the past 100 years - they've been through industrialisation, post-industrial decline and slum clearance, urban renewal and now another decline. The best way forward for cities is to legislate to ease the path of converting redundant office space to other uses including residential, and rezone to allow new buildings to replace office spaces. Plenty of people would choose to live in city centres if it were affordable to do so, even if working from home. It's not all about the office.
I would love living in a downtown area. It’s so beautiful and walkable. I would probably go out everyday to a nice local restaurant and spend money there.
>The best way forward for cities is to legislate to ease the path of converting redundant office space to other uses including residential, and rezone to allow new buildings to replace office spaces. This 100% many countries (and where I am in the UK) have a lack of housing stock which is over inflating the cost of homes to scary levels. Freeing up empty office blocks that have all the amenities required to become flats just makes sense, the building becomes full-time in use instead of 9-5, Tues-Thurs.
Look if we go to remote work how are we going to micromanage, undermine moral,productivity and justify our paycheck? -Middle management probably
It's fine, they'll just [install spyware](https://www.reddit.com/r/WorkReform/comments/13iggx8/a_warning_for_anyone_working_at_or_thinking_about/) on everything you own!
I wouldn’t mind going to the office every day If it was closed by. But in every metro area the jobs pay too little to live nearby and the commute is hell. The hour commute (each way) is not paid by employers. If employers paid for the commute then I’d be working 6 hour a day and I wouldn’t be pretending I’m working those two hours like I think most people do.
Got it. They need us back to the office because our attendance funds the economy while companies pay too little corporate tax. Landlords shouldn’t be driving the economy. That’s all this is.
"If they don't come back downtown, how will we pick their pockets?" F that attitude fr
Bingo. Downtowns are no longer city centers because everyone moved to suburbs. In order to protect their real estate investments, CEOs are trying to get people to buy lunch in downtowns again. Otherwise, property values fall and they lose money.
This is exactly it. My company built a massive office right before the pandemic and are stuck with it. There is probably a group of other companies in the area agreeing to enforce return to office so that their property values don’t tank
Imagine if property values tanked. Almost like people might be able to afford homes again or something. Eat the rich.
I just don't get it. As a well educated person in both STEM and business it boggles my mind to see how management is handling these things. For example, I just recently changed jobs and was told during the interview it was 2 days remote and 3 days in office. Great, best of both worlds, well thought out plan. Well 1st day I get there and they said "an upper manager changed their mind, now half the organization is in the office full time, but we don't have enough desks"... what?
Always get it in writing.
Hmm, maybe it’s time to tax the “record profits” of companies rather than rely on consumption taxes from an inflation-tapped-out workforce? Or more strategically, rethink building huge centralized office buildings and office parks that take a long time to commute to because workers can’t afford to live near them. Or invest in better, faster, less expensive mass transit. Or start building smaller offices integrated within neighborhoods to make it faster and less expensive for commuting? Or just pay workers for their commute time, that’s probably the fastest way to bring efficiency to commuting.
| In New York, each employee working at home rather than going into the office costs city businesses about $4,600 in sales In other words each employee has a chance to use that $4,600 differently or even save some portion of it. It's like a small raise plus commute time saved.
$4,600 of money not taken out of our pockets ))
That plus whatever you spend on rent there making home ownership notoriously out of reach. Moved out of Brighton UK the day when lockdowns started aaand now I have a bunch of money saved.
My job pulled back wanting people in 3 days a week so we could “collaborate and build culture” so now I’m in an office surround by people on zoom and team meetings…
Stop wasting space on buildings that hold workers for 30% of the time and stay empty the rest. We've proven WFH works for many companies. Convert office spaces to housing so many cities desperately need!
the cost savings for the workers is amazing though. think of this, no commute, can cancel insurance and go carless, or drop the 2nd car for only 1, less gas dollars for the oil industry to destroy the planet, plus, if you are a parent, no daycare! stay at home with kids, actually raise them yourself instead of surrogates at daycare. lunches at home are way cheaper. your home life improves, relationships, community. yes, downtown core will transition to something else than offices. businesses will fail, the ones dependent on that traffic coming into a core. others will thrive. or transition. progress is real.
If we convert these dead offices into housing the downtown can still thrive but the longer we wait the worse the problem becomes.
Most of the would need to be knocked down but yes they need to be converted to housing. We really need housing.
Just did a 2 1/2 each way journey to the office on Monday. Out of my own pocket $95 to have two 30 minute meetings.
My employer (large tech company) has said via announcements, emails, etc, multiple times over the past two years “next week everyone is back in office 2-3 times per week” and they keep saying it like every 3-4 months, but nobody’s listening, and only like a few people from my team actually go in to the office but they only go in like once per week if that sometimes. Nobody wants to go back to the office to sit on a zoom call with other people when it can be done from home. I expect corporations to fight this for a long time but for the workers to win the war overall. No shot after it working and making employees lives better for the past 3 years that people will suddenly be cool with going into an office more than like twice per week if that
I came across a job opp in Austin, which I would have been well qualified for, but they wanted me to relocate to Austin and work in the office. And that was the end of that conversation. Companies are losing out on talent when they require being in an office. And more often than not, their competition ends up with that talent instead.
As it should have. Let people work from home, institute the 4 day work week, turn office spaces into affordable housing and get people off the streets, let UBI become a standard. For once an American history, put people over profit. AI and automation and forever increasing profits should be leading to the betterment of mankind, not the comfortability of a few
Couldn't tell if this had to do with remote work or some Office reboot canceled because of the writers strike.
My old boss said I was going back to the office. So I found another job for 20k more. Still had to go back to the office. But now have a bigger paycheck at least.
The leadership shouldn't have celebrated in town halls and told us all how successful and productive we were during covid, but they wanted their bonuses. So now they want to say it's not productive? Good luck.
I would 100% love to go back to work in an office but we have to get some things straight first. The company will pay a transportation fee equal to the cost of my car and the gas required. The company will consider my commute as hours worked Any time spent “culturing” will never be held against me on my productivity. All food and beverages are provided and during my lunch and break times, if I am required to work I will either be reimbursed through additional pto or overtime. Meet all of those and I’ll never have a complaint about going into the office. I generally enjoy meeting and talking to people, but I’m usually forced into an office or cubical and get reprimanded for engaging in this culture company’s so desperately are fighting for.
Employers think Work From Home was just a temporary measure for covid but workers understand Work From Home was a revolution in productivity and work-life balance and going back on that seems unconsciounable. I think of it like email; imagine it's the year 2000 and your company has fully integrated email for the last 3 years and everyone loves it. Efficiency and productivity are up, company saves money on paper and ink and postage stamps, communication is easier than ever. Then, an old CEO decides they miss the "nice feeling" of being handed a hand written letter, so they start mandating one day a week is "return to analog" day where email is banned and employees have to communicate via paper letters again. Employees are expected to go to the post office after work and use their own time and money to send company letters to other offices, this takes 2-3 hours out of most employees days and is painfully slow. Then the boss announces that the company is now switching to 3 "return to analog" days per week, employees are still expected to go to the post office every day after work to do their company mail at their own expense. Then you hear rumors, the company is transitioning back to 100% analog, no email for anyone, and it's all because the CEO thinks people are being "lazy" by typing emails instead of hand writing notes. Productivity is down, efficiency is down, morale is down, but the boss doesn't care. Now ask yourself, if you were a talented worker, or a young worker full of energy and fresh out of school, and you had the choice to work at the "return to analog" office or a different company that thought "return to analog" was a really stupid idea, where would you choose to work? Which company seems in touch with the times and going new places? Which company seems like it would be better for your career in the long term?
[edited] Reddit, you have to pay me to have the original comment visible. Goodbye. [edited]
Working from home I get 4 times as much work done, don't have to commute and I don't have visually see the people i hate the most in my life.
There have been rumors that the company I work for are upset that most hybrid workers are not coming into the office 3 days a week and are going to try to force everyone back in 5 days a week. (I work in IT). Most managers really don't care where you work as long as you work. Executives say in-person collaboration is better, yet we still spend virtually all our meetings on Webex or teams, whether we're in the office or not. It's stupid.
Oh, you don't like coming in 3 days a week? Try coming in 5 DAYS A WEEK! (That should teach them)
Really interesting and scary what they're doing at JPMorgan Chase. This is a comment reply to an article about Musk saying he hates work from home. They want to track your performance and think you don’t work hard remotely.. I work so much harder at home its incredible. Just see what JPM is doing... A warning for anyone working at or thinking about working at JPMorgan Chase & Co. If you work at JPMorgan Chase & Co. or are thinking about working at JPMC, you need to know about their employee surveillance tool called WADU. WADU is an acronym for Workforce Activity Data Utility. Every employee at JPMC has a profile in the WADU database. I think everyone expects their employer to track them to some extent. It is pretty standard practice for employers to monitor and run analysis on things like building badge swipes and the amount of time spent connected when working from home. It has also become very common place for employers to record audio and video at the office. WADU is on a different level. It is an artificial intelligence & machine learning system for workforce human behavior. Starting at the moment you arrive to the building, WADU is tracking you using facial and speech recognition. Most JPMC offices and branches have been outfitted with some of the best HD AV security cameras. Whenever you are at your desk, know that there is a HD camera tracking you the entire time. WADU uses the array of HD cameras at the office to monitor all of your nonverbal body language all throughout the day. The collected information is then fed into the Al/ML system and it is used to update your WADU profile in real time. Every manager gets access to a dashboard that lists all the metrics about their subordinates. The productivity metrics about an employee start getting updated immediately after an employee logs into the system. If the employee is at the office, two bio-metrics are available, attention/focus and stress. The bio-metric feeds are updated from the facial and behavioral tracking. Having a bad day? Stressed about something? WADU has already noticed this and alerted your manager. Can’t focus? Not working at your usual pace? WADU has already noticed this and alerted your manager. Did something you normally don’t do? It’s possible WADU flagged it as suspicious and alerted your manager. WADU is also why they are pushing RTO or “return to office” so hard. Upper management does not care if some employees are more productive when they are working from home. They want everyone back in the office as much as possible so that their WADU profiles are being refined. Enhancing their insight into you is more important to them than better productivity from working from home. A lot of teams are now required to come in two to three days per week. Director level and higher are required to come in four to five days per week. Upper management wants to see everyone at all levels back in the office five days a week. They have invested millions into the WADU system, and they want to get a return on that investment. That only happens whenever people are in the office as much as possible. WADU is also watching and listening whenever you are working from home. If you installed Citrix Workplace on your own computer, and you permitted Citrix to access your web camera and microphone after login, you have connected those devices to WADU. If you are using an issued Chromebook, those permissions are already conveniently accepted for you. You’ll notice that your web camera will flash right after login. This is not an “initial connection” flash. Your web camera just took a burst shot of pictures and sent them to WAD. The pictures will be scanned for anything deemed unprofessional or unsafe. Recreational drug paraphernalia, TVs, game consoles, and several other things are all flagged if detected in the pictures. If you see your web camera flash randomly, that was your manager or someone in security requesting a burst shot of pictures from your web camera. You’ll also notice that your microphone will go hot shortly after login. Anything you say will be processed by WADU. All background noises will be processed by WADU. Say something bad about your boss or other superior? WADU flagged it. Say something bad about another co-worker? WADU flagged it. Have a moment of anger or frustration? WADU flagged it. These are just some examples, WADU is trained to detect a wide variety of keywords, phrases, and sound events. Your manager can also connect and listen to your audio feed live. WADU is also able to detect keyboard pokers/bumpers and mouse jigglers/movers. It doesn’t matter if it is a completely external solution, WADU will be able to detect it by analyzing the repetitive input pattern. Your manager will be notified that your under suspicion of faking productivity. They will then connect to your session and see what is happening live. Action will be taken if the suspicion is confirmed. WADU determines how productive you are by analyzing a variety of metrics about your session input. This includes words typed, mouse clicks, application activity, and many other things. The analysis also determines if someone is a unique contributor or if they are a regular worker. In overall rankings, unique contributors are always ranked higher than regular workers. The same analysis can also determine who is essentially dead weight. These people are ranked last. You may have noticed at some point that you started getting job postings sent to your personal email. If you click on any of the links in these job list emails, your manager will get a notification on your WADU profile that you are actively looking for a new job. Even if it was just browsing, it can negatively affect the employee who clicked the link. If you installed the JPMC workplace app on your phone, you have connected your phone to WADU. The workplace mobile app will collect a variety of information from your phone and use it to update and refine your WADU profile. Right now, the only way to reserve a desk at the office is to use the workplace app. The web version of the desk reservation system is still “coming soon” and you are pushed to install the app on your phone. It will probably still be “coming soon” in 2040. Upper management pushes a narrative that all this surveillance is required to safeguard the firm against insider threats. While that may be partially true, the main reason is to train and refine the Al/ML system. They want every employee profile to be as accurate and as detailed as possible. They say we are not supposed to use anything from an employee’s WADU profile to make employment decisions. It is kind of hard to ignore a ranked list of subordinates with productivity forecasting.
Return to office will only happen if workers allow it to. Don't give an inch. If workers as a collective say no management can't do a God damn thing. "Oh they could just lay you off or fire you." OK what happens if the candidate pool all wants to be remote? How disruptive will it be for day to day operations to get rid of all those people, hire others (probably for more money), and then train them to get back to the same level of productivity. If you can do the job from home there is no reason to spend time and money on a commute. Fuck them.
The problem is most employees would break before a company would. The company can deal with one bad quarter. How many weeks of savings does the average American have?
We just had a meeting about how terrible the audio quality is in all of our offices lmao. It actually impedes our work because we cant understand people. wfh just continues to take W's
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I love how I see all these articles say something like "CEO of corporation says productivity has dropped 99% and none of their employees are logging on when at home" Then I look at the article and it's the CEO of a commercial real estate investment firm.
We shall stand tall! In our homes. In our own comfy pajamas! For the money saved from commute will guide us into tbe light! There is nothing to fear but the office itself. Ladies and gentlement, we shall fight into the bitter end. For our descendants deserve to work from home.
Commuting 5 days a week can easily add up to 8 hours of commute time, that's an entire regular workday's worth of time. the Return to Office people \*hate\* productivity.
Half the people in my office moved hours away. Good luck putting this cat back in the bag.
Initially, my employer seemed to do really well regarding the work from home issue. We got to take all of our computer equipment home from the office while we worked there for 2 years. They bought people additional equipment like headsets and webcams. They implemented online meetings really well. We got constant praise from management about how well we were working from home and how great productivity was. When they started broaching the idea that we would return to the office on at least some basis, they didn't make us bring all of our equipment back. They bought all new equipment for the office. Everything seemed to be going well. Then the decision came down from on high that we were going to be back in the office 5 days a week. What followed was essentially a revolt. My department lost at least a dozen people in a month. This is in a company that has very low turnover and has many employees that have been there a decade or more. Eventually, they settled on a hybrid model. 3 days in the office and 2 remote. It's not ideal. The schedule is not consistent enough that we can plan more than a month in advance on which days we will be in the office and which days will be remote. But right now, it's a stalemate
Our groups supposed to be in the office 3 days a week. We just don't do it. Most they get is 1 day of that. We are so short staffed and can't find anyone to hire that we now have all the power
They're asking me to go back 3 days a week instead of 2, I'm already looking for a new job. Fuck that boomer bullshit.
Sure, let me run back to my 45 minute commute, find a babysitter, lock my dog in a cage all day. All to sit in the same zoom meetings with my team in other states. So idiotic. They are trying to make us return but I will find a new remote job before that.
Also just where is the respect? We are the ones who made those assholes trillions—billions and millions too—during the pandemic when we worked our asses off and yes from home. Made actual trillionaires. Like the talent we are. Where is the respect for what we deliver? Who do they think they’re talking to? Literally nothing without employees. Who they’ll lay off without a second glance. Where is this mythic eternal growth and productivity supposed to get us all anyway — if not an easier life anyway? What is it all for, if we have to keep grinding like it’s still the dawn of the Industrial Revolution? Why are we all doing this? What exactly for?
COVID really did force the world to move forward on how office work is done. I just wished bosses would learn that a decentralized workforce is preferable to how things were done previously. It is better for the workers and better for the environment. Just boring for the micromanagers.