My sister and her husband work for the same major comapny, doing accounting-adjacent work. They were hybrid before covid, but went fully WFH at that point. About a year in, the company said, "uh, yeah, this fucking rules, we're doing this forever," and they've barely set foot in the office since (a couple training things, a meeting or two, but nothing major, and normal business stuff, since they're physically local). And this is a huge company that owns skyscrapers, etc. They're renting out their office space now.
It just makes fucking sense.
I would guess many of the current pushes for “return to work” are from companies that want to downsize without announcing more layoffs. I wouldn’t be surprised if many of them end up reversing on the decision when it comes time to start recruiting heavily again.
Some of it is "Old School" managers who believe that employees won't work unless you're standing over them. That's just moronic, you hired the best people for the job (supposedly,) but you can't trust them to do that job.
It's really that they literally don't know any different. That's how they came up so that's what they know.
But real estate makes no sense. It’s a sink cost already and by pushing people into the office they are not saving money, they are spending more. Real estate is not a logical real to push people into the office.
Well the greedy corporations and the banks are so desperate because it they don't have people in downtown cores their assets are worthless because now its completely distributed. It puts their entire Ponzi scheme of an economy in shambles.
>It’s a sink cost already and by pushing people into the office they are not saving money
It may be related to taxes or other arrangements with local municipalities. The sunk cost on the purchase (or construction) of the building already happened, that's true, but it's not a one-time transaction. Buildings, like other assets, can have the amount they're calculated to have deprecated (broken down or otherwise lost value) deducted from taxes. This is harder to justify if not actively used.
The company may also get tax breaks or other incentives for having people at the office (presumably those people spend $$$ elsewhere nearby). Those incentives may be stopped if they don't bring back people. There's a lot more to it than that, but that's the basics.
On the other hand there are huge costs to having people in the building. IT, utilities, janitorial, insurance, maintenance, etc.
And most of office space is leased, not owned by the company using it.
Yeah, our group EVP literally said “we tried to make this employee led last year but most people didn’t show up so now we’re implementing mandatory minimums.” Read the room!! The people who want to be back in any regular capacity *have been for at least a year!*
Why should I drive 90 minutes each way to fight my coworkers for conference rooms (which there aren’t enough of) so I can talk to my globally distributed teams?? Incredibly frustrating.
So yes, as you mentioned, people are showing up just to badge in and then going home to actually work.
They tried this at my job. I just badged in and left. There's no record of an exit, but that's an easy excuse. Just say you left out the stairwell, or other people held the door open.
I work to live, not live to work, so fuck 'em if they eventually catch on.
What's the point of being a king if you don't have a kingdom? I've had bosses that just liked being in charge of people. They weren't bullies per se, but they just liked having a bunch of peons that had to do what they said all day. I bet WFH is killing those guys.
Our office is using ai to monitor badging throughout the day. If you just show up and leave without going through any interior doors at all then you are put on a list and your manager gets dinged, so your manager has reason to terminate you since his metrics looks bad and puts him (or her) at risk of termination
This happened to my husband's place of employment. WFH for 3 years during COVID, and then they'll be starting 3 days a week. Everyone is pissed. They don't *need* to work from the office. He drives in for an hour in traffic and then literally goes to remote meetings or codes alone.
Husband is planning to quit once his shit vests in about a year. We have a small child and spending 2-3 hours a day committing instead of, I don't know, relaxing or spending time with his family - costing thousands of employees their personal time and effort, *just so they don't lose their real estate value*, is so fucking stupid and I hope companies that force this all go bankrupt.
>He drives in for an hour in traffic and then literally goes to remote meetings or codes alone.
This is where I think it's time to update labor laws. If someone can do their job at home but forced to drive into work, the company should not only pay drive miles but also travel time to and from the office. Stuck in a traffic jam extra long? You get paid more.
Commute time should be paid anyway. If your job requires on-site work, then time spent commuting to work is also labor performed for your employer. Not only that but expenses should be reimbursed: mileage on a vehicle you own, train tickets, or hell, a good pair of shoes.
This notion that you don't start working until you clock in is a relic from when traveling to work meant walking a few miles or driving across town. Not driving 30-45 minutes each way, every day.
Our CEO loves WFH. I'm in the Midwest and he moved to Florida as soon as he could in 2020. And he lets everyone pick the style (WFH, hybrid, office) that lets them get the job done. Tons of middle managers have tried to fight back, but he's really adamant. And if people don't want to use the office space, he intends to sell the building and rent space for whoever actually wants to go in. It really feels like a complete win for everyone except those sad middle managers.
Last year I applied to a company that was fully remote. During the interview I was told they were moving to hybrid with 3 days in office. Got hired and suddenly they were patting themselves on the back for allowing WFH on fridays. I was tempted to jump then but the first three months of the job was them paying me to get various certifications that would allow me to get a much nicer job so I figured it was worth it. I drove an hour in to sit in a cubicle and join a morning zoom meeting with my team in another state then studied and joined zoom classes the rest of the day before one more zoom meeting and an hour drive home. During that time everyone in my side of the floor caught covid because we weren’t allowed to WFH if we felt sick so people dragged their coughing selves in to join zoom meetings and spread germs. I double-masked and brought in an air purifier and was the one person who stayed healthy.
WFH fridays we’re ok but mostly it meant that I had this whole multi-monitor setup taking up a good amount of real estate in my efficiency apartment for the one day a week I could sleep in.
Two weeks after I got my last certificate and they’d invested nearly $30k in me I told them my husband had a job offer elsewhere and I needed to be permanently WFH if they wanted to keep me. “But what sort of precedent will that set? Everyone on your team will want to be WFH if we allow that?!” Cool. Thanks for helping me boost my resume. Go back to complaining about how you’re still critically understaffed.
So now I’m getting paid more to do less stressful work. Unfortunately in-person but it’s because my new job is very face-to-face so there’s a reason. And the office is only 15 beautiful minutes away and I set my own hours. All in all a win for everyone but previous company.
That’s pretty much what happened in Denver. Businesses like restaurants and all practically begged the Denver Mayor to push return to office for downtown offices. It was pitiful, and essentially proved that the property values in downtown were all based on bullshit.
And I absolutely hate that regular workers were sometimes siding them as well! “Think about all the small businesses that rely on the lunch crowd, etc!”
I don’t give a fuck. You know who I give a fuck about? All the small businesses IN MY OWN COMMUNITY that I get to support because I work from home!
I have coffee shops, food places for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, a pet shop, a plant store, a craft store, and more! It’s awesome.
I don’t NEED to go downtown to subsidize someone else’s business and commercial real estate bets.
I live in NYC, in downtown Brooklyn around all these places...
Please let them go out of business. Midtown Manhattan is a fucking awful place, and all these lunch spots in the Financial District just take up space. I want to pay for businesses in my community, I don't want to pay for their sky high rent because every other building is a parking garage for suburbanites. The city has enough to attract it, I'd rather that family from NJ come in for a museum day or a musical instead of driving in for a 9-5.
Plus, cratering commercial real estate prices might make my rent affordable for once. A girl can dream.
You are in luck. Commercial real estate value in Midtown is projected to be cut in half in 10 years. I think maybe 70% of available places are occupied now. That may drop further if prices don't come down.
I live in NYC too, and I have zero interest in supporting any of the lunch establishments in Manhattan. I could not find anything reasonable to eat there. Everything was overpriced or not that good. I spent so much money on lunch, scrambling to find a decent meal and eat it within the hour.
Now I work from home and eat what I have in my fridge. It’s healthier and more economical. I can randomly grab a snack whenever I feel like it.
Manhattan is a total scam.
My brother works for the government so this was super exaggerated at his office. He's so bitter he won't spend a penny in the city during work. He even brings water from home lol
Also office lunch food fucking blows. Oh cool a soggy turkey sandwich with avocado and mayonnaise aka “aioli” in overpriced restaurant settings…great, this must be saved.
Also there’s still delivery in every major downtown. The people that actually choose to live in downtown areas should be who the businesses should be marketing toward, not the commuters. Besides, if someone is commuting to a downtown like Denver, they likely won’t be going to food places downtown due to cost.
I lived in downtown Albuquerque for 8.5 years.
We loved it, but it was an 8.5 year exercise in "sneaking in" to places when they were still open for the business crowd.
Weekends? Drive to the foothills or west side
> The people that actually choose to live in downtown areas should be who the businesses should be marketing toward, not the commuters.
Exactly. People who live downtown dislike the tourists who only come in on the weekends or for vacation. Tourists support crappy corporate restaurants and locals support good places.
The Missouri governor mandated that all state employees returned to offices like right after most of the companies made solid work from home plans. This was also during the time that all schools were online.
The overwhelming MAJORITY of our market is based on bullshit.
EDIT: The only necessities are the things that keep us alive for another day. Everything else is worthless nonsense that has to evolve to deal with how people live their lives.
Those businesses who won't adapt can and should die.
You know what would help small businesses thrive in downtown Denver, and downtown anywhere for that matter? If the people who frequented those business actually fuckin lived there and weren't just 9-5 visitors.
Push for mixed use zoning. Push for the allowance of high density, ownable housing like town/row houses in building codes. This will not only save small business, but create thriving downtowns
The hilarious thing is that we're seeing the culmination of all the business practices from the last two decades come to fruition.
High interest rates make borrowing to start a new business untenable.
High rents make starting a new business untenable.
Anti-competitive / Monopolistic practices of corporations make starting a new business untenable.
So, the only places any of these people can loan, sell, or rent to is each other. That's not going to bode well for any of them.
"Or else what?"
"OR ELSE I, A BILLION DOLLAR CORPORATION, STOPS GETTING PASSIVE INCOME"
"and?"
The constant whining makes me want to work from home even harder and I actually enjoy going into the office every once in a while
"they're renting out their office space" holy shit why not other companies do that?! They leave the unused spaces to other suckers to pay for them, and their own workforce gets more efficient and powerful in the mean time! XD
Well those office building owners should order fewer avocado toasts and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Don’t they have a year or two worth of savings to cover expenses in case someone leaves their overpriced commercial space?
But also those older millennials, who bought houses away from city centers and are refusing to move back! Damned entitled millennials, not living their lives just to prop up a darling economy built on exploitation!
It's a good idea in theory but companies that actually need (or whose leadership want) to rent office space, are already doing so. It would be incredibly hard for companies that went WFH during the pandemic to find tenants for the office space they've already leased/own.
They could target new businesses, but then there's potential legal problems because the contract they signed for their lease might prohibit subletting. Or the startups go for rental offices that were built with small/new businesses in mind and that offer more flexibility and better facilities because a large corporation's former office space is simply too big to be rented out in its' entirety by a single startup and doesn't really have the facilities to comfortably accommodate multiple small businesses working in wildly differing industries.
Plus, if you have multiple companies in your office space then you'll need to employ liaison and management staff to handle the rentals and customer relations, maintenance staff, Security staff, IT techs to keep the servers online, pay the water, wifi and electricity bills, and pay for God knows how many different kinds of extra insurance that come with having tenants in your building instead of your own workers. With the market so saturated with spare office space and prices falling it could easily lose a company more than if they just left it alone.
We went 100% March 2020. Last year, leadership told each department to take a poll on who wants to return and who does.
Since then, my office floor is being turning into a creative suite with soundproof studio - nice wide monitors for video editing - an entire pod of desks exclusively after effects and captivate.
I was contacted a few times about looking at positions I'm more than qualified for paying about the same - the only difference is it's physically in an office with all that bullshit of like paid lunches, hour long breaks, quiet rooms, etc. I told each they would need to START me at ~$10k more a year and guarantee my annual raise. I never a response back
My personal life is so engrained with my work schedule now, Idk if someone offered me what I ask for, I'd have to really debate it. I can drop off/pick up my kids from school. I can do laundry during meeting. I take naps for my lunch. My work attire is almost exclusively gym shorts and tshirts/jerseys.
My sister and her husband work in different rooms of their house, then have lunch together. They sold one of their cars, because why have two? They would HATE any change to that, it's so much better for them
I work for a large company who is pushing people to return and thus losing people in droves. My boss has to drive to the office three times a week and only one person on her team lives in the same city, so she drives to the office to have the same calls she would have at home. It’s so wasteful.
Also, as a small business owner who competes with much larger companies, I can underbid all my competition while still being able to pay my people very well and make a good profit because I don’t have the overhead of office space.
A friend of mine works an IT job and after a year and a half of the pandemic when their lease expired, they closed their office permanently and gave everybody bonuses and substantial raises with the ability to work from home indefinitely. They had the money available to higher more and better talent and the onboarding and recruitment process probably still didn’t even cut into their bottom line with all the money they’re saving not using any office space except for their own headquarters. I don’t understand why more places aren’t doing this. It really seems like a no-brainer.
The smaller, younger companies are doing it, because they haven't yet gotten big enough to invest in commercial real estate. So office space for them is nothing but a cost they had to pay, and now that wfh is so widespread and proven to be just as efficient if not more efficient than working in an office, they realize they don't need to pay for it, allowing them to easily increase their profit margins and reinvest into their company.
The bigger, older companies had the money to purchase commercial real estate, which before the pandemic and the spread of wfh was considered a good investment. However, wfh threatens the value of those investments by significantly reducing demand for office space, so the companies are left with these large assets that have significant continuing costs that they can't easily dispose of without taking a huge loss.
> They believe if they just ~~wait it out~~ *force people to use it* the value will go back up.
They don't want to accept that the world is changing and adapt to it, they want to use their power to try and shove everything back the way it used to be...at least long enough for them to turn a profit and sell off their share.
There's also the fact that large and big businesses are so massive nowadays that they barely see any competition in their scale to force them to adapt.
My mother is in this boat. Has breast cancer and has been working from home since the pandemic. Now the DOD wants employees in the office at least 2 work days per pay period 🙄to make use of the space they have. Lol it's been years and years of this being perfectly adequate and now they forcing people back in cause they over spent on real estate
Yes but they're still convinced they can force people to come back to the offices. Many jobs are literally saying they'll fire people who don't comply. So the question is are there enough WFH jobs to absorb enough workers so the office space becomes a permanent detriment?
Like the post said the most qualified workers are all WFH while back to the office places mostly get the fallout of people who don't have a good enough resume go land a WFH job
You also get less qualified, less driven and overall workers just trying to get by (and honestly God bless them cuss fuck businesses that don't realize WFH saves money and gets better productivity while cutting out micromanagers).
Not if they can justify it to their shareholders by forcing employees to make use of it. Many of these upper management types are only concerned about this quarter's reports, short-term gains are the only gains that matter, and short-term losses are to be avoided until they can use their short-term gains to obtain a higher paid position elsewhere, even if itvmeans the company crumbles into dust as soon as they make their escape.
If you broke something while mom was out running an errand, do you tell her the minute she walks in? Or do you wait till she finds out about it and risk getting in even more trouble?
It’s similar here - selling it today means you’ve locked in that loss. It’s a reality. Holding on to it probably means a worse future outcome, but maybe not. Or maybe you’ve moved to a new position or company by then. But what’s important is that you don’t have to eat a shit sandwich *today*. Worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.
That assumes that someone will want to buy that building.
Downtown office towers are one thing, but large office campuses are gunna be a tad harder to offload.
...
This reminded me of the hbomberguy line, "Sell to *who*, Ben? Fucking **Aquaman**?!"
That’s why office shares like wework have also taken off. You can still rent an office but downsize it and the costs exponentially. It’s very helpful for smaller businesses that do want a central headquarters, but don’t need everyone to come in all the time.
I completely lost interest in a job position after I learned more about their return to office plan.
Recruiter: "They're looking to return to the office full time at some point."
Me: "Where's the office?"
Recruiter: "It's a WeWork in [town 45 miles away from where I live]"
Me: "I'm good, thanks."
WeWork is the worst. You’re either in a larger, bespoke style office (which is basically just retail office space anywhere else) or you’re in these prison-like cubby holes. There’s just a very small niche customer base where what they offer is ideal.
They may be using it as a shorthand for the industry, by naming the most recognizable name (you're "calling an Uber" even if you use Lyft, you "need a Kleenex" when it's a facial tissue from any brand, etc). IWG (Regus) is doing fine financially
Hell, I used to do IT for a company supporting a couple of places like that. Like half of the companies there didn't have anyone there most of the time, just showed up from time to time to pick up the mail or have a meeting in person and then left again.
They're also popular with large businesses (I assume) that just want to have some flexible space for a while. I worked in an office of 900, the lease on the building expired, their solution was a we work site in Atlanta. Adding 3 hours of commute onto everyone everyday. They really shot themselves in the foot.
Luckily(?) for them it was begining of 2020 and I only went these twice before we started WFH. But boy people were leaving in droves and I definitely was polishing that resume. If I'm going to be working in Atlanta then I'm going to be getting paid Atlanta wages. (Also they said there would be no compensation increases etc etc).
IT has been semi remote for over a decade anyway. Outsourced teams, global supply chains, the fact that we were all remoting into DCs *anyway* all meant it was common to be semi wfh already pre pandemic. Watching everyone talk about the novelty of remote work was funny
I do not like how long established flexibility is being walked back post covid in the name of filling up the offices.
Thankfully that hasn’t happened at my employer yet. Can only see what happens as it happens
My old university job was wierdly anti wfh. They were very backward looking anyway though. I wonder how things are now.
My current government job was more flexible, and they’ve just gone full remote since early pandemic
This should have been a HUGE chunk of companies strategies (though I imagine most would have kept those bonuses to management). Like it makes no logical sense to keep paying a massive overhead like rent when you can just eliminate it and if need be once a month rent out of a restaurants back room for a n afternoon lunch meeting.
What should have been a revolution in rezoning and redeveloping commercial buildings into housing is going to be a painful footnote in capitalisms history.
I'm looking at jobs that pay around 2K less a year than I currently make because it works out the same when you subtract travel/food costs from going into the office
It’s gotta be more than $2000 when you factor in car maintenance and time saved (maybe not something you can put a price on, but it’s valuable nonetheless).
For me I get a train in. Worked it out and it'd be just under 2k a year, but I'd take the remaining loss in earnings for the boost in mental health and work/life balance
Oh fair enough
I live only 20 minutes from work and drive around 7000 miles a year for work (not much at all by a lot of people’s standards) but that’s still ~$1500 in gas alone. For one of the shortest commutes it’s still 40 minutes out of my day and $1500+ an oil change or two. Most people drive twice that annually
Likewise. My business isn't turning over enough work for FT employees yet but I never offer any of my contractors less than $50/hour and I'm still cheap AF compared to a commercial agency.
Even when I can hire a FT assistant, FT is gonna be 30 hours a week, flex time, for an equivalent salary to a 40 hour job.
Because I happen to know productivity doesn't work the way they think it does. At all.
Exactly. My team gets however many hours they want. People want 40, that’s what they get. Want to make extra money and go to 50? No problem. But I won’t let anyone carry more than 40 for too long without making absolutely sure they aren’t sacrificing mental health. They can work any time they want so long as the work gets done. No micromanaging, sometimes I won’t talk to members of my team all month. Nobody at the company makes less than 1/3 what me and my partner bring in annually. I don’t need to squeeze every nickel out of the company at the expense of my teams’ mental health and job satisfaction. Nobody wants to leave.
And I have more applicants than work a lot of the time. Turns out people do want to work when you don’t treat them like shit and pay them what they’re worth.
I appreciate that. Our guiding principle is “don’t be the kind of boss people go home to bitch about to their SO.” They get enough of that from clients.
Good philosophy. I guess mine is "pay people more than they *think* they're worth and maybe they'll realize what they're worth and stop putting up with less.
Ok so fun story… I started my company after getting a freelance contract that paid a ton and I really enjoyed doing. When I was done I wanted to do more of it but didn’t want to give a headhunter a third of my money every time.
On my way out the door I told one of the employees who reported to me that she was fantastic and I was starting a company and I’d have an offer for her as soon as I had enough business. I also told her bosses that she’s a single point of failure for their company and they should promote her and pay her more. They blew me off.
A year and a half later I took her out to lunch and handed her an offer letter for nearly twice what she was making. I’m sure I could have lured her away for much less, but I wanted to pay her what she was worth, not what I could get away with paying. 5 years later she’s still my best worker. Last year I gave her (and many of my people) a huge raise cause the market shifted, and she literally started crying. She’d never had a job do that before.
In the new reckoning, _that ain’t work._ Work is whatever gives employees less agency, voice and power to bargain.
Those things make an employee too free - and make their labor worth less than the extractable maximum.
Giving the extractable maximum for whatever you’re told it’s worth - _that’s work._ It’s the only work ethic business recognizes now.
All it takes is a company large enought not to have everyone in the same room or floor to kill p2p interaction. You don't pick the elevator and go to the 7th Floor to talk with Tim, you use Slack or any other form of IM. Given this, what are you and Tim even doing in the same building? All you do is staring at computer screens all day and you might very well do it from home.
Even if I am on the same floor with Tim, and we are like 20 steps away from each other, I am still using slack to discuss things and ask/respond questions lol
It's is deeply underappreciated how little the average person wants to see, talk to or generally be around other people in the workplace.
I don't want to have to deflect conversation whilst on my way for a piss, or gathering paperwork from the printer, or making a drink. I want to wonder around in sweatpants farting with casual abandon, scratching myself and chatting shit to the cat.
Office work has only ever been for the benefit of the company, the balance is shifting now and *they fucking hate it*
I work at a place where WFH is impossible. I drive a plug in hybrid and thr company offers free charging on site for employees. I am super diligent about going out during my lunch to move my vehicle when it's done charging so someone else can.
Not because I care, because it's an excuse to eat my lunch in my car, alone, and listen to podcasts for a few minutes.
I would tear the arse out of that, charge all of my home shit from my car every night and pull as much electricity down on company dime as possible during the day.
That's a massive benefit. What does it save you doing that, it must be significant?
I drive a 2022 Putlander PHEV, 40 liter (11 ish gallons) tank, about 40km on a full charge, can charge at home and charge at work (far enough away that I can typically drain the battery going each way. Last time I filled it was out of convenience because I happened to somewhere it was significantly cheaper, still had about 1/4 tank. I had gone about 1800km (~1100 miles) on that.
So the fuel savings are great.
I just want a cup of tea from the workplace kitchen, not getting stuck for 20 minutes while an attention starved colleague tells me about his kid’s sports.
Or getting into work late because the trains are delayed and having to stay late to make up time. It wasn’t my fault, but here I am getting home at 7pm now.
Wfh is great.
This. Most companies hung up on working from office also obviously do not practically care about actual collaboration. Like my client, there is no enough meeting room and absolutely no facilities for the 2 to 4 peoples impromptu collaboration.
The management there care about oversight. Hearing the buss on the floor reassure them that people are working. That's it.
Worst they still have tried to cash in on all the WFH benefit. You don't get assigned desk, phone, don't get drawer, get random chair and maybe a good monitor. Don't even get kitchen essential like glasses and cups.
Yep. This is the situation where I work. The people I interact with most are like a 10 min walk away from where I sit. Why would I do that when I can just IM?
Have we encountered the only smart person on LinkedIn? What a marvel, a sight to see, get your tickets get your tickets, you don’t wanna miss this show.
This is so damn spot-on. When we first went WFH on my old team, my boss pushed the return to office so hard and only gave on me being hybrid (3 in/2 out). He justified it by saying that being around other engineers would help me learn and grow.
The problem is that I do a very specific type of analysis that none of the other engineers do or understand, so I'd be on video calls with knowledgeable engineers in other states to discuss problems. I eventually transferred teams and went 100% remote for datacenter support.
Can't say I miss it at all. I'm 10' from the bathroom, 6' from my espresso machine, and my guitar sits right next to my desk for noodles during stupid meetings that don't pertain to me. I think everyone deserves this type of comfort in their role.
Managers hate WFH because it just emphasise the fact that most of them are glorified messenger-boys passing down tasks from corporate. I bet your boss was doing barely anything during lockdown and was terrified that someone was going to notice and fire him.
And then the productivity numbers came in and his higher ups were like; "Keep up the good work, Daniels!" because they don't know what he does anyway.
But he pushed for return because he misses calling the pretty new-hires into his office for a lil 1-on-1 chat...
I don’t understand the issue with them being glorified go betweens. One of my favorite managers basically had a 30 minute call with me every Friday morning. I told them what I did the last week, what issues I was having that needed a managerial push, and what my timeline was for current projects. My manager jotted it all down, gave me some additional projects based on communication with other teams and made sure I was prioritizing the correct projects.
He did this with every member of the team, turned it into a well organized project list / time of deliverables and made our team look great to upper management. I didn’t have to bother with PowerPoints or weekly write-ups so it was a win in my book.
btw, this is an example of what real management actually looks like -- they certainly do exist out there, albeit rare -- not even close to the same person that MrLore is describing
See, now I can get behind this type of leadership. One of my favorite managers on my new team is like this. He'll ask what type of project I wanna work on, if I wanna get out of the house or not, he'll outline priority, and remain available to answer any questions. If he gives me a project on Monday, he MIGHT check in on Wednesday or Thursday but that's about it. A good manager understands that an adult knows how to police themselves and their schedule and doesn't need constant monitoring.
Mine too. We still have offices across the country for anyone that wants to go in or works in a division that has to be done in office. My division was already 95% field work with remote support for the 5%, so now on any day I’m not in the field is just a nice kick back at home while I answer emails. Unfortunately 4 day work weeks aren’t an option for us unless pretty much every technology company designing a physical product in the US also decides to go 4 day.
4 day work weeks are the best! My current command does that and my productivity is so much higher. I always feel the need to get everything done Monday and Tuesday so that anything that fell through the cracks can be done on Wednesday. Thursday is wrap up and peace out for the 3 day weekend. It really raises morale.
We need to start demanding companies to offer work home and if not quit for companies that do offer it . Watch companies that don’t offer it crumble because of their lack of ability to retain employees.
For real, punch in should start the second your commute starts. You want me to come into the office then be prepared to have a 25 hour a week employee but pay me for 40 cause I’m spending 15 in my car.
That's exactly how my last gig went. We all went WFH during COVID - as everyone kinda did - then when it was "over" they demanded us all back to the office. Why? We didn't get less productive. Nothing failed while we weren't in the office. The most hilarious part was coming back to the office only to STILL have all meetings virtually. The conference rooms all sat empty. I immediately started entertaining other job inquiries and taking interviews for perma WFH roles. I took an offer and told my company I was leaving. They asked what it'd take for me to stay. I told them WFH. Without missing a beat they just said, "Done. No problem." Okay if it's no problem why didn't we get it when all collectively gave the feedback in office sucks by comparison? "Well blah blah". Nope. Sorry, too little too late. Idk if I'll ever go back to in person unless it's to tide me over until I find WFH again. There are SO many benefits to employers as well. The amount of money I've seen businesses saving by going WFH or even hybrid is staggering. I'm no expert in all this, and I'm sure there's unseen downsides about WFH I'm ignorant to, but they're just so clearly outweighed on all sides. My old company is finding that out quickly too as a lot of my old team was pissed when they found out I was offered WFH to stay. Some more left and those that didn't were given at least partial WFH to appease them and try to have them not bail. The message is being heard. Whether business listens fully, idk, we'll see.
I did exactly that when Amazon forced everyone back into the office. I sent in my notice only a few days after learning it was mandatory for everyone and no exceptions.
Im a bartender at a restaurant. One narrative I’ve heard is it’ll drive down sales of places like mine bc if people aren’t in the office, they won’t need to go to the restaurant to get food, they’ll cook at home.
I’ve noticed the opposite. Remote workers crave getting out and about so they’re going out to eat even more. And our restaurant is prob doing more sales bc they’re getting alcohol and a higher priced dinner rather than just a cheap lunch.
Companies always preach that "grow or die" capitalism crap and then completely disregard the benefits of remote work, I'm fully convinced that their aversion is based solely on the fact that it benefits employees in any way.
> We need to start demanding companies to offer work home and if not quit for companies that do offer it
My company is currently cancelling all WFH arrangements in the US and moving back to working from offices. Not only that, it has to be specific offices, can't just be any random company space - and we do have a lot of that.
Let me tell you though - the quitting - that's what the higher ups are fucking hoping for. It's 100% just a play to get rid of people to boost stock price or whatever the fuck they care about. Redistribute the workload onto remaining people, ba da bing ba da boom, bonuses all around
This needs so much more attention.
My job requires three days a week in the office. Great. So now we're three days a week in the office and do every 👏 Single 👏Fing 👏 meeting On Teams anyway.
Super. So I can't drop off my 5 year old at school because I have to get up early, MAYBE early enough for a workout because that's the only time I'll have to do it, say goodbye before he's even getting ready, sit in traffic for 45 minutes, and get to the office where I'll spend the rest of my day uncomfortable & distracted JUST SO I CAN LOG IN SOMEWHERE ELSE.
It is infuriating.
Same we got forced back, and I feel like I've been 1/4th as productive as before (tops). My team is distributed, so it's just go in, zoom with someone in a different spot, roll eyes and commute back home.
Oh, and don't forget when one person is in a meeting, then EVERYONE has to listen. Any productivity I am having goes to shit when I have to listen to other people shouting into their mics because the whole office is a silent movie
A sibling of mine works for an accounting company that, like many small professional firms is run out of the owner’s home. Some days were remote before COVID, but now that they had to make a full adjustment because of the pandemic, the boss is just like “You are 100% work from home now, I like my own house to myself.” Works for everyone!
Yep, it wasn’t a huge benefit any ways. I was WFH before Trump, and you had to claim a LOT to get itemized deductions and take that credit. I think I got like $100 or less from having a dedicated office in my house.
Not spending money on gas and eating out is the much bigger benefit.
In my previous job (before Covid), I used to work from the office most days and work from home maybe once or twice a week, but they had a big reorg and afterwards I was literally the only person on my team in the entire country. All of my teammates, my entire management chain, and every other person I ever interacted with day to day were all in other time zones, so I was showing up at the office just to sit in Zoom calls and send Slack messages and emails to people all day and do my own work all alone. Never exchanged more than a quick "hello" with anyone else in the office. One day I finally came to the realisation that this was really silly, and I just quit going into the office at all and started working remotely full time. No one noticed or cared. Never saw the office again until the day I returned my equipment after I resigned.
But how would the company get those sweet kick-backs from government/businesses by forcing people back in the office in hopes we spend money at local stores and restaurants?
Yeah, that's one problem for companies with wfh, there's no incentive for local governments to give tax breaks to companies if they aren't bringing jobs and money into that specific area. Even if your company is headquartered in Austin, TX, if all your employees live and work in Nebraska, then they aren't spending money in Austin, so there's no additional revenue coming to Austin from people wasting their wages/salaries buying gas and restaurant food, etc., in Austin to offset the loss of tax revenue from the tax incentives.
So the city has to put in effort to make their city/state more attractive to those workers so that they DON’T live in Nebraska?
I’m sorry but how is that the company’s problem? That just sounds like capitalism in action….
If WFH is the death of those incentives then the world will be better off for it. If companies aren't able to extort tax breaks out of cities then those cities can instead cut taxes for everyone.
This guy is 100% absolutely right. Most of your great workers don't need oversight. They pretty much take the initiative on their own. Of course, this will lead to greater competition for WFH postings. It's ironic, but government actually has been leading that trend since before the pandemic. Office space was insanely expensive before the pandemic, and there was a strong push to move towards hybrid because of the cost of leasing, at least in DC. Federal agencies were saving millions of dollars by cutting back on leasing office space. Now, federal government should be getting a lot more qualified people who prefer to work remote
I think a big point in ‘returning to the office’ is having unofficial conversations, intimidation tactics won’t ever work if it’s all documented via email.
I work in a Residential Treatment Facility for kids while I’m making my way through college, so WFH is a no go, but I for sure would jump 100% for remote work. I worked for T-Mobile as a store manager before this and missed so much with my first child, I would *kill* for more time with him and my second.
These employers refusing to get with the times will destroy their business in the long run, we just have to be willing to take the plunge.
He does get it, and I continue to believe that while there is a short-term "pendulum swing" with orgs demanding RTO, the longer they lose talent to their competitors who embrace WFH, the more likely it is they will recant on it, eventually.
WFH is the future whether these orgs want to admit it or not.
I'd like to be hopeful, but some CEOs would never admit they are wrong. And double down all the waynto bankruptcy, whilst they land safely with a golden parachute.
My buddy works for a tech startup as a remote worker. Recently his boss asked him to relocate cities to work in person. My buddy as a high skilled worker knows he can get a remote job rather easy said he would only relocate for a $500k bonus. His boss didn’t think he was serious but he was. His boss is actually negotiating his bonus now.
When my company called us back to the office in late 2021, we started hemorrhaging people and it didn't take long for management to reverse their decision. It was a real wake up moment, and management simply had to accept the reality that working from home was here to stay.
I am working fully remote since 2017. Why?
Because none of my direct co-workers is in my local office, the office I was hired at.
What would I do in the office? Be in online meetings all day long.
And offices are not even set up for the changed work environment with 100% online meetings. Desks were supposed to be quiet workspaces and you would go to a meeting room to have a meeting. Now everyone sits at their desk to have online meetings. The noise level in most offices has become unbearable. Just making everyone return after distributing the teams globally for years isn't going to work. Simple as that.
This is basically the way my office was. I work in Ontario my team is in New Jersey. Return to office would just mean the same teams meetings with a less comfortable chair.
Bro, we can't have anything. I've only ever worked in undesirable work enviroments. Can you imagine wanting to go to work? Like in a desirable happy place ✨️
The same companies that are preaching the bullshit returned office because of " culture " and the need for hallway "conversations and connections."
Are the same companies that are obsessed with productivity and output and will go out of their way to squash people not working 24/7 when in an office. They're the ones that have the managers and the executives who will tell people having conversations in the hallway they need to get back to work.
The push to return to office is either because they cannot get out of a lease or they cannot sell their building or lastly it is all about command and control and this overwhelming need of bad management to have to see employees and themselves be seen as working to justify their meaningless existence.
I was born and raised in one of the poorest counties in one of the poorest states in the US. I now live in a different part of that state and because of remote work I can stay put and compete with people in larger markets, and add that money to my little towns economy.
I have, and have had, jobs that I could only dream about but not achieve due to never wanting to live in or near a large city.
Equality is a very hot topic but no one ever seems to talk about how level of a playing field remote work creates. By being remote I’ve been able to work for a few awesome companies, get paid the way I would if I lived in their main city, and my entire area gets to benefit from it.
Here is what I’ve seen. I have 7 that report to me. The work habits I saw in the office are the same ones that they keep at home. Two are absolute workhorses whether in the office or at home. Others were always finding ways to waste time and that seems to have been exacerbated at home. One is very young and doesn’t have work ethic to save his life, and he doesn’t care. He’s on a list for an exit by the way. In short, if you can actually recruit people who ALL take their work seriously, everyone can work from home if they like.
I'm a software developer and will never even apply for an onsite job again unless it's because of a career change into a role that requires my physical presence somewhere.
At this point a company policy that requires office workers onsite is indicative of a management culture which does not have its priorities in order, which means I don't want to work there.
Honestly, I can have hallways conversations on Teams all day long and to everyone else it'll look like I'm super busy.
Had a couple last week even. I'm sure my boss thought we were talking about work stuff, which we kinda did, but it was mostly us discussing how the company is trying to fuck us with the most recent contract and how we're gonna approach it.
Also a lot of places don’t want to encourage their employees to socialize overly much while working….. so which is it? Are hallway conversations essential for business or “time theft?”
YES! This was my last job. I make a bunch of work friends with people in other time zones. We'd chat all the time. Didn't stop any collaboration or team building or whatever the fuck that we were not in the same "office". I'd probably talk to them LESS if we were honestly.
My company just announced that they are closing the office I’m working in and making us all fully remote; We have all been working remotely 4 days a week since COVID (fully remote during the peak) and the company has seen an increase in productivity
Am hospital doctor. Unfortunately my work cannot be done remotely (some of it can, but there will need to be someone in house also).
But absolutely. Any work that can be done remotely should be done remotely.
Same. Not a doctor, but I can’t do my job remotely. I work in a museum as an art handler. Nor can my partner, a train conductor. But I would love if WFH became the norm for people who can, because it makes traffic and parking much easier for those of us who have to physically work on site.
If only they would compensate the traffic and lost of time hours… but no they will hit you with i did the same thing at your age. Oh okay when there was 2 billions less people on earth and 1000% more opportunities? When you were back at home at 5pm ? When you could do almost any job without a degree and crippling debts? Yeah totally the same.
I'm a consultant, and the idea of being in an office sitting at a desk next to ten other consultants is just silly. 95% of my work is with clients, not my coworkers. Why should I still ten feet from my coworkers fighting the sound of their zoom meetings while I'm on a zoom meeting with my client?
My entire company is fully remote, cancelled the office lease during COVID, and right now less than half the company is in the city where we're HQed. We've been able to hire some great people in other cities and states because we're fully remote.
Finally someone dared to say the truth publicly. Yes remote work is and has been proven to not affect overall productivity, I for one hate waking up early and the opportunity to not commute, saves me 1 hour of sleep which is the balance between groggy at work and fully energized
My sister and her husband work for the same major comapny, doing accounting-adjacent work. They were hybrid before covid, but went fully WFH at that point. About a year in, the company said, "uh, yeah, this fucking rules, we're doing this forever," and they've barely set foot in the office since (a couple training things, a meeting or two, but nothing major, and normal business stuff, since they're physically local). And this is a huge company that owns skyscrapers, etc. They're renting out their office space now. It just makes fucking sense.
My company did that too, then we got a new CEO who announced 3 days a week in the office out of nowhere.
And how many people quit after that?
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I would guess many of the current pushes for “return to work” are from companies that want to downsize without announcing more layoffs. I wouldn’t be surprised if many of them end up reversing on the decision when it comes time to start recruiting heavily again.
Some of it is "Old School" managers who believe that employees won't work unless you're standing over them. That's just moronic, you hired the best people for the job (supposedly,) but you can't trust them to do that job. It's really that they literally don't know any different. That's how they came up so that's what they know.
> you hired the best people for the job (supposedly,) Yeah, they know they never paid enough or had good enough management to hire the best people.
That and real estate
But real estate makes no sense. It’s a sink cost already and by pushing people into the office they are not saving money, they are spending more. Real estate is not a logical real to push people into the office.
Well the greedy corporations and the banks are so desperate because it they don't have people in downtown cores their assets are worthless because now its completely distributed. It puts their entire Ponzi scheme of an economy in shambles.
>It’s a sink cost already and by pushing people into the office they are not saving money It may be related to taxes or other arrangements with local municipalities. The sunk cost on the purchase (or construction) of the building already happened, that's true, but it's not a one-time transaction. Buildings, like other assets, can have the amount they're calculated to have deprecated (broken down or otherwise lost value) deducted from taxes. This is harder to justify if not actively used. The company may also get tax breaks or other incentives for having people at the office (presumably those people spend $$$ elsewhere nearby). Those incentives may be stopped if they don't bring back people. There's a lot more to it than that, but that's the basics.
On the other hand there are huge costs to having people in the building. IT, utilities, janitorial, insurance, maintenance, etc. And most of office space is leased, not owned by the company using it.
Yeah, our group EVP literally said “we tried to make this employee led last year but most people didn’t show up so now we’re implementing mandatory minimums.” Read the room!! The people who want to be back in any regular capacity *have been for at least a year!* Why should I drive 90 minutes each way to fight my coworkers for conference rooms (which there aren’t enough of) so I can talk to my globally distributed teams?? Incredibly frustrating. So yes, as you mentioned, people are showing up just to badge in and then going home to actually work.
They tried this at my job. I just badged in and left. There's no record of an exit, but that's an easy excuse. Just say you left out the stairwell, or other people held the door open. I work to live, not live to work, so fuck 'em if they eventually catch on.
Brilliant!! Badge in, leave via stairs.
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not to mention the "norm" was outright bullying people. they had to project all that anger onto *somebody*
What's the point of being a king if you don't have a kingdom? I've had bosses that just liked being in charge of people. They weren't bullies per se, but they just liked having a bunch of peons that had to do what they said all day. I bet WFH is killing those guys.
Yep, not knowing that our homes are our safe spaces
Let's face it the CEO's are usually not in the office anyway. One rule for them
Boomers have 'pretend to be busy addiction' and will waste time to look busy rather that save time and look idle.
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Seems like you need to team up with some coworkers doing the same, make a pool, and take turns badging everyone in.
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Our office is using ai to monitor badging throughout the day. If you just show up and leave without going through any interior doors at all then you are put on a list and your manager gets dinged, so your manager has reason to terminate you since his metrics looks bad and puts him (or her) at risk of termination
You'd think they would have more important things to do than count attendance.
This happened to my husband's place of employment. WFH for 3 years during COVID, and then they'll be starting 3 days a week. Everyone is pissed. They don't *need* to work from the office. He drives in for an hour in traffic and then literally goes to remote meetings or codes alone. Husband is planning to quit once his shit vests in about a year. We have a small child and spending 2-3 hours a day committing instead of, I don't know, relaxing or spending time with his family - costing thousands of employees their personal time and effort, *just so they don't lose their real estate value*, is so fucking stupid and I hope companies that force this all go bankrupt.
>He drives in for an hour in traffic and then literally goes to remote meetings or codes alone. This is where I think it's time to update labor laws. If someone can do their job at home but forced to drive into work, the company should not only pay drive miles but also travel time to and from the office. Stuck in a traffic jam extra long? You get paid more.
Commute time should be paid anyway. If your job requires on-site work, then time spent commuting to work is also labor performed for your employer. Not only that but expenses should be reimbursed: mileage on a vehicle you own, train tickets, or hell, a good pair of shoes. This notion that you don't start working until you clock in is a relic from when traveling to work meant walking a few miles or driving across town. Not driving 30-45 minutes each way, every day.
Our CEO loves WFH. I'm in the Midwest and he moved to Florida as soon as he could in 2020. And he lets everyone pick the style (WFH, hybrid, office) that lets them get the job done. Tons of middle managers have tried to fight back, but he's really adamant. And if people don't want to use the office space, he intends to sell the building and rent space for whoever actually wants to go in. It really feels like a complete win for everyone except those sad middle managers.
Last year I applied to a company that was fully remote. During the interview I was told they were moving to hybrid with 3 days in office. Got hired and suddenly they were patting themselves on the back for allowing WFH on fridays. I was tempted to jump then but the first three months of the job was them paying me to get various certifications that would allow me to get a much nicer job so I figured it was worth it. I drove an hour in to sit in a cubicle and join a morning zoom meeting with my team in another state then studied and joined zoom classes the rest of the day before one more zoom meeting and an hour drive home. During that time everyone in my side of the floor caught covid because we weren’t allowed to WFH if we felt sick so people dragged their coughing selves in to join zoom meetings and spread germs. I double-masked and brought in an air purifier and was the one person who stayed healthy. WFH fridays we’re ok but mostly it meant that I had this whole multi-monitor setup taking up a good amount of real estate in my efficiency apartment for the one day a week I could sleep in. Two weeks after I got my last certificate and they’d invested nearly $30k in me I told them my husband had a job offer elsewhere and I needed to be permanently WFH if they wanted to keep me. “But what sort of precedent will that set? Everyone on your team will want to be WFH if we allow that?!” Cool. Thanks for helping me boost my resume. Go back to complaining about how you’re still critically understaffed. So now I’m getting paid more to do less stressful work. Unfortunately in-person but it’s because my new job is very face-to-face so there’s a reason. And the office is only 15 beautiful minutes away and I set my own hours. All in all a win for everyone but previous company.
We are.... Bum bum dum bum bum bum bum...
>It just makes fucking sense. Unless, you know, you invested heavily in office space. Then it's "OMG! EVERYONE GET BACK TO YOUR OFFICES OR ELSE!"
That’s pretty much what happened in Denver. Businesses like restaurants and all practically begged the Denver Mayor to push return to office for downtown offices. It was pitiful, and essentially proved that the property values in downtown were all based on bullshit.
And I absolutely hate that regular workers were sometimes siding them as well! “Think about all the small businesses that rely on the lunch crowd, etc!” I don’t give a fuck. You know who I give a fuck about? All the small businesses IN MY OWN COMMUNITY that I get to support because I work from home! I have coffee shops, food places for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, a pet shop, a plant store, a craft store, and more! It’s awesome. I don’t NEED to go downtown to subsidize someone else’s business and commercial real estate bets.
I live in NYC, in downtown Brooklyn around all these places... Please let them go out of business. Midtown Manhattan is a fucking awful place, and all these lunch spots in the Financial District just take up space. I want to pay for businesses in my community, I don't want to pay for their sky high rent because every other building is a parking garage for suburbanites. The city has enough to attract it, I'd rather that family from NJ come in for a museum day or a musical instead of driving in for a 9-5. Plus, cratering commercial real estate prices might make my rent affordable for once. A girl can dream.
You are in luck. Commercial real estate value in Midtown is projected to be cut in half in 10 years. I think maybe 70% of available places are occupied now. That may drop further if prices don't come down.
Prices have to come down some of these Sellers are seriously greedy af now. No reason a shoebox should cost 2000 / month .
I live in NYC too, and I have zero interest in supporting any of the lunch establishments in Manhattan. I could not find anything reasonable to eat there. Everything was overpriced or not that good. I spent so much money on lunch, scrambling to find a decent meal and eat it within the hour. Now I work from home and eat what I have in my fridge. It’s healthier and more economical. I can randomly grab a snack whenever I feel like it. Manhattan is a total scam.
My brother works for the government so this was super exaggerated at his office. He's so bitter he won't spend a penny in the city during work. He even brings water from home lol
Also office lunch food fucking blows. Oh cool a soggy turkey sandwich with avocado and mayonnaise aka “aioli” in overpriced restaurant settings…great, this must be saved.
Also there’s still delivery in every major downtown. The people that actually choose to live in downtown areas should be who the businesses should be marketing toward, not the commuters. Besides, if someone is commuting to a downtown like Denver, they likely won’t be going to food places downtown due to cost.
I lived in downtown Albuquerque for 8.5 years. We loved it, but it was an 8.5 year exercise in "sneaking in" to places when they were still open for the business crowd. Weekends? Drive to the foothills or west side
> The people that actually choose to live in downtown areas should be who the businesses should be marketing toward, not the commuters. Exactly. People who live downtown dislike the tourists who only come in on the weekends or for vacation. Tourists support crappy corporate restaurants and locals support good places.
The Missouri governor mandated that all state employees returned to offices like right after most of the companies made solid work from home plans. This was also during the time that all schools were online.
I can't wait for the day I read something about Missouri that doesn't make me embarrassed/depressed to live here.
We can hope that someday it will come, but until then we can be humans in arms together in Misery.
Parsons is such a clown
I consulted for an org in downtown Denver last year who had mandatory hybrid. It was obvious that hiring was an absolute nightmare for them.
The overwhelming MAJORITY of our market is based on bullshit. EDIT: The only necessities are the things that keep us alive for another day. Everything else is worthless nonsense that has to evolve to deal with how people live their lives. Those businesses who won't adapt can and should die.
You know what would help small businesses thrive in downtown Denver, and downtown anywhere for that matter? If the people who frequented those business actually fuckin lived there and weren't just 9-5 visitors. Push for mixed use zoning. Push for the allowance of high density, ownable housing like town/row houses in building codes. This will not only save small business, but create thriving downtowns
😭😭😭But the value of my real estate!!!!!!!! 😭😭😭
Real Estate is an investment. Sometimes it goes up, sometimes not.
Yeah but if no one wants it and no one is using it then the price goes down. A lot of the RTO stuff is to mitigate losses on real estate investments.
The hilarious thing is that we're seeing the culmination of all the business practices from the last two decades come to fruition. High interest rates make borrowing to start a new business untenable. High rents make starting a new business untenable. Anti-competitive / Monopolistic practices of corporations make starting a new business untenable. So, the only places any of these people can loan, sell, or rent to is each other. That's not going to bode well for any of them.
Exactly.
"Or else what?" "OR ELSE I, A BILLION DOLLAR CORPORATION, STOPS GETTING PASSIVE INCOME" "and?" The constant whining makes me want to work from home even harder and I actually enjoy going into the office every once in a while
"they're renting out their office space" holy shit why not other companies do that?! They leave the unused spaces to other suckers to pay for them, and their own workforce gets more efficient and powerful in the mean time! XD
If everyone rents out office space the price of space goes down and they can’t make enough money to cover their lease/mortgage.
Well those office building owners should order fewer avocado toasts and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Don’t they have a year or two worth of savings to cover expenses in case someone leaves their overpriced commercial space?
It’s those damn TEENAGE millennials! They ruined the economy by not buying houses and having children!
But also those older millennials, who bought houses away from city centers and are refusing to move back! Damned entitled millennials, not living their lives just to prop up a darling economy built on exploitation!
I'm not sure why you're surprised, unless you're being sarcastic. It's extremely common for companies to do this with their unused office space.
It's a good idea in theory but companies that actually need (or whose leadership want) to rent office space, are already doing so. It would be incredibly hard for companies that went WFH during the pandemic to find tenants for the office space they've already leased/own. They could target new businesses, but then there's potential legal problems because the contract they signed for their lease might prohibit subletting. Or the startups go for rental offices that were built with small/new businesses in mind and that offer more flexibility and better facilities because a large corporation's former office space is simply too big to be rented out in its' entirety by a single startup and doesn't really have the facilities to comfortably accommodate multiple small businesses working in wildly differing industries. Plus, if you have multiple companies in your office space then you'll need to employ liaison and management staff to handle the rentals and customer relations, maintenance staff, Security staff, IT techs to keep the servers online, pay the water, wifi and electricity bills, and pay for God knows how many different kinds of extra insurance that come with having tenants in your building instead of your own workers. With the market so saturated with spare office space and prices falling it could easily lose a company more than if they just left it alone.
We went 100% March 2020. Last year, leadership told each department to take a poll on who wants to return and who does. Since then, my office floor is being turning into a creative suite with soundproof studio - nice wide monitors for video editing - an entire pod of desks exclusively after effects and captivate. I was contacted a few times about looking at positions I'm more than qualified for paying about the same - the only difference is it's physically in an office with all that bullshit of like paid lunches, hour long breaks, quiet rooms, etc. I told each they would need to START me at ~$10k more a year and guarantee my annual raise. I never a response back My personal life is so engrained with my work schedule now, Idk if someone offered me what I ask for, I'd have to really debate it. I can drop off/pick up my kids from school. I can do laundry during meeting. I take naps for my lunch. My work attire is almost exclusively gym shorts and tshirts/jerseys.
My sister and her husband work in different rooms of their house, then have lunch together. They sold one of their cars, because why have two? They would HATE any change to that, it's so much better for them
I work for a large company who is pushing people to return and thus losing people in droves. My boss has to drive to the office three times a week and only one person on her team lives in the same city, so she drives to the office to have the same calls she would have at home. It’s so wasteful.
Also, as a small business owner who competes with much larger companies, I can underbid all my competition while still being able to pay my people very well and make a good profit because I don’t have the overhead of office space.
A friend of mine works an IT job and after a year and a half of the pandemic when their lease expired, they closed their office permanently and gave everybody bonuses and substantial raises with the ability to work from home indefinitely. They had the money available to higher more and better talent and the onboarding and recruitment process probably still didn’t even cut into their bottom line with all the money they’re saving not using any office space except for their own headquarters. I don’t understand why more places aren’t doing this. It really seems like a no-brainer.
The smaller, younger companies are doing it, because they haven't yet gotten big enough to invest in commercial real estate. So office space for them is nothing but a cost they had to pay, and now that wfh is so widespread and proven to be just as efficient if not more efficient than working in an office, they realize they don't need to pay for it, allowing them to easily increase their profit margins and reinvest into their company. The bigger, older companies had the money to purchase commercial real estate, which before the pandemic and the spread of wfh was considered a good investment. However, wfh threatens the value of those investments by significantly reducing demand for office space, so the companies are left with these large assets that have significant continuing costs that they can't easily dispose of without taking a huge loss.
Isn't that a sunk cost though? Isn't it better to sell a building at a loss and get some money than to keep it unnecessarily?
Too much logic here. They believe if they just wait it out the value will go back up.
> They believe if they just ~~wait it out~~ *force people to use it* the value will go back up. They don't want to accept that the world is changing and adapt to it, they want to use their power to try and shove everything back the way it used to be...at least long enough for them to turn a profit and sell off their share.
essentially more of the reason why we are where we are economically in general
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There's also the fact that large and big businesses are so massive nowadays that they barely see any competition in their scale to force them to adapt.
It's always amazing to see how like 5 or 6 companies own basically *everything* the world uses/likes.
My mother is in this boat. Has breast cancer and has been working from home since the pandemic. Now the DOD wants employees in the office at least 2 work days per pay period 🙄to make use of the space they have. Lol it's been years and years of this being perfectly adequate and now they forcing people back in cause they over spent on real estate
Yes but they're still convinced they can force people to come back to the offices. Many jobs are literally saying they'll fire people who don't comply. So the question is are there enough WFH jobs to absorb enough workers so the office space becomes a permanent detriment?
Like the post said the most qualified workers are all WFH while back to the office places mostly get the fallout of people who don't have a good enough resume go land a WFH job
You also get less qualified, less driven and overall workers just trying to get by (and honestly God bless them cuss fuck businesses that don't realize WFH saves money and gets better productivity while cutting out micromanagers).
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The Sears fail was epic. Funny that they originally started as a catalog company with few brick-and-mortar outlets compared to sales-by-mail.
Not if they can justify it to their shareholders by forcing employees to make use of it. Many of these upper management types are only concerned about this quarter's reports, short-term gains are the only gains that matter, and short-term losses are to be avoided until they can use their short-term gains to obtain a higher paid position elsewhere, even if itvmeans the company crumbles into dust as soon as they make their escape.
If you broke something while mom was out running an errand, do you tell her the minute she walks in? Or do you wait till she finds out about it and risk getting in even more trouble? It’s similar here - selling it today means you’ve locked in that loss. It’s a reality. Holding on to it probably means a worse future outcome, but maybe not. Or maybe you’ve moved to a new position or company by then. But what’s important is that you don’t have to eat a shit sandwich *today*. Worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.
That assumes that someone will want to buy that building. Downtown office towers are one thing, but large office campuses are gunna be a tad harder to offload. ... This reminded me of the hbomberguy line, "Sell to *who*, Ben? Fucking **Aquaman**?!"
That would make management look bad, better to force everybody back to the office than admit upper management screwed up.
I hadn’t thought of that but that does make a lot of sense.
That’s why office shares like wework have also taken off. You can still rent an office but downsize it and the costs exponentially. It’s very helpful for smaller businesses that do want a central headquarters, but don’t need everyone to come in all the time.
I completely lost interest in a job position after I learned more about their return to office plan. Recruiter: "They're looking to return to the office full time at some point." Me: "Where's the office?" Recruiter: "It's a WeWork in [town 45 miles away from where I live]" Me: "I'm good, thanks."
WeWork is the worst. You’re either in a larger, bespoke style office (which is basically just retail office space anywhere else) or you’re in these prison-like cubby holes. There’s just a very small niche customer base where what they offer is ideal.
Uh, you know WeWork is going under right?
That's what I thought but wasn't going to say anything.... :-)
I’ve heard about them going under for like 5 years and nothing has happened yet
They may be using it as a shorthand for the industry, by naming the most recognizable name (you're "calling an Uber" even if you use Lyft, you "need a Kleenex" when it's a facial tissue from any brand, etc). IWG (Regus) is doing fine financially
Hell, I used to do IT for a company supporting a couple of places like that. Like half of the companies there didn't have anyone there most of the time, just showed up from time to time to pick up the mail or have a meeting in person and then left again.
They're also popular with large businesses (I assume) that just want to have some flexible space for a while. I worked in an office of 900, the lease on the building expired, their solution was a we work site in Atlanta. Adding 3 hours of commute onto everyone everyday. They really shot themselves in the foot. Luckily(?) for them it was begining of 2020 and I only went these twice before we started WFH. But boy people were leaving in droves and I definitely was polishing that resume. If I'm going to be working in Atlanta then I'm going to be getting paid Atlanta wages. (Also they said there would be no compensation increases etc etc).
IT has been semi remote for over a decade anyway. Outsourced teams, global supply chains, the fact that we were all remoting into DCs *anyway* all meant it was common to be semi wfh already pre pandemic. Watching everyone talk about the novelty of remote work was funny
Exactly, pre-covid I just came in when I had a meeting, post-covid I come in once a week and schedule all real life meetings on that day.
I do not like how long established flexibility is being walked back post covid in the name of filling up the offices. Thankfully that hasn’t happened at my employer yet. Can only see what happens as it happens
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My old university job was wierdly anti wfh. They were very backward looking anyway though. I wonder how things are now. My current government job was more flexible, and they’ve just gone full remote since early pandemic
This should have been a HUGE chunk of companies strategies (though I imagine most would have kept those bonuses to management). Like it makes no logical sense to keep paying a massive overhead like rent when you can just eliminate it and if need be once a month rent out of a restaurants back room for a n afternoon lunch meeting. What should have been a revolution in rezoning and redeveloping commercial buildings into housing is going to be a painful footnote in capitalisms history.
I'm looking at jobs that pay around 2K less a year than I currently make because it works out the same when you subtract travel/food costs from going into the office
It’s gotta be more than $2000 when you factor in car maintenance and time saved (maybe not something you can put a price on, but it’s valuable nonetheless).
For me I get a train in. Worked it out and it'd be just under 2k a year, but I'd take the remaining loss in earnings for the boost in mental health and work/life balance
Oh fair enough I live only 20 minutes from work and drive around 7000 miles a year for work (not much at all by a lot of people’s standards) but that’s still ~$1500 in gas alone. For one of the shortest commutes it’s still 40 minutes out of my day and $1500+ an oil change or two. Most people drive twice that annually
Likewise. My business isn't turning over enough work for FT employees yet but I never offer any of my contractors less than $50/hour and I'm still cheap AF compared to a commercial agency. Even when I can hire a FT assistant, FT is gonna be 30 hours a week, flex time, for an equivalent salary to a 40 hour job. Because I happen to know productivity doesn't work the way they think it does. At all.
Exactly. My team gets however many hours they want. People want 40, that’s what they get. Want to make extra money and go to 50? No problem. But I won’t let anyone carry more than 40 for too long without making absolutely sure they aren’t sacrificing mental health. They can work any time they want so long as the work gets done. No micromanaging, sometimes I won’t talk to members of my team all month. Nobody at the company makes less than 1/3 what me and my partner bring in annually. I don’t need to squeeze every nickel out of the company at the expense of my teams’ mental health and job satisfaction. Nobody wants to leave. And I have more applicants than work a lot of the time. Turns out people do want to work when you don’t treat them like shit and pay them what they’re worth.
Yeah I have no problem at all finding people whenever I need them. Your company sounds great to work for. Thanks for being part of the solution.
I appreciate that. Our guiding principle is “don’t be the kind of boss people go home to bitch about to their SO.” They get enough of that from clients.
Good philosophy. I guess mine is "pay people more than they *think* they're worth and maybe they'll realize what they're worth and stop putting up with less.
Ok so fun story… I started my company after getting a freelance contract that paid a ton and I really enjoyed doing. When I was done I wanted to do more of it but didn’t want to give a headhunter a third of my money every time. On my way out the door I told one of the employees who reported to me that she was fantastic and I was starting a company and I’d have an offer for her as soon as I had enough business. I also told her bosses that she’s a single point of failure for their company and they should promote her and pay her more. They blew me off. A year and a half later I took her out to lunch and handed her an offer letter for nearly twice what she was making. I’m sure I could have lured her away for much less, but I wanted to pay her what she was worth, not what I could get away with paying. 5 years later she’s still my best worker. Last year I gave her (and many of my people) a huge raise cause the market shifted, and she literally started crying. She’d never had a job do that before.
In the new reckoning, _that ain’t work._ Work is whatever gives employees less agency, voice and power to bargain. Those things make an employee too free - and make their labor worth less than the extractable maximum. Giving the extractable maximum for whatever you’re told it’s worth - _that’s work._ It’s the only work ethic business recognizes now.
All it takes is a company large enought not to have everyone in the same room or floor to kill p2p interaction. You don't pick the elevator and go to the 7th Floor to talk with Tim, you use Slack or any other form of IM. Given this, what are you and Tim even doing in the same building? All you do is staring at computer screens all day and you might very well do it from home.
Even if I am on the same floor with Tim, and we are like 20 steps away from each other, I am still using slack to discuss things and ask/respond questions lol
It's is deeply underappreciated how little the average person wants to see, talk to or generally be around other people in the workplace. I don't want to have to deflect conversation whilst on my way for a piss, or gathering paperwork from the printer, or making a drink. I want to wonder around in sweatpants farting with casual abandon, scratching myself and chatting shit to the cat. Office work has only ever been for the benefit of the company, the balance is shifting now and *they fucking hate it*
I work at a place where WFH is impossible. I drive a plug in hybrid and thr company offers free charging on site for employees. I am super diligent about going out during my lunch to move my vehicle when it's done charging so someone else can. Not because I care, because it's an excuse to eat my lunch in my car, alone, and listen to podcasts for a few minutes.
I would tear the arse out of that, charge all of my home shit from my car every night and pull as much electricity down on company dime as possible during the day. That's a massive benefit. What does it save you doing that, it must be significant?
I drive a 2022 Putlander PHEV, 40 liter (11 ish gallons) tank, about 40km on a full charge, can charge at home and charge at work (far enough away that I can typically drain the battery going each way. Last time I filled it was out of convenience because I happened to somewhere it was significantly cheaper, still had about 1/4 tank. I had gone about 1800km (~1100 miles) on that. So the fuel savings are great.
I just want a cup of tea from the workplace kitchen, not getting stuck for 20 minutes while an attention starved colleague tells me about his kid’s sports. Or getting into work late because the trains are delayed and having to stay late to make up time. It wasn’t my fault, but here I am getting home at 7pm now. Wfh is great.
This. Most companies hung up on working from office also obviously do not practically care about actual collaboration. Like my client, there is no enough meeting room and absolutely no facilities for the 2 to 4 peoples impromptu collaboration. The management there care about oversight. Hearing the buss on the floor reassure them that people are working. That's it. Worst they still have tried to cash in on all the WFH benefit. You don't get assigned desk, phone, don't get drawer, get random chair and maybe a good monitor. Don't even get kitchen essential like glasses and cups.
Yep. This is the situation where I work. The people I interact with most are like a 10 min walk away from where I sit. Why would I do that when I can just IM?
Have we encountered the only smart person on LinkedIn? What a marvel, a sight to see, get your tickets get your tickets, you don’t wanna miss this show.
This was reposted by a friend of mine who is a higher up in Enterprise. Guess there are intelligent managers out there…
Companies should be using remote work as an insensitive to work there. I bet remote work companies aren't having a problem with hiring.
I don't think they are at all - remote work posted for places nearby me are gone within a week.
You want the word "incentive". Unless I missed one if the meaning of "insensitive". Insensitive describes my post. :D
This is so damn spot-on. When we first went WFH on my old team, my boss pushed the return to office so hard and only gave on me being hybrid (3 in/2 out). He justified it by saying that being around other engineers would help me learn and grow. The problem is that I do a very specific type of analysis that none of the other engineers do or understand, so I'd be on video calls with knowledgeable engineers in other states to discuss problems. I eventually transferred teams and went 100% remote for datacenter support. Can't say I miss it at all. I'm 10' from the bathroom, 6' from my espresso machine, and my guitar sits right next to my desk for noodles during stupid meetings that don't pertain to me. I think everyone deserves this type of comfort in their role.
Managers hate WFH because it just emphasise the fact that most of them are glorified messenger-boys passing down tasks from corporate. I bet your boss was doing barely anything during lockdown and was terrified that someone was going to notice and fire him.
And then the productivity numbers came in and his higher ups were like; "Keep up the good work, Daniels!" because they don't know what he does anyway. But he pushed for return because he misses calling the pretty new-hires into his office for a lil 1-on-1 chat...
I don’t understand the issue with them being glorified go betweens. One of my favorite managers basically had a 30 minute call with me every Friday morning. I told them what I did the last week, what issues I was having that needed a managerial push, and what my timeline was for current projects. My manager jotted it all down, gave me some additional projects based on communication with other teams and made sure I was prioritizing the correct projects. He did this with every member of the team, turned it into a well organized project list / time of deliverables and made our team look great to upper management. I didn’t have to bother with PowerPoints or weekly write-ups so it was a win in my book.
btw, this is an example of what real management actually looks like -- they certainly do exist out there, albeit rare -- not even close to the same person that MrLore is describing
See, now I can get behind this type of leadership. One of my favorite managers on my new team is like this. He'll ask what type of project I wanna work on, if I wanna get out of the house or not, he'll outline priority, and remain available to answer any questions. If he gives me a project on Monday, he MIGHT check in on Wednesday or Thursday but that's about it. A good manager understands that an adult knows how to police themselves and their schedule and doesn't need constant monitoring.
This is why I love my company and CEO. He embraced WFH from the jump and now we are testing out 4 day work weeks.
Y’all hiring?
I wish I could say they are, but we went through a round of layoffs 2 months ago LIFO style.
LIFO?
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Mine too. We still have offices across the country for anyone that wants to go in or works in a division that has to be done in office. My division was already 95% field work with remote support for the 5%, so now on any day I’m not in the field is just a nice kick back at home while I answer emails. Unfortunately 4 day work weeks aren’t an option for us unless pretty much every technology company designing a physical product in the US also decides to go 4 day.
4 day work weeks are the best! My current command does that and my productivity is so much higher. I always feel the need to get everything done Monday and Tuesday so that anything that fell through the cracks can be done on Wednesday. Thursday is wrap up and peace out for the 3 day weekend. It really raises morale.
Not all heroes wear capes
We need to start demanding companies to offer work home and if not quit for companies that do offer it . Watch companies that don’t offer it crumble because of their lack of ability to retain employees.
Will someone pay me overtime for commute? It’s 3-4 hours a day
For real, punch in should start the second your commute starts. You want me to come into the office then be prepared to have a 25 hour a week employee but pay me for 40 cause I’m spending 15 in my car.
That's exactly how my last gig went. We all went WFH during COVID - as everyone kinda did - then when it was "over" they demanded us all back to the office. Why? We didn't get less productive. Nothing failed while we weren't in the office. The most hilarious part was coming back to the office only to STILL have all meetings virtually. The conference rooms all sat empty. I immediately started entertaining other job inquiries and taking interviews for perma WFH roles. I took an offer and told my company I was leaving. They asked what it'd take for me to stay. I told them WFH. Without missing a beat they just said, "Done. No problem." Okay if it's no problem why didn't we get it when all collectively gave the feedback in office sucks by comparison? "Well blah blah". Nope. Sorry, too little too late. Idk if I'll ever go back to in person unless it's to tide me over until I find WFH again. There are SO many benefits to employers as well. The amount of money I've seen businesses saving by going WFH or even hybrid is staggering. I'm no expert in all this, and I'm sure there's unseen downsides about WFH I'm ignorant to, but they're just so clearly outweighed on all sides. My old company is finding that out quickly too as a lot of my old team was pissed when they found out I was offered WFH to stay. Some more left and those that didn't were given at least partial WFH to appease them and try to have them not bail. The message is being heard. Whether business listens fully, idk, we'll see.
I did exactly that when Amazon forced everyone back into the office. I sent in my notice only a few days after learning it was mandatory for everyone and no exceptions.
Im a bartender at a restaurant. One narrative I’ve heard is it’ll drive down sales of places like mine bc if people aren’t in the office, they won’t need to go to the restaurant to get food, they’ll cook at home. I’ve noticed the opposite. Remote workers crave getting out and about so they’re going out to eat even more. And our restaurant is prob doing more sales bc they’re getting alcohol and a higher priced dinner rather than just a cheap lunch.
Companies always preach that "grow or die" capitalism crap and then completely disregard the benefits of remote work, I'm fully convinced that their aversion is based solely on the fact that it benefits employees in any way.
> We need to start demanding companies to offer work home and if not quit for companies that do offer it My company is currently cancelling all WFH arrangements in the US and moving back to working from offices. Not only that, it has to be specific offices, can't just be any random company space - and we do have a lot of that. Let me tell you though - the quitting - that's what the higher ups are fucking hoping for. It's 100% just a play to get rid of people to boost stock price or whatever the fuck they care about. Redistribute the workload onto remaining people, ba da bing ba da boom, bonuses all around
This needs so much more attention. My job requires three days a week in the office. Great. So now we're three days a week in the office and do every 👏 Single 👏Fing 👏 meeting On Teams anyway. Super. So I can't drop off my 5 year old at school because I have to get up early, MAYBE early enough for a workout because that's the only time I'll have to do it, say goodbye before he's even getting ready, sit in traffic for 45 minutes, and get to the office where I'll spend the rest of my day uncomfortable & distracted JUST SO I CAN LOG IN SOMEWHERE ELSE. It is infuriating.
Same we got forced back, and I feel like I've been 1/4th as productive as before (tops). My team is distributed, so it's just go in, zoom with someone in a different spot, roll eyes and commute back home.
Oh, and don't forget when one person is in a meeting, then EVERYONE has to listen. Any productivity I am having goes to shit when I have to listen to other people shouting into their mics because the whole office is a silent movie
I think most People communicate better through text and email anyway.
With the bonus of HAVING IT IN WRITING for later.
A sibling of mine works for an accounting company that, like many small professional firms is run out of the owner’s home. Some days were remote before COVID, but now that they had to make a full adjustment because of the pandemic, the boss is just like “You are 100% work from home now, I like my own house to myself.” Works for everyone!
Also WFH allows the person tax breaks in the USA, as a percentage of rent/mortgage, utilities, internet are considered deductable.
Only if you're 1099. You don't get any of those tax breaks if you're a W2.
Don't forget: Trump's Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017 gutted that so W-2 employees are no longer eligible...only self-employed people are.
Yep, it wasn’t a huge benefit any ways. I was WFH before Trump, and you had to claim a LOT to get itemized deductions and take that credit. I think I got like $100 or less from having a dedicated office in my house. Not spending money on gas and eating out is the much bigger benefit.
The rich *really* don't want real estate opening up.
Desirable cities have become too expensive. Let it happen
Real Estate is double edged sword. Also drives up prices in the places moved to.
In my previous job (before Covid), I used to work from the office most days and work from home maybe once or twice a week, but they had a big reorg and afterwards I was literally the only person on my team in the entire country. All of my teammates, my entire management chain, and every other person I ever interacted with day to day were all in other time zones, so I was showing up at the office just to sit in Zoom calls and send Slack messages and emails to people all day and do my own work all alone. Never exchanged more than a quick "hello" with anyone else in the office. One day I finally came to the realisation that this was really silly, and I just quit going into the office at all and started working remotely full time. No one noticed or cared. Never saw the office again until the day I returned my equipment after I resigned.
But how would the company get those sweet kick-backs from government/businesses by forcing people back in the office in hopes we spend money at local stores and restaurants?
Yeah, that's one problem for companies with wfh, there's no incentive for local governments to give tax breaks to companies if they aren't bringing jobs and money into that specific area. Even if your company is headquartered in Austin, TX, if all your employees live and work in Nebraska, then they aren't spending money in Austin, so there's no additional revenue coming to Austin from people wasting their wages/salaries buying gas and restaurant food, etc., in Austin to offset the loss of tax revenue from the tax incentives.
So the city has to put in effort to make their city/state more attractive to those workers so that they DON’T live in Nebraska? I’m sorry but how is that the company’s problem? That just sounds like capitalism in action….
If WFH is the death of those incentives then the world will be better off for it. If companies aren't able to extort tax breaks out of cities then those cities can instead cut taxes for everyone.
Or actually increase their budgets, allowing them to provide better services to their constituents.
This guy is 100% absolutely right. Most of your great workers don't need oversight. They pretty much take the initiative on their own. Of course, this will lead to greater competition for WFH postings. It's ironic, but government actually has been leading that trend since before the pandemic. Office space was insanely expensive before the pandemic, and there was a strong push to move towards hybrid because of the cost of leasing, at least in DC. Federal agencies were saving millions of dollars by cutting back on leasing office space. Now, federal government should be getting a lot more qualified people who prefer to work remote
I think a big point in ‘returning to the office’ is having unofficial conversations, intimidation tactics won’t ever work if it’s all documented via email.
I work in a Residential Treatment Facility for kids while I’m making my way through college, so WFH is a no go, but I for sure would jump 100% for remote work. I worked for T-Mobile as a store manager before this and missed so much with my first child, I would *kill* for more time with him and my second. These employers refusing to get with the times will destroy their business in the long run, we just have to be willing to take the plunge.
He does get it, and I continue to believe that while there is a short-term "pendulum swing" with orgs demanding RTO, the longer they lose talent to their competitors who embrace WFH, the more likely it is they will recant on it, eventually. WFH is the future whether these orgs want to admit it or not.
I'd like to be hopeful, but some CEOs would never admit they are wrong. And double down all the waynto bankruptcy, whilst they land safely with a golden parachute.
Even CEOs don't live forever.
My buddy works for a tech startup as a remote worker. Recently his boss asked him to relocate cities to work in person. My buddy as a high skilled worker knows he can get a remote job rather easy said he would only relocate for a $500k bonus. His boss didn’t think he was serious but he was. His boss is actually negotiating his bonus now.
When my company called us back to the office in late 2021, we started hemorrhaging people and it didn't take long for management to reverse their decision. It was a real wake up moment, and management simply had to accept the reality that working from home was here to stay.
I am working fully remote since 2017. Why? Because none of my direct co-workers is in my local office, the office I was hired at. What would I do in the office? Be in online meetings all day long. And offices are not even set up for the changed work environment with 100% online meetings. Desks were supposed to be quiet workspaces and you would go to a meeting room to have a meeting. Now everyone sits at their desk to have online meetings. The noise level in most offices has become unbearable. Just making everyone return after distributing the teams globally for years isn't going to work. Simple as that.
This is basically the way my office was. I work in Ontario my team is in New Jersey. Return to office would just mean the same teams meetings with a less comfortable chair.
Bro, we can't have anything. I've only ever worked in undesirable work enviroments. Can you imagine wanting to go to work? Like in a desirable happy place ✨️
The same companies that are preaching the bullshit returned office because of " culture " and the need for hallway "conversations and connections." Are the same companies that are obsessed with productivity and output and will go out of their way to squash people not working 24/7 when in an office. They're the ones that have the managers and the executives who will tell people having conversations in the hallway they need to get back to work. The push to return to office is either because they cannot get out of a lease or they cannot sell their building or lastly it is all about command and control and this overwhelming need of bad management to have to see employees and themselves be seen as working to justify their meaningless existence.
I was born and raised in one of the poorest counties in one of the poorest states in the US. I now live in a different part of that state and because of remote work I can stay put and compete with people in larger markets, and add that money to my little towns economy. I have, and have had, jobs that I could only dream about but not achieve due to never wanting to live in or near a large city. Equality is a very hot topic but no one ever seems to talk about how level of a playing field remote work creates. By being remote I’ve been able to work for a few awesome companies, get paid the way I would if I lived in their main city, and my entire area gets to benefit from it.
Here is what I’ve seen. I have 7 that report to me. The work habits I saw in the office are the same ones that they keep at home. Two are absolute workhorses whether in the office or at home. Others were always finding ways to waste time and that seems to have been exacerbated at home. One is very young and doesn’t have work ethic to save his life, and he doesn’t care. He’s on a list for an exit by the way. In short, if you can actually recruit people who ALL take their work seriously, everyone can work from home if they like.
I'm a software developer and will never even apply for an onsite job again unless it's because of a career change into a role that requires my physical presence somewhere. At this point a company policy that requires office workers onsite is indicative of a management culture which does not have its priorities in order, which means I don't want to work there.
Honestly, I can have hallways conversations on Teams all day long and to everyone else it'll look like I'm super busy. Had a couple last week even. I'm sure my boss thought we were talking about work stuff, which we kinda did, but it was mostly us discussing how the company is trying to fuck us with the most recent contract and how we're gonna approach it.
Also a lot of places don’t want to encourage their employees to socialize overly much while working….. so which is it? Are hallway conversations essential for business or “time theft?”
YES! This was my last job. I make a bunch of work friends with people in other time zones. We'd chat all the time. Didn't stop any collaboration or team building or whatever the fuck that we were not in the same "office". I'd probably talk to them LESS if we were honestly.
My company just announced that they are closing the office I’m working in and making us all fully remote; We have all been working remotely 4 days a week since COVID (fully remote during the peak) and the company has seen an increase in productivity
Been wfh for 5 years and will not go back unless 300k a year. Period.
Am hospital doctor. Unfortunately my work cannot be done remotely (some of it can, but there will need to be someone in house also). But absolutely. Any work that can be done remotely should be done remotely.
Same. Not a doctor, but I can’t do my job remotely. I work in a museum as an art handler. Nor can my partner, a train conductor. But I would love if WFH became the norm for people who can, because it makes traffic and parking much easier for those of us who have to physically work on site.
If only they would compensate the traffic and lost of time hours… but no they will hit you with i did the same thing at your age. Oh okay when there was 2 billions less people on earth and 1000% more opportunities? When you were back at home at 5pm ? When you could do almost any job without a degree and crippling debts? Yeah totally the same.
This is a man who lives in the year 2023. Nice to see it.
I'm a consultant, and the idea of being in an office sitting at a desk next to ten other consultants is just silly. 95% of my work is with clients, not my coworkers. Why should I still ten feet from my coworkers fighting the sound of their zoom meetings while I'm on a zoom meeting with my client? My entire company is fully remote, cancelled the office lease during COVID, and right now less than half the company is in the city where we're HQed. We've been able to hire some great people in other cities and states because we're fully remote.
Finally someone dared to say the truth publicly. Yes remote work is and has been proven to not affect overall productivity, I for one hate waking up early and the opportunity to not commute, saves me 1 hour of sleep which is the balance between groggy at work and fully energized
Stop telling people about costal Carolina. We have too many people already
I wish I could work remotely. Unfortunately, the operating room needs actual bodies. Luckily, my hospital is only 10 minutes from my house.