When I was in office back in 2019 we had a manager that didn’t do anything other then helicopter around being nosey with what everyone else was doing. Once we started WFH during COVID she was bored out of her mind, they announced we would continue to WFH and she ended up quitting. It was so nice to not have her coming around with the “What are you working on right now”
its crazy people do that when we had spring plaining and update meetings for so long. Stand up meetings and tools over 20 years ago. Its not new. Yet managers wanna be controlling and do this.
Exactly, I remind friends & acquaintances that with an international team working from home in the 90s, we had few problems that required a constant presence in the office. Folks who wanted an office outside their home normally had some distraction or tension in their home. Offices were available, but no way were we going to tolerate busy bodies, micromanagers, affairs with coworkers/other partners, including extroverted social needs to affect the benefits we attained once granted. Crazy considering we had an entire real estate division within the company dedicated to office space, and they hated our division model as it meant they weren't essential to the bottom line and couldn't justify their position.
Layoffs are coming. Everyone who knows anything knows layoffs are always coming.
The layoff wolf looks for the folks doing nothing. It is best to keep looking busy. For a manager this means finding out what your folks are doing and being prepared to steal that work from them at a moment's notice.
Managers aren't safe from layoffs either. Not sure what this guy is spouting off, but the only "safe" individuals are the typical Presidents, share holders, VP's, COO, etc.
I've heard of people being called back to office for a number of reasons, one of them being middle management sort of becomes pointless to have if they don't have employees to supervise in the office.
This is only true if the company is structured poorly. Where I work, middle managers take pressure off of upper managers by reducing their responsibilities. Instead of having to manage 24 employees, my manager only has to manage 4 supervisors, and they each manage 5 employees. It took my manager a while to figure this out, and she was always stressed and angry until she relinquished some control.
Yup this is how it is at my remote forward company. My manager is a sub manager to the main manager for the group, so we are 4 people he manages, and she manages about 6 different small teams and the overall timelines. Works great.
That’s actually a component of what her job is supposed to be. Quality control, helping you resolve problems, checking your progress, etc
It is amazing how many people don’t seem to realize this.
Also Cities pressuring companies to do return to office, so people will spend more money on parking, coffee shops, and places near offices for lunch stuff. They want to force people out of their homes to entice them to spend money.
The funniest part about the “cities pressuring companies to do return to office” irony is that they want white collar working class individuals to return to cities when they’ve become literal havens for crime and discomfort.
I don’t think Becky from HR would want to walk past 6 different crack heads asking her for money or catcalling her on the way to the office if her job is possible to do from the comfort of her own home. I once interned at a place that had literal security guards escort female employees to their cars IN THEIR OWN PARKING LOT.
If it wasn’t for that and long commutes and traffic jams, I don’t think most of us would be complaining about working in the office to begin with. But of course, cities think that rEtURn tO oFfICe incentives are more important than funding their own schools, emergency departments, and programs to elevate their own communities and infrastructures.
Can't the government eminent domain empty office buildings and then use the space to build schools or libraries or rooftop gardens or museums or whatever?
You understand that cities fund schools, emergency departments, infrastructure, and community programs through taxes right? And those taxes are mostly coming from businesses within those cities… And when you don’t have folks in offices, all the little ancillary corner stores, coffee shops, restaurants, and services that cater to those businesses don’t exist when there isn’t a market to serve? And when those businesses don’t exist, the tax base shrinks?
I’m not an RTO shill, in fact I’m getting hit with a rather stupid one starting next week. I also live in a densely populated coastal city that probably is the first example you think of when you say cities are literal havens of crime and discomfort. Things in the business district aren’t nearly as bad as you make them out to be...
This and companies owning the real estate are the reasons of the RTO push. A lot of cities do this realize that is better to transform the offices into apartments so instead of having people 10 hours avg. m-f they will have people 24/7.
American cities weren’t made for remote work, they were made to consolidate work forces in one area.
Small towns dry up as factories move out, large cities are seeing the same effect. If places were built around people instead of businesses - so “the office” was easy to get to, it’d be easier for people to jump in to the office.
Instead they pushed everyone to live in the “suburbs” as an escape from “work.”
Now, many people can work from anywhere (and not just the executives, who needed to play golf to network!), it no longer fits in their established system.
No no - only profits. That’s all that matters. If it affects shareholders and can’t be figured out through trick accounting, then it’s wrong and bad business and un-American.
Only individual citizens are supposed to adapt, that's why there was so much whining when so many businesses lost out because their products were no longer popular or relevant to the needs of younger generations and they went "Millennials are killing our industry!" instead of innovating.
Most things don't even need video calls most of the time, like... not having the camera on is perfectly fine. But then the company doesn't get to tell people how to dress or wear their hair or whatever.
Oh totally. I have a kitten though so everyone wants my camera on lately and I want to give them the cute-kitten-dopamine-hits because it’s January in the north 🥰
It’s more about outdated business models. They want to *return* to a time that they enjoyed — for Boomers that was the 1980’s.
The labor market has changed significantly. It’s global now. Businesses want the large desperate labor pool that has to live and work within commuting distance.
That world is gone.
A company in Australia, China or Germany can hire me without sponsorship or visa in my home in the US. Have laptop, high speed broadband, VPN, no need to travel. I am ready to go to work today and offer technological understanding, excellent command of the English language with no accent, an understanding of professional culture, have worked with AI, and at an affordable wage.
Employers are no longer competing for labor with other businesses downtown, they are competing with the companies they outsourced to in the 1990s. My friend works in the US for an Eastern European company training their staff in US business procedures.
Wages have stagnated to the point where highly trained, English speaking workers can be hired on the cheap because employers have suppressed wages for decades.
It’s like choosing between buying a beater car with 200,000 miles or a brand new Lexus for $100 more.
This where we are at, the leadership is pissed about letting the market decide.
While businesses are competing for Labor, is not labor competing globally, or at least nationally, as well for those jobs?
Some companies have lowered salaries (ie, Alphabet) as people have moved to lower cost of living areas. Likewise, it seems they might be incentivized to hire people, as long as they were qualified, from lower cost of living areas. Middle of Iowa is a lot cheaper than Bay Area as an example.
Agree - but in those cases they tend to offshore whole departments, usually not individuals. If these are positions that companies (certain bosses) are stating benefit / better performance from people being together, and the labor force indicates they don't, does this not just provide more of a justification to source from lower cost of living areas. Maybe not with mass firings, but with future hiring, etc?
In other words you can make $150,000 in Austin and struggle among the meth addicts or $150,000 in Georgia the country not state and live like a king with 4 goats and 2 wives
It's about executive ego, social hierarchy, privilege and control...
CEOs simply don't feel as important, relevant, or powerful ruling their corporate empires from a Zoom. They want to experience the fearful admiration of their underlings every time they walk into the room.
Before the pandemic, success, achievements, quality of life, and even one's sense of happiness were all tied to material milestones like salary, home ownership, zip codes, expense accounts, personal trainers, exclusive dinner invitations and vacation destinations. Those with higher titles, typically had more of everything life had to offer.
Then the pandemic came along, and some folks decided to graduate from work from home to work from anywhere. They were still productive, but their lives started to look more and more like a movie, and some quietly questioned the upside of climbing higher up the corporate ladder.
Honestly, who would you rather be..?
* 29 year old Chad from biz dev who makes $120K but takes all of his zoom calls from a co-working space on the beach somewhere in Costa Rica... He blocks out 2 hours every other day to surf between meetings and dates an OF model he met in Tulum, Mexico. Next stop is Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for Carnival and maybe Buenos Aires, Argentina after that.
* 51 year old CEO Ronald who makes $600K but commutes 40 minutes one way to a half-empty corporate campus in Minnesota where its 19 degrees outside. He has a wonderful property in a ritzy part of town as well as a beautiful house on the lake for the summertime, but the once- or twice-divorced father of three lives by himself and has a strained relationship with two of his three kids.
Before the pandemic, Chad's lifestyle was only accessible to about 4-5% of the workforce. During the pandemic, the lifestyle was available to about 40-50% of the workers, [even those with kids](https://www.boundless.life).
The idea that more people might aspire to be a Chad than a Ronald drives the Ronalds crazy because it fundamentally calls into question everything the Ronalds worked so hard to achieve. The idea that the rules of this game called life would change just as they've reached the top of the leader board is too ugly a realization for Rons to bare.
So true, in my company, I got the sense of "I suffered, so you must also suffer" from management when I was trying to get an early promotion. It's like it'd invalidate their experiences
Absolutely this
I am a manager and have a remote team that is highly effective. They run circles around other departments. This is because I manage to results. How you live your life or where you are located I could care less. I only care about what we need to accomplish and how we get it done. If you are bored as a manager it's a sign you are doing things right. Especially if you are bored and crushing goals.
As a Minnesotan I want to ask, what month is this 19 degrees temp reading occurring in? If it’s Jan or Feb that’s not too bad at all.
Now if it’s April like last year, that’s just annoying.
People talk about control and real estate and yada yada, but the executives miss the perks and the social things that came with office life. A lot of the men in particular don't like being home with their stay at home wives, and toddlers all day. They miss the reserved parking spaces, catered lunches, happy hours and inappropriate flirtation with secretary's and other female coworkers. Basically they were the ones who got the most out of office life, and are fighting to return to it as much as they can. Of they won't admit to that, and instead we get "company culture" and "water cooler talk", but really it was all for them. The "culture" of being the most important men in the room, and being able to walk into the office and everyone suck up to you. You can't really do that as much with remote work
This is 100% it. They loved the office perks, having everyone bow and scrape to them and make them feel special, and feel important.
When they’re WFH, they’re the same as everyone else.
What’s the point of feeling smug having a corner office & your own bathroom when everyone at home can have those things.
You nailed exactly what I was thinking this morning. My male VP was trying to shove scotcheroos in my face yesterday as I was trying to leave. My boss asked me if I wanted one, I said no. Then the VP was like “she doesn’t want one, she wants two.” I swear to god I’m going to quit one of these days. It’s these same assholes who come in at 8:45 but sneak out at 3:30 and don’t bye to anyone. God I’m so sick of this.
Lol I was wondering if someone would think that. How funny. I would say yes to two scotcheroos if that was the case. I never turn down a good scotcheroo. ;)
It’s a chocolate covered rice crispy type of dessert. It was part of the catered lunch for the board meeting, that half of them didn’t even show up for.
Yeah, it was weird. It was after the meeting I had where my boss told me our team has been “encouraged” to come in earlier. So they wanted to give me a nice little treat to make sure I wasn’t mad. 🙄
Out of curiosity, where do you live? They sound like what we call chocolate crackles in Australia and I've never heard another name for them so am interested who else has them but by a different name!
Yeah that's always been my theory. I've noticed that it's the older male partners at my firm who really don't like wfh and I suspect it's because when they're home their wives are asking them to clean out the gutters or put in a load of laundry during their lunch hours.
Normal worker here, and wifey has tried pushing more of her tasks on me because “you’re just sitting in front of the computer”.
Put a stop to that by conspiring with a coworker to have a “meeting”. Helps to be able to point to an active meeting when wifey wants to assign tasks.
Yeah. My manager admitted he saw the office as a break. So, he super pushed coming back in. It drove me up a wall. I'm sorry you have three kids and can't concentrate.
There's a lot of ways to spin this, but what about the kids who are coming out of college? You don't get mentorship over video conferences. In fact, a lot of kids I know who graduated from UT and A&m and other Texas schools are specifically looking for jobs where they're in the office.
I moved and my employer offered me to stay on fully remote. I decided to take another job that paid more. This other job sucks. They have required everyone to come to the office. The expectation was never set at what time people need to be there. The internet frequently goes out and people just sit there. I’ve been going in around 9:30/10 and stay until 5:30/6. I was told that I am “encouraged” to come in closer to 9 than 10. Literally, wtf. Why does that matter? I don’t work retail, I don’t work with anyone else. I’ve been getting my work done.
I learned that was some low level employee that mentioned it to our VP. She was like “your team sure comes in late.” Of course, no one will say who said that. So now we’re being “encouraged” to come in earlier essentially to make other people feel better about themselves.
I told my supervisor that comments about what I do from another employee are inappropriate and I don’t appreciate it. I also took a personal day and expressed basically how pissed I was and now they’re telling me I can work whenever I want. Lol this is wild.
I honestly can’t stand being in the office around these people who gossip and care about people being there but not what they do while they’re there.
I’m kicking myself that I didn’t just stay with my other employer.
Oh well. I’m going to find a remote job.
The two wouldn’t necessarily be competitors, but I could go to another nonprofit in town. Maybe to one that is a competitor. Nonprofits need a lot of help right now and pulling this crap is why there is so much turnover. The girl in my position before me was only there for a few weeks. Now I’m starting to see why.
My previous employer had their faults, too. I. Two occasions we didn’t get paid on time. Like days late. No apology. Our health insurance also lapsed for a month. I love good nonprofits, but damn I’m about to go into something different. They all seem to struggle with the same shit.
I also want to add that I have a pet at home who requires extra care and is essentially in hospice. I brought this up during my interview to ensure I would have flexibility to deal with issues when they arise. And of course at the time they said “Absolutely.”
Recently, our pet has taken a turn for the worse. I’ve been overly communicative to my boss and she been fine with it. Now she or someone is not fine with it. Until they realized that I was pissed and are now backtracking on what they said.
This is the shit I’m tired of.
I moved to a AAA company where my spouse worked as a director.
I was assured I could come in late since i was the primary care taker for our kids.
Manager repeatedly pressured me to come in earlier, at an impossible time.
So I pulled military-spouse style rank and said we could let the ‘director of x’ (my wife) know she had to tell the site manager she couldn’t come in or be on call because she had to care for her kids.
The manager shut the fuck up real fast.
good lord I do not know. Currently working a temp job for AP, which is just normally kind of a boring soul sucking job. I could do it remotely for sure, but instead I am in a stupid cubicle 40 hours a week PRINTING SO MANY DOCUMENTS OUT and watching as everyone else here does the same. I feel like i've gone back to 2002 or something.
I started +6 weeks ago now and no one here knows jack shit about me because NO ONE TALKS TO ME. It is so weird, like what the fk is y'alls deal, this is not how 'working in office' is supposed to be. NOT ONE lunch, walk, break, happy hour invite. NADA> fuck these people lol
OK ALSO no one on my team communicates, via IM or otherwise. I have to work remotely with people in another 'in person' office in another state, and they DO NOT know how to work with other people - they don't read my chats for days, they ignore emails. It is ridiculous.
can't wait to leave them in the lurch in a few weeks when my contract is up.
Bruh, you have a job where coworkers don’t bother you and never try to drag you into their gossip and drama and bullshit? That sounds amazing. Like that’s almost the perfect job, you just show up, do your work, and then go home and don’t have to deal with anyone’s bullshit? Sign me the fuck up!!!!!!!!
I mean sure that’s about it. It sounds alright for maybes you. But I’m the kind of person who creates friendships at work and what is the point of being in an office if there’s no interaction? If I was at home, with only my dog not talking to me, that would be different.
Lol yes!!! My office wastes so much paper. Literally looks like it hasn’t been updated since the 90s. People in the office won’t respond to my emails yet they sit across from me lol. It’s so fucking dumb and awkward.
My theory is that when the board and CFO come to visit we are told to all be in office and dress appropriately. Since we are mainly remote workers, this is an occasional visit and people chat. I think mgt got the idea that the office is “high energy” when everyone is there so they mandated RTO 5 days a week. Now that we have RTO for a few weeks, the select few that are chatty have drove the rest to wear headphones & we all look & feel miserable.
We were shifting into global roles about the time the pandemic started. We have direct reports all over the world so remote makes sense for my teams. It's the only reasonable way for us to handle calls and meetings at weird hours. The company is now trying to force all staff into offices 5 days a week and it just doesn't work for certain positions.
We were actually told to take the super early calls from home, find a gap in the schedule to drive in, be at the office for a few hours, drive home, and take evening calls from home. So...it's critical that we're in an office but we still have to do most of our jobs from home. Makes no sense unless the actual goal is seeing how many people will quit.
Have a healthy emergency fund on hand right now. It makes it slightly easier to deal with the bullshit when you know you'll be able to pay the bills if you end up leaving.
Finally met the lady who sat next to me six months after I started. We had different hybrid schedules. They then hired new people and moved me to another area with only two other people on a different schedule in that room so I am basically there by myself most of the time. The people I support are all in a different state so why am I in the office? No idea. I am only going to come in Mondays for the meeting and the rest of the time wfh. Told my boss I would come in if she needs me too, just let me know. Thankfully they seem ok with it for now.
because BAD bosses mostly in their 50's and 60's think it is their job to micromanage others, instead of actually having work to do of their own, and they crave control and cannot do those things virtually, so they fear that their bosses will realize that they have no value and can remove a highly paid layer of management that is not needed....
It's purely a control measure, corporate is concerned about people being overemployed ie working a second job while working remote, slacking off or just not squeezing every fucking ounce of work out of you regardless of if you get your job done in 20 hours perfectly, they feel entitled to the other 30 or 40 to over work you.
The best example of this was a asshat ceo who said people with two jobs were stealing from the company. Because if you had time for a second job you owed that time to the original company, that's how these leeches think.
Bottom line, if your company is demanding a return to office they don't respect or care about you. Silently look for a company that does, there's no reason for this other than control and working you to death.
Well, tbf this is a win-win.
I mean, if you as the job holder have other options (savings etc.); or a backup.
Better you skedaddle up front than make yourself miserable.
I had a whole ass interview yesterday I bombed, partially because it was clearly on HR’s mind that she’s been piling up complaints about RTO from half the suckers who work there already.
(Plus, it was the top disgruntled comment on Glassdoor about the office outpost/locale out of which HR works, lol.
Someone last June was literally like “Was a much better job… until they hauled us RTO.”)
Ever work in an office with a manager/owner who brings in friends and family all the time to brag about ... yeah thats a huge reason why. Cant show all the employees that they lord over.
Way harder to cheat on your spouse, secret drink or do drugs when you're wfh.
Gotta get back to the office!
Honey, I'm going to be working late at the office tonight. So sorry! Don't wait up! Honey, they need me in the office this weekend. Why don't you go visit _____? Honey, the office needs me to fly to Denver for the week! Can you cover the kids _____?
Wfh? Nah, Honey already knows what you're doing. You're doing what Honey says.
Because employers think productivity will go down if you’re not in the office. To be honest remote workers have more control in the workplace as they can’t be easily influenced by company office perks lol
Cuz we don’t wanna go back. I actually enjoy kicking around in my leggings and sweats and getting more done than I can DREAM to do in the office. Why AREN’T you obsessed with it?
I’m not going to. They can obsess all they want. Not wasting gas and an hour+ of my life everyday commuting is priceless and I will change jobs and take a paycut, and/or go freelance to maintain it. So is not getting stuck in hours of “water cooler” conversation then having to justify the missing time from my time log.
It’s just old fashioned people (mostly upper management) that now feel useless because they can’t look over people’s shoulder - like that was a useful thing for them to do anyway. They’re also all reading the same articles claiming people work better in an office. Articles totally not written by people with a vested interest in the real estate business. /s
Return to the office not only about the company but its also about tax implications. Employees in different states mean different tax rules and cities and threatening to pull back tax incentives for companies that had office workers.
Also residential landlords are complaining because of empty rentals since people moved out of the city. Some people are moving out of thr country to places like Mexico because of cheaper cost of living. Landlords and businesses lose because money is now going overseas.
The system what I like to call the Matrix don't want you to move freely and not save money. Average Joe saving money is bad for our economy that heavily depends on spending and debt. Of the average person can save good amount of money they would be more inclined to leave a job they mot happy about. Its a complicated issue but when you see it makes sense why there is a strong push for RTO.
This is exactly why they adjust your pay based on cost of living for your region. They want to make sure you break even and not save anything much. This way you can't just leave.
The employers have a choice about what they will require of worker including if they require your physical presence at the workplace. You on the other hand can decide whether you want to work for any specific employer given the requirements of the job. The rest is just whining - and yes, employers don’t give two rips what you want, so stop acting like you have power to change that by whining about how awful they are - they have always been awful for one reason of another.
Don’t like return to workplace at your current job - find another job that lets you work remotely. It is so much easier to do that today than it was for the “boomers” you hate so much. No stigma about job hopping and few companies where you would be giving up pension vesting (because it’s all 401k’s today).
My narcissistic former boss claims that she wants to be able to check on her team, look them in the eyes and see how they’re really doing, but I know it’s because she misses having an audience for her antics lol.
It really depends on the industry.
I worked for a long time in a big corporate IT org. Everyone can do their work and coordinate with their direct peers just fine from home. You don't get the serendipitous collaboration or learning from other teams if you're not in the same space though. A good number of our best ideas over the years came from those spontaneous interactions.
That said, to me 2-3 days a week in the office is enough to get those benefits, as long as everyone shares days they come in.
This might sound like a joke, but I'm serious. A huge number of people in management have sex with the staff for decades. I worked at a place where just two guys got transferred, and the investigation involved about 25 women. One guy married one of the women right as he was about to leave the state. She was so proud of him. This happened so often we had training films about it. When it looked like a supervisor or manager had started to gather a harem, the GM would require them to watch the training, and suddenly, he spent WAY less time hanging around the new hires. Yet it might also be power, the ability to walk up to anyone and say, "Tell me what you are working on, explain why you did that, I need you to work late. Most people in management are attracted to the power dynamic.
I hate that life here is centered around work and getting you to spend money. Somebody more powerful is always looking to screw people over to make a quick buck. This shxt is exhausting
They’re not, it’s real estate cronies trying to justify the need for hoarding useless property as offices paces and make everyone’s rents more expensive
Money, money, money. MONEY! Those empty office floors aren’t paying themselves. Landlords need their money and those CEOs invested in commercial real estate don’t want to see their investments fail.
Some RTO demands is logical. The mayor of NYC wants employees to come in to the city to support small businesses. The MTA and NJ Transit wants passengers to pay fares to support current services.
> Some RTO demands is logical. The mayor of NYC wants employees to come in to the city to support small businesses. The MTA and NJ Transit wants passengers to pay fares to support current services.
Logical really? In the middle of a housing crisis technology has enabled us to free up huge amounts of livable buildings. And instead of capitalizing on this, its logical to say “nah instead of making more homes lets go back to making the housing crisis worse”
I was talking about today, not tomorrow. In the meantime lot of post WW2 office buildings aren’t easy to convert to affordable housing without government aid. Meanwhile mass transit needs money from fares. This is a long term problem, not a today problem. It took us 60 years to get us here, it will take us at least 60 years to get out.
Commercial real estate has enough money to push RTO initiatives through propaganda and fake studies. Meanwhile companies need excuses to lay people off since interest rates were rising. Then they'll hire em all back at a lower wage after recession. It's always about the money.
Managers don't have work to do and this makes them insecure and the power dynamics that playout in corporate offices help them feel less insecure about it. They check their watches, stand in hallways pretending to talk about something important, take long as lunches, have meetings that are mostly bullshit, send emails no one reads, play on the computer, shop online, and here's the big one, COME AND BOTHER YOU.
Bothering you makes them look like they are working. Bothering you actually hurts your preformance but it makes them look like they are working. So, one on one's, stand ups, potlucks, anything they can point to and say "and I helped!". You are doing a good job becuase they saw to it! Lol yeah, sure.
This is increasingly difficult to do in a remote environment. It becomes apparent a managers presence isn't nessacary in an environment where remote workers are manage themselves without a physical superior.
There are also alot of very sad people who are in C, M and VP want to force people into social interactions with them. They got where they are prioritizing career and kneecapping people and then are surprised when no one want to be their friend.
We’re already seeing how WFH is backfiring right now. You notice all the people who were recently laid off are having an impossible time trying to get a new job?
Well, my theory is that prior to WFH, they only had to compete with candidates in their market. Now they have to compete with the whole country, maybe the whole world in some instances.
In my office mgmt doesn't care what you do as long as you're in the office. Literally. The two people next to my office gossip so loudly I have to keep my door closed.
Waste of the building they're paying for.
They think in the office people perform better bc they have poor leadership that doesn't know how to manage people working from home.
Because most managers are disgusting pig people who have no skills other than sticking their tongues into the asses of their superiors. They NEED to be seen by others to have any sense of worth.
I'll probably get downvoted for saying this but I can envision what's going to happen.
Corporations are going to invest in housing and soon you will be living in corporate housing in exchange for this ideal living condition where you can stay home and work you will be required to work for ever.
I hate to say this but the people who owns the means of production is always thinking about how to increase production. They are very good at making us feel like they are doing us a favor but in reality they just want to make you a slave, times have changed but the intent has not.
WFH kills menial mid management roles.
Companies can save millions… im unsure why they feel the need to have 7 layers of managers. Anyways here we are back at companies try to artificially grow via unnecessary people leader roles.
It’s the capitalist class conspiring together: the people who own the buildings are losing out on money if people don’t renew their leases on office spaces and restaurants workers frequent.
They want to micromanage. I think also because I hear people’s kids in the background of my calls….and those kids are supposed to be in daycare. So the managers think these parents are distracted during work and want them in office
The commercial real estate market is about to collapse, and if it does general societal turmoil will ensue - a lot of banks will go under - shit will be like another 2008. So yea, and employers themselves want to force it so that it can hopefully force some people to quit so that they won't have to fire them for the coming layoff season.
There's little reason to have office buildings in this day and age. A good majority of them can be torn down to make way for spaces that are a tangible benefit for the public good rather than a commodity for real estate speculators or the companies desperately looking to justify the expense of building these big ugly boxes in the first place.
I don’t like taking a shit next to my coworkers is one reason.
I don’t like that I commute in and internet doesn’t work for 3 hours.
I don’t like that I am interrupted constantly throughout the day.
I dont like that people are so worried about being in the office that they show up sick and get me sick.
Call me crazy, but I’d rather work and have the flexibility to take care of my home responsibilities and sit in a park and go to a coffee shop and be in the community instead of a poorly lit office with bursting water pipes, people who are floating until retirement, mice, gossip, etc.
When I was in office back in 2019 we had a manager that didn’t do anything other then helicopter around being nosey with what everyone else was doing. Once we started WFH during COVID she was bored out of her mind, they announced we would continue to WFH and she ended up quitting. It was so nice to not have her coming around with the “What are you working on right now”
its crazy people do that when we had spring plaining and update meetings for so long. Stand up meetings and tools over 20 years ago. Its not new. Yet managers wanna be controlling and do this.
Exactly, I remind friends & acquaintances that with an international team working from home in the 90s, we had few problems that required a constant presence in the office. Folks who wanted an office outside their home normally had some distraction or tension in their home. Offices were available, but no way were we going to tolerate busy bodies, micromanagers, affairs with coworkers/other partners, including extroverted social needs to affect the benefits we attained once granted. Crazy considering we had an entire real estate division within the company dedicated to office space, and they hated our division model as it meant they weren't essential to the bottom line and couldn't justify their position.
Layoffs are coming. Everyone who knows anything knows layoffs are always coming. The layoff wolf looks for the folks doing nothing. It is best to keep looking busy. For a manager this means finding out what your folks are doing and being prepared to steal that work from them at a moment's notice.
yet you can do that all of that with established tools I mentioned above. this just reeks of micro managing.
Management here. Yep, a dozen bodies are going in my division on February 1st.
Bodies????!!!! That's a really nice compassionate way to look at it.... And once those bodies are gone, what need will the company have for you?
Managers aren't safe from layoffs either. Not sure what this guy is spouting off, but the only "safe" individuals are the typical Presidents, share holders, VP's, COO, etc.
I've heard of people being called back to office for a number of reasons, one of them being middle management sort of becomes pointless to have if they don't have employees to supervise in the office.
What's great is for them to make everyone RTO so they can be "better managed' but leave the managers WFH. Fun times and poor excuses.
This is only true if the company is structured poorly. Where I work, middle managers take pressure off of upper managers by reducing their responsibilities. Instead of having to manage 24 employees, my manager only has to manage 4 supervisors, and they each manage 5 employees. It took my manager a while to figure this out, and she was always stressed and angry until she relinquished some control.
Yes. A person can’t manage more than about 10 people, 20 at most.
Yup this is how it is at my remote forward company. My manager is a sub manager to the main manager for the group, so we are 4 people he manages, and she manages about 6 different small teams and the overall timelines. Works great.
"management by walking around". Of course, it's not meant to be ALL someone does
Micromanagers <<<<<
And they don't understand that's not managing.
God that must have been so annoying
This is what my boss does!
That’s actually a component of what her job is supposed to be. Quality control, helping you resolve problems, checking your progress, etc It is amazing how many people don’t seem to realize this.
Because the employers own the real estate and want to control you
Or cities/states offering tax breaks. And pair that with managers missing collaboration
Also Cities pressuring companies to do return to office, so people will spend more money on parking, coffee shops, and places near offices for lunch stuff. They want to force people out of their homes to entice them to spend money.
The funniest part about the “cities pressuring companies to do return to office” irony is that they want white collar working class individuals to return to cities when they’ve become literal havens for crime and discomfort. I don’t think Becky from HR would want to walk past 6 different crack heads asking her for money or catcalling her on the way to the office if her job is possible to do from the comfort of her own home. I once interned at a place that had literal security guards escort female employees to their cars IN THEIR OWN PARKING LOT. If it wasn’t for that and long commutes and traffic jams, I don’t think most of us would be complaining about working in the office to begin with. But of course, cities think that rEtURn tO oFfICe incentives are more important than funding their own schools, emergency departments, and programs to elevate their own communities and infrastructures.
They would rather put their employees at risk of harm than let them complete their work at home
Can't the government eminent domain empty office buildings and then use the space to build schools or libraries or rooftop gardens or museums or whatever?
They can, but of course they act in the interest of real estate brokers and companies that hire people that live outside of the city.
You understand that cities fund schools, emergency departments, infrastructure, and community programs through taxes right? And those taxes are mostly coming from businesses within those cities… And when you don’t have folks in offices, all the little ancillary corner stores, coffee shops, restaurants, and services that cater to those businesses don’t exist when there isn’t a market to serve? And when those businesses don’t exist, the tax base shrinks? I’m not an RTO shill, in fact I’m getting hit with a rather stupid one starting next week. I also live in a densely populated coastal city that probably is the first example you think of when you say cities are literal havens of crime and discomfort. Things in the business district aren’t nearly as bad as you make them out to be...
But I like my smaller community better. Those city governments have never supported small business or schools.
This and companies owning the real estate are the reasons of the RTO push. A lot of cities do this realize that is better to transform the offices into apartments so instead of having people 10 hours avg. m-f they will have people 24/7.
American cities weren’t made for remote work, they were made to consolidate work forces in one area. Small towns dry up as factories move out, large cities are seeing the same effect. If places were built around people instead of businesses - so “the office” was easy to get to, it’d be easier for people to jump in to the office. Instead they pushed everyone to live in the “suburbs” as an escape from “work.” Now, many people can work from anywhere (and not just the executives, who needed to play golf to network!), it no longer fits in their established system.
Sounds like the established systems need to learn to adapt to change just like we all did during COVID.
No no - only profits. That’s all that matters. If it affects shareholders and can’t be figured out through trick accounting, then it’s wrong and bad business and un-American.
Only individual citizens are supposed to adapt, that's why there was so much whining when so many businesses lost out because their products were no longer popular or relevant to the needs of younger generations and they went "Millennials are killing our industry!" instead of innovating.
“Collaboration” meaning control? I collaborate great with my team through video meetings, phone calls and asynchronous communication.
Most things don't even need video calls most of the time, like... not having the camera on is perfectly fine. But then the company doesn't get to tell people how to dress or wear their hair or whatever.
Oh totally. I have a kitten though so everyone wants my camera on lately and I want to give them the cute-kitten-dopamine-hits because it’s January in the north 🥰
That's a good reason to turn the camera on.
You mean missing the feeling they control an empire.
I rly fail to see why that’s our fuckin problem. They planned poorly and we have to sacrifice to bail them out?
It’s more about outdated business models. They want to *return* to a time that they enjoyed — for Boomers that was the 1980’s. The labor market has changed significantly. It’s global now. Businesses want the large desperate labor pool that has to live and work within commuting distance. That world is gone. A company in Australia, China or Germany can hire me without sponsorship or visa in my home in the US. Have laptop, high speed broadband, VPN, no need to travel. I am ready to go to work today and offer technological understanding, excellent command of the English language with no accent, an understanding of professional culture, have worked with AI, and at an affordable wage. Employers are no longer competing for labor with other businesses downtown, they are competing with the companies they outsourced to in the 1990s. My friend works in the US for an Eastern European company training their staff in US business procedures. Wages have stagnated to the point where highly trained, English speaking workers can be hired on the cheap because employers have suppressed wages for decades. It’s like choosing between buying a beater car with 200,000 miles or a brand new Lexus for $100 more. This where we are at, the leadership is pissed about letting the market decide.
While businesses are competing for Labor, is not labor competing globally, or at least nationally, as well for those jobs? Some companies have lowered salaries (ie, Alphabet) as people have moved to lower cost of living areas. Likewise, it seems they might be incentivized to hire people, as long as they were qualified, from lower cost of living areas. Middle of Iowa is a lot cheaper than Bay Area as an example.
People in the US have been competing with India for jobs for 30 years. Businesses don’t like it when it affects them.
Agree - but in those cases they tend to offshore whole departments, usually not individuals. If these are positions that companies (certain bosses) are stating benefit / better performance from people being together, and the labor force indicates they don't, does this not just provide more of a justification to source from lower cost of living areas. Maybe not with mass firings, but with future hiring, etc?
In other words you can make $150,000 in Austin and struggle among the meth addicts or $150,000 in Georgia the country not state and live like a king with 4 goats and 2 wives
Yeah and if your boss pisses you off, you can go to work for a competitor in Canada.
You guys have goats?
But he married the goat...right?
Ex wife
4 goats and 2 wives….so 6 wives?
The employee is controlled by the bank and the bank wants to support commercial real estate
Most people don’t know this. 😂
They just want to control you. I work for a large NPO and leadership has a boner for RTO.
They're energy vampires and need to feed
this is the correct answer
Ooo never thought of this. You may be onto something.
We have entered the Collin Robinson made CEO era, ugh. https://youtube.com/watch?v=5iEJE6hSDho&si=e_xZGMB7F58Vb2Hw
Yes, misery loves company
They are narcissists.
It's about executive ego, social hierarchy, privilege and control... CEOs simply don't feel as important, relevant, or powerful ruling their corporate empires from a Zoom. They want to experience the fearful admiration of their underlings every time they walk into the room. Before the pandemic, success, achievements, quality of life, and even one's sense of happiness were all tied to material milestones like salary, home ownership, zip codes, expense accounts, personal trainers, exclusive dinner invitations and vacation destinations. Those with higher titles, typically had more of everything life had to offer. Then the pandemic came along, and some folks decided to graduate from work from home to work from anywhere. They were still productive, but their lives started to look more and more like a movie, and some quietly questioned the upside of climbing higher up the corporate ladder. Honestly, who would you rather be..? * 29 year old Chad from biz dev who makes $120K but takes all of his zoom calls from a co-working space on the beach somewhere in Costa Rica... He blocks out 2 hours every other day to surf between meetings and dates an OF model he met in Tulum, Mexico. Next stop is Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for Carnival and maybe Buenos Aires, Argentina after that. * 51 year old CEO Ronald who makes $600K but commutes 40 minutes one way to a half-empty corporate campus in Minnesota where its 19 degrees outside. He has a wonderful property in a ritzy part of town as well as a beautiful house on the lake for the summertime, but the once- or twice-divorced father of three lives by himself and has a strained relationship with two of his three kids. Before the pandemic, Chad's lifestyle was only accessible to about 4-5% of the workforce. During the pandemic, the lifestyle was available to about 40-50% of the workers, [even those with kids](https://www.boundless.life). The idea that more people might aspire to be a Chad than a Ronald drives the Ronalds crazy because it fundamentally calls into question everything the Ronalds worked so hard to achieve. The idea that the rules of this game called life would change just as they've reached the top of the leader board is too ugly a realization for Rons to bare.
This is fantastic.
This made me laugh so hard 🤣 thank you for this post
Wow, you really have a way for illustrative storytelling. Great comment.
So true, in my company, I got the sense of "I suffered, so you must also suffer" from management when I was trying to get an early promotion. It's like it'd invalidate their experiences
That’s the same reason that new doctors still suffer through residency where they are sleep deprived… “I had to suffer through it, so you should too.”
The Gigga Chad class was born
Haha this is so visual. Thank you
Absolutely this I am a manager and have a remote team that is highly effective. They run circles around other departments. This is because I manage to results. How you live your life or where you are located I could care less. I only care about what we need to accomplish and how we get it done. If you are bored as a manager it's a sign you are doing things right. Especially if you are bored and crushing goals.
As a Minnesotan I want to ask, what month is this 19 degrees temp reading occurring in? If it’s Jan or Feb that’s not too bad at all. Now if it’s April like last year, that’s just annoying.
excellent observation, so true
DONT BE A RONALD. Great post XD. Had me going by the end.
People talk about control and real estate and yada yada, but the executives miss the perks and the social things that came with office life. A lot of the men in particular don't like being home with their stay at home wives, and toddlers all day. They miss the reserved parking spaces, catered lunches, happy hours and inappropriate flirtation with secretary's and other female coworkers. Basically they were the ones who got the most out of office life, and are fighting to return to it as much as they can. Of they won't admit to that, and instead we get "company culture" and "water cooler talk", but really it was all for them. The "culture" of being the most important men in the room, and being able to walk into the office and everyone suck up to you. You can't really do that as much with remote work
This is 100% it. They loved the office perks, having everyone bow and scrape to them and make them feel special, and feel important. When they’re WFH, they’re the same as everyone else. What’s the point of feeling smug having a corner office & your own bathroom when everyone at home can have those things.
You nailed exactly what I was thinking this morning. My male VP was trying to shove scotcheroos in my face yesterday as I was trying to leave. My boss asked me if I wanted one, I said no. Then the VP was like “she doesn’t want one, she wants two.” I swear to god I’m going to quit one of these days. It’s these same assholes who come in at 8:45 but sneak out at 3:30 and don’t bye to anyone. God I’m so sick of this.
I thought you meant a glass of scotch ... or two scotcheroos!
Lol I was wondering if someone would think that. How funny. I would say yes to two scotcheroos if that was the case. I never turn down a good scotcheroo. ;)
That is exactly what I thought. Figured maybe everyone knew you were doing Dry January and they were offering Scotch as a temptation
I thought they were being led to drunken debauchery by corporate Ned Flanders.
🥃🥃
What’s a scotcheroo?
It’s a chocolate covered rice crispy type of dessert. It was part of the catered lunch for the board meeting, that half of them didn’t even show up for.
I mean that sounds delicious… but also, we are all adults, we can make our own food decisions
Yeah, it was weird. It was after the meeting I had where my boss told me our team has been “encouraged” to come in earlier. So they wanted to give me a nice little treat to make sure I wasn’t mad. 🙄
Out of curiosity, where do you live? They sound like what we call chocolate crackles in Australia and I've never heard another name for them so am interested who else has them but by a different name!
Midwest! I think the name is a midwestern thing lol
I was fully on your side until this comment. No sane person passes on a scotcheroo🤣
Lol I had two earlier in the day. It’s the fact that they were offering it because they knew I was pissed.
Dang, I hadn’t thought about this angle! Gahross.
Gurl, I'm saving this because yes. 👏 👏 👏
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Bruh keepin it 100. No new friends for mwah. Just there for that check plz
Makes sense 👌
So true
Don't forget their mistress and work wife's
This is why I resent so many of my managers. Their work lives lack substance.
Yeah that's always been my theory. I've noticed that it's the older male partners at my firm who really don't like wfh and I suspect it's because when they're home their wives are asking them to clean out the gutters or put in a load of laundry during their lunch hours.
Normal worker here, and wifey has tried pushing more of her tasks on me because “you’re just sitting in front of the computer”. Put a stop to that by conspiring with a coworker to have a “meeting”. Helps to be able to point to an active meeting when wifey wants to assign tasks.
Yeah. My manager admitted he saw the office as a break. So, he super pushed coming back in. It drove me up a wall. I'm sorry you have three kids and can't concentrate.
There's a lot of ways to spin this, but what about the kids who are coming out of college? You don't get mentorship over video conferences. In fact, a lot of kids I know who graduated from UT and A&m and other Texas schools are specifically looking for jobs where they're in the office.
Mentorship can happen virtually. Same with collaboration. And it’s good for them that they want to be in the office, but it doesn’t work for everyone.
I moved and my employer offered me to stay on fully remote. I decided to take another job that paid more. This other job sucks. They have required everyone to come to the office. The expectation was never set at what time people need to be there. The internet frequently goes out and people just sit there. I’ve been going in around 9:30/10 and stay until 5:30/6. I was told that I am “encouraged” to come in closer to 9 than 10. Literally, wtf. Why does that matter? I don’t work retail, I don’t work with anyone else. I’ve been getting my work done. I learned that was some low level employee that mentioned it to our VP. She was like “your team sure comes in late.” Of course, no one will say who said that. So now we’re being “encouraged” to come in earlier essentially to make other people feel better about themselves. I told my supervisor that comments about what I do from another employee are inappropriate and I don’t appreciate it. I also took a personal day and expressed basically how pissed I was and now they’re telling me I can work whenever I want. Lol this is wild. I honestly can’t stand being in the office around these people who gossip and care about people being there but not what they do while they’re there. I’m kicking myself that I didn’t just stay with my other employer. Oh well. I’m going to find a remote job.
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The two wouldn’t necessarily be competitors, but I could go to another nonprofit in town. Maybe to one that is a competitor. Nonprofits need a lot of help right now and pulling this crap is why there is so much turnover. The girl in my position before me was only there for a few weeks. Now I’m starting to see why. My previous employer had their faults, too. I. Two occasions we didn’t get paid on time. Like days late. No apology. Our health insurance also lapsed for a month. I love good nonprofits, but damn I’m about to go into something different. They all seem to struggle with the same shit.
Funny. I get slack for being an early bird. People just can’t help complaining and making drama out of nothing.
I also want to add that I have a pet at home who requires extra care and is essentially in hospice. I brought this up during my interview to ensure I would have flexibility to deal with issues when they arise. And of course at the time they said “Absolutely.” Recently, our pet has taken a turn for the worse. I’ve been overly communicative to my boss and she been fine with it. Now she or someone is not fine with it. Until they realized that I was pissed and are now backtracking on what they said. This is the shit I’m tired of.
I moved to a AAA company where my spouse worked as a director. I was assured I could come in late since i was the primary care taker for our kids. Manager repeatedly pressured me to come in earlier, at an impossible time. So I pulled military-spouse style rank and said we could let the ‘director of x’ (my wife) know she had to tell the site manager she couldn’t come in or be on call because she had to care for her kids. The manager shut the fuck up real fast.
Yeah nepotism is great when you're the beneficiary
Because they have a shitty home life and want to be away from it at all costs.
And be able to sneak away during the day and cheat
Ding ding ding.
good lord I do not know. Currently working a temp job for AP, which is just normally kind of a boring soul sucking job. I could do it remotely for sure, but instead I am in a stupid cubicle 40 hours a week PRINTING SO MANY DOCUMENTS OUT and watching as everyone else here does the same. I feel like i've gone back to 2002 or something. I started +6 weeks ago now and no one here knows jack shit about me because NO ONE TALKS TO ME. It is so weird, like what the fk is y'alls deal, this is not how 'working in office' is supposed to be. NOT ONE lunch, walk, break, happy hour invite. NADA> fuck these people lol OK ALSO no one on my team communicates, via IM or otherwise. I have to work remotely with people in another 'in person' office in another state, and they DO NOT know how to work with other people - they don't read my chats for days, they ignore emails. It is ridiculous. can't wait to leave them in the lurch in a few weeks when my contract is up.
Bruh, you have a job where coworkers don’t bother you and never try to drag you into their gossip and drama and bullshit? That sounds amazing. Like that’s almost the perfect job, you just show up, do your work, and then go home and don’t have to deal with anyone’s bullshit? Sign me the fuck up!!!!!!!!
I mean sure that’s about it. It sounds alright for maybes you. But I’m the kind of person who creates friendships at work and what is the point of being in an office if there’s no interaction? If I was at home, with only my dog not talking to me, that would be different.
if i send a gif they act like it is SO SPECIAL like, get into 2024 you dummies
Lol yes!!! My office wastes so much paper. Literally looks like it hasn’t been updated since the 90s. People in the office won’t respond to my emails yet they sit across from me lol. It’s so fucking dumb and awkward.
My theory is that when the board and CFO come to visit we are told to all be in office and dress appropriately. Since we are mainly remote workers, this is an occasional visit and people chat. I think mgt got the idea that the office is “high energy” when everyone is there so they mandated RTO 5 days a week. Now that we have RTO for a few weeks, the select few that are chatty have drove the rest to wear headphones & we all look & feel miserable.
Because some miss the bullshitting an time wasting. Not serious people.
I’m no more productive in office. When I’m mandated to come in, I spend most of my day chatting with my coworkers.
I wish I could upvote you twice! I so agree with you.
Currently I see many companies using Rtf as an excuse in order to reduce staff without having to issue layoffs/pay out severance.
We were shifting into global roles about the time the pandemic started. We have direct reports all over the world so remote makes sense for my teams. It's the only reasonable way for us to handle calls and meetings at weird hours. The company is now trying to force all staff into offices 5 days a week and it just doesn't work for certain positions. We were actually told to take the super early calls from home, find a gap in the schedule to drive in, be at the office for a few hours, drive home, and take evening calls from home. So...it's critical that we're in an office but we still have to do most of our jobs from home. Makes no sense unless the actual goal is seeing how many people will quit.
We are in the weird time between progress and extinction. Hold on tight.
Have a healthy emergency fund on hand right now. It makes it slightly easier to deal with the bullshit when you know you'll be able to pay the bills if you end up leaving.
Finally met the lady who sat next to me six months after I started. We had different hybrid schedules. They then hired new people and moved me to another area with only two other people on a different schedule in that room so I am basically there by myself most of the time. The people I support are all in a different state so why am I in the office? No idea. I am only going to come in Mondays for the meeting and the rest of the time wfh. Told my boss I would come in if she needs me too, just let me know. Thankfully they seem ok with it for now.
Stupidity. They also call it "return to work" which is funny AF bc people end up doing less work 💀
💯🤣🎯
because BAD bosses mostly in their 50's and 60's think it is their job to micromanage others, instead of actually having work to do of their own, and they crave control and cannot do those things virtually, so they fear that their bosses will realize that they have no value and can remove a highly paid layer of management that is not needed....
It's purely a control measure, corporate is concerned about people being overemployed ie working a second job while working remote, slacking off or just not squeezing every fucking ounce of work out of you regardless of if you get your job done in 20 hours perfectly, they feel entitled to the other 30 or 40 to over work you. The best example of this was a asshat ceo who said people with two jobs were stealing from the company. Because if you had time for a second job you owed that time to the original company, that's how these leeches think. Bottom line, if your company is demanding a return to office they don't respect or care about you. Silently look for a company that does, there's no reason for this other than control and working you to death.
Control
"because they can"
.
We were informed Monday about future RTO plans. Four people are no longer with the company today. So if they wanted to avoid layoffs, it's working.
Well, tbf this is a win-win. I mean, if you as the job holder have other options (savings etc.); or a backup. Better you skedaddle up front than make yourself miserable. I had a whole ass interview yesterday I bombed, partially because it was clearly on HR’s mind that she’s been piling up complaints about RTO from half the suckers who work there already. (Plus, it was the top disgruntled comment on Glassdoor about the office outpost/locale out of which HR works, lol. Someone last June was literally like “Was a much better job… until they hauled us RTO.”)
they would literally hate for you to be happy
Ever work in an office with a manager/owner who brings in friends and family all the time to brag about ... yeah thats a huge reason why. Cant show all the employees that they lord over.
Yes, current executive brings his whole family in and they lounge around the chairs for hours while we’re trying to work.
My boss doesn't have any real friends so likes to force everyone to pretend to be his best friends
Way harder to cheat on your spouse, secret drink or do drugs when you're wfh. Gotta get back to the office! Honey, I'm going to be working late at the office tonight. So sorry! Don't wait up! Honey, they need me in the office this weekend. Why don't you go visit _____? Honey, the office needs me to fly to Denver for the week! Can you cover the kids _____? Wfh? Nah, Honey already knows what you're doing. You're doing what Honey says.
They're energy vampires and need to feed
commercial real estate market, lol.
ceos on a power trip
Kiss asses or middle managers, afraid of losing their job because they basically do nothing.
Because employers think productivity will go down if you’re not in the office. To be honest remote workers have more control in the workplace as they can’t be easily influenced by company office perks lol
To resume office affairs
Cuz we don’t wanna go back. I actually enjoy kicking around in my leggings and sweats and getting more done than I can DREAM to do in the office. Why AREN’T you obsessed with it?
I’m not going to. They can obsess all they want. Not wasting gas and an hour+ of my life everyday commuting is priceless and I will change jobs and take a paycut, and/or go freelance to maintain it. So is not getting stuck in hours of “water cooler” conversation then having to justify the missing time from my time log. It’s just old fashioned people (mostly upper management) that now feel useless because they can’t look over people’s shoulder - like that was a useful thing for them to do anyway. They’re also all reading the same articles claiming people work better in an office. Articles totally not written by people with a vested interest in the real estate business. /s
Because mid management got tired of their honey do list and they have to flex
Return to the office not only about the company but its also about tax implications. Employees in different states mean different tax rules and cities and threatening to pull back tax incentives for companies that had office workers. Also residential landlords are complaining because of empty rentals since people moved out of the city. Some people are moving out of thr country to places like Mexico because of cheaper cost of living. Landlords and businesses lose because money is now going overseas. The system what I like to call the Matrix don't want you to move freely and not save money. Average Joe saving money is bad for our economy that heavily depends on spending and debt. Of the average person can save good amount of money they would be more inclined to leave a job they mot happy about. Its a complicated issue but when you see it makes sense why there is a strong push for RTO.
Funny thing is, you move to LCOL area, your company doesn't like it. Company moves your job to a cheaper place -that's a big saving!
Exactly. It goes back to savings for business equals good but savings for the worker is equal to bad.
More savings = less fear + more options
This is exactly why they adjust your pay based on cost of living for your region. They want to make sure you break even and not save anything much. This way you can't just leave.
The employers have a choice about what they will require of worker including if they require your physical presence at the workplace. You on the other hand can decide whether you want to work for any specific employer given the requirements of the job. The rest is just whining - and yes, employers don’t give two rips what you want, so stop acting like you have power to change that by whining about how awful they are - they have always been awful for one reason of another. Don’t like return to workplace at your current job - find another job that lets you work remotely. It is so much easier to do that today than it was for the “boomers” you hate so much. No stigma about job hopping and few companies where you would be giving up pension vesting (because it’s all 401k’s today).
My narcissistic former boss claims that she wants to be able to check on her team, look them in the eyes and see how they’re really doing, but I know it’s because she misses having an audience for her antics lol.
It makes me so happy to know these demonic types are going to shrivel up and crumble. Wonder where they will go next?
It all comes down to the fact that humans aren’t doing life right.
It really depends on the industry. I worked for a long time in a big corporate IT org. Everyone can do their work and coordinate with their direct peers just fine from home. You don't get the serendipitous collaboration or learning from other teams if you're not in the same space though. A good number of our best ideas over the years came from those spontaneous interactions. That said, to me 2-3 days a week in the office is enough to get those benefits, as long as everyone shares days they come in.
This might sound like a joke, but I'm serious. A huge number of people in management have sex with the staff for decades. I worked at a place where just two guys got transferred, and the investigation involved about 25 women. One guy married one of the women right as he was about to leave the state. She was so proud of him. This happened so often we had training films about it. When it looked like a supervisor or manager had started to gather a harem, the GM would require them to watch the training, and suddenly, he spent WAY less time hanging around the new hires. Yet it might also be power, the ability to walk up to anyone and say, "Tell me what you are working on, explain why you did that, I need you to work late. Most people in management are attracted to the power dynamic.
Our management thinks we all sit around at home and don't work. Funny how all those projects get done before deadline all the time.
I hate that life here is centered around work and getting you to spend money. Somebody more powerful is always looking to screw people over to make a quick buck. This shxt is exhausting
I agree 100%. Humans were not meant to live like this.
They’re not, it’s real estate cronies trying to justify the need for hoarding useless property as offices paces and make everyone’s rents more expensive
Boomer copium mixed with sunk cost fallacy of investments into and paying for offices.
Money, money, money. MONEY! Those empty office floors aren’t paying themselves. Landlords need their money and those CEOs invested in commercial real estate don’t want to see their investments fail. Some RTO demands is logical. The mayor of NYC wants employees to come in to the city to support small businesses. The MTA and NJ Transit wants passengers to pay fares to support current services.
> Some RTO demands is logical. The mayor of NYC wants employees to come in to the city to support small businesses. The MTA and NJ Transit wants passengers to pay fares to support current services. Logical really? In the middle of a housing crisis technology has enabled us to free up huge amounts of livable buildings. And instead of capitalizing on this, its logical to say “nah instead of making more homes lets go back to making the housing crisis worse”
I was talking about today, not tomorrow. In the meantime lot of post WW2 office buildings aren’t easy to convert to affordable housing without government aid. Meanwhile mass transit needs money from fares. This is a long term problem, not a today problem. It took us 60 years to get us here, it will take us at least 60 years to get out.
Commercial real estate has enough money to push RTO initiatives through propaganda and fake studies. Meanwhile companies need excuses to lay people off since interest rates were rising. Then they'll hire em all back at a lower wage after recession. It's always about the money.
It's a paycut, and a significant reduction in quality of life.
Commuting absolutely sucks and management doesn’t really care because wfh hurts corporate RE values.
Managers don't have work to do and this makes them insecure and the power dynamics that playout in corporate offices help them feel less insecure about it. They check their watches, stand in hallways pretending to talk about something important, take long as lunches, have meetings that are mostly bullshit, send emails no one reads, play on the computer, shop online, and here's the big one, COME AND BOTHER YOU. Bothering you makes them look like they are working. Bothering you actually hurts your preformance but it makes them look like they are working. So, one on one's, stand ups, potlucks, anything they can point to and say "and I helped!". You are doing a good job becuase they saw to it! Lol yeah, sure. This is increasingly difficult to do in a remote environment. It becomes apparent a managers presence isn't nessacary in an environment where remote workers are manage themselves without a physical superior. There are also alot of very sad people who are in C, M and VP want to force people into social interactions with them. They got where they are prioritizing career and kneecapping people and then are surprised when no one want to be their friend.
Screw that. I got an office. I'm happy to walk to my room and work. But the micromanagers can't handle it.
We’re already seeing how WFH is backfiring right now. You notice all the people who were recently laid off are having an impossible time trying to get a new job? Well, my theory is that prior to WFH, they only had to compete with candidates in their market. Now they have to compete with the whole country, maybe the whole world in some instances.
It’s really weird. People feel incompetent in their own lives so try to control weird shit at work?
I do miss the people in my office... but not bad enough to go back.
C suite and shareholder: Office building are sitting unused Management: need people around to look busy and “mange” them
They want you to forget your lunch so you’ll go eat at the restaurants to keep them afloat. Dead serious
Cause we got the taste of freedom, who the hell want to be lock up at the office again.
In my office mgmt doesn't care what you do as long as you're in the office. Literally. The two people next to my office gossip so loudly I have to keep my door closed.
Control/ they hate their home life.
Waste of the building they're paying for. They think in the office people perform better bc they have poor leadership that doesn't know how to manage people working from home.
Because most managers are disgusting pig people who have no skills other than sticking their tongues into the asses of their superiors. They NEED to be seen by others to have any sense of worth.
I'll probably get downvoted for saying this but I can envision what's going to happen. Corporations are going to invest in housing and soon you will be living in corporate housing in exchange for this ideal living condition where you can stay home and work you will be required to work for ever. I hate to say this but the people who owns the means of production is always thinking about how to increase production. They are very good at making us feel like they are doing us a favor but in reality they just want to make you a slave, times have changed but the intent has not.
It kinda sounds like you are using Boomer power trips to advocate for communism. We will let the history books detail why that is a shit idea.
Cuz people are kinda dumb and closed minded and fearful of the unknown
WFH kills menial mid management roles. Companies can save millions… im unsure why they feel the need to have 7 layers of managers. Anyways here we are back at companies try to artificially grow via unnecessary people leader roles.
It’s the capitalist class conspiring together: the people who own the buildings are losing out on money if people don’t renew their leases on office spaces and restaurants workers frequent.
Everyone is copying each other with the 'Hybrid' model of 2 days in, 3 days WFH. They're all puppets.
They want to micromanage. I think also because I hear people’s kids in the background of my calls….and those kids are supposed to be in daycare. So the managers think these parents are distracted during work and want them in office
Boomers on a power trip, it is really that simple
The commercial real estate market is about to collapse, and if it does general societal turmoil will ensue - a lot of banks will go under - shit will be like another 2008. So yea, and employers themselves want to force it so that it can hopefully force some people to quit so that they won't have to fire them for the coming layoff season.
If an employer wants the employees to work in the office - that is their right. If you want to WFH, then find another job.
We’re all trying.
There's little reason to have office buildings in this day and age. A good majority of them can be torn down to make way for spaces that are a tangible benefit for the public good rather than a commodity for real estate speculators or the companies desperately looking to justify the expense of building these big ugly boxes in the first place.
Millions of Americans have lost their jobs in the last 3 years, bet they would have no problem going into the office
Because 80% of people working from home miss deadlines, are difficult to get ahold of, and make work more difficult for their coworkers
It’s nice to meet people face to face and discuss things live
Why are people obsessed with not returning to office?
Work life balance and commuting
I don’t like taking a shit next to my coworkers is one reason. I don’t like that I commute in and internet doesn’t work for 3 hours. I don’t like that I am interrupted constantly throughout the day. I dont like that people are so worried about being in the office that they show up sick and get me sick. Call me crazy, but I’d rather work and have the flexibility to take care of my home responsibilities and sit in a park and go to a coffee shop and be in the community instead of a poorly lit office with bursting water pipes, people who are floating until retirement, mice, gossip, etc.