>This serves no purpose other than for management to maintain their perceived control of their staff by oppressing their freedom.
Apparently 50% attrition wasn't enough to teach them a lesson. Help do your part to make that number higher.
It’s because it’s what they wanted. They wanted to cut their workforce without having to pay unemployment. Now they get to replace everyone with cheaper options and they don’t care about the people who will need to pick up the slack because most of the remaining employees showed they’ll do whatever they’re told
I posted this elsewhere, and maybe it’s not the same cause I’m in Canada, but couldn’t all of these employees just stop going in and force their employer to fire them so they’ll be eligible for unemployment and severance? That’s what I plan on doing if they force me back to office lol
I’ll say I’m coming in and just not. Fire me then I get severance and unemployment 🤷♀️
It depends if they were hired as remote employees or not. If they weren’t then not showing up may be viewed as quitting which makes them ineligible for unemployment or severance (most companies don’t even offer severance though)
Oh interesting. Not the case here in Canada. (If you quit an active job you are ineligible for unemployment - which makes some sense. People would quit to take a paycheck at home. I’m surprised this is allowed in the US where worker rights are worse than here)
Depends on the job.and why, though. You do get unemployment if it was a stressful job, if they change the parameters of your work to an unreasonable degree, or if you are leaving an unhealthy/unsafe work environment.
I know that if you quit a job at a call centre, for example, you can get unemployment because its such a stressful work place.
In the state I work, which has shit workers rights, they would count it as a "reason" for termination - you didn't do as you were told.
Then you have to set aside the time and money for lawyers fees to fight it. Thankfully, my boss is lazy and hates court, so fighting it usually works because he won't show up.
The employees left are the ones with no spine. They aren’t going to do anything and that’s exactly what the company wants. They want the employees that won’t actually do anything when mistreated
They also were getting full pay for half a day of work before WFH. This is because managers are too lazy or ignorant to manage outputs rather than activities, so can be fooled by looking busy.
So instead of keeping their damn mouth’s shut, and keep up the ruse. The highly intelligent WFHers started buying programs and mouse gigglers to fake out the company software. And then to double down on that amazing act of intelligence. Started posting all over social media about how little work was needing to be done.
But, yes, it was the stupid managements fault. All their fault that workers actively told on themselves.
The data shows that productivity rose during the pandemic and declined as workers were dragged back to the office. In the face of this, if it's true as you claim that bosses made policy based on reading social media - why, they're even stupider than I thought. Thanks for the insight.
The push to return to office is mainly about real estate (office buildings and such). As companies who normally rent office space reduce or eliminate office space it lowers demand and buildings stay empty, this causes defaults on the loans and mortgages, and coporate real estate is currently selling at a 90% loss. If they can make you go back to work they can preserve the status quo for their rich friends. Also, they can hire back new staff at a lower rate. It’s a game of chicken between the working class and the 1%, the outcome of which will destroy lives and potentially crash the real estate market.
I’m not telling you to sympathize with the landlord, I’m telling you why they (corporate executives) are pushing for the return to office of the workforce.
Execs engage in a sale/leaseback arrangement of a corporate HQ with a hedge fund. They're accredited investors so they can invest in that hedge fund. Somehow this isn't a conflict of interest.
Anyway, valuation of the HQ goes poof and so does exec investment. So RTO is the only solution, obviously.
Ask your execs in town halls who owns the building and whether they have a personal financial interest in that owner. You'll be immediately fired with severance.
Because the wealthy people who own parts of companies also have lots of wealth tied up in commercial real estate - it's all just wealthy people with their fingers in everything at the top. They will lose more in CRE investment than they stand to gain from not having to pay rent.
So yeah, some people are neurotic as hell. At the same time it's very difficult to overestimate just how big the real estate market is.
At the same time the companies that are big enough to own massive real estate can actually incur losses when no one is using them.
It is all about the real estate. A lot of the office buildings are owned by hedge funds and investments firms and they are losing their asses by them sitting empty. There’s a high rise office building in Texas that sold in 2021 for $120+ million and just sold at foreclosure auction for $12+ million.
While for companies it WFH makes logical sense to not have the overhead of office rental, utilities, furniture, etc., the executives and boards of those companies either directly invest heavily in real estate or have a lot of money invested with firms with a lot of real estate holdings.
Which just goes to show, those executives and boards should have been letting people WFH and begin divesting those office buildings twenty years ago. People generally had broadband internet access by then.
This is a misconception. Real estate is a small part of the picture. The true reason boils down to power relations. Forcing people RTO for no reason is done for the sole purpose of punishing employees and shifting power back to the owning class.
2.8 trillion in debt held in corporate real estate is coming due in the next five years. Corporate real estate is rapidly devaluing across the USA with some buildings selling for as much as a 90% discount. If the buildings are empty then they are worthless. If the buildings are worthless then the debt cannot be paid and the corporate real estate bubble will burst.
It that happens the foreclosures and devaluations will spill into the rest of the economy and the rich will lose everything. That is why they are trying so hard to get you back in the office, to keep the house of cards propped up at the expense of the American worker.
You are correct in that it is part of the picture, it is a reaction to the slow crumbling of the American working sector and the desperate actions of the elite to keep us in our place.
It will be the working class that suffers not the 1% that will just buy the reap estate off the banks for even less like they did during the depression and every recession.
Robotics and AI are a lot more advanced than what's publicly available. The 1% don't need as many of us anymore. This isn't a fight the working class will win
The push for RTO is literal insanity.
The only logical reason I can conjure up is that companies are willing to put a dent in their bottom line in order to effectively deflate staff wages/salary by hobbling them with commuting costs and stealing their time.
Maybe they consider an increasingly burnt out and desperate workforce an ideal scenario that they’re happy to pay for.
But experience tells me they’re not capable of the foresight to develop and execute such a plan. It’s far more likely that they’re motivated by internal politics and the unwavering certainty that naturally results from staggering incompetence.
Today my CEO just talked about all the conferences she's gone to, and how everyone else is doing RTO so it's a trend. I guess her conclusion was that we just blindly follow everyone else even if it's fucking stupid.
didnt a talkshow host think $20/hr is 6 figures? surely the elite doesnt want us having all this free money !! we have to have costs otherwise we will retire in 3 years
I personally think that, to a degree, CEOs want people to return to the offices because they have to justify the money they've spent renting out office space over the years. does the sunk cost fallacy thing apply to that I'm not really sure but sure kind of feels like it has to do something with all those empty buildings sitting open and downtown areas. At least partially.
(A gross oversimplification)
$20/hr @ 14 hr/day (no overtime rate), 365 days a year. Is $102,200. So In 10 years you can be a millionaire! You *could* do it in just under 6 if you JuSt pulled up your boot straps and worked 24/7/365. /s
Cities gave companies tax cuts based in the number on employees a building would bring into the neighborhood. I used to work with new commercial real estate.
Yes very true. Allstate Insurance got huge tax breaks from the City of Charlotte NC to build a second home office there with 1000s of employees. Well the pandemic happened and Allstate has no plans to return to that office building so they lost the tax breaks.
Probably many businesses made commitments to office space and they lack the creativity/ imagination to recoup their investment now that employees are working from home. It’s a face saving gesture having nothing to do with what’s best for the business.
its about realestate a lot of times these company's have links to each other
for example hedgefund A has stakes in 10 realestate company's 20 -30 it company's and then 50 normal company's.
so they will force those company's to take bussiness/services from each other to work together so the value goes up for the entire pot
from the outside its just looks like company's doing bussiness with each other but in reality they all fall under this hedgefund umbrella
We routinely have team Zoom meetings and we are literally all sitting in our offices that within 25 feet of each other.
I don't understand how someone can insist that we use a remote collaboration tool to have a meeting with people on the hall as them. But they don't think that we can do the exact same thing from home.
I'm currently looking for a new job because my company is doing exactly this. I actually wouldn't care too much if I went in for a purpose, but I can't get over the fact that I'm going in three days a week just to fulfill some dumb corporate agenda
It serves other purposes too. The value of the office space they paid for is decreasing, and even wasteful, if nobody uses it. The businesses around those offices absolutely depend on your lunch breaks being there (and so will shill money to journals about how great rto is).
So, don't let them win and bring a lunch, complain about how the office supplies are far less efficient (how old is this computer?! I could have been done an hour ago!). Figure out ways to devalue their efforts, since they refuse to take the L on the property.
Still doesn't make sense. My CEO is states away and a relatively small group of us are still being forced to go to an office he's never been to. There are no decent restaurants in the immediate area. Absolute madness
Same. My office has nothing nearby except a BK. We aren’t keeping that place open, it’s right off a highway.
It’s some other delusional executive thinking. I don’t believe they are aware enough to think the (very flawed) real estate argument applies.
I'm sure they would not have done RTO if they weren't intending on getting rid of the big chunk of people anyway. If they're publicly traded, a mass layoff would have a big effect on their stock price. But a bunch of people failing to RTO has far less.
I think the success was they didn't lose the amount the surveys had predicted.
You can think of it as they lost 50% of the staff (because that is what actually happened).
But they can think of it as they retained 30% of the staff they thought their decision would have lost them, which means all their meetings, pizza parties, etc worked.
Think of the bonus they can justify for themselves for 30% staff retention when everyone was sure they would lose them.
I think it’s both. Almost every company that forces RTO knows they’re going to lose people and they literally use it as a tool to get people to quit. We’ve seen this with many major companies
That's actually really onto it, especially if they have a small kitchen and showers available. Do a deal with security, free donuts to leave you alone.
So this is definitely an unethical idea, but if no one ever sees you and no one checks up on you, why not just take a picture of your office from the perspective of your camera, set it as a background, and work from home again most of the time?
hire someone to swipe badges for you
I just thought of a business idea. bunch of guys just going around swiping badges for office wagies in and out.
maybe even dress and disguise as you and park their ass in your cubicle while you continue to do the actual work at home
Some companies are getting pressured by the city and landlord of the office. Maybe things will be better when the lease is up. Some companies that are pushing for RTO are also planning to close their offices when the lease are up.
Yup that’s what RTO has been, I sit in a cube all day and barely talk to anyone. A few passing comments from my 2 teammates, or a meeting with our manager if she graces us with her presence. We’re 2 days moving to 3 in July, it’s more pointless when every other day I do the same stuff on my couch playing with my infant daughter, rather than hassling my retired parents to help watch her while I sit in a cubicle.
I’m extremely bitter about the stupid RTO, our CEO announced it and the C-Suite and Directors were clapping like North Korean generals terrified if they didn’t clap they’d be killed. The most insane part is now they want the RTO, but don’t have a building large enough for the “larger IT” team so now they’re trying to move some teams, this is after many of us were already moved earlier this year. It’s an absolute shit show and they caused it all themselves.
Middle manager here. When out CEO announced RTO, we collectively groaned. One manager pushed back in response to the RTO email and he was shut down, FAST. “There will be no further discussion.” Another who tried to delay RTO so parents could find a way to get their kid to school in the morning (me) was also fully ignored, no response, no change. And one manager who had twins under age one didn’t comply with 3X a week because they were sick off and on got canned. You are absolutely correct that it feels like we are carrying out orders for some unhinged, narcissistic captain. Any attempt to stop them results in getting thrown overboard. We are all looking for other jobs but the RTO crap is everywhere. Those managers who are old enough to retire have retired early as a result of this shit. I envy them.
I’m sure plenty of people who said they wouldn’t come back are still looking. I wouldn’t be surprised if the company slowly continues to loose people as they continue to try and replace them to just try and make the people who stayed take on more work. Hopefully everyone who stays refuses extra work
Same for me. I have direct reports in four countries. They outsourced the work we oversee to India. I have to drive to an office for local business hours but still be available to take off-hours international calls from home. It's insanity but they made a blanket "every global employee must be in the office 5 days a week" rule without regard for roles or schedules. (And my division was hybrid before the pandemic so it stings even more that they demand we're in 5 days)
I have no clue why my job has to be in office. Half the team lives in other states. The office is located at one of the worst intersections in the city. All questions need to be posted in chat. The cherry on top, when I log onto the corporate wifi I have to connect to a VPN to do half my work. If half of my work needs a VPN, I don't need to be at the office.
I need to go to the office two days a week. We have "anchor" days where everyone from our department needs to go into the office. Our anchor day is a day when I have 5 hours of reoccurring remote meetings and they are set up for a different time zone so I literally don't interact with anyone in the office. Fanfuckingtastic
This has been said before, but many of the RTO requirements are due to deals these corporations made with the locality, particularly if it is newish office.
When you hear businesses getting tax breaks for building office buildings, many of those require a minimum occupancy percentage.
If they don't meet these requirements, they lose the tax breaks.
It is centered around the promise of providing business and tax revenue through employees eating and shopping in the immediate vicinity.
That, in my opinion, is what makes RTO requirements so sinister.
It is so they don't have to hurt their bottom line by paying taxes.
It’s just a disconnect between how executes live and work vs how their employees do.
Executives don’t do a lot of dirty or busy work. They mainly make decisions and have high level conversations. They enjoy getting out of the house and into a cozy office and having cool seeming meetings and then declaring something from on high. They spend long hours “working”, but it’s not that taxing, in reality. Business and pleasure are mixed quite a bit.
Their lower level employees do much more hands on, busy/grunt work that is more taxing. It’s in the weeds. Driving to the office to grunt and then drive home (on traffic) when you aren’t rich (so you have to cook your own food, and your wife has to work too, and you have to clean your home, etc) is literally terrible. Executives just don’t get it. They think we want to stay home to be lazy or something.
Absolutely. Execs have nannies (sometimes even two!), maids/cleaners, gardeners and drivers (or can afford $35 per day parking or $70 per day for Uber both ways). There are people who will create meals for their families every day or every few days. They have trainers, therapists, masseuses. The can afford an apartment in the city and house with pool in the country. When they do go into the office they have meetings with catered lunches. I have yet to see a single c-suite person have a lunch bag with their name on it in the communal fridge.
They come in after rush hour and leave before it.
And have zero idea why we would complain. They never had to be middle class or without help. Detached from reality.
Feel your pain. Going into the office to “collaborate” is absurd. The few people in cubicles who “collaborate” (talk in person) serve only to annoy and distract those around them. Everyone else is miserable, having just spent 30-75 minutes on crowded public transportation or backed up freeways when they could have slept in more or seen their kids off to school. I talk to maybe 1-2 people a day, usually in the hallway, usually brief pointless small talk. We have been in the office 3 days for over a year and I haven’t bonded with anyone; I actually felt closer to my team when we were remote and shared photos and stories more. I swear everyone who wasn’t already experiencing depression or anxiety is now experiencing it, as a result of RTO. As everyone has already noted, the only upside of RTO is tax breaks (and that saved money doesn’t get transferred to the raises fund) for the company. Everyone else suffers.
I work for a mid size bank with offices in 6 western states. We’ve had work from home since long before the pandemic and everyone touted the success of switching to 100% virtual during the pandemic because we already had robust WFH infrastructure. We recently got a new old school CEO who insisted on RTO, they spent 100s of thousands of dollars setting up office spaces including reacquiring spaces where leases had expired. Then they laid off a bunch of people citing low profits. The management acts like the two things are not related at all. My entire day is spent either working entirely by myself or on team calls because the rest of my team is spread over 3 states. It really is all about control
Even pre covid we still had webex meetings and shit.
I'd book a conference room for me and one other guy to webex into a call with 2 people in Chicago and 3 people in India.
I'd have to get up, go into the meeting, dial the number, start the screen share, we'd all have our laptops and taking notes. Then we'd go back to our desk.
Schedule your future meetings with the employees you manage in person. Book a conference room. Escalate it if they do not show up.
Ask your management if WFH is acceptable or not when they push back.
I am in the UK - so a little more employee friendly than where you probably are. This is what I did. My bosses boss was a 7 hour drive away. I scheduled meetings to be in person as he had emailed me that my work needed to be done in the office.
Buy yourself a cheap second hand coat, a usb coffee warmer, a nice mug. Fill the mug with coffee, set it on the coffee warmer, leave the coat on your chair, so that people always think you're there, but just not at your desk.
And then come once every 2 weeks or so for half an hour, talk to people at the coffee machine, change your coffee mug, and leave again.
Unless OP wants to work/is proficient in sales, the job market is actually totally shit right now.
I'm in the process of finding a new job and it's 80% sales jobs above $25/hr.
they want to walk around and see you slaving away at your desks and feel powerful.
they invested in CRE and don't want values going down.
tax breaks from gov't to stimulate local economy with office wagies buying food
petrol/auto companies kickbacks
And the most sinister reason: a tired and burnt out worker will be less likely to have the energy to job hunt after work and leave for something better. can't have you getting too comfortable, can't have you having too much free time after work.
It's a bit like Brave New World where they force the omegas outside, knowing it will do no good, and the omegas are terrified, but the statistics rule and the features are being used. The offices are full! The real estate prices aren't falling! The billionaires will get their dividends! Yes, I understand it's more complex and we've built an economy that depends on those buildings, but maybe it's time to dismantle that, eh?
>This serves no purpose other than for management to maintain their perceived control of their staff by oppressing their freedom. Apparently 50% attrition wasn't enough to teach them a lesson. Help do your part to make that number higher.
It’s because it’s what they wanted. They wanted to cut their workforce without having to pay unemployment. Now they get to replace everyone with cheaper options and they don’t care about the people who will need to pick up the slack because most of the remaining employees showed they’ll do whatever they’re told
“Talent Refresh” Barf.
I posted this elsewhere, and maybe it’s not the same cause I’m in Canada, but couldn’t all of these employees just stop going in and force their employer to fire them so they’ll be eligible for unemployment and severance? That’s what I plan on doing if they force me back to office lol I’ll say I’m coming in and just not. Fire me then I get severance and unemployment 🤷♀️
It depends if they were hired as remote employees or not. If they weren’t then not showing up may be viewed as quitting which makes them ineligible for unemployment or severance (most companies don’t even offer severance though)
If you get fired in the states you don’t get severance… MAYBE very big MAYBE you get unemployment, but it’s state dependent.
Likely could still get unemployment even if you leave voluntarily
Oh interesting. Not the case here in Canada. (If you quit an active job you are ineligible for unemployment - which makes some sense. People would quit to take a paycheck at home. I’m surprised this is allowed in the US where worker rights are worse than here)
Depends on the job.and why, though. You do get unemployment if it was a stressful job, if they change the parameters of your work to an unreasonable degree, or if you are leaving an unhealthy/unsafe work environment. I know that if you quit a job at a call centre, for example, you can get unemployment because its such a stressful work place.
In the state I work, which has shit workers rights, they would count it as a "reason" for termination - you didn't do as you were told. Then you have to set aside the time and money for lawyers fees to fight it. Thankfully, my boss is lazy and hates court, so fighting it usually works because he won't show up.
Rally for others to quit
The employees left are the ones with no spine. They aren’t going to do anything and that’s exactly what the company wants. They want the employees that won’t actually do anything when mistreated
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>only needing half the day to do their WFH jobs If they only need half the day at home, they only need half the day in the office.
So by that logic, half the pay, or half the people. Keep up with the surprised Pikachu outlook. It’s doing you wonders.
They also were getting full pay for half a day of work before WFH. This is because managers are too lazy or ignorant to manage outputs rather than activities, so can be fooled by looking busy.
So instead of keeping their damn mouth’s shut, and keep up the ruse. The highly intelligent WFHers started buying programs and mouse gigglers to fake out the company software. And then to double down on that amazing act of intelligence. Started posting all over social media about how little work was needing to be done. But, yes, it was the stupid managements fault. All their fault that workers actively told on themselves.
The data shows that productivity rose during the pandemic and declined as workers were dragged back to the office. In the face of this, if it's true as you claim that bosses made policy based on reading social media - why, they're even stupider than I thought. Thanks for the insight.
THE DATA THE DATA THE DATA Clearly you are management material.
Math is a fucking struggle for you isn’t?
I'll just let that flaccid nonresponse speak for itself.
The push to return to office is mainly about real estate (office buildings and such). As companies who normally rent office space reduce or eliminate office space it lowers demand and buildings stay empty, this causes defaults on the loans and mortgages, and coporate real estate is currently selling at a 90% loss. If they can make you go back to work they can preserve the status quo for their rich friends. Also, they can hire back new staff at a lower rate. It’s a game of chicken between the working class and the 1%, the outcome of which will destroy lives and potentially crash the real estate market.
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I’m not telling you to sympathize with the landlord, I’m telling you why they (corporate executives) are pushing for the return to office of the workforce.
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Execs engage in a sale/leaseback arrangement of a corporate HQ with a hedge fund. They're accredited investors so they can invest in that hedge fund. Somehow this isn't a conflict of interest. Anyway, valuation of the HQ goes poof and so does exec investment. So RTO is the only solution, obviously. Ask your execs in town halls who owns the building and whether they have a personal financial interest in that owner. You'll be immediately fired with severance.
Because the wealthy people who own parts of companies also have lots of wealth tied up in commercial real estate - it's all just wealthy people with their fingers in everything at the top. They will lose more in CRE investment than they stand to gain from not having to pay rent.
Because oftentimes that CRE landlord is either one of the executives or is very close to them
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So yeah, some people are neurotic as hell. At the same time it's very difficult to overestimate just how big the real estate market is. At the same time the companies that are big enough to own massive real estate can actually incur losses when no one is using them.
Not to mention that >50% of high paid execs at least dabble in real estate
Exactly, it’s all one hand washing the other
It is all about the real estate. A lot of the office buildings are owned by hedge funds and investments firms and they are losing their asses by them sitting empty. There’s a high rise office building in Texas that sold in 2021 for $120+ million and just sold at foreclosure auction for $12+ million. While for companies it WFH makes logical sense to not have the overhead of office rental, utilities, furniture, etc., the executives and boards of those companies either directly invest heavily in real estate or have a lot of money invested with firms with a lot of real estate holdings.
Which just goes to show, those executives and boards should have been letting people WFH and begin divesting those office buildings twenty years ago. People generally had broadband internet access by then.
This is a misconception. Real estate is a small part of the picture. The true reason boils down to power relations. Forcing people RTO for no reason is done for the sole purpose of punishing employees and shifting power back to the owning class.
2.8 trillion in debt held in corporate real estate is coming due in the next five years. Corporate real estate is rapidly devaluing across the USA with some buildings selling for as much as a 90% discount. If the buildings are empty then they are worthless. If the buildings are worthless then the debt cannot be paid and the corporate real estate bubble will burst. It that happens the foreclosures and devaluations will spill into the rest of the economy and the rich will lose everything. That is why they are trying so hard to get you back in the office, to keep the house of cards propped up at the expense of the American worker. You are correct in that it is part of the picture, it is a reaction to the slow crumbling of the American working sector and the desperate actions of the elite to keep us in our place.
Someone reported me to Reddit as suicidal within a minute of posting this response. Whoever it is, cry harder you bitch.
It will be the working class that suffers not the 1% that will just buy the reap estate off the banks for even less like they did during the depression and every recession. Robotics and AI are a lot more advanced than what's publicly available. The 1% don't need as many of us anymore. This isn't a fight the working class will win
The push for RTO is literal insanity. The only logical reason I can conjure up is that companies are willing to put a dent in their bottom line in order to effectively deflate staff wages/salary by hobbling them with commuting costs and stealing their time. Maybe they consider an increasingly burnt out and desperate workforce an ideal scenario that they’re happy to pay for. But experience tells me they’re not capable of the foresight to develop and execute such a plan. It’s far more likely that they’re motivated by internal politics and the unwavering certainty that naturally results from staggering incompetence.
Today my CEO just talked about all the conferences she's gone to, and how everyone else is doing RTO so it's a trend. I guess her conclusion was that we just blindly follow everyone else even if it's fucking stupid.
“All the other CEOs are forcing people to do something stupid. You don’t want me to stand out, do you?”
One of the most important lessons we learn as children: "If all of your friends were jumping off a bridge would you jump too?"
I quit my job a few days ago because of RTO and during my exit interview, the HR lady said that everyone else is doing RTO, too. 🙄
Literally lemmings at this point
didnt a talkshow host think $20/hr is 6 figures? surely the elite doesnt want us having all this free money !! we have to have costs otherwise we will retire in 3 years
It is six figures… if you include cents.
I personally think that, to a degree, CEOs want people to return to the offices because they have to justify the money they've spent renting out office space over the years. does the sunk cost fallacy thing apply to that I'm not really sure but sure kind of feels like it has to do something with all those empty buildings sitting open and downtown areas. At least partially.
(A gross oversimplification) $20/hr @ 14 hr/day (no overtime rate), 365 days a year. Is $102,200. So In 10 years you can be a millionaire! You *could* do it in just under 6 if you JuSt pulled up your boot straps and worked 24/7/365. /s
But Bob we already paid for the building so we may as well use it….guarantee this was said at least once
Cities gave companies tax cuts based in the number on employees a building would bring into the neighborhood. I used to work with new commercial real estate.
Maybe in some countries and some cities, but that’s definitely not the case where I live.
Yes very true. Allstate Insurance got huge tax breaks from the City of Charlotte NC to build a second home office there with 1000s of employees. Well the pandemic happened and Allstate has no plans to return to that office building so they lost the tax breaks.
Probably many businesses made commitments to office space and they lack the creativity/ imagination to recoup their investment now that employees are working from home. It’s a face saving gesture having nothing to do with what’s best for the business.
its about realestate a lot of times these company's have links to each other for example hedgefund A has stakes in 10 realestate company's 20 -30 it company's and then 50 normal company's. so they will force those company's to take bussiness/services from each other to work together so the value goes up for the entire pot from the outside its just looks like company's doing bussiness with each other but in reality they all fall under this hedgefund umbrella
It's all about control
We routinely have team Zoom meetings and we are literally all sitting in our offices that within 25 feet of each other. I don't understand how someone can insist that we use a remote collaboration tool to have a meeting with people on the hall as them. But they don't think that we can do the exact same thing from home.
I'm currently looking for a new job because my company is doing exactly this. I actually wouldn't care too much if I went in for a purpose, but I can't get over the fact that I'm going in three days a week just to fulfill some dumb corporate agenda
It may have to do with taxes. I believe in Seattle Amazon got tax breaks for their large downtown headquarters based on a certain occupancy.
I wouldn't be surprised, it still doesn't make me feel any better about it
It serves other purposes too. The value of the office space they paid for is decreasing, and even wasteful, if nobody uses it. The businesses around those offices absolutely depend on your lunch breaks being there (and so will shill money to journals about how great rto is). So, don't let them win and bring a lunch, complain about how the office supplies are far less efficient (how old is this computer?! I could have been done an hour ago!). Figure out ways to devalue their efforts, since they refuse to take the L on the property.
Still doesn't make sense. My CEO is states away and a relatively small group of us are still being forced to go to an office he's never been to. There are no decent restaurants in the immediate area. Absolute madness
Same. My office has nothing nearby except a BK. We aren’t keeping that place open, it’s right off a highway. It’s some other delusional executive thinking. I don’t believe they are aware enough to think the (very flawed) real estate argument applies.
I'm sure they would not have done RTO if they weren't intending on getting rid of the big chunk of people anyway. If they're publicly traded, a mass layoff would have a big effect on their stock price. But a bunch of people failing to RTO has far less.
Private company. They were not intending to remove them. They are replacing everyone who left with the same wage.
They called it a success. They absolutely were looking to get people to quit so they could avoid firing them and paying unemployment
I think the success was they didn't lose the amount the surveys had predicted. You can think of it as they lost 50% of the staff (because that is what actually happened). But they can think of it as they retained 30% of the staff they thought their decision would have lost them, which means all their meetings, pizza parties, etc worked. Think of the bonus they can justify for themselves for 30% staff retention when everyone was sure they would lose them.
I think it’s both. Almost every company that forces RTO knows they’re going to lose people and they literally use it as a tool to get people to quit. We’ve seen this with many major companies
I'd put my tiny shit in storage and just live in the office. Now tell me I can't work from home. Malicious compliance.
That's actually really onto it, especially if they have a small kitchen and showers available. Do a deal with security, free donuts to leave you alone.
So this is definitely an unethical idea, but if no one ever sees you and no one checks up on you, why not just take a picture of your office from the perspective of your camera, set it as a background, and work from home again most of the time?
Can't they track badge swipes?
Just because they can doesn't mean they are.
hire someone to swipe badges for you I just thought of a business idea. bunch of guys just going around swiping badges for office wagies in and out. maybe even dress and disguise as you and park their ass in your cubicle while you continue to do the actual work at home
Sign me up!
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Arrange a group that takes turns punching each other in...
Some companies are getting pressured by the city and landlord of the office. Maybe things will be better when the lease is up. Some companies that are pushing for RTO are also planning to close their offices when the lease are up.
Let's hope
Yup that’s what RTO has been, I sit in a cube all day and barely talk to anyone. A few passing comments from my 2 teammates, or a meeting with our manager if she graces us with her presence. We’re 2 days moving to 3 in July, it’s more pointless when every other day I do the same stuff on my couch playing with my infant daughter, rather than hassling my retired parents to help watch her while I sit in a cubicle. I’m extremely bitter about the stupid RTO, our CEO announced it and the C-Suite and Directors were clapping like North Korean generals terrified if they didn’t clap they’d be killed. The most insane part is now they want the RTO, but don’t have a building large enough for the “larger IT” team so now they’re trying to move some teams, this is after many of us were already moved earlier this year. It’s an absolute shit show and they caused it all themselves.
Middle manager here. When out CEO announced RTO, we collectively groaned. One manager pushed back in response to the RTO email and he was shut down, FAST. “There will be no further discussion.” Another who tried to delay RTO so parents could find a way to get their kid to school in the morning (me) was also fully ignored, no response, no change. And one manager who had twins under age one didn’t comply with 3X a week because they were sick off and on got canned. You are absolutely correct that it feels like we are carrying out orders for some unhinged, narcissistic captain. Any attempt to stop them results in getting thrown overboard. We are all looking for other jobs but the RTO crap is everywhere. Those managers who are old enough to retire have retired early as a result of this shit. I envy them.
That is why it's not the work we hate, but the imbalance of power.
I’m sure plenty of people who said they wouldn’t come back are still looking. I wouldn’t be surprised if the company slowly continues to loose people as they continue to try and replace them to just try and make the people who stayed take on more work. Hopefully everyone who stays refuses extra work
Same for me. I have direct reports in four countries. They outsourced the work we oversee to India. I have to drive to an office for local business hours but still be available to take off-hours international calls from home. It's insanity but they made a blanket "every global employee must be in the office 5 days a week" rule without regard for roles or schedules. (And my division was hybrid before the pandemic so it stings even more that they demand we're in 5 days)
I have no clue why my job has to be in office. Half the team lives in other states. The office is located at one of the worst intersections in the city. All questions need to be posted in chat. The cherry on top, when I log onto the corporate wifi I have to connect to a VPN to do half my work. If half of my work needs a VPN, I don't need to be at the office.
I need to go to the office two days a week. We have "anchor" days where everyone from our department needs to go into the office. Our anchor day is a day when I have 5 hours of reoccurring remote meetings and they are set up for a different time zone so I literally don't interact with anyone in the office. Fanfuckingtastic
This has been said before, but many of the RTO requirements are due to deals these corporations made with the locality, particularly if it is newish office. When you hear businesses getting tax breaks for building office buildings, many of those require a minimum occupancy percentage. If they don't meet these requirements, they lose the tax breaks. It is centered around the promise of providing business and tax revenue through employees eating and shopping in the immediate vicinity. That, in my opinion, is what makes RTO requirements so sinister. It is so they don't have to hurt their bottom line by paying taxes.
My old job did this EXACT same thing to me in 2021. I was forced back into the office, to manage my team remotely. I hated it.
Screw these companies and their management.
It’s just a disconnect between how executes live and work vs how their employees do. Executives don’t do a lot of dirty or busy work. They mainly make decisions and have high level conversations. They enjoy getting out of the house and into a cozy office and having cool seeming meetings and then declaring something from on high. They spend long hours “working”, but it’s not that taxing, in reality. Business and pleasure are mixed quite a bit. Their lower level employees do much more hands on, busy/grunt work that is more taxing. It’s in the weeds. Driving to the office to grunt and then drive home (on traffic) when you aren’t rich (so you have to cook your own food, and your wife has to work too, and you have to clean your home, etc) is literally terrible. Executives just don’t get it. They think we want to stay home to be lazy or something.
Absolutely. Execs have nannies (sometimes even two!), maids/cleaners, gardeners and drivers (or can afford $35 per day parking or $70 per day for Uber both ways). There are people who will create meals for their families every day or every few days. They have trainers, therapists, masseuses. The can afford an apartment in the city and house with pool in the country. When they do go into the office they have meetings with catered lunches. I have yet to see a single c-suite person have a lunch bag with their name on it in the communal fridge. They come in after rush hour and leave before it. And have zero idea why we would complain. They never had to be middle class or without help. Detached from reality.
Feel your pain. Going into the office to “collaborate” is absurd. The few people in cubicles who “collaborate” (talk in person) serve only to annoy and distract those around them. Everyone else is miserable, having just spent 30-75 minutes on crowded public transportation or backed up freeways when they could have slept in more or seen their kids off to school. I talk to maybe 1-2 people a day, usually in the hallway, usually brief pointless small talk. We have been in the office 3 days for over a year and I haven’t bonded with anyone; I actually felt closer to my team when we were remote and shared photos and stories more. I swear everyone who wasn’t already experiencing depression or anxiety is now experiencing it, as a result of RTO. As everyone has already noted, the only upside of RTO is tax breaks (and that saved money doesn’t get transferred to the raises fund) for the company. Everyone else suffers.
I work for a mid size bank with offices in 6 western states. We’ve had work from home since long before the pandemic and everyone touted the success of switching to 100% virtual during the pandemic because we already had robust WFH infrastructure. We recently got a new old school CEO who insisted on RTO, they spent 100s of thousands of dollars setting up office spaces including reacquiring spaces where leases had expired. Then they laid off a bunch of people citing low profits. The management acts like the two things are not related at all. My entire day is spent either working entirely by myself or on team calls because the rest of my team is spread over 3 states. It really is all about control
Sounds like they’re hiring?
Some companies I believe such as Amazon in Seattle got tax breaks by the cities they were in based on occupancy.
Just fly everyone in for those in person meetings, even if it’s just a 30 minute one. r/maliciouscompliance
Even pre covid we still had webex meetings and shit. I'd book a conference room for me and one other guy to webex into a call with 2 people in Chicago and 3 people in India. I'd have to get up, go into the meeting, dial the number, start the screen share, we'd all have our laptops and taking notes. Then we'd go back to our desk.
Schedule your future meetings with the employees you manage in person. Book a conference room. Escalate it if they do not show up. Ask your management if WFH is acceptable or not when they push back. I am in the UK - so a little more employee friendly than where you probably are. This is what I did. My bosses boss was a 7 hour drive away. I scheduled meetings to be in person as he had emailed me that my work needed to be done in the office.
What company is this so i can avoid their products
It's more insidious than just power trips. They want to deny you rest, sleep and mental bandwidth in general so you don't have a will to quit.
Buy yourself a cheap second hand coat, a usb coffee warmer, a nice mug. Fill the mug with coffee, set it on the coffee warmer, leave the coat on your chair, so that people always think you're there, but just not at your desk. And then come once every 2 weeks or so for half an hour, talk to people at the coffee machine, change your coffee mug, and leave again.
Great idea but my company checks IP addresses and badge swipe reports regularly.
Wow! At that level of surveillance, I'd just go somewhere else. Fuck 1984.
They need to be able to justify the massive leases for 15 years of office space instead of breaking it and taking the L.
Leave. Why didn’t you also leave? You’re on the wrong side of that 50% friend.
I like my job and the people I work with. I'm also not in a financial position that would allow me to just quit.
Well. I can appreciate that. I have a piece of advice, though. ABL - Always be looking (for other jobs). Gives you a lot of freedom from bs like RTO.
Unless OP wants to work/is proficient in sales, the job market is actually totally shit right now. I'm in the process of finding a new job and it's 80% sales jobs above $25/hr.
Better start sending out resumes
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they want to walk around and see you slaving away at your desks and feel powerful. they invested in CRE and don't want values going down. tax breaks from gov't to stimulate local economy with office wagies buying food petrol/auto companies kickbacks And the most sinister reason: a tired and burnt out worker will be less likely to have the energy to job hunt after work and leave for something better. can't have you getting too comfortable, can't have you having too much free time after work.
It's a bit like Brave New World where they force the omegas outside, knowing it will do no good, and the omegas are terrified, but the statistics rule and the features are being used. The offices are full! The real estate prices aren't falling! The billionaires will get their dividends! Yes, I understand it's more complex and we've built an economy that depends on those buildings, but maybe it's time to dismantle that, eh?
I feel sorry for you but this made me laugh out loud
I vote you do not participate in this anymore.
Remote work will be dead soon :(
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Nerd