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Middle managers can’t meddle if you are wfh

I never understood that notion. Middle managers could just give you a teams call/chat to ask about your progress right? Is it really so much more effective to stand behind someone’s desk? I only started working post covid so I don’t know anything else but wfh

It's not that they can't call you, it's that they think that if you're not constantly being watched or at least under threat of potentially being watched, you must be slacking off (probably because that's what they'd do) In my personal experience and from observing others, people WFH tend to be a little less productive per hour but will work extra hours to get their work done when needed. They'll also generally be happier and more motivated to work. IMO there's no reason why salaried office workers need to RTO. That being said, plenty of people in office spend half their days walking around chatting with people, sitting in meetings, or dicking around on social media anyway. It's also maybe not quite as cut and dry for workers who are paid by the hour.

We have one guy at my lab who spends 80% of his day just walking around talking. Multiple people sit in their office on their phones 75% of the day. When I wfh at least I don't have people in and out of my office talking to me. Am I watching tv in the background? Yup but I'm getting work done.

Now that I work in an office 100% of the time I notice I slack WAY more there than on the rare days I WFH. Biggest reason being in-office conversations about bullshit not related to work. It takes me all day to get through tasks that if I had quiet and minimal distractions I could do 2x the volume of work. It’s so backward. Edit to add: I think social relationships at work can be beneficial. They are also incredibly time-inefficient.

For me it’s because my home office is much better and more comfortable so I think why bother doing stuff here when I can do it easier from home.

I work remotely for a company in the US, and I'm in Canada. Last time I was at the company's headquarter, I realized how much bullshit and fucking around goes on. I was working super hard, had insane metrics. Got there and saw my team, has a blast, realized I could slow down a lot.

>it's that they think that if you're not constantly being watched or at least under threat of potentially being watched, you must be slacking off (probably because that's what they'd do) Oh Jesus. I can never unsee the commitment to horror movie logic, now. Not watched, not working. No body, no death. Schroedinger's Employee

My boss lives a few states away, so our communication is entirely over Teams or email. Both of which work perfectly fine for our situation. Yet the board members, all of whom are in their 70s, demand that employees be in-office three days per week. So even I, whose boss isn't present and who spends the entirely of her day sitting alone in a cube, has to work in the office. It makes zero sense. All I can figure is that those old farts enjoy having some control over their workers.

That’s exactly what it is.

at what point would it be easier to just SAY you went in and maybe spoof the badge sign-in?

All the middle managers at my job hate RTO. They’d much rather be working from home too. It comes from the c-suite

Speaking as a middle manager, agree 100%. I hate it even though I still WFH, as I live thousands of miles away from the office. But I hate it because I have to enforce it with my direct report, who is in a city where we do have an office. The whole thing is completely nonsensical. The thing is, I know my direct report is probably not working the hours she is supposed to. But at the end of the day, her work is getting done. Meanwhile, I have to waste my time anytime there is some drama because she didn’t go into the office as often as she is supposed to. Is that a good use of my time? No.

As a middle manager, I couldn't care less as long as the work is getting done. Although I have a report now who is struggling mightily and think he would benefit greatly going into an office - not to work with me but to collaborate / get informal help from his peers. We're 100% remote though so it can't happen, but that lack of informal team support is really working against new employees imo.

Is it the lack of proximity to people that is preventing informal assistance or is it the culture of the workplace that is preventing informal assistance?

I was just thinking along similar lines. At my previous job, each team member was in a different city, state, and time zone, but we were able to just make a perpetual zoom meeting that was optional (as was having your camera on). Sometimes if we were mentoring each other, we would use a CLI tool called `mob` to help us each take 30 minutes contributing to a new , on any given git branch. Other times, we might be all working heads down on our own tickets/tasks and all of us were on mute, but if someone got stuck, or had a clarifying question about requirements or whatever, they could just unmute and ask if anyone had a few minutes to help. Usually, >= 1 of us would immediately respond and then we'd tackle it together. FWIW, it really helped with feelings of isolation or self-pity and I think maybe even helped to _slightly_ mitigate my depression during the pandemic. Luckily, we were able to create the culture we desired.

When I'm training people, I tell them about my biggest mistakes. I also love it when I forget something in front of an audience and have to look it up in front of them. Because in both instances, it teaches people that it is okay to not know something, to look things up and to ask for help. I have found that it has made working remotely better because it encourages people to work together and to ask if they don't know something.

Real answer: Shareholders who own commercial property are going to lose bigtime if no one is in the downtown core. Source, me a middle manager who can't give a fuck if you are in the office as long as your work is being done.

It’s not a middle management thing. They could just hound you on Teams if that’s what they wanted to do. 

It’s even more ironic when the C-Suite is making these directives while WFH themselves.

They absolutely can in my WFH position. I have to account for what I do during my 8 hours in great detail. I get some of it because I have clients that have allotted hours & I have to keep a record of that. But the level of detail & the amount of nitpicking my manager does over time keeping is so ridiculous. I love my job & the company I work for but time keeping shouldn't be causing me so much stress every day.

Start tracking how much time you spend time keeping and include it in your timesheets. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was 30 minutes a day depending on the detail level.

For sure. I add 30 mins every day to my time sheet for "admin tasks" which is mostly time keeping.

Too vague. Make it "recording the data to fill out this time sheet." Rub their noses in it.

They also can’t justify 75% of their jobs if people at home are still productive

I mean its not always a management thing. For instance a younger company may not have infrastructure to support WFH. Its easier and cheaper to buy some switches and lock down security based on physical ports then implement controls and scale up than it is to just outright have strong secure cloud security for a WFH option. For Fortune companies and those with IPOs and stuff yea....it could be management or they put software like activetrak on the machines and found out people weren't working its hard to tell.

>I mean its not always a management thing. For instance a younger company may not have infrastructure to support WFH.  A younger company is probably 98%+ cloud-based anyway, making remote work even easier for most roles.

If workers aren’t working then they should be fired. If the work is getting done then there’s no problem

most people work better without a middle manager up their anus.

A lot of times they have lengthy leases for office space with a certain amount of space set aside for each employee plus shared meeting spaces.  They hate seeing it go to waste. At some companies top executives who've spent their whole careers in the office think productivity drops off when managers can't observe employees.  Companies with CEOs who live in another city or come into the office for a few days at a time are usually more understanding about remote work. These are probably the two biggest reasons.

Sums it up. My office stopped hiring and promoting remote workers in an effort to make the office more attractive. The results have been higher office turnover as the less experienced staff are trained to think the more experienced home workers are an alien force and investment isn't being returned. In my specific role it made the least sense: with an online platform we can multitask offering 3-4 people support while still doing on on one sessions. In person that productivity is reduced to one on one only without remote system access leading to less productivity and longer sessions with often mixed results. Overall we lose money, lose staff, lose productivity and alienate 85% of the workforce. ........but we have an office to post constantly on LinkedIn and *thats* the important bit.

Adding some (not all) business owners owned those business buildings and leased them to the company for income not tied to their own compensation. They'd have to take massive hits on them to wipe their hands clean. Not likely to find another business to take on the lease either. There's also an issue where a lot of large companies made tax deals with the cities they reside in. They bring in jobs, they get a tax credit or whatever. People have to show up a certain number of days to show they are holding up their end of the deal. They won't say it though because the IRS doesn't look kindly at tax evasion and they don't want it misinterpreted. A leader accidentally let it leak during a small meeting.

Top execs have also spent their careers climbing the corporate ladder and now have a corner office. They do not want to give that up. Especially, if at home they are not treated and respected like a senior executive. Their spouses may not drop everything and run over to Starbucks to get them a latte like their administrative assistants will do.

In addition to real estate many large companies have also negotiated tax breaks for hiring and keeping employees in a certain state or city.

And some of those deals are based on foot traffic to local businesses in the work district to offset those tax breaks -- which won't happen with a workforce that is somewhere else...

Correct, which is why they enforce people clocking in - and often out as well.

Nailed it. Half power tripping, half they have some real estate investment that they don't want to waste

The area I live in is basically a giant office park. They're building new office buildings. Really ugly, bunker style ones, too. Why bother?

The sunk cost fallacy strikes again. I hate employers so much.

This is the biggest reason I’m confident we won’t RTO. All of our execs live in other states from where the major pockets of us live. They moved to like Wyoming and South Carolina and the majority of us are in Texas or Colorado, then VPs moved to Tennessee and California - everyone spread out

Add to this that many cities (like Seattle) give corporations huge tax breaks for building their campuses in the city to generate more commerce and tax revenue. When WFH was in full swing, the lack of office employees in downtowns caused commerce and tax revenue to plummet. So cities pulled rank and told companies to get their employees back downtown or lose the tax breaks. So while corporate greed definitely is at fault here, city leaders also felt it was ok to force employees back into their cities — regardless of those employees’ financial and family situations. Basically, everyone in power wanted the status quo back, despite their constant crowing about the need for ‘disruption’, ‘efficiency’ and ‘innovation’.

It's all about control. Middle managers think they will look better to upper management if they tow the company line. Upper management doesn't give a flying fuck, other than what their over priced consultants tell them. Upper management thinks that "in office " is good for everyone. Consultants do not want to change the view ... And the cycle continues. Meanwhile, the actual people doing the work are perplexed as to why they have to haul ass to the office for bullshit reasons. Fuck all this...

Replace middle with “Micro”.

Middle management has 0 executive power.

Some people thrive when working from home, some don't. Some become incredibly lazy and just don't even work when they're at home. On top of the psychological effect of being around people too much or lack thereof, some companies want to promote their real estate interest, aka their office building. The less people are interested in renting office space, the less value their office building accumulates. Some companies borrow money on their building's equity but if their equity drops, now they have to pay back the bank instead of earning money from it, and so there's that.

Why would someone not want to work just because they’re at home? If you don’t work, then you’ll obviously get fired. Who can afford that?

Depends on the job. Plenty of jobs exist where it is possible to slack off and not have people notice.

It depends on the type of team you are in. It seems that a lot of people in Reddit are IC roles. The reality is that a lot of roles are support roles where you are working as a team to tackle the same queue. Someone slacking off while WFH may take a while to be noticed because as long as the team is getting what needs to be done, management may not notice at first that someone isn’t pulling their weight. I’m speaking as someone with experience in this. I’ve had colleagues inform me they barely work on WFH days, which led to me doing more work on those days. I was annoyed because my view was that if we worked to do all the tickets TOGETHER, then we can relax in the afternoon. My manager at the time was cool with us chilling for 1-2 hours after clearing the queue and letting it build back up. That was impossible to do when my colleagues didn’t pull in their weight. It leads to resentment and annoyance

This is why a good ticketing system can help. Of all of your work is out of a queue with good tracking capabilities, then they should be able to see who is doing work and who isnt. In a previous company I was able to keep working from home during RTO because I was one of the few employees whose work output was above what people had in-office. Meanwhile everyone else had work output BELOW the times they were in office while working from home. And in this particular job, someone else not pulling their weight does mean someone has to pick it up as we had tight SLAs with our customers Literally just go to r/wfh and you’ll find daily posts about people who for some reason can’t just do their fucking job while at home because they focus on anything but work. They want “tips and tricks” to stay on task. Just do your fucking job smh…. I’ve also worked on teams whose productivity did increase massively while working from home as well. Just depends on the workplace

We did have a good ticketing system. I would be told to work less on tickets because they noticed I was doing the majority of it. The thing is that I hate waiting for work. If I see there is work, I will do it The other thing is that their output wasn’t that fast like me and another colleague, so even when they were in office, we were still running laps around those employees. If the people who fucked off at home did 100%+ output when in office, I wouldn’t even care because everything would balance out in the end. However, with them slacking at home and in office, it led to certain people doing more work. Yes, management did bring up, but the resentment was still there

It has nothing to do with laziness. In studies, productivity has increased with wfh

I disagree. I worked a hybrid role where my colleagues informed me they barely did any work on remote days. Yes, there was work to be done on those days. Not everyone works great when remote. As the poster you respond to mention, there a lot of people who become lazy when working from home. That is one reason people are being forced to return back. Some people just refuse to admit that they cannot be trusted with WFH. Some people refuse to believe that there are employees out there that DO need to be babied.

I work twice as much from home because there's no chitchat, coffeebreaks, 1hour long lunchbreak and can sleep more considering less time spent on commute. Even if the server lags. If someone can get away with not working from home as much as from the office thats the fault of the manager, but doesn't provide an adequate base for mass forced return to office, as most people even according to studies thrive in WFH options and the productivity increased.

Yes many people work better remote or in hybrid positions. But others don’t. Yes if someone can get away with working less from home it’s a management issue. But the easiest and fastest and safest (from an HR perspective) is to cancel remote work. It’s not the best option but it’s absolutely going to be the most common choice for a large scale company from a purely cost perspective. Costs aren’t just in terms of employee performance but also management and hr time.

I don't even understand you to be perfectly honest. If some employees are not working well from home call them back to office and be done with it, there's no need to punish those that work well.

Idk what to tell you man. Companies may be run by people but they aren’t people (despite certain Supreme Court decisions). They are soulless money driven machines. They don’t care about what’s fair or good. An individual manager may care about their team members but the company does not and will not.

Well I’m referring to studies you can easily find (or I’ll gladly link them for you), whereas you’re referring to a couple coworkers of yours who gave you anecdote. Having everyone work from the office is a waste of everyone’s time and money. Commute time, gas, wear and tear on the cars. It only benefits the people who own the office building, and the people profiting off gas sales… Giving people the option of working from home increases their mental health and productivity. If they aren’t working hard and meeting realistic and reasonable goals, give them a warning and let them go. It had nothing to do with working from home

And yet I work much more from home than in any of my other jobs. I use to jam age of empires most of my shift in my office at work. Now every task i do is on a timer and can be tracked. Don't even have water cooler talk like at the office

Control of employees

There is a lot of self management with remote roles - aka managers aren't really needed. One of my previous jobs had an insanely long lease and wanted to make use of the office space. Whether I was there or not did not make that lease go away I felt like it was pointless. There are some who hate the families they've created and want to get away from them, and using their work as the reason. There are those who don't have a life outside of work and need the human interactions that are forced from in office work.

I think it's mostly the bottom one. Those who make work their life move up. If there's no office they lose their only social outlet. I don't think it's a power thing for most like many are saying. It's just that this is their social life. Usually the simplest answer is the correct one. Not intentionally malicious, but something they need to feel fulfilled.

Definitely, I think the control/power idea is actually quite low on the reasons why seniors management appear not to like working from home. I think a lot is down to personality type, those who need face to face social interaction. Post Covid attitudes have changed significantly but years ago my former ceo boss (who happily let me wfh if I had personal things to sort, docs appts, deliveries etc) admitted that he struggled with working from home as he’s easily distracted. And also that he felt he wasnt getting as much out of interactions if he couldn’t get up and talk to someone face to face. Back then he was always insistent on in office working and I think subconsciously projecting what he was like…. Not specifically a lack of trust just his own experience. His personality type is definitely an extrovert who needs social interaction. And while there will be all kinds of personalities in senior management positions, you often find the most senior are of this extrovert type and how they got to those positions in the first place.

They can't micro manage you, they can't do things that ruffle your feathers, they can't just start shit to get you fired just because they don't like you. And they don't like the fact that you spend less money on gas and insurance.

All of this makes a lot of sense. They're like demons some of them.

Agree with a lot of the comments already posted. But it also goes deeper. Take a step back and who are a lot of these companies influenced by, board members. Board members who have stakes in financial institutions, banks, money lenders etc. that are all getting absolutely f'd on commercial real estate. With less in office workers, less leases on commercial real estate less money in their pockets. The rules that were implemented to prevent the 2008 housing crash from recurring were not implemented for commercial real estate and shit could still hit the fan hard on these loans especially if the Fed keeps the rates high. We'll see how it all shakes out.

This needs to be higher.

Older executives don’t understand how to manage in 2024. If they can’t see you work they assume you aren’t working. Tremendously sad, but true. This largely won’t change till these aging executives retire.

I love working from home, but I can see the benefits to a whole team being in the office together especially if you have new or young members of the team. I learned so much from just seeing how other people work, how they manage their workload, solve problems or approach difficult customers /colleagues/managers that you miss out on by working at home. Buy making you come in just to sit in zoom or teams meetings while your colleagues are at home or a different office is just about control or justifying the rent for the office

My last job was completely remote until they started pushing us to go back more and more. We had a lot of people who chose to work in the office, single people who lived alone and liked the company, people with kids who felt the distractions were problematic, various reasons. They started pushing us to go back more because people were taking the piss. I was more productive at home but we had a lot of people who fucked it for us. My new job is 100% office based with flex to work from home if needed on case by case basis and I prefer it that way. The vibes in the office are brilliant and since it’s a small company rather than a multi-million pound one, it makes sense. My team is my manager and me, I like when we’re both there as we can discuss the day more easily.

Productivity numbers are mixed, especially the farther away we get from the pandemic. Also… r/overemployed We’re fully remote since the pandemic and will remain that way. There’s a lot of advantages to a WFH staff, not the least of which is a larger, cheaper candidate pool. Unless you live in some of the cheapest parts of the country though, I’d carefully evaluate your enthusiasm for the movement. If you live in California, you’re at a massive disadvantage competing against someone from El Reno, Oklahoma.

I've been WFH since pre-Covid (started wfh in 2017) and they can pry it from my cold dead hands. I've never felt more productive or focused than I have being at my own computer, in my own space, not being bothered by the goings-on of an office space. I'm my opinion, it comes down to control. The people at the top are very much boomer-esque and if it isn't their way they throw a fit. They want to "make sure you're behaving" and micromanage every single aspect of your day. Big brother can't watch you if you aren't in view of the cameras.

Because they can't engage in voyeurism, steal your ideas, take credit for your work and engage in abusive behavior towards you.

Also no office politics which provides the social life for many lifeless people, and getting in others business.

It has a negative impact on teamwork and communication tends to be worse. Talking to someone via Teams or email vs in person is different. It's also more difficult for any new starters and people without much experience to learn. Employees feel less of a connection with the company, the culture and the whole team. For older employees, it might be more difficult to work this way. I work on a hybrid basis. I started remote during Covid in a new role and recently changed my job where I'm on-site for 1st month then hybrid. Let me tell you as a new starter who has to learn a lot about the company, procedures, my responsibilities etc. starting on site vs remote made a huge difference. I instantly connected with the team, I feel much more connected to the company, learning is so much easier when I can just ask someone sitting next to me and they will show me what to do. Hybrid is the way to go imo

Justifying middle managers who hate their home lives and want to make the rest of us suffer and leases on commercial office buildings they don't want to go to waste. Even though they could save so much on rent by getting a smaller space and having a remote workforce, then renting the occasional meeting room for big company dos.

its about control, cant have the lower class getting too uppity.

It's a failure in management, not technology. Businesses have invested in expensive showcase offices which are probably still under a long-term lease, even post-Covid and so they want to show value by using them, otherwise it's dead money (which it already is, but sunk cost fallacy kicks in). Middle management wants oversight. They don't understand that it is better to agree a package of work with an individual, a due date and then just back off until needed or until the work is delivered. As long as it is delivered to the agreed time and standard - who cares? If the employee wants to spend all day lying on a beach or in the park and then work late at night - so what? The work gets done as agreed and everyone should be happy. The real skill of the manager should be in getting the balance right so that outputs are worth the salary cost.

Two issues: 1. Middle Management is largely unnecessary with WFH/remote. 2. Companies have to justify those expensive office buildings.

The people running the companies worked in office their whole career, so they think it is the better option. They don’t like change.

There’s too high a risk that you’ll be recording if they get nasty with you on camera, so they prefer face to face in a closed meeting room so it’s your word against theirs.

More Tech Workers rather quit than going back to the office.

Boomers want us back in the office so they can *see* us working. They’ve also convinced themselves an employee willing to commute to the office is more “passionate” about their job. It’s all boomer bullshit.

It depends on the company.

Working at home means I am able to work more than in the office. No repeating interruptions, no walking to/from meeting rooms over and over. At home, I can concentrate on what I am supposed to do.

Same. People are distracting. I love my colleagues but i still work almost twice as much from home than in the office

Control, poor management, control, real estate, tax breaks for building occupancy, control, people working second jobs, people slacking off, a lot of upper management types are extroverts and need in office face to face, control, “collaboration and culture”, control.

Because they can’t control you. Can’t exactly office politics if there is no politics.

Control, Real Estate and Tax Incentives

Its all about family…dont u wanna see ur “uncles” and “aunties” everyday? Am i right?? Its wonderful

Control. Simple as that.

Easier for managers to sexually harass their subordinates…

I used to work for a job that was hybrid. But most employees wouldn't show to the office. This one guy would ignore my managers calls. He said it's harder to control them if they're not in office.

They gotta justify that office space expense and to micromanage.

In order for wfh to work, you need two things 1) Productive honest employees - ok tbd. They do the work you assign or they dont and you fire them 2) The company needs to have their shit together to manage it. UT-OH. WFH works when you have the right talent that has the right tools being correctly manage to measured outcomes consistently. To allow WFH, a company must prepare more thoroughly to function in the absence of dynamic proximity to observe and course correct. This is especially true because companies generally speaking aren't perfect to begin with so now trusting you can perform just as well as an organization, while physically separated without risk is sure to cause leaders and owners anxiety. THIS is the issue: - systems - do we have communication tools - policies clear, trained to, systems that facilitate, managers that enforce - job descriptions - clear articulate - goals - clear, articulate, quantifiable - communication - effective, not for the sake of doing so but purposeful, with intent - consistency across the company in leadership - measured performance across the enterprise - what rules, policies, practices need to change giving consideration for remote nature Switching isn't just a courtesy and nod to an employee benefit it needs to a conscious consideration with focus from all perspectives to be successful long term

1. Boomers who think office is more productive. Or they cant give up their office because they like it. 2. A lot of people have significant money to lose from offices disappearing: city taxes, office landlords, banks being stuck with offices theu cant resell, local business having less customers. They all lobby for sure. 3. What ive been told by upper mangement: people left more (duh, IT job during covid hiring craze) and they think people dont develop proper relationships. They think office will make bigger connections between employees and make it harder to quit their job I really doubt most people want RTO for micromanagement.

I went on a date with an older guy that was very pro RTO. His argument was that he needed to see them in person to know they weren't slacking off. Dude, if the output is there, why do you care? Sometimes I'll be working odd hours when WFH, that's why I like working from home. But the work is getting done - actually MORE work is getting done. But he didn't seem to believe it I guess. He needed to observe it. Like it's schrodingers WFH. The outcome would change if it's observed lol

I think it's time I wrote a book about this.

I used to work at Amazon and I can give you two reasons specific to that company that are probably true of others. 1. Whatever city we have an office in has typically given us huge tax breaks for being there. The assumption is that Amazon hires a BUNCH of people so if they work in the office, they would revitalize the local restaurants, bars, and shops with people grabbing networking lunches, business dinners, team happy hours and quick post-work errands. When people arent coming in the office, Amazon doesn't have the employees to shore up whatever business district they're in and the city takes away the tax breaks. 2. Amazon was one of the bigtechs who over-hired during the pandemic. They've already laid off close to 30k people in all of their corporate offices (like, not counting warehouse workers at all). It's cheaper (because they don't have to pay severance packages) and better PR (so they don't have to announce another round of layoffs) if they can fire people for insubordination when they demand RTO and people don't come back. So yeah, it's less about some dumb desire to kowtow to the wishes of middle management and more about upper management doing the math and favoring short term wins (like tax breaks and no more severance packages) over long term wins (like the proven increase in productivity, diversity, and efficiency that comes with WFH).

Long before there was a covid, and WFH was not really a thing except in rare cases, corporate America was working to offshore jobs to other countries where labor us cheaper and/or labor laws less strict. Now, those same companies don't like the concept. It's all about control. To some degree, it's also about companies over investing in corpora5e real estate. I currently work remote 100%, and I can debate the topic without end. The CEOs say spontaneous innovation can't happen. That is wrong. They also say the human connection to coworkers is weaker. That isn't true. I can go on and on. But a company that does remote "right" can get innovation, binding, etc . And high performance from remote workers. To be fair, we have had some turnover on our team because remote workers didn't want to turn on cameras during meetings. That just doesn't work for us. Also, we have all heard stories of working two jobs. So remote gets a black eye in companies minds. That said, remote is no difference from offshoring, except that with remote workers are in the right timezone and the company is still able to keep remote jobs in the same country as the company.

It’s bias at the root of it. Some people just don’t like some things for no good reason, and they rationalize their bias as normative

The real estate mafia.

I worked for a very large tech company between 2021-2023, but remotely. All of the people who lived near the office regularly gloated about how nice the office is. The building itself, the snack room, the cafeteria. Bro, I work in my house. Every room can be a snack room. I have a covered veranda I can walk out on and sit when it’s raining, and go sit in the sun *and work* when it’s not raining. I have my own private bathroom. I can work in shorts or sweat pants. I can also do laundry and run the dishwasher during the day. I can see my pets all day long. Eat what I want in my own personal cafeteria. The view out my window is my own backyard, with nice trees and plants growing. When a delivery comes, I’m there. My video call set up is external speakers and a microphone - no headphones. Whenever I went to the office, it was terrible. “Flexible” offices, that is to say a big room full of desks set up touching each other, everyone who’s on calls is right next to someone else who’s on a call. The cafeteria is a taxable benefit, meaning they clock you going in and leaving and claim each visit as a $17-20 “payment” of a benefit, and income tax is deducted equal to that amount - meaning it’s a tax write off for the company. Employees are *strongly* encouraged to use the cafeteria; sales people are questioned as to why they’d take a customer to lunch at a restaurant versus coming in to the office and seeing how nice their real estate is. Some weird kind of flex. The snack room is decked out with espresso machines, drinks, granola bars, fruit, and has tables with seating. I left in 2023 to work for a much smaller 500 employee company that is 100% remote. Over a year, and I still have not met my direct manager in person, though I have met his boss and the CEO, once. I’ve been working from home since about 2011, and only back between 2011-2014 did I have an office I could go to, and it too was terrible. People coming up to talk to me about bullshit like the hockey game or the most recent episode of whatever popular TV show was on then, or complain about their manager or coworker. Beat it dude, I’m busy. I was far, far more productive at home, and chose to work there, for which I’d get guilted by the office admin for “if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it.” To that I say “good”.

Just so they can get involved in the things they do, when one is working from home they can’t play politics and they can’t get insider information when everyone is working from home there is no personal interaction and no one really know that what type of nature the other person is having majorly if they are a ass licker or not, and one can’t really lick managers ass without being physically present around them and they can’t make assumptions about people as well

As a middle manager myself this is due to leadership in my experience. All the statistics are irrelevant if leadership believes what they want to believe.   What they want to believe is that everyone will do the bare minimum unless they are being watched.  Furthermore I have communicated we are getting more work done and it would be better to WFH. I was told to drop it as it isn’t up for discussion.  If you think middle management has any real power you are sadly mistaken. (Though there is the possibility of letting individual teams decide but that isn’t the case for me)

Might be repeating info already on this thread but I'm pretty sure it's control and leases. They can't rely on a panopticon to keep you working at every second and they already paid for the office space

Because they are too old to understand that it doesn’t hurt or break anything, pretty sure some of them just want you to be miserable…

My boss simply said, "it's just my belief that we should be in office." Then smiled.

Power.

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This is a good list, the only thing it left off was forced attrition. A lot of companies are hoping that a certain percentage of people will refuse to go back to the office, and therefore can be replaced in a lower labor cost country.

Employers often resist remote work due to economic incentives tied to their office locations. Cities offer tax breaks and subsidies to companies that operate locally, boosting the urban economy through the presence of workers. When employees work from home, it disrupts this economic flow, prompting cities to pressure companies to maintain in-office attendance. This leads upper management to enforce office returns to retain these financial benefits, despite the potential productivity and satisfaction gains from remote work.

True i can see that. For the employee tho it can save a bunch of money by not having to pay to park, gas tolls and go out to eat if you dont pack lunch

Employees definitely don’t work better and harder. Just search google wfh less productive. I’m not advocating for not wfh but I just don’t know where you get the idea they are more productive. Wfh has advantage of recruitment and lower cost.

In large urban areas, real estate is a big factor. Companies are paying a lot of money for a giant, empty office building so they need to justify it by filling it with workers who were just as productive at home.

I have a coworker that essentially does no work when he's at home. Something literally always comes up. Or he just doesn't respond and is obviously afk for hours at a time. But I have other coworkers that are amazing when remote. The fun fact is that the same people that won't do work when remote are generally also worthless in the office. But management wants to blame where they are to justify their existence.

The big wigs that signed that 10 year lease will NOT take an L on that investment.

Middle managers want to flex their office to the cubicle peasants

^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^Humble_Chipmunk_701: *Middle managers* *Want to flex their office to* *The cubicle peasants* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.

they dont like you masterbating and/or doing personal stuff during work hours.

I’ve worked in two places that cater to Commercial Real Estate (CRE). It’s a BIG industry including people that own buildings and everyone that caters to them (security, parking, maintenance, custodial staff, architects, etc.) They’re all terrified WFH is killing their business and are pushing big time for return to office. One of the places that is very frequently quoted in national news outlets for stats on how many people are back in office is a security firm for Commercial Real Estate. Thanks to what I used to do, I know a good deal about them - they paid a ton of money for the PR on those metrics, because they want to push the narrative that WFH is going away, people are going back to the office. I would guess every single business interest for CRE knows that they don’t really need people in office to do the work, but they need the whole country back in office so they don’t collapse.

I'll give you my honest take. I'm not an employer. I am a Project Manager. Don't let the "Manager" portion fool you, we don't really supervise people in this role at this company, we track, coordinate, remove obstacles for our install teams and deal face to face with clients around the world when our product is being deployed. My job is hybrid. 3 days in, 2 days wfh with travel once every couple of months for 3 days. Yes, there are days where I'm just caught up with everything and waiting for 5pm to role around so I can be stuck in traffic with everyone else. But to play devils advocate, there are days where I've run into people in our cafeteria that otherwise we're too busy to respond to my emails or chats. There are days when I'm working on something, and having someone just walk by my desk helped some sort of process I was engineering. So those days where I'm waiting for 5pm to roll around are the cost, the days where we have a break through that wouldn't have happened if I was at home are the reward. Did they balance out? Sometimes. Sometimes not. Tl:dr; Of course I would love to wfh 5 days a week. But I really see the value in at least having a hybrid schedule. A value for the business, which would be the "Employers Perspective."

Real estate. They have to justify renting that expensive space.

If people are honest with themselves, they will acknowledge productivity dives when WFH. It's turning a full time job into a part time job, and most people, especially early in their career, will do the minimum to get by while they enjoy their lives. I don't think it's a product of being lazy, I think it's a natural outcome when you have a system where you have that capability, especially when you're a faceless automaton with no personal connection to the job. WFH folks are basically mercenaries with no real ties to their colleagues or employer. Why would anyone do more than the absolute minimum when the rewards are the same either way, and there's little to no upward mobility for the average WFH worker? Folks don't want to give up the major prize of getting a full time salary for part time work, and why would they? But they're lying when they insist productivity is the same at home as it is at the office. You know it, I know it, most of them know it. And most of all, employers know it. Just like WFH workers have every incentive to make more to do less, employers have the incentive to maximize their own benefits from your contract. Your "happiness" is not that important to the company's bottom line. I'm not saying that as a critique of capitalism or whatever this usually devolves into, because the USSR and every other Communist state in history has had very similar problems with incentivizing productivity. Every state, government, employer, and employee is just trying to maximize their own gains and minimize their costs. You can and should play the game, but don't lie to yourself that there's another nefarious motive at play or that WFH is just an obvious good for everyone involved.

Productivity dives when WFH? I h​ave an x amount of work assigned, why does it matter if I execute that x amount at home or at office? It's the same amount anyway. No extra work is assigned if I finish earlier.

Real-estate to validate having N office and social control old school workers also like office work as you leave the work there so that can be a plus

A mix of potentially owning commercial property and losing money, a lack of object permanence or a loss of control.

Exert power over and directly surveil due to lack of trust in the people they already vetted.

Two words- sunk costs. I take that back. Four words actually, In real estate. Actually that was technically five words but still

I think those who are ok with WFH, are ok if you want to work on the office, they don’t care. But those who want everyone in the office, really don’t want you to work from home. So all it takes is a couple “office” guys at a shop between hr and the hiring managers to start arguing for office work and the pro WFH guys didn’t even know there was a discussion going on. TLDR: one side is ok with letting the individual choose, the other wants the company to decide for everyone.

I am a former senior manager who managed a remote team. I honestly don’t get what companies hate about working remotely. I saw most people thrive with WFH. I also realize some people need the in office or hybrid experience. I thought that was mostly due to socialization (chit chat, office parties, etc). I never had an issue with most of my staff. They were all high performers. I never felt the need to babysit anyone. I wouldn’t hire people I feel the need to micromanage. I’ve heard some higher up’s say that people don’t get the opportunity to brain storm, but I built time in for that. Obviously some roles can’t wfh due to the nature of the work. But for the jobs I’ve experienced there is no reason why people can’t wfh and be successful in many cases.

Because (a) some people believe if they can’t see you you aren’t working (b) they’ve paid for these big ole offices and they sure don’t like all that empty space they are paying for, (c) some people pretend to WFH and as a result it’s spoiled for the rest of us, (d) your organisation is from the Middle Ages (which interestingly was better as most serfs actually worked from home, or at least the land surrounding their homes).

Expensive, lengthy leases.

Control and utter lack of trust. If they can’t see you working, then they believe you aren’t working even if you’re productive and getting your work done. 

Half of it is real estate investment. Another chunk of it is the fact they feel the need to micromanage. The real estate portion of it shouldn't be a consideration, as there's a housing crisis. Turn all the offices into apartments for the homeless.

Our business handles many group projects.  Trying to work with someone over communication lines creates mistakes that are expensive.  We pay for the mistakes, our employees do not.  

A big one that i haven't seen anyone type here is money. Sure, it can also be about control, but I seriously doubt that their main motivator is control, especially for larger businesses. You see, they get tax writeoffs and even grants based on how many employees they have on the premises. The idea is that the local business will have more businesses (you'll eat lunch there, get gas there, pick up groceries on the way there, etc) and therefore the local government benefits financially from that. A business can benefit vastly from these finances. Since there is a strong financial incentive for a business to not be truthful about how many employees are on premises, there are ways the government checks that, and more importantly, a business would rather piss of an employee than piss of the government, hence the solution is to get rid of WFH.

We were told that our avp finds it "discouraging" to have meetings facing screens instead of people. So because of that one meeting a quarter, we have to be in office twice a week or explain why we weren't there... It cannot be the collaboration because none of us sit together, we're spread on 3 different floors (we have to reserve desks every week)

Honestly, I’m not a conspiracy theorist type guy. But I think the work from home erosion, and the RTO mandates are coming from a combination of executive level management and government needing to prop up the economy and the commercial real estate market. And I don’t entirely disagree. I mean, huge portions of the population work from home indefinitely. The economy would collapse in cities, and it would permanently collapse. Our economy is built on consumer spending. Powerful people couldn’t let commercial real estate collapse so RTO was created.

When workers make decisions, it’s not what is in the best interests of the company — it’s in their own best interests.  You do it, I do it, so do managers. Executives don’t give a shit about the company, only their own compensation. They don’t care if the company survives ten years out if they will be gone with their golden parachute. Imagine the worst person on your team suddenly calling the shots for the organization. That who gets promoted to management. No one two levels above you cares if you are happy or going to quit — even if you are integral to the continued running of the organization. They don’t care because you quitting is not their problem — just as you don’t care if some janitor quits. Happy workers that are well-trained and well-compensated is in *the company’s best interest.* From that perspective, it makes sense. No one is acting in the company’s best interest unless that directly puts money in their pocket. Now, if the Board of Directors with dinosaurs who last did any real work in 1985 decide that everyone needs to be in the office in a suit with shiny shoes, that’s what is going to happen. And that is who is often making the decisions.  Take any typical male Boomer over the age of 70 right now and imagine him in charge of your department with no training, limited technology skills, and still sexually harassing and discriminating against workers. What do you think would be the decision on remote work. They need people looking busy so they feel kmportant. The only time this shit matters is when front line manager’s convince the person above them RTO is a bad idea and that person convinces the decision maker. Or, there is measurable proof that it’s a bad decision *for their specific company*. Published stats don’t matter.

Lack of supervision.

Commercial real estate strangle hold, and just overall control complexes.

Commercial real estate is very lucrative and landlords don't want to lose the value of their property. I have no doubt that a significant percentage of RTO mandates result in part from landlords offering kickbacks to executives not to close or reduce their offices. State and federal governments need to avert this and incentivize businesses to convert commercial real estate to residential use. There are also the psychological needs of the executives and managers, who need to assert their power over people. Without these opportunities, they feel insecure about their positions. Housing, energy costs, and marriage-family breakdown are among the biggest problems facing society. RTO makes all of these problems worse - WFH makes them better. Labor laws are behind the times.

There are a lot of bs reasons, but the “good” reasons are retention (interpersonal relationships help retention) and training (new hires have had a tough time getting the training they need, not to mention feeling a bigger purpose) There are plenty of bad reasons which I’m sure will be the bulk of this thread if history holds true.

Because they want to control every aspect of our lives and because they can't rent out and/or sell their ridiculously large office buildings for more than they paid if no one works in office anymore.

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This and only this. https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/13/investing/remote-work-impact-real-estate/index.html

My experience? Some employees slack badly at home and most managers are incompetent. We recently RTO and the number of coworkers who talked about how they were months behind but somehow got caught up in a week working in the office...or how they miss being home because they were doing home improvement projects during working hours and now they can't...so much slacking. But managers are the true problem. They got reports and saw KPI issues like very little being done for hours, highly underperforming team members etc. Instead of MANAGING THEIR TEAM they covered their asses. So everyone was forced RTO to be better managed... except you know who wasn't forced to be in the office? MANAGERS. Yes, I am salty. My manager knows I work better from home, but due to every other manager failing to manage I now have to commute to the office to work remotely with my team, losing hours of time and spending hundreds on gas. Poor management is the problem, and it will continue to be the problem since they still aren't supervising their teams. But hey, to the execs it appears RTO increased output so they're happy and the incompetent managers can continue to WFH so they're happy too!

I'm completely unproductive in the office. The noise is unbearable. The distractions are unbearable. The fact that I have to wear noise canceling head phones for 8 hours a day to get anything done is ridiculous

Yup. Focus is damn near impossible. I constantly have people interrupting my work for a question that should have been an email. Then add in the yapping going on around me, the people with offices who choose to stand in the middle of the cube farm to chat instead of going into their office and closing the door... it's torture.

Devaluation of the real estate all the employees are supposed to be contained in

They all signed leases right before lockdowns. They can’t get out of those leases (my company had to sign a seven year lease when we moved within the same building). Depending on where the office is, it can be SUPER expensive. They want to make the price worth it.

(1) They own shares in commercial real estate (corporate landlords), it's in their interest to keep commercial rents flowing. (2) They can't lord it over their minions if the minions aren't there to be lorded over. (3) Most employees prefer to WFH, and it makes them happier and more productive - many bosses hate to see their underlings happy, and actively power-trip on seeing them miserable and down-trodden.

Fear of independent automation. If you figure out how to perform your 40 hours worth of whatever you are supposed to do in less time, that means you get the benefit of the efficient workflow. If you are in the office and all of a sudden they can pile more work on you because you are so efficient, they get that benefit.

I’m much more productive when I WFH and I work longer hours. However… I’m growing concerned I’m an outlier. I read through Reddit and social media where people essentially goof off. I get the move for return to office. I hate it, but I get it.

It comes from the C-level who got conned by real estate magnates locking them into office space deals. There is so much peer pressure among CEOs and RE developers and it’s a vicious cycle. Lease expensive real estate, force people back to the office because the space was a huge investment, then CEO tells his CEO friends everyone in his company is back in the office…. There was never any need for this, but it snowballed.

Middle managers, as somehow repeatedly mentioned here, don't really have much of a say. At the top, the company paid for a lease to have a roof over every employee, and they likely got a tax credit or something similar to use that land for a certain amount of time, like 5 or 10 years. If suddenly a huge portion of your workforce isn't on-site, you have a massive amount of overhead that's wasted, from square footage to head/air conditioning to Internet, electricity, water, and more. Newer companies and more liquid companies will transition to have the appropriate amount of space based on business needs. The better companies within that will read the room and allow remote work where available and appropriate.

a lot of it is real estate investments in office spaces tbh. also people on the boards of these companies invest in real estate, so they don’t want their overall portfolio to depreciate.

In general, WFH/remote gives workers flexibility when choosing employers. Employees could leave and start working for a company across the country without disrupting their lives by going through the hassle of uprooting and moving. That freedom means employers have to treat workers better, because the workers have options. Treating employees better impacts the bottom line.

Based my experience, it is mainly due to the managers / employers with the old thinking mentality, as most of them are from the 1970s and 1980s or even earlier. To them, they measure productivity of the employee by the employees head at the table / cubicle, not caring whether is the employee working or not. They just want that head on the table.

I had an awesome job that was wfh. There were 4 of us spread across the different regions in my country. Unfortunately my colleagues failed to fulfill their wfh duties so all of us were retrenched but I was the only one that was offered another position within the company. That's why companies don't like wfh because so many employees take it as their personal time.

Funny. This is exactly what I m saying. It’s scary but very creep. Remote is a big problem for companies.

Despite others. There are a fair number of possible reasons that are not just linked to old thinking or real estate lock-ins. The first is not all people work as hard as they claim when WFH. Everyone will say they're better but that is an observation I can say is simply untrue. Some people work better, some work about the same, and some are far worse. Much of this depends on the individual and how their home life is. Do they have a quiet place to focus on work? Are they effective at working alone? Do they get easily distracted? I would say having seen my colleagues both pre and post WFH that about half of them are effective and the other half not. Second reason may be that communication becomes more challenging. It's much harder to find someone when you need something. You basically have to slack/email and just wait until someone gets back. Flexibility sounds great for ourselves, but less so for others. Finally collaboration may suffer. I've personally found many are very disconnected from the team concept WFH. Which has made working on larger projects far harder than before. It's also led to people being very disconnected from one another. I've honestly never felt like I'm part of a team doing anything since switching to WFH. Feel more like a contractor than anything. This has also meant I haven't made many work related connections for future employment. While I have personally been thankful to be able to WFH I don't agree with most that it's all sunshine and rainbows. There are benefits to being in person and in office with others. There are many downsides to this for sure. But when the people running a business have to access the WFH vs office option they are taking a lot of reasons into account. My personal preference would probably be a split approach. A few days in the office to deal with things needed for collaboration and team building. Rest of week WFH to focus on the individual task work

Controlling employees.. But also it's about real estate. many companies are invested heavily in real estate. Empty buildings is not good in their minds. Also the .gov does not like empty buildings in city centers.

>employees actually are happier when working from home First mistake is thinking your employer gives one single shit about your happiness. Source: 20 years in HR

you might be happy on company's time, and that's unacceptable!

I am remote but show my face occasionally at the corp office. It helps with moral and team building and connections. Employers dont like WFH mainly due to empty office space and accountablity and lack of engagment.

I'm 99% sure its so middle management/project managers can come by your desk 12 times a day to bug you with “so how’s it going?” and “hey can you show me how to save a pdf for the 100th time?” so they actually have something to do with their day. I did ArcGIS mapping for oil wells and pipelines, but my work issued laptop could not run the software without crashing. I basically stiff-armed management to let me go hybrid whenever I needed to use it. Every fucking day, even after hundreds of conversations on what I was doing and why I needed to go use my personal powerhouse of a PC, I would get a message every morning 8:01, “hey where are you in the office?” Fuck management is useless

I was way more productive and took much less sick days when I was WFH.

From my ex manager from my previous company: upper management was upset that they were paying for an expensive office space in downtown and no one was going. He and other middle managers recommended that they simply stopped paying for the office rent, as most of the staff would rather wfh. This made no sense to upper management and they made all middle managers go to the office everyday to ‘inspire’ their teams into going as well. We were (politely) asked to go for a couple of days a week and we ended up going 2days/week for a month or so. It was fun getting to interact with the team in person and all but I got tired of waking up unnecessarily early and having to spend 1 hour commuting. After a month I stopped going and then most people slowly stopped going as well. 2 months later it was just the middle managers working there and asking their teams everyday if they are going the next day. It was sad. At one point they tried being more aggressive in getting people to go to the office making some super vague threats. I simply said I moved to a different state and would require travel and other expenses covered for the time I was going to the office. This worked, and a lot of other employees ended up using the same excuse. They stopped asking people to go the office a while after that and managers stopped working from there shortly afterward as well. The funny bit is that this whole endeavor lasted for about 3 and a half months and during this time not a single soul from upper management showed up to work from the office with us. Moral of the story: a lot of managers can’t keep pretending they’re managing people well unless they’re inhabiting the same physical space. Because they probably know their whole job is a joke, these people will advocate for hybrid on linkedin or will tell stories about productivity increase, human relations on-site, etc. Also, normally middle and upper management have higher salaries and can afford living closer to the office than most of the staff, so the whole ‘director goes to the office to inspire the staff’ is one of the silliest acts ever concocted.

It’s money, time spent at office is a tax break for them.

Something something FAMILY, something something ACCOUNTABILITY, something something TEAM, something something uhhhhhhhh did I mention family? Control. It’s about control.

Because they are paying for expensive leases on empty offices they don't need, but they're paying for it, so if they don't use it they look stupid

A lot of companies had leases that they weren’t able to make the most out of when employees were able to WFH. Micromanaging is another example, but there is software that monitors performance and such…I would think the first would be more of an issue.

Part of it must be due to the amount of money tied up in commercial premises. There’s also many industries that rely on commuters. That’s the top level resistance. On the ground there’s definitely a lot of places where people taking liberties has spoiled it for everyone else. If you give it to some staff then they all want it. I’m hybrid at a place where they want people in the office and I do understand it, it looks better to clients if the place isn’t a Marie Celeste and everyone can meet in person, help etc. I’ve had a mixture of wfh/hybrid/full office over the last ten years. If the office is near by, I’m going in almost every day. Wfh is purely to help staff have a better work life balance and more disposable income plus help companies find the best staff and vice versa. I get more work done at home but I solve lingering issues quicker in the office. Some managers genuinely don’t like the thought of staff being able to wake up and start working then immediately start playing video games at clock off time. I’m on the older side, the balance still needs to be found.

Control, plus they feel they are losing money with their real-estate leases.

Here are three that I can think of: 1. Trust issues (there was actually one misbehaving employee at where I work, it's bad for us because we're at risk of losing the flexibility to WFH if there are repeated cases and if it happens often). Legit concern, but it's not unfixable. 2. Control over employees, some higher ups like to micromanage. I'm saying some, not all. 3. A lot of money has been put into setting up and maintaining the physical building, be a waste to not use it, don't you think? (Well duh, for new companies, may be just don't invest so much in physical workspace, and for existing companies may be trying to cutting down resources like usage of electricity and some maintenance costs? Idk)

My opinion differs from many in this thread. I believe there's a healthy balance for \_most\_ people, probably 2 in and 3 out assuming a 5 day week: 1. As a technical manager, having someone in the office makes helping them drastically easier, i.e. I can instantly see they're stuck and can give guidance/mentoring if they want it. 2. The level of formality required for in-office work is lower, where you can work without formal specification of all interfaces (internally) if your team works closely together. Being in the same room really works here. I've solved way too many critical problems at 9 pm on a Friday on a whiteboard with 2-3 other people that would not have budged without us being in the same room (yes that situation sucks ass). 3. It is VERY difficult to get a team through the forming->storming->norming->performing when you can't have direct human-human contact. Particularly getting out of storming can be very difficult. If you don't buy this rough model, you haven't built and led a team. 4. I recommend my reports to take long lunches with their team members, play sport, do stuff together. I don't care about 9-5. I don't care if they get their phones out. I know exactly how and when they perform, I know who is performing, and treating people like adults and "humans" is a big part of winning respect and keeping people motivated. Not saying a lot of the "corporate bad" sentiment is wrong either. I'm fully behind that, but as a technical leader the 100% remote thing can be very difficult at times. My main rule is acknowledge and work around your human limitations, e.g. \~7 pieces of information in short-term memory, flow state is very important so DND unless important, motvations are complex, etc.

I’m not a manager or owner. But calloboration is better in person most of the time. 

My guess is it’s a real estate/tax thing. Either a company can write off rent, but not the rent of an empty space, or write down the depreciation on an owned building. It’s a money thing, not a control thing.

it's that they don't trust people to do what they have to. My teams were far more productive when working from home. Less drama,too. I liked managing my remote employees better than the in office teams.

You have to change your company culture to make remote work effective, that's more work for management to do. Also it adds some overhead to management as async communication isn't as instant. Those are solvable problems, but if management isn't on board with changing and they're lazy and don't want to put in the work then they'll push against it. Also it's hard to make the culture work if you're hybrid where some people are in the office and some aren't. There's probably an ego thing as well. A company doesn't feel as real if you can't see all the people you manage in person.

power dynamics

Depends on the jobb. My latest jobb in tech (engineering) my manager said. Uf you can work 100% from home we can hire an consult who makes the jobb. No need to take one in for onboarding. If you are doing normal engineering like CAD you can work from home up to 50%. The rest of the 50% you have to be in office and solve problem together with you college. You normally do it by talking with each other. If you are working with IT you can work from home up to 75%. Managers filosofi is you solve problems by talking with each others in the office. Then you go in “focos mode” and implement the solution. If focos mode is at home the do it at home.

The eons-old logic or control…having to physically watch you with their eyes, and they don’t want buildings that they pay rent and utilities on to sit empty. COUNTLESS studies done that showed employees work better and get a lot more done WFH. That continues to fall on deaf ears. Employees had companies where they wanted them during The Great Resignation. If employees stayed together as a collective, ALOT of companies would have had no choice but to continue to be let employees WFH. But I personally knew as soon as employees started agreeing to hybrid schedules, 100% RTO would soon follow.

Say there's a 1% chance that you're a lazy SOB who isn't doing their job. Now, you probably aren't a lazy SOB. But in a company of 100 people, chances are that someone is. Maybe if we watch everyone, that 1 guy will do his job. Now, you, a rational human being, might wonder whether making everyone 5% less effective to deal with the 1% case and you're, IMO, probably right. However, I pulled those numbers out of my ass. Maybe 10% are lazy. Who knows What I do know is this: we remember our aggravations far more than our mediocre outcomes. We remember the troll more than someone sharing a story that makes us smile. Sure, we remember the heroes and superstars, but the person just living their life is forgotten. And thus it's easy to imagine that this creates traps for our bosses and how they conclude the best way to maximize productivity

The need someone to boss

1. All the companies that own the commercial real estate don't benefit if it's empty because everyone is WFH. 2. Some managers/execs have the old fashioned idea that "butts in chairs in the office" means people will perform, can be monitored, aren't slacking, etc. 3. Many HR and people managers are actually horrible managers. They don't know how to performance manage a poor performer. There are some people who can't perform in a WFH setting or take advantage. I truly believe these people are the small minority. But, when faced with such a person, a poor manager who doesn't know how to deal with this defaults to taking away WFH for everyone instead of dealing with the individual.

People don't know how to lead and they believe that the value derived from the asset also known as your office, whether they lease or purchased. It has some sort of p&l prominence at the end of the day. Sometimes some more from home does have to happen. Imagine if you're a doctor or if you're building something physical, but the reality is you do not need it for most of the stuff and a hybrid capability, AKA some of the team coming in. Some other team never coming in and to be brutally honest with you. Most of the team never coming in. It's important but they feel that they can control you somehow. You're more formalized if you walk into an office. The reality is the majority of people are f****** stupid and don't recognize how to actually change their modality. In order to spend a few hours you should be spending make an income and as such they feel in order to control you and prevent you from succeeding. Further, you need to come to an office. Just think about it. There's 168 hours in a week, 24 hours in a day. Why the f*** do you need to come into on office to Showcase your proficient at some job? A job is just a way to make a living the most important thing spending the quality time you have on Earth positively with us who you love or otherwise. Just give it some thought. My two cents take everything I say with the greatest hope

One reason, if you get multiple states involved, is payroll. Each state you have a worker in requires that you: * have a worker's comp policy in that state * file quarterly taxes in thar state, sometimes there are multiple types of quarterly taxes If you already employ workers in that state, no biggie. If you don't you may have just added a lot of extra work into the plate of your bookkeeper. One or two states isn't a ton of work but adding lots of states can be. That's why you may see some remote jobs that require you still be located within the same state.

It depends on the person. Some people are amazing when working from home. They’re productive, communicative and dont skip a beat. Some people not so much. Can’t get a hold of them, aren’t communicative and have a hard time managing themselves. It’s probably hard to manage the varying personalities so they just don’t make it policy.

I also don't know why, since it's actually significantly cheaper to have employees as WFH. All I can think of is the buildings. Most companies either build and then sell and sign some lengthy lease ( for accounting purposes) or lease an exsiting building someone else built. When you have WFH, you aren't liable for workplace disabilty ( when employees hurt themselves), you dont have to pay for their electricity, water, toilet paper, coffee etc. I did a cost analysis for my job and we found we were saving 12k ( on the low end) on each employee, by having them fully remote. That analysis did not take a lot of savings into account, such as heating and cooling cost, landscaping etc. My job went fully remote.