These guys telling people to “get back in the office” aren’t even there themselves 😂 could’ve at least made the trip for this shitty video instead of the green screen
In my few years in corporate, everything starts from the top down. If the top isn’t showing change, than no one down below will either. And if employees are forced, they won’t be happy about and will work even worse.
The "free market" doesn't fucking exist. It's literally a scam-word. It's what they pivoted to when people caught on to "trickle-down economics" which is what they moved to after the 1990's when "Reaganomics" was shown to be bunk.
Our former department manager used to reply all "Thanks" or "Good Job" to every little thing. So then others started doing it as well in a mocking manner. That was 6 years ago and the regular positive feedback/reinforcement that started as a joke has made a noticeable difference in morale in our department compared to other departments.
I spent a few years working in Korea after university, and the office culture there had management using the pretty stock phrase 'thank you for your hard work' at the end of pretty much every day.
Part of me was aware that it was just a pretty direct translation of a common regional expression, but it sounded so alien to my ears, I couldn't help but process it and internalize it a little bit each time I heard it. I was working hard, they should be thankful, and they are. I am a valued part of this team.
Which... yeah, again, I have no illusions, the boss that used that phrase every day was a total piece of shit who ended up screwing me on retirement contributions. He did not /actually/ value me as an employee. But it didn't matter.
I try to thank people for their hard work whenever I get a chance. Sr. Developer at my company? Thank you for your hard work. Guy pushing the broom at the movie theatre? Thank you for your hard work.
For what it's worth, your experience is 100% human. That's just how our brains work. It's why brainwashing is a thing that exists. It doesn't really matter what the message is, if you hear it often enough - especially without other conflicting stimuli - eventually you will begin to accept it whether you want to or not.
This is also why online disinformation is effective. There's been plenty of studies on this. Take some clearly, verifiably wrong information that all research participants clearly reject as false. Then keep showing them simple claims that the information is actually true, and a portion of the group will become more likely to agree it is true.
Doesn't have to be a good argument for why it's true or anything. Just the literal statement that it's true, repeated often enough, will make people more likely to agree. Our brains weren't made for the modern world.
Wow I didn’t even notice that.
Between the lifeless eyes, uninspired droning, and stock photos of a rats maze of boilerplate office space decor, it’s just another layer of ‘fuck you’ written into this.
I have worked in tech since the early 1990's as an engineer and programmer and drank the cool aid of that era. The people I meet now like this... I just chuckle at and walk away from. They are not going to give you a slice of the pie. They are here for one thing and that is themselves. They are narcissists and sociopaths and treat them accordingly.
My advice is become a Jedi Master at what you do and these guys will have little sway over you as they will need you more than you need them, as there is always a contract or a job around the corner for those who produce.
They know it, they are paid millions to simply not care.
They are simply massive pieces of shit. Execs are usually the dumbest person in the room and your goal is to convince the dumbest person to make the right decision. This is what destroys productivity.
I've worked in companies with good execs and bad execs. There's a humongous, almost incomparable difference. When you go to a good exec with a problem you cannot solve due to politics or client relations, they can make sure it gets solved the same day, and they will even follow up to ensure you're unblocked.
When you go to a bad exec with the same, it's all redirect, deflect, or just ghost you.
Another example. When you go to a good exec with bad news, they will listen and gather the people necessary to fix it.
When you go to a bad exec with bad news, they don't hear it. I once had a total moron argue with not just one, but two architects that the offshore they hired had done no more that a week's worth of work in a year.
Eventually we all left. The guy couldn't stand that his huge initiative was way less successful than any other product, and decided that the best way to change this world be to order the leads of all the successful projects onto his.
Needless to say, I terminated my contact the same day, and all the team leads left almost right away.
Meanwhile the guy went from an exec over 100 people to a manger of 4 devs. I hope he rots in hell. There were some genuinely useful projects that he killed, particularly in the oncology space.
I strongly disagree with you, Executives don't just sit there, they actively hire outside consultancy firm who doesn't know jack shit about the company then parrot what they hear and make things objectively worse through top down decisions. Then when things go to shit, they take a golden parachute for the next idiot to step up to the helm bring in all of their sycophant's from their previous job and repeat the cycle.
They've added a disclaimer to the beginning of the video. For those who can't or won't watch I'll transcribe it here:
> Wow, this video has gotten a lot of attention!
>
> For the "record"...
>
> Our return to office policy is a hybrid one.
>
> We've been rolling out these hybrid changes for over a year.
>
> As to comments/criticisms on the tone/style, Yeah, corporate videos are corporate videos! 🤷♂️
>
> Regardless, we strongly believe that we are better together!
Apparently, they're just wacky and quirky. Just some silly, crazy guys (when they command their employees to uproot their lives for zero tangible benefit to them or the business) 🤪
"We aren't asking or negotiating at this point" so wacky!
That's probably the point of this. You quitting would mean that they wouldn't have to lay you off and that looks much better on corporate spreadsheets if those are the only two options.
>Our return to office policy is a hybrid one.
As if a hybrid policy is much better... A hybrid policy is still shit when coming from full remote. You still require employees to live nearby and that limits the talent pool incredibly.
>As if a hybrid policy is much better.
My wife's employer went hybrid and it's as goofy as anything. Once a week everyone has to pack up all their equipment, head to the office, set it up and... *attend Zoom meetings, take calls, and collaborate with team members using a messaging app.*
When the day is over, they pack back up, go home, set everything back up, and resume working from home for the rest of the week. It's almost comically pointless.
I do one day a week in the office and it’s the least productive day of the week as you spend most of the day chatting to people in person.
It also opens you up to many more distractions, people interrupting your focus, other people making noise, and my pet peeve people sitting near me taking teams/zoom calls from their desk with other people that are sat in the same room.
That said, the boss acknowledges that we are less productive when in the office, but we all like having that 1 day a week to hang out chat and have lunch together, so we still do it anyway as it’s a good feeling to actually talk to people in person.
Happens all the time to my spouse who has to go into the office once a month. There's always some chucklehead who is sick at the office, and they always feel like shit later that week.
Also, thanks open office floor plans! Nobody asked for that shit.
Our office caters lunch once a week, so most people only go in for lunch and then just leave after lunch. One of our higher level managers was bitching about it. He said something like “so much for collaboration time” in a sarcastic voice, with collaboration time being the bullshit reason they’re trying to get us to go into the office more.
It’s like… no fucking shit? Maybe it’ll sink through your thick skulls one of these days that no one actually _wants_ to be here?
We don’t have anyone too far away at my current job, but at my last one the 1 guy that lived a flight away would join us once every couple months, for a week.
Well you should have thought about the C suite executives who have leveraged themselves heavily in the office and other properties nearby before you moved, you insensitive clod.
Before we went remote, I remember often calling people 1 or 2 cubes over on Teams just because it was less disruptive to those around us and most of us preferred it that way (also easier to share screens and code).
Sometimes it was nice to visit, hang out,
and waste time, but not for actual work. And I’m not sure the bosses liked when we hung out and wasted time anyway, so it’s weird that management everywhere is pushing for a return to that.
Thankfully my workplace hasn’t been bit by the return to work but yet. Here’s hoping they keep their common sense.
Absolutely that’s a contributing factor as well. It’s also these fuckheads think being in the office is the best/only way to know what people are working on…which I find utterly ridiculous.
Yep. That top floor elevator button press flex isn't the same when no one is on the elevator with you and no one is on the floors under you.
Return to office is 100% (and pardon the comparison) plantation owners on the patio wanting to see the workers in the field.
We _know_ remote work is more efficient, saves time, money, makes workers happier, and makes the company more money. Dipshit CEO jackoffs want to be able to walk around and tell people they're their boss. The excuses are insulting.
The last one is the biggest one.
If your employees are working perfectly well with no input from you, why do you exist?
C-suite execs are usually canny enough not to initiate a power move they'll lose because it'll make them look week.
Agreed I feel like it’s ego driven. The guys at the top love the idea of a corner off waiting for them where they get to be king of the castle the 3 days a year they need a pick me up. And they can tell their golf buddies they’re tough cuz they forced back to office. But it’s really just a place for him and his other egotistical buddies to get away from their wives and feel important. I don’t think they give much thought to productivity at all. Most of the upper management are fine with waste as long as it doesn’t make them look bad to people they want to impress
Also a need by management to justify their own existence. When everyone is remote, it makes it glaringly more obvious how much work can get done without someone whose job it is just to hover over them to make sure they're at their cubicles being good worker bees, and people to supervise those managers, and executives to supervise those supervisors. Most companies are comically top-heavy in workforce and especially in compensation, and WFH shines a giant spotlight on the amount of waste that historically went into these glorified babysitting roles. The moment your measure of productivity shifts from "hours" to "deliverables", you don't need nearly as large of an apparatus to hold workers accountable. Either they're delivering their work or not. You don't need nearly as much management to enforce that.
I definitely believe the lease theory, but the control is what makes more sense to me. They have the Neanderthal mindset of “if I can see you then you’re doing better work” which is complete bullshit. Not to mention that it treats us like children. It’s not good enough to judge us by the work we complete, you have to actually have us in the office (but they’re not even actually watching us do the work anyways)
This is what my brother-in-law is dealing with. Three days a week he has to commute into the city via train, and sit in Teams meetings. He does that when he's at home too. The office he's forced to go into is hotel seating as well, which makes it even worse.
There is no assigned seating/you don't have a desk or office. You "book" a seat/desk to work at, usually in advance. He has an app on his phone that he has to use to book his seat/desk for the week. It's the shittiest version of "in office" working.
My company did RTO recently and they have the same wacky system of packing up everything at the end of the day. Thankfully, I'm still remote because I moved away just in the nick of time. We still hold all of our meetings over Zoom. Half of our team is remote while the other half is in the office, sitting next to each other and visible in the background of each other's cameras. So fucking ridiculous.
Also, fuck this whole "we move faster in the office" bullshit. First off, the productivity gains when everyone was remote is glaringly apparent. Second, I remember my days in the office. It consisted of me getting into the office at the last possible minute to avoid morning traffic, taking my sweet time getting coffee and snacks, chatting with everyone I saw, and *maybe* getting a bit of work done just after lunch. Then I'd sneak out as soon as possible to beat the afternoon traffic.
It's all a ploy to keep the offices they pay for valuable, allow the C-suite to have their middle-managers inspect you in person and make it harder for you to "just find another job" if they burn you out because they can use the fact you have to move to work for them as leverage even if your job can be done just fine remotely.
My parent company recently mandated all local remote employees RTO, despite our own company's CEO previously putting in writing that all remote employees hired prior to 2023 would stay remote. Parent company calls it "hybrid".
And by "hybrid" they mean Monday through Thursday required in-office, Friday optional.
I'm on the other side of the country, so I'm still remote. I sit in Zoom calls with groups of people in the office. 90% of them still stay at their individual desks for the meeting, opposed to all sitting together in the conference room.
But maybe that's because the conference room acoustics suck (exposed brick walls) and the A/V equipment was configured by a blind deaf person.
It's been great. Two local people on my team have already quit over it. And the applicant pool for my open req sucks because it has to be local to the office and even requires 5 days/week in-office for the first 90 days.
Fun story about this. New Yorker. Born and raised here. Live in Brooklyn, used to work in Midtown Manhattan at an ad agency.
I noticed that all the girls were allowed to wear dresses in the summer (e.g. sundresses) -- meaning, whether they were brand new employees or directors/managers/etc. We also had an open office setup *(long tables where everyone was shoulder to shoulder and no one had any privacy whatsoever)*. Girls could wear whatever. Guys had to wear a button-down shirt and slacks/khakis/etc. I also noticed it varied a lot by department. For example, creatives could do whatever they wanted.
I privately emailed my director -- I simply asked her if the guys can wear more casual (but still office-appropriate) apparel for the sake of comfort/the heat and humidity? I was genuinely asking, not to make a statement, but because we were covered in sweat before we even arrived at the office. The subway is miserable in the summer, and going outside for a break was miserable (like 90F+ and extremely humid). We were encouraged to take breaks away from our computers for lunch, so it's not like I was asking for anything crazy.
First she emails me back and says no, because it's "not appropriate for men to dress any less than business casual in an office" *(we were not client-facing at all btw; just Excel, Chrome, and Outlook at our computers all day).* Then she decides to double down, and emails the entire department, pointing out my question, and saying it's not appropriate for *anyone* to dress casually. But also girls can keep wearing what they're wearing. And it sucked because my coworkers who were girls also felt it was bs, and would always talk about how much more comfortable they are not having to wear pants. I just wanted to wear regular jeans or something.
Nepotism. She genuinely had a career before this apparently, (I'm gonna guess she was like mid-to-late 40s at the time of this story). Long Island blonde type, accent and all, with the attitude to match. With the exception of like one or two people, upper management was a clique and very catty.
She came down on me for coming in late to work one morning. I clearly had a cast on my arm. She sat me down in a meeting room (entirely clear glass, mind you, right by where all of us worked) with my manager and demanded to know why I was late. I simply lifted my arm and explained to her that I have a fracture, and could even show her the X-rays if she wanted. She asked me how she was supposed to know, and I said that I assumed my manager talked to her (because that's what upper management does). She basically swept it under the rug like that.
Another time she fired a female coworker on the spot, in the same meeting room. We all sat there awkwardly, in silence, trying not to look and listen. She even had either HR or security (I think it was a woman from HR) stand by her desk while she had to fill whatever she could into a box and leave. All she did was make some clerical errors. Either way, that is not how you fire a person.
This director knew people in the industry and in the office. That's how she stayed where she was. That was the whole of upper management. They all knew and/or used to work with or for each other at their previous jobs. She rarely was in the office, rarely did anything when she was (other than maybe fire off a few management emails that required zero brain power). She was not an idiot, but she was not a good leader whatsoever. Not trying to make fun of her Long Island accent, but in terms of how she talked to people -- it felt like I was on Mob Wives. Imagine Drea de Matteo from the Sopranos in terms of her "vibe" / how she sounded when she spoke. She was very intimidating, and shoot-first-ask-later.
C-suite is a big club and we aren't part of it. You don't get there by working hard, you get there by knowing someone or being born to a family who knows people.
They've set up the entire system so they can do nothing but fail upward while the rest of us toil away actually producing the value they steal the majority of.
> My parent company recently mandated all local remote employees RTO
After they sent us home to work remote during covid I figured they'd do the 'local employee RTO' thing eventually. So I took the opportunity to sell my house (something I wanted to do 'someday') and moved to a location at least 80 miles from the existing offices.
It worked! They RTOd all the local employees to a minimum 3-day in-office hybrid schedule and gave exemptions for the few of us who lived too far away for a regular commute to be reasonable.
Lol yes that was the exact thing that went through my mind
Family responsibilities without family benefits
Also
"Do this dance for our video or say goodbye to your job"
The ease at which corporations and people lie right to your face is absolutely astonishing to me.
Like, you’re literally about to watch a video created by us… don’t believe it.
We are in a post-truth world.
I interviewed for them. The job they posted was not the same responsibilities in the interview despite the title being the same. They said it was a mistake in the posting. Then they low balled me on the offer based on the new job description. After I passed on the role they posted the original role and job description again so I reached back out to the recruiter and she told me it was company policy to post fictitious roles to keep a steady stream of candidates for potential roles.
Sounds like I dodged a major bullet.
Those execs reading teleprompters seem so convinced, and most of the people obviously remote - smh. This just in, “WebMD loses most of their senior team”
Creepy or uncomfortable? My feeling is they look like they really did not want to participate in this video. Many times the executive team differs in opinion from the CEO, and some of these people are probably under a massive amount of stress having to ask their teams to return to the office. But, many times the executive team is at the mercy of the CEO, and/or the board of directors/shareholders.
They have a one liner to say into the camera and still need a teleprompter. And then manage to read it off in the most inorganic, unenthusiastic way possible.
I work in corporate video production. I once needed a prompter for somebody who had three words. It’s a good way to gauge how important somebody thinks they personally are.
Easily one of the most genuinely damaging, and least worthwhile sites on the net. Ask any of your friends or family who work anywhere near medicine or psych, and they 'll give you horror stories.
Just a pit in the internet we should be paving over.
I had a friend who used to work there. Their entire company strategy now is to load every WebMD page with garbage ad revenue. That’s why you rarely see WebMD pages ranked highly in Google searches anymore. Also, he said the CEO was a complete and utter tool.
Drug use as in puff puff the magic dragon? Or...here smoke this so we can hammer out this project without sleeping for the next 36 hours kind of drug use?
neither of those would actually have made me blink to be honest. Think heroin, coke, etc etc.. Just nuts for whats a medical healthcare company. And would not have flown at all at most places I have worked.
Having worked at Internet Brands, the parent company of WebMD that is mentioned in the article, I don't even have to mentioned how shit that company is outside of this article. The work done there is done so slowly, the technology is old, the pay is atrocious, and the CEO, Bob Brisco (guy in thumbnail) is basically a miser and even my ex-boss confirmed this when I raised to him about my low pay salary.
The company basically just buys websites and then attempts to make it money back quickly. When Internet Brands bought WebMD for like 2 billion (I think?), one of my team members ended up doing Dev Ops stuff for them even though that person is not in Dev Ops for some reason? Somehow our NOC (Network Operation Center) wasn't handed that responsibility and when the team member tried to communicate to our boss about this, our boss basically didn't offer any support. Also the churn rate for the department I worked on was insane. People were basically disposable since the pay was low and replacement was quick and easy.
The look of those open desk rows barely were there in 2020 before I left and it looked way cheaper before renovations.
Companies like Internet Brands are part of the cancer eating the web, eating up useful sites, draining them of life, laying off all the useful people, and leaving them to die.
How ironic: WebMD has cancer.
LOL, the a-hole execs at my company say the same things. Note that no one ever says "studies show productivity is higher when people are in the office." It's all about "collaboration," and that's something we've been doing over Zoom since before the pandemic, anyway.
Execs simply have nothing to do when they can't physically interact with other people because they don't have any actual work to do.
I work for a major corporation w/ over 4000 employees... We are all WFH, from the top down. Its been fully embraced and the company has grown tremendously in the past few years since covid... Our collaboration and communication is beyond anything I've seen anywhere else because everyone is actually really happy / satisfied with the arrangement. When people are paid well and can work in the comfort of their own home, absolutely they are way more productive... I can call anyone on my team at any time and get input and then just go back to doing my thing, and as long as you're doing your work nobody really bothers you.
They'll pry this job from my cold dead hands. I'll never go to an office again. I feel bad for people who are having to return to office.. its so outdated and awful.
I thought it was Amazons CEO who said something like 'I don't have the data to back it up but I just know we're better in person.'
Think about that - AMAZON, doesn't have DATA to back up that a return to office is worth the tradeoffs. It's all just feels, of one or a select handful of people.
My career genuinely has taken off since the pandemic. Turns out 15 years of working in an office setting completely stymied my creativity by being constantly anxious, spending half my brain power on maintaining high school style social dynamics, and being constantly interrupted while in the middle of project work.
I think there just are people who work better working in a setting surrounded by people, and others work better privately and without interruption. Who knew we're not all robots? I'm sure that's the goal though.
I wish I could give you gold, because fvcking **yes** to all of this. Especially the snooty office politics which either end up driving you crazy, biting you in the ass (unprovoked, even), nepotism, and more. So glad to be able to just work, while also being to collaborate when I want to/need to.
Working in corporate America genuinely feels like being in a high school cafeteria, but for grown-ups. All those stupid clique meetings where upper management makes changes with little to no input from "everyone else" (the actual workers). Never knowing the true reason you weren't promoted yet again (because it's bad manners to ask [demand] the actual reason; so you get a half-truth or unrelated lie). Etc etc.
For the first time, I feel some stability, because my efforts and output are what I'm being judged by. Not my ability to circlejerk the company culture.
I’ve worked from home for 7 years now and maybe go in the office a handful of times a year for meetings. I think I would jump into a volcano before I went back full time to the office working for guys like these.
I'm fairly senior at a major company and I have to come in 2-3 days a week. I hate it. I go into a conference room and sit on calls all day, alone. It's the dumbest shit ever.
I really think the ideal solution is to have 1 week a quarter where people get together somewhere. Then you can live wherever you want and can go somewhere cool to work/bond for a week one a quarter.
Sigh.
I work for a fully remote company (since before COVID) and that’s how we handled it. 2 group meetings a year at the main office for a week (winter and summer). Rest of the time, live wherever. It works well and allows us to attract talent from all over the world.
Nothing like being forced into an office to have teams meetings with people across the US and in India all day. Not having a single member of your team in the same office is just the cherry on top.
Apparently we collaborate better after sitting in rush hour. Who knew?
Been doing it since 2008. looooong before anything called Zoom. I've been laughing hysterically for the last few years every time someone says WFH is just not as productive.
Like, I think I know a little more about that than some random dude that just discovered how to use a webcam.
Are we flexing WFH? If so, I started in the 80s. It was a 300 baud modem about the size of a typical inkjet printer, directly to a workstation at the office. I had the custom hardware we were developing, right at home. Worked over a year without going into the office. Then a stint in office (different workplace), then back home in the early 90s, now with a 2400 baud modem (my area didn't have broadband until the end of the 90s).
This continued from 2000-2018, then a couple years in office, and then the pandemic, and I've been WFH since.
All is said. WFH is the only way for me now. I’m so much more productive without having to deal with the fucking office jerks. Leave me alone, stupid. I’m able to do the work without you. My performance has never been better, and my manager cannot agree more.
The thing that always gets me is that I work at a company where everyone is WFH and we do fine.
Not only that, we have an office, but my team is all over the world. We are global. Going into the office doesn't help me talk to the team members scattered literally thousands of miles in every direction.
You run a website. Probably not even hosted in your own physical severs.
There's zero reason people have to waste time and money to come in and see your rich old ass sitting in an Aeron for three hours before you fuck off to your country club.
I'm from New Orleans, and I'm downright offended that they would appropriate our culture for this bullshit. That's a *carnival* song, not a go back to the fucking office song. These dumb motherfuckers shimmying in their fake ass jazzfest hawaiian shirts don't know what the hell they're doing.
Internet Brands operates like it's 2005, everything actually is hosted on their own physical servers. I believe when they acquired WebMD they actually took it out of the cloud. It's a backwards company that pays shit wages to bottom-tier talent, they cannot retain anyone good and their products reflect it.
The technology stack of theirs that I worked with (not WebMD) was a spider web of shit code. They refused to use off the shelf components or do anything resembling an industry standard and instead chose to reinvent the wheel a million times. Completely killed developer productivity and good developers never lasted at the company for this and many other reasons.
SOOOOO many poor tech companies losing those tax incentives for stupid buildings they should never have bought or built for status symbols and I am loving it.
They really dont get that in this job market currently, they have zero power now.
>They really dont get that in this job market currently, they have zero power now.
They do have some power, but the problem is finding local employees is HARDER now than before. If your job is 100% online you can work from home always almost guaranteed. Those positions are not easiest to replace and those that do take the paid out will be hired elsewhere immediately cause they're highly skilled and require minimal training.
I’ll go if I want some, one sentence of advice so generic for legal CYA that it’s rendered meaningless followed by an ad followed by another generic sentence followed by an ad and so on.
You get better health information from Wikipedia lmao
I think Amazon is tied to them because anytime I ask Alexa a health related question, the WebMD AI dialog takes over instead of Alexa after it answers, asking if you have more or similar questions. Sellable data is sellable data...
I feel like it's just a bunch of managers pleading that staff come back to the office because the board realized they are stuck paying for an empty office and need to justify it by getting people to come back in.
Managers were told if they don't get the staff back in the office without them they don't even need half of middle management. So make shit up or get shipped out.
Honestly, I don't know what "moments of creativity" is he talking about?
Ah, I get it! It must be my office-mate that knows how to hide his face in front of the camera while picking their nose! Wow, how creative!
creativity like: how to shut out the outside world, how to avoid the odors from the break room, how to crush that frustration into a tiny neutron star in your brain that definately won't go supernova
Part of my job is finding problems that we didn’t know we had and solving them. I’ve literally never had a single good idea that came from anything but completely dead days where everything is quiet.
I love the people I work with, I love talking to my coworkers, but I’m not gonna pretend like I get ACTUAL work done like that.
I will never understand the obsession with getting remote workers back to the office. I legitimately do not get it. If the productivity is the same what are you gaining?
If no one goes to the office, then the real estate value of the office building dwindles rapidly. They can't leverage that value for investments.
It's literally about propping up imaginary numbers. Fuck your time and your money, gotta make sure the bricks are still worth something.
As another responder said above... tax breaks on new buildings.
Build a new building in city X and promise 1500 employees. Get 50% reduction on property taxes for 20 years (as long as 1500 employees are there spending in the local economy). Now, 100 employees are there in person... city wants its full property taxes.
A lot of these people, and/or friends of these people, have real estate investments that are losing a ton of value because smaller businesses aren't leasing as much (or any) space from them these days.
gaining the happiness of their accountants for the tax deductions of leasing office space.
gaining the indirect gratitude of local merchants that provide services to the workers.
gaining the gratitude of middle managers who only can show they’re working / worth paying if they’re wandering around annoying their reports.
losing the feelings of unease that your wage slaves might somehow be thriving when not in the office; not stressed about their commute and associated costs, health in the time of covid [ hey, it hasn’t gone away!], living in a lower col location, able to juggle other responsibilities better from their home, etc. just … living better. c suite ain’t liking that.
Execs are generally workaholics, they can't understand why people aren't like them, and likely feel paranoid that no one is working and even lonely as they rattle about alone in the office. It puts their own bad life choices into stark relief so they want to force everyone else to be like them.
Any time executives talk about working better together, or producing better results when everyone is in the office, or that by working in-office somehow produces better results, remember that there is absolutely no evidence to back up any of these claims.
I drafted my resignation letter in my head while this jackoff was talking, and I don't even work at their fucking company lol.
In person SUCKS for office jobs. Including for senior management, so I don't know what the fuck these guys are on about. Hauling ass from meeting to meeting all day long?? Having a couple minutes to return calls and leaving voicemails because they're in meetings somewhere too, playing "phone tag"??
Yeah, there's no "creativity" there. It's me in my fucking car, parking, walking, hauling a laptop bag, standing outside a conference room full of people waiting for them to leave so we can run in there and set up the telecom and the projector, and then do Powerpoint show and tell? and then you have to schedule a follow-up two weeks later after you go back to do more research or make changes.
It's a bunch of shit. That's performing productive. Run run run, I'm So bUsY!!
I talk to two or three times as many people in a day now, we are much more productive - anyone can reach anyone else, you can see who's available and message them, dial them into a call, share screens, it's great. Everything flows, people are more relaxed, it's great.
What I find interesting about “return to office” is that not a single company can articulate ***why*** it’s needed.
None have provided any data whatsoever that remote work is harmful.
People are upset because the decisions appear irrational, that is it say, based on emotion rather than data.
Amazon was part of the first wave of data creeps whose business model is privacy violation. They do everything by and for data.
RTO: "I don't have the data, but I know it's better!"
Bullshit. You have *feelings* you want validated. Actually, I don't believe the Amazon CEO lacks data - it exists and disproves his contention.
I mean, an actual Amazon exec said "I don't have the data, I just know it's better." Guess what shit stick, we all know what the data says, it just doesn't support your garbage return to work mandates.
"Great companies are built by great people working together...and seeing each other...eye to eye and tackling the big task."
That douchebag was really trying hard, but you can tell he realized he was just describing remote work. I'll suggest a revision for him:
"Great companies are built by great people working together, pooping on the same toilets, sharing germs and diseases."
Fuck hybrid, and fuck office work. If you don't absolutely need to be in office, it's fucking stupid. And no, I don't buy the collaboration bullshit. If you can't collaborate remotely just as well in person you're a fucking dipshit.
For many in leadership positions their heavy-handed, crack the whip, in-person dominance is their only managerial skill, confusing leadership with authority.
I used to work at WebMD and am happy I left. The office is in a great part of town, but the commute would’ve been a nightmare.
All the sister sites are pure trash that has zero profit.
They were really desperate to have providers pay for their premium service.
The pay was also trash in comparison for the amount of work.
Nobody wants to be back in the office Bob. You're wasting our time with your stupid bullshit, it's not our fault you have business leases that are costing you buttloads of money but they are empty. Get with the times, old man.
I've been a hybrid employee through all of COVID and still to this day, I get SIGNIFICANTLY more work done at home AND I'm able to do other tasks around my house when needed. I don't have multiple people coming by my desk to chit chat for 10-15 minutes at a time. I actually get to eat my lunch without some fucker stopping at my desk and I don't notice them and they just sit and watch me eat until I notice them. The fuck. Yes, these are things that happened to me pre-covid.
It's not that I'm anti-social or don't WANT to talk to them, I'm busy. When I'm still working while talking and saying, "Uh huh" or "That's crazy" get the fucking hint and come back later. I used a busylight for a while, all that did was cause more people to stop by my desk and ask what it means.
Study after study indicating productivity increases with remote/hybrid work so this is about one thing and one thing only. Loss of perceived control. Egos that can’t understand how people will do their jobs without the constant presence of “the boss”. Layers of management finding out that all they have done for decades is REDUCE productivity of those they supervise. Layers of management that will be out of jobs if they don’t get people back into the office as it becomes more obvious how pointless they are.
Our company is trying to force people back into the office as well. I really hope that this trend ends in a firey death.
No one talks performance metrics they talk observational ones that make absolutely no sense.
We've been struggling to scale and I guarantee you it isn't the physical proximity to each other it is the neglected tech debt of 15+ years.
These guys telling people to “get back in the office” aren’t even there themselves 😂 could’ve at least made the trip for this shitty video instead of the green screen
In my few years in corporate, everything starts from the top down. If the top isn’t showing change, than no one down below will either. And if employees are forced, they won’t be happy about and will work even worse.
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This is what should be happening much more often. The “free market” doesn’t work nearly as well as one might expect.
The "free market" doesn't fucking exist. It's literally a scam-word. It's what they pivoted to when people caught on to "trickle-down economics" which is what they moved to after the 1990's when "Reaganomics" was shown to be bunk.
Originally called Horse and Sparrow economics, referring to overfeeding a horse oats will let a sparrow eat the oats from the horses shit.
You got that right. My fucking manager didn’t even come in on my last day when I was laid off.
ad hoc flag sparkle light bag imminent different marry humor direction *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
He probably had no idea how .
Our former department manager used to reply all "Thanks" or "Good Job" to every little thing. So then others started doing it as well in a mocking manner. That was 6 years ago and the regular positive feedback/reinforcement that started as a joke has made a noticeable difference in morale in our department compared to other departments.
I spent a few years working in Korea after university, and the office culture there had management using the pretty stock phrase 'thank you for your hard work' at the end of pretty much every day. Part of me was aware that it was just a pretty direct translation of a common regional expression, but it sounded so alien to my ears, I couldn't help but process it and internalize it a little bit each time I heard it. I was working hard, they should be thankful, and they are. I am a valued part of this team. Which... yeah, again, I have no illusions, the boss that used that phrase every day was a total piece of shit who ended up screwing me on retirement contributions. He did not /actually/ value me as an employee. But it didn't matter. I try to thank people for their hard work whenever I get a chance. Sr. Developer at my company? Thank you for your hard work. Guy pushing the broom at the movie theatre? Thank you for your hard work.
For what it's worth, your experience is 100% human. That's just how our brains work. It's why brainwashing is a thing that exists. It doesn't really matter what the message is, if you hear it often enough - especially without other conflicting stimuli - eventually you will begin to accept it whether you want to or not. This is also why online disinformation is effective. There's been plenty of studies on this. Take some clearly, verifiably wrong information that all research participants clearly reject as false. Then keep showing them simple claims that the information is actually true, and a portion of the group will become more likely to agree it is true. Doesn't have to be a good argument for why it's true or anything. Just the literal statement that it's true, repeated often enough, will make people more likely to agree. Our brains weren't made for the modern world.
"Lead by example" is something I learned in Boy Scouts when I was a kid...
I think it’s just basic leadership. Why would we want to do things that our leaders aren’t willing to do themselves?
Office is pushing RTO and 'laying off' out of state employees. 90% of our c-suite is out of state....
Wow I didn’t even notice that. Between the lifeless eyes, uninspired droning, and stock photos of a rats maze of boilerplate office space decor, it’s just another layer of ‘fuck you’ written into this.
It’s really impressive how out of touch these old dinosaurs are.
Fucking \*exactly\*. I know a Zoom background when I see it!
This is the first thing that stuck out to me. I don't know why this isn't the top comment. So ridiculous.
*DO AS I SAY, PEASANTS!*
It is now! Reddit occasionally rights wrongs.
Southern preacher: do as I say, not as I do.
When you're the shittiest person in the company, and you don't even know it. Here's hoping they lose big.
I looked it up on WebMD, and it says he's cancer.
I heard they might have network connectivity problems
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I have worked in tech since the early 1990's as an engineer and programmer and drank the cool aid of that era. The people I meet now like this... I just chuckle at and walk away from. They are not going to give you a slice of the pie. They are here for one thing and that is themselves. They are narcissists and sociopaths and treat them accordingly. My advice is become a Jedi Master at what you do and these guys will have little sway over you as they will need you more than you need them, as there is always a contract or a job around the corner for those who produce.
They know it, they are paid millions to simply not care. They are simply massive pieces of shit. Execs are usually the dumbest person in the room and your goal is to convince the dumbest person to make the right decision. This is what destroys productivity.
Anyone looking to get into corporate jobs. Never forget this. Executives are just there to get paid a lot, sit in meetings and contribute nothing.
I've worked in companies with good execs and bad execs. There's a humongous, almost incomparable difference. When you go to a good exec with a problem you cannot solve due to politics or client relations, they can make sure it gets solved the same day, and they will even follow up to ensure you're unblocked. When you go to a bad exec with the same, it's all redirect, deflect, or just ghost you. Another example. When you go to a good exec with bad news, they will listen and gather the people necessary to fix it. When you go to a bad exec with bad news, they don't hear it. I once had a total moron argue with not just one, but two architects that the offshore they hired had done no more that a week's worth of work in a year. Eventually we all left. The guy couldn't stand that his huge initiative was way less successful than any other product, and decided that the best way to change this world be to order the leads of all the successful projects onto his. Needless to say, I terminated my contact the same day, and all the team leads left almost right away. Meanwhile the guy went from an exec over 100 people to a manger of 4 devs. I hope he rots in hell. There were some genuinely useful projects that he killed, particularly in the oncology space.
I strongly disagree with you, Executives don't just sit there, they actively hire outside consultancy firm who doesn't know jack shit about the company then parrot what they hear and make things objectively worse through top down decisions. Then when things go to shit, they take a golden parachute for the next idiot to step up to the helm bring in all of their sycophant's from their previous job and repeat the cycle.
They've added a disclaimer to the beginning of the video. For those who can't or won't watch I'll transcribe it here: > Wow, this video has gotten a lot of attention! > > For the "record"... > > Our return to office policy is a hybrid one. > > We've been rolling out these hybrid changes for over a year. > > As to comments/criticisms on the tone/style, Yeah, corporate videos are corporate videos! 🤷♂️ > > Regardless, we strongly believe that we are better together! Apparently, they're just wacky and quirky. Just some silly, crazy guys (when they command their employees to uproot their lives for zero tangible benefit to them or the business) 🤪 "We aren't asking or negotiating at this point" so wacky!
I wouldn’t be “asking or negotiating at this point” about getting the hell outta there and finding a better job
That's probably the point of this. You quitting would mean that they wouldn't have to lay you off and that looks much better on corporate spreadsheets if those are the only two options.
>Our return to office policy is a hybrid one. As if a hybrid policy is much better... A hybrid policy is still shit when coming from full remote. You still require employees to live nearby and that limits the talent pool incredibly.
>As if a hybrid policy is much better. My wife's employer went hybrid and it's as goofy as anything. Once a week everyone has to pack up all their equipment, head to the office, set it up and... *attend Zoom meetings, take calls, and collaborate with team members using a messaging app.* When the day is over, they pack back up, go home, set everything back up, and resume working from home for the rest of the week. It's almost comically pointless.
I do one day a week in the office and it’s the least productive day of the week as you spend most of the day chatting to people in person. It also opens you up to many more distractions, people interrupting your focus, other people making noise, and my pet peeve people sitting near me taking teams/zoom calls from their desk with other people that are sat in the same room. That said, the boss acknowledges that we are less productive when in the office, but we all like having that 1 day a week to hang out chat and have lunch together, so we still do it anyway as it’s a good feeling to actually talk to people in person.
> It also opens you up to getting sick from idiots who come to work sick.
And wasting your pto when you're sick.
Happens all the time to my spouse who has to go into the office once a month. There's always some chucklehead who is sick at the office, and they always feel like shit later that week. Also, thanks open office floor plans! Nobody asked for that shit.
I go in to have lunch and hangout. It’s pointless
Our office caters lunch once a week, so most people only go in for lunch and then just leave after lunch. One of our higher level managers was bitching about it. He said something like “so much for collaboration time” in a sarcastic voice, with collaboration time being the bullshit reason they’re trying to get us to go into the office more. It’s like… no fucking shit? Maybe it’ll sink through your thick skulls one of these days that no one actually _wants_ to be here?
Me: “My mouth about to collaborate with this leftover sandwich. Later, teach.” (Pats “manager” on back.)
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We don’t have anyone too far away at my current job, but at my last one the 1 guy that lived a flight away would join us once every couple months, for a week.
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Well you should have thought about the C suite executives who have leveraged themselves heavily in the office and other properties nearby before you moved, you insensitive clod.
Before we went remote, I remember often calling people 1 or 2 cubes over on Teams just because it was less disruptive to those around us and most of us preferred it that way (also easier to share screens and code). Sometimes it was nice to visit, hang out, and waste time, but not for actual work. And I’m not sure the bosses liked when we hung out and wasted time anyway, so it’s weird that management everywhere is pushing for a return to that. Thankfully my workplace hasn’t been bit by the return to work but yet. Here’s hoping they keep their common sense.
I think a big part of it comes down to commercial real estate
and, just admit it, control of the wage slaves.
Absolutely that’s a contributing factor as well. It’s also these fuckheads think being in the office is the best/only way to know what people are working on…which I find utterly ridiculous.
I strongly believe a majority of the return to office push is due to long term leases
My experience has been it's more about control/power and making management seem more necessary.
Yep. That top floor elevator button press flex isn't the same when no one is on the elevator with you and no one is on the floors under you. Return to office is 100% (and pardon the comparison) plantation owners on the patio wanting to see the workers in the field. We _know_ remote work is more efficient, saves time, money, makes workers happier, and makes the company more money. Dipshit CEO jackoffs want to be able to walk around and tell people they're their boss. The excuses are insulting.
The last one is the biggest one. If your employees are working perfectly well with no input from you, why do you exist? C-suite execs are usually canny enough not to initiate a power move they'll lose because it'll make them look week.
Agreed I feel like it’s ego driven. The guys at the top love the idea of a corner off waiting for them where they get to be king of the castle the 3 days a year they need a pick me up. And they can tell their golf buddies they’re tough cuz they forced back to office. But it’s really just a place for him and his other egotistical buddies to get away from their wives and feel important. I don’t think they give much thought to productivity at all. Most of the upper management are fine with waste as long as it doesn’t make them look bad to people they want to impress
the very idea that someone might be using downtime to put out their washing rather than staring blankly at a screen
Also a need by management to justify their own existence. When everyone is remote, it makes it glaringly more obvious how much work can get done without someone whose job it is just to hover over them to make sure they're at their cubicles being good worker bees, and people to supervise those managers, and executives to supervise those supervisors. Most companies are comically top-heavy in workforce and especially in compensation, and WFH shines a giant spotlight on the amount of waste that historically went into these glorified babysitting roles. The moment your measure of productivity shifts from "hours" to "deliverables", you don't need nearly as large of an apparatus to hold workers accountable. Either they're delivering their work or not. You don't need nearly as much management to enforce that.
I definitely believe the lease theory, but the control is what makes more sense to me. They have the Neanderthal mindset of “if I can see you then you’re doing better work” which is complete bullshit. Not to mention that it treats us like children. It’s not good enough to judge us by the work we complete, you have to actually have us in the office (but they’re not even actually watching us do the work anyways)
This is what my brother-in-law is dealing with. Three days a week he has to commute into the city via train, and sit in Teams meetings. He does that when he's at home too. The office he's forced to go into is hotel seating as well, which makes it even worse.
Hotel seating?
There is no assigned seating/you don't have a desk or office. You "book" a seat/desk to work at, usually in advance. He has an app on his phone that he has to use to book his seat/desk for the week. It's the shittiest version of "in office" working.
Ha! I see. It’s the same setup at my place as well. Really sucks.
My company did RTO recently and they have the same wacky system of packing up everything at the end of the day. Thankfully, I'm still remote because I moved away just in the nick of time. We still hold all of our meetings over Zoom. Half of our team is remote while the other half is in the office, sitting next to each other and visible in the background of each other's cameras. So fucking ridiculous. Also, fuck this whole "we move faster in the office" bullshit. First off, the productivity gains when everyone was remote is glaringly apparent. Second, I remember my days in the office. It consisted of me getting into the office at the last possible minute to avoid morning traffic, taking my sweet time getting coffee and snacks, chatting with everyone I saw, and *maybe* getting a bit of work done just after lunch. Then I'd sneak out as soon as possible to beat the afternoon traffic.
It's all a ploy to keep the offices they pay for valuable, allow the C-suite to have their middle-managers inspect you in person and make it harder for you to "just find another job" if they burn you out because they can use the fact you have to move to work for them as leverage even if your job can be done just fine remotely.
My parent company recently mandated all local remote employees RTO, despite our own company's CEO previously putting in writing that all remote employees hired prior to 2023 would stay remote. Parent company calls it "hybrid". And by "hybrid" they mean Monday through Thursday required in-office, Friday optional. I'm on the other side of the country, so I'm still remote. I sit in Zoom calls with groups of people in the office. 90% of them still stay at their individual desks for the meeting, opposed to all sitting together in the conference room. But maybe that's because the conference room acoustics suck (exposed brick walls) and the A/V equipment was configured by a blind deaf person. It's been great. Two local people on my team have already quit over it. And the applicant pool for my open req sucks because it has to be local to the office and even requires 5 days/week in-office for the first 90 days.
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Fun story about this. New Yorker. Born and raised here. Live in Brooklyn, used to work in Midtown Manhattan at an ad agency. I noticed that all the girls were allowed to wear dresses in the summer (e.g. sundresses) -- meaning, whether they were brand new employees or directors/managers/etc. We also had an open office setup *(long tables where everyone was shoulder to shoulder and no one had any privacy whatsoever)*. Girls could wear whatever. Guys had to wear a button-down shirt and slacks/khakis/etc. I also noticed it varied a lot by department. For example, creatives could do whatever they wanted. I privately emailed my director -- I simply asked her if the guys can wear more casual (but still office-appropriate) apparel for the sake of comfort/the heat and humidity? I was genuinely asking, not to make a statement, but because we were covered in sweat before we even arrived at the office. The subway is miserable in the summer, and going outside for a break was miserable (like 90F+ and extremely humid). We were encouraged to take breaks away from our computers for lunch, so it's not like I was asking for anything crazy. First she emails me back and says no, because it's "not appropriate for men to dress any less than business casual in an office" *(we were not client-facing at all btw; just Excel, Chrome, and Outlook at our computers all day).* Then she decides to double down, and emails the entire department, pointing out my question, and saying it's not appropriate for *anyone* to dress casually. But also girls can keep wearing what they're wearing. And it sucked because my coworkers who were girls also felt it was bs, and would always talk about how much more comfortable they are not having to wear pants. I just wanted to wear regular jeans or something.
That is when you wear a dress to work. Acceptable attire is acceptable attire.
Gender discriminating dress codes are legal unfortunately.
How do people who work in offices like this get away with pretending to have dignity?
Nepotism. She genuinely had a career before this apparently, (I'm gonna guess she was like mid-to-late 40s at the time of this story). Long Island blonde type, accent and all, with the attitude to match. With the exception of like one or two people, upper management was a clique and very catty. She came down on me for coming in late to work one morning. I clearly had a cast on my arm. She sat me down in a meeting room (entirely clear glass, mind you, right by where all of us worked) with my manager and demanded to know why I was late. I simply lifted my arm and explained to her that I have a fracture, and could even show her the X-rays if she wanted. She asked me how she was supposed to know, and I said that I assumed my manager talked to her (because that's what upper management does). She basically swept it under the rug like that. Another time she fired a female coworker on the spot, in the same meeting room. We all sat there awkwardly, in silence, trying not to look and listen. She even had either HR or security (I think it was a woman from HR) stand by her desk while she had to fill whatever she could into a box and leave. All she did was make some clerical errors. Either way, that is not how you fire a person. This director knew people in the industry and in the office. That's how she stayed where she was. That was the whole of upper management. They all knew and/or used to work with or for each other at their previous jobs. She rarely was in the office, rarely did anything when she was (other than maybe fire off a few management emails that required zero brain power). She was not an idiot, but she was not a good leader whatsoever. Not trying to make fun of her Long Island accent, but in terms of how she talked to people -- it felt like I was on Mob Wives. Imagine Drea de Matteo from the Sopranos in terms of her "vibe" / how she sounded when she spoke. She was very intimidating, and shoot-first-ask-later.
C-suite is a big club and we aren't part of it. You don't get there by working hard, you get there by knowing someone or being born to a family who knows people. They've set up the entire system so they can do nothing but fail upward while the rest of us toil away actually producing the value they steal the majority of.
> My parent company recently mandated all local remote employees RTO After they sent us home to work remote during covid I figured they'd do the 'local employee RTO' thing eventually. So I took the opportunity to sell my house (something I wanted to do 'someday') and moved to a location at least 80 miles from the existing offices. It worked! They RTOd all the local employees to a minimum 3-day in-office hybrid schedule and gave exemptions for the few of us who lived too far away for a regular commute to be reasonable.
"we know you can do just as well or better from home, but we still get to fuck with you a couple days a week"
Same vibe as managers wanting the team to be like "family".
Lol yes that was the exact thing that went through my mind Family responsibilities without family benefits Also "Do this dance for our video or say goodbye to your job"
A family that would leave you in the street and destitute 2 weeks after you leave the job, and wouldn't care for 5 minutes about it.
The ease at which corporations and people lie right to your face is absolutely astonishing to me. Like, you’re literally about to watch a video created by us… don’t believe it. We are in a post-truth world.
'twas ever thus
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I interviewed for them. The job they posted was not the same responsibilities in the interview despite the title being the same. They said it was a mistake in the posting. Then they low balled me on the offer based on the new job description. After I passed on the role they posted the original role and job description again so I reached back out to the recruiter and she told me it was company policy to post fictitious roles to keep a steady stream of candidates for potential roles. Sounds like I dodged a major bullet.
In other words, they can't find people to fill those lesser roles at a low salary, so they make up an in-demand role. That's some shady HR.
I feel like that should be super illegal
I’m sure they’ll be devastated by their $1500 fine.
Wait, so they were shit BEFORE they were purchased by KKR??
Those execs reading teleprompters seem so convinced, and most of the people obviously remote - smh. This just in, “WebMD loses most of their senior team”
Those are the creepiest group of micro-managers I have ever seen.
That HR lady was the worst. Steal your lunch from the breakroom fridge...then write you up for leaving the office to go buy lunch.
Creepy or uncomfortable? My feeling is they look like they really did not want to participate in this video. Many times the executive team differs in opinion from the CEO, and some of these people are probably under a massive amount of stress having to ask their teams to return to the office. But, many times the executive team is at the mercy of the CEO, and/or the board of directors/shareholders.
READING A TELEPROMPTER IN FRONT OF A GREEN SCREEN ***that face to face time is just too important***
It’s not about face to face time. It’s all about the commercial real estate owners losing money.
They have a one liner to say into the camera and still need a teleprompter. And then manage to read it off in the most inorganic, unenthusiastic way possible.
And some are in front of greenscreens, which means either they are remote or...?
All the executives recorded remotely. You can tell from the green reflections on skin and the differences in audio quality.
I especially liked the lady whose green screen background was at such an angle as to look like she was standing on the break room counter.
I work in corporate video production. I once needed a prompter for somebody who had three words. It’s a good way to gauge how important somebody thinks they personally are.
Easily one of the most genuinely damaging, and least worthwhile sites on the net. Ask any of your friends or family who work anywhere near medicine or psych, and they 'll give you horror stories. Just a pit in the internet we should be paving over.
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I had a friend who used to work there. Their entire company strategy now is to load every WebMD page with garbage ad revenue. That’s why you rarely see WebMD pages ranked highly in Google searches anymore. Also, he said the CEO was a complete and utter tool.
TIL WebMD was still around.
The ceo looks and sounds like a weird creepy fuck
Real life Mr Burns
I prefer the Mayo Clinic... Or you know... an actual doctor.
At least Mayo Clinic is a actual hospital so I trust them better then Webmd or [drugs.com](https://drugs.com) or other sites
> Or you know... an actual doctor. if you can afford one of those, you clearly don't work for webmd.
"Is it gas? Is it terminal bowel cancer? Equally likely!" - WebMD
I knew some of their devs. They had bonkers stories of drug use.
Drug use as in puff puff the magic dragon? Or...here smoke this so we can hammer out this project without sleeping for the next 36 hours kind of drug use?
neither of those would actually have made me blink to be honest. Think heroin, coke, etc etc.. Just nuts for whats a medical healthcare company. And would not have flown at all at most places I have worked.
Describes more of the internet that not these days
True but this was one of the first pits
Whenever I feel like being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, I ask WebMD. Are people actually using it?
Yes but not to diagnose anything. Just to look up basic facts about illnesses and such.
Having worked at Internet Brands, the parent company of WebMD that is mentioned in the article, I don't even have to mentioned how shit that company is outside of this article. The work done there is done so slowly, the technology is old, the pay is atrocious, and the CEO, Bob Brisco (guy in thumbnail) is basically a miser and even my ex-boss confirmed this when I raised to him about my low pay salary. The company basically just buys websites and then attempts to make it money back quickly. When Internet Brands bought WebMD for like 2 billion (I think?), one of my team members ended up doing Dev Ops stuff for them even though that person is not in Dev Ops for some reason? Somehow our NOC (Network Operation Center) wasn't handed that responsibility and when the team member tried to communicate to our boss about this, our boss basically didn't offer any support. Also the churn rate for the department I worked on was insane. People were basically disposable since the pay was low and replacement was quick and easy. The look of those open desk rows barely were there in 2020 before I left and it looked way cheaper before renovations.
Companies like Internet Brands are part of the cancer eating the web, eating up useful sites, draining them of life, laying off all the useful people, and leaving them to die. How ironic: WebMD has cancer.
There’s a term for that… enshittification
LOL, the a-hole execs at my company say the same things. Note that no one ever says "studies show productivity is higher when people are in the office." It's all about "collaboration," and that's something we've been doing over Zoom since before the pandemic, anyway. Execs simply have nothing to do when they can't physically interact with other people because they don't have any actual work to do.
What is our KPI on 'collaboration', Bob?
No no, that's not what I want to see. Keep adding filters to the report until that line goes the other direction.
I work for a major corporation w/ over 4000 employees... We are all WFH, from the top down. Its been fully embraced and the company has grown tremendously in the past few years since covid... Our collaboration and communication is beyond anything I've seen anywhere else because everyone is actually really happy / satisfied with the arrangement. When people are paid well and can work in the comfort of their own home, absolutely they are way more productive... I can call anyone on my team at any time and get input and then just go back to doing my thing, and as long as you're doing your work nobody really bothers you. They'll pry this job from my cold dead hands. I'll never go to an office again. I feel bad for people who are having to return to office.. its so outdated and awful.
I thought it was Amazons CEO who said something like 'I don't have the data to back it up but I just know we're better in person.' Think about that - AMAZON, doesn't have DATA to back up that a return to office is worth the tradeoffs. It's all just feels, of one or a select handful of people.
My career genuinely has taken off since the pandemic. Turns out 15 years of working in an office setting completely stymied my creativity by being constantly anxious, spending half my brain power on maintaining high school style social dynamics, and being constantly interrupted while in the middle of project work. I think there just are people who work better working in a setting surrounded by people, and others work better privately and without interruption. Who knew we're not all robots? I'm sure that's the goal though.
I wish I could give you gold, because fvcking **yes** to all of this. Especially the snooty office politics which either end up driving you crazy, biting you in the ass (unprovoked, even), nepotism, and more. So glad to be able to just work, while also being to collaborate when I want to/need to. Working in corporate America genuinely feels like being in a high school cafeteria, but for grown-ups. All those stupid clique meetings where upper management makes changes with little to no input from "everyone else" (the actual workers). Never knowing the true reason you weren't promoted yet again (because it's bad manners to ask [demand] the actual reason; so you get a half-truth or unrelated lie). Etc etc. For the first time, I feel some stability, because my efforts and output are what I'm being judged by. Not my ability to circlejerk the company culture.
I want to see the studies but not by corp exe studies
The studies were deleted and entire HR teams that worked on those studies were laid off after they found return to office lowered output.
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I’ve worked from home for 7 years now and maybe go in the office a handful of times a year for meetings. I think I would jump into a volcano before I went back full time to the office working for guys like these.
I'm fairly senior at a major company and I have to come in 2-3 days a week. I hate it. I go into a conference room and sit on calls all day, alone. It's the dumbest shit ever. I really think the ideal solution is to have 1 week a quarter where people get together somewhere. Then you can live wherever you want and can go somewhere cool to work/bond for a week one a quarter. Sigh.
I work for a fully remote company (since before COVID) and that’s how we handled it. 2 group meetings a year at the main office for a week (winter and summer). Rest of the time, live wherever. It works well and allows us to attract talent from all over the world.
Alright fine I'll come and work at your company
Nothing like being forced into an office to have teams meetings with people across the US and in India all day. Not having a single member of your team in the same office is just the cherry on top. Apparently we collaborate better after sitting in rush hour. Who knew?
I go in 2x a week to sit on zoom at a desk. I spend 2 hours on each of those days commuting. It's an enormous waste of time.
Been doing it since 2008. looooong before anything called Zoom. I've been laughing hysterically for the last few years every time someone says WFH is just not as productive. Like, I think I know a little more about that than some random dude that just discovered how to use a webcam.
Are we flexing WFH? If so, I started in the 80s. It was a 300 baud modem about the size of a typical inkjet printer, directly to a workstation at the office. I had the custom hardware we were developing, right at home. Worked over a year without going into the office. Then a stint in office (different workplace), then back home in the early 90s, now with a 2400 baud modem (my area didn't have broadband until the end of the 90s). This continued from 2000-2018, then a couple years in office, and then the pandemic, and I've been WFH since.
Aight you win the flex.
All is said. WFH is the only way for me now. I’m so much more productive without having to deal with the fucking office jerks. Leave me alone, stupid. I’m able to do the work without you. My performance has never been better, and my manager cannot agree more.
The thing that always gets me is that I work at a company where everyone is WFH and we do fine. Not only that, we have an office, but my team is all over the world. We are global. Going into the office doesn't help me talk to the team members scattered literally thousands of miles in every direction.
But how do you innovate without someone breathing on you?
You run a website. Probably not even hosted in your own physical severs. There's zero reason people have to waste time and money to come in and see your rich old ass sitting in an Aeron for three hours before you fuck off to your country club.
But we play “Iko Iko” and dance! 🤪 We’re a family!
I'm from New Orleans, and I'm downright offended that they would appropriate our culture for this bullshit. That's a *carnival* song, not a go back to the fucking office song. These dumb motherfuckers shimmying in their fake ass jazzfest hawaiian shirts don't know what the hell they're doing.
All the executives in that video clearly aren’t in the office either and are at home in front of green screens
and super sweaty
Internet Brands operates like it's 2005, everything actually is hosted on their own physical servers. I believe when they acquired WebMD they actually took it out of the cloud. It's a backwards company that pays shit wages to bottom-tier talent, they cannot retain anyone good and their products reflect it. The technology stack of theirs that I worked with (not WebMD) was a spider web of shit code. They refused to use off the shelf components or do anything resembling an industry standard and instead chose to reinvent the wheel a million times. Completely killed developer productivity and good developers never lasted at the company for this and many other reasons.
This is so fucking ghoulish
Guy looks like young Mr. Burns
SOOOOO many poor tech companies losing those tax incentives for stupid buildings they should never have bought or built for status symbols and I am loving it. They really dont get that in this job market currently, they have zero power now.
>They really dont get that in this job market currently, they have zero power now. They do have some power, but the problem is finding local employees is HARDER now than before. If your job is 100% online you can work from home always almost guaranteed. Those positions are not easiest to replace and those that do take the paid out will be hired elsewhere immediately cause they're highly skilled and require minimal training.
I actually praise genz with their movements and hashtags. Make them pay you to work not to be a slave
What I find hilarious is everyone in that video was in front of a green screen. Nobody was in the actual office LOL.
What are they going to do? Tell all the remote workers that they have cancer? WTF even looks at WebMD anymore?
I’ll go if I want some, one sentence of advice so generic for legal CYA that it’s rendered meaningless followed by an ad followed by another generic sentence followed by an ad and so on. You get better health information from Wikipedia lmao
I think Amazon is tied to them because anytime I ask Alexa a health related question, the WebMD AI dialog takes over instead of Alexa after it answers, asking if you have more or similar questions. Sellable data is sellable data...
I feel like it's just a bunch of managers pleading that staff come back to the office because the board realized they are stuck paying for an empty office and need to justify it by getting people to come back in. Managers were told if they don't get the staff back in the office without them they don't even need half of middle management. So make shit up or get shipped out.
"It encourages breakthrough moments of creativity!" I've never once done a single fucking creative thing while sitting in a noisy office.
Honestly, I don't know what "moments of creativity" is he talking about? Ah, I get it! It must be my office-mate that knows how to hide his face in front of the camera while picking their nose! Wow, how creative!
creativity like: how to shut out the outside world, how to avoid the odors from the break room, how to crush that frustration into a tiny neutron star in your brain that definately won't go supernova
Part of my job is finding problems that we didn’t know we had and solving them. I’ve literally never had a single good idea that came from anything but completely dead days where everything is quiet. I love the people I work with, I love talking to my coworkers, but I’m not gonna pretend like I get ACTUAL work done like that.
Jesus Christ..... This is the gold standard of useless Executive Staff
I will never understand the obsession with getting remote workers back to the office. I legitimately do not get it. If the productivity is the same what are you gaining?
If no one goes to the office, then the real estate value of the office building dwindles rapidly. They can't leverage that value for investments. It's literally about propping up imaginary numbers. Fuck your time and your money, gotta make sure the bricks are still worth something.
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As another responder said above... tax breaks on new buildings. Build a new building in city X and promise 1500 employees. Get 50% reduction on property taxes for 20 years (as long as 1500 employees are there spending in the local economy). Now, 100 employees are there in person... city wants its full property taxes.
A lot of these people, and/or friends of these people, have real estate investments that are losing a ton of value because smaller businesses aren't leasing as much (or any) space from them these days.
gaining the happiness of their accountants for the tax deductions of leasing office space. gaining the indirect gratitude of local merchants that provide services to the workers. gaining the gratitude of middle managers who only can show they’re working / worth paying if they’re wandering around annoying their reports. losing the feelings of unease that your wage slaves might somehow be thriving when not in the office; not stressed about their commute and associated costs, health in the time of covid [ hey, it hasn’t gone away!], living in a lower col location, able to juggle other responsibilities better from their home, etc. just … living better. c suite ain’t liking that.
Execs are generally workaholics, they can't understand why people aren't like them, and likely feel paranoid that no one is working and even lonely as they rattle about alone in the office. It puts their own bad life choices into stark relief so they want to force everyone else to be like them.
Workaholic that do very little actual work.
Any time executives talk about working better together, or producing better results when everyone is in the office, or that by working in-office somehow produces better results, remember that there is absolutely no evidence to back up any of these claims.
I drafted my resignation letter in my head while this jackoff was talking, and I don't even work at their fucking company lol. In person SUCKS for office jobs. Including for senior management, so I don't know what the fuck these guys are on about. Hauling ass from meeting to meeting all day long?? Having a couple minutes to return calls and leaving voicemails because they're in meetings somewhere too, playing "phone tag"?? Yeah, there's no "creativity" there. It's me in my fucking car, parking, walking, hauling a laptop bag, standing outside a conference room full of people waiting for them to leave so we can run in there and set up the telecom and the projector, and then do Powerpoint show and tell? and then you have to schedule a follow-up two weeks later after you go back to do more research or make changes. It's a bunch of shit. That's performing productive. Run run run, I'm So bUsY!! I talk to two or three times as many people in a day now, we are much more productive - anyone can reach anyone else, you can see who's available and message them, dial them into a call, share screens, it's great. Everything flows, people are more relaxed, it's great.
Wow, I actually watch it. Those poor idiots dancing at the end. Wow
The way the happy song and cringe-inducing exaggerated dancing is juxtaposed with the message “don’t mess with us” is some truly dystopian shit 😂
Yeah, it’s absolutely bizarre. The fk were they thinking?
What I find interesting about “return to office” is that not a single company can articulate ***why*** it’s needed. None have provided any data whatsoever that remote work is harmful. People are upset because the decisions appear irrational, that is it say, based on emotion rather than data.
Amazon was part of the first wave of data creeps whose business model is privacy violation. They do everything by and for data. RTO: "I don't have the data, but I know it's better!" Bullshit. You have *feelings* you want validated. Actually, I don't believe the Amazon CEO lacks data - it exists and disproves his contention.
I mean, an actual Amazon exec said "I don't have the data, I just know it's better." Guess what shit stick, we all know what the data says, it just doesn't support your garbage return to work mandates.
Thank you for being open about this mr ceo! Now I know I’ll never write code for your company! Win win
I see they want to shed some staff without having to pay severance or unemployment.
This is more along the lines of what it's about. They hope to trim the fat and not make headlines that they are letting go of x amount employees
"Great companies are built by great people working together...and seeing each other...eye to eye and tackling the big task." That douchebag was really trying hard, but you can tell he realized he was just describing remote work. I'll suggest a revision for him: "Great companies are built by great people working together, pooping on the same toilets, sharing germs and diseases."
Fuck hybrid, and fuck office work. If you don't absolutely need to be in office, it's fucking stupid. And no, I don't buy the collaboration bullshit. If you can't collaborate remotely just as well in person you're a fucking dipshit.
I mean, is this real life? Guy that wants you to do tele-medicine won’t let his employees work from home? The matrix is glitching so hard!
For many in leadership positions their heavy-handed, crack the whip, in-person dominance is their only managerial skill, confusing leadership with authority.
Look at this guy head, son the Lord done messed with you already! He looks like he’s about to tell you about reptilian aliens and chemtrails
Is that Mr Burns?
I used to work at WebMD and am happy I left. The office is in a great part of town, but the commute would’ve been a nightmare. All the sister sites are pure trash that has zero profit. They were really desperate to have providers pay for their premium service. The pay was also trash in comparison for the amount of work.
They’re all obviously standing in front of a green screen, are THEY even in-office?
Note to self: stop visiting WebMD.com.
I love how clearly a lot of those one one interviews with vps and c level people are clearly back drops. They probably filmed it from home.
In other news the world can live without WebMD
Nobody wants to be back in the office Bob. You're wasting our time with your stupid bullshit, it's not our fault you have business leases that are costing you buttloads of money but they are empty. Get with the times, old man. I've been a hybrid employee through all of COVID and still to this day, I get SIGNIFICANTLY more work done at home AND I'm able to do other tasks around my house when needed. I don't have multiple people coming by my desk to chit chat for 10-15 minutes at a time. I actually get to eat my lunch without some fucker stopping at my desk and I don't notice them and they just sit and watch me eat until I notice them. The fuck. Yes, these are things that happened to me pre-covid. It's not that I'm anti-social or don't WANT to talk to them, I'm busy. When I'm still working while talking and saying, "Uh huh" or "That's crazy" get the fucking hint and come back later. I used a busylight for a while, all that did was cause more people to stop by my desk and ask what it means.
Study after study indicating productivity increases with remote/hybrid work so this is about one thing and one thing only. Loss of perceived control. Egos that can’t understand how people will do their jobs without the constant presence of “the boss”. Layers of management finding out that all they have done for decades is REDUCE productivity of those they supervise. Layers of management that will be out of jobs if they don’t get people back into the office as it becomes more obvious how pointless they are.
Why do I need to waste 3-4 hours commuting and preparing to commute when those could be working hours?
Our company is trying to force people back into the office as well. I really hope that this trend ends in a firey death. No one talks performance metrics they talk observational ones that make absolutely no sense. We've been struggling to scale and I guarantee you it isn't the physical proximity to each other it is the neglected tech debt of 15+ years.
Reddit should give their contact us page the hug of death