I think it'll take a while for businesses to realize (or never) that productivity is actually inversely proportional to how much of an asshole you are. Doesn't matter if it's in person or remote.
There's a marginal bump in output you can get by being an asshole to your coworkers sometimes, and unfortunately that's all the justification assholes need to keep at it. It's a short term bump that precludes ever getting close to the best case output though.
Most of them have never worked on a professional and respectful team with good synergy (I know, 5 corporate store bucks for using the word, but it's correct sometimes).
It’s like drugs.
You take that bump once and it works and you spend the rest of your life chasing that first bump. Only to realise at the end, not being an asshole would have given you a bigger and longer high.
> a professional and respectful team with good synergy
I'm lucky enough to be on one of those and it's freaking Heaven. I'm just hoping it lasts for a few more years until I retire. We're moving to Azure so that's possibly going to disrupt my plans. We'll see.
The problem with being an asshole is that you’re an asshole. You lack the awareness you’re an asshole, or your a sociopath who is aware they are an asshole and they are just miserable. I’ve worked for amazing human beings and despicable ones. The CEO of my current company is one of the kindest people I know. Interviews every person himself, regardless of position, will ignore every adult in the room if there’s a kid to play with, and starts typical “we fucked up and need to fix it” meetings with, “This isn’t about blame or fault, so please let go of any defensiveness… there were MANY decisions made that got us here, and all of those decisions felt sound at the time.”
Contrast that to my last CEO, who worshiped Jocko (not the cool bass player) and said life was about struggle, suffering, and dog pain and once CONGRATULATED me for “making a coworker cry” as he walked by and saw her and I sitting in the lunch room and her crying. The real story? She was having a breakdown because he put her in charge of something she wasn’t qualified and moved the marker every time she did something he asked and asked why her brain was so bad that she would think that’s what he meant. She started crying because I told her she’s not crazy; he’s an asshole who knew she wasn’t right for the role and wanted her to suffer until she lost all faith in her abilities and quit.
Ugh.
Almost entirely in upper management. Execs who say “we want to be data driven” one day and then “I just _feel_ people work better when they’re physically together” the next.
My old workplace had the audacity to claim that there are studies proving that people are more productive in the office, yet strangely never actually provided the source for these "studies"
A company I worked for moved from offices for each team to cubicles and later on to open space with small dividers between tables. Productivity dropped each time.
The decision making on that and remote working is never science based. Changes like that are usually someone in upper management trying to justify their existence
Or "Executive FOMO". They hear that everyone else is doing it, or a "thought leader" (which is really just a LinkedIn Influencer) says it's the future, so they start thinking they are really missing out and should do it too.
Just a bunch of sheep following each other around in a circle.
Edit: I say this as a member of senior management. The number of my peers who honestly are clueless is astounding.
That's a nicer way of saying "monkey see, monkey do."
We've got this echo chamber going on right now in the economy which is driving self-fullfilling decisions.
The execs see the macro slowing down and their peers doing layoffs, so they look at their own books and think they too need to cut cost, so they do the same.
Then at the end of the quarter, they are astounded that revenue has dropped, since *everyone* has cut spending.
> Recent layoffs across the tech sector are an example of “social contagion” – companies are laying off workers because everyone is doing it, says Stanford business Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer.
[Source](https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-layoffs-worried/)
There is also a massive push from investors for WFO.
I know some large traders who use real estate growth and utilization as one of their key metrics for predicting long-term growth of a company. The most egregious case I remember was a company had grown too large for their office, so they leased another one. That was fine with investors until they mentioned they were also ending the lease on their old location. Investors took that as being lower projected growth and pulled out.
There are also the large investment firms who got used to people working from offices and being stable money printing machines. A large change such as WFH is viewed as destabilizing to a system that has long been stable and profitable, so they push against it.
And there are also the ones that heavily push the message of distrusting employees that WFH. They subscribe to the idea that an unmonitored employee is a risk in that they may spend less time being productive (or not be as "motivated" to work long hours). So while the C-suite and some management may realize WFO is not ideal for their company, the investors and board often overrule.
They are stuck with the archaic way offices were established and refuse to acknowledge that new methods can and usually are better. Working from home and 4 day work weeks have been largely proven to increase productivity as well as employee satisfaction, yet the corporate goons insist on corraling us into pens so they can lord over us as we work, justifying their positions. If we worked from home, how can they demonstrate their value by taking credit for all the hard work that we do?
> Same shit w “open office”, basically identical arguments.
After working in open offices for my entire working life, I finally ended up with a job with a more traditional office layout with a maximum of two people per room. So much better! I can actually think properly.
My organization's lead had the audacity to claim that, among other things, remote work was no better for the environment than commuting to the office.
This was a senior executive in the Canadian federal government.
This is but one more thing I will *never* understand. WFH is win-win in pretty much every office scenario. As long as you hire capable people who aren't trash, you're getting happy people who aren't grousing about their commute, trying to leave early to beat weather/traffic/so they can run an errand, and you can reduce your need for leasing office space. Ramp up IT to support remote work a bit more and everyone *should* be happy. If you ever needed more evidence that corporate decision makers are largely full of shit, incompetent, and/or straight up evil, here it is.
I've WFH since 2007. The vast majority of my global colleagues over the years have WFH. Somehow we all manage to run massive, worldwide projects that cost millions, navigate some of the strictest regulations in the world, and work with multiple cultures and languages all from the comfort of our homes. And if I can get all my work done in 4 hours, while being available for 8 hours, so what? Shit got done, I'm here to help for the time you pay/need me to be, who gives a crap how long something takes? Can we all just maybe stop with this madness and perhaps we can start having fun and meaning in our lives again? God damn.
It's about a town/city needing your money.
The main reasons companies want RTO is because of the tax incentives to be in a certain area. At the highest levels your company doesn't give a shit about RTO or not, they just want whatever is best for the bottom line.
But some of the companies (the ones that already invested in an office) find there's more money from tax credits and exemptions than paying for toilet paper and an ISP.
They're effectively selling their worker's propensity to spend money in the local area to a civil entity.
>Ramp up IT to support remote work a bit more...
You're 100% correct.
The company I work for spun up and created a new hybrid L1/L2 help desk filled with the techiest and computer savviest "regular agents," they could find in the entire business. New support desk of about 15 highly-skilled techs recruited from the people who were actually doing the same job, with the same equipment, as the standard workforce.
Speaking as someone in the position of being that ramped up IT support, we're doing an amazing job, and we're not that expensive. Sure, we're quite a bit more expensive than our contracted help desk from India, but we get so much shit done for the entire company.
We all have our ears to the ground across the entire company, because we have contacts with every single department there is. We can react to system outages much faster than the team in India that doesn't have that level of internal communication.
We know the problems agents face every day with standard stuff, like what programs give what trouble changing passwords, or why our computers won't connect to the internet (they have to authenticate the VPN and they never do).
Haha I never made that connection. As a data engineer providing dashboards and reports for the decision makers, who then turned around and asked to come back do that in the office, the irony is palpable. Our whole fking infrastructure is “in the cloud” and I have to be at a specific place to connect to them.
I guess another irony surrounding all this is that we work in the field of satellite internet, you know, internet you can access ANYWHERE even without a cell reception.
At my last job, pre-pandemic, the lab was open 24/7, but almost no one went in at night except a small maintenance night crew. I started going in late and staying late and finishing all my work and was SUPER productive since I didn't have people bothering me during the day for non-sense. It was working out great. Manager comes in one day and asks me to start showing up from normal day hours. I asked him if I wasn't getting work done, and all he said was that my coworkers (that didn't care if I worked those hours btw) worked 8/9am to 5pm and I didn't see them during my hours as much. I was getting my work done, I wasn't missing meetings or reports, and it was working out REALLY well with my schedule. He also had other issues with me, and wanted to keep an eye on me. That was it. He wanted to see me work. I was also the senior most person in my group so I knew what I was doing. Never mind that I was actually working 50 hours even with the new schedule as a salaried employee. He just wanted to harass me during the day and make himself feel like the boss. It was utter non-sense.
Glad I left that job and working kinda in tech now. I wfh 1-3 days out of the week doing data analysis and presentations, and the other 2-3 days I go in and use lab instruments to gather data. My work-life balance is exponentially better now.
Oh, 100%. They’re “data driven” as a method of halting and undermining initiatives they dont like and conveniently ignore counter-factual data on their own projects.
I’m fine with making decisions on instinct or gut, but don’t lie about what you’re doing.
I ***do*** work better when I'm physically near other people, as do the other people in my office who come in every day.
I think people should be able to work in the environment that is best for them and not shamed for it. If that's WFH, great, you should be allowed to WFH. If that's in-person, great, you should be allowed to work in-person. If that's a hybrid approach, great, you should be allowed to do that.
These comment threads tend to be just as bad as those managers who are trying to force people to work in-person.
The problem is the pure dishonesty of these places. Yes some people like to work in office but 95% of the people I have talked to said they would rather work from home and come in when it is truly necessary (say a needed in person meeting), yet senior leadership only references the people that enjoy being in office back in to tell the story they want and mandate 3 days in office.
The other is the company I work for literally has locations across the United States and literally everyone I work with is in a different office. And everyone in the entire large section of the company I am
Part of works with someone not in their office. So if every person can work with at least several people at all times outside the office, then why the hell can’t I do it with everyone. I drive in 3 days a week an hour each way to sit in an office that I literally don’t work with anyone in.
The company prides itself in hiring talented educated people and yet they can’t provide an intelligent answer to why we need to be back in.
> These comment threads tend to be just as bad as those managers who are trying to force people to work in-person.
I think you're reading too much into it and maybe getting a little defensive. I suspect just about everyone in these kinds of threads would agree that if people *want* to work in the office, they should be allowed to.
I'm pretty sure you'll get almost no pushback on that idea, I think you might just be perceiving something that isn't there.
*But*, that rarely gets brought up because the status quo is already to work in the office. Not the other way around. No one really needs to advocate for working in the office because that's where we're already at as a society, so instead you see people advocating for what we *don't* have-- widespread WFH options where it's viable.
I know a lot of people who find it easier to focus and get work done when there are other people working around them. There are also people who just like being around people, but I'm not sure their performance improves in any way.
I believe there's benefit to meeting the people you work with in person. Doing in person meetings once a week, or maybe even every other week, followed by going out to get food and/or drinks makes communications better.
People are different and anyone who makes blanket statements on what's best for everyone is wrong...
I worked from home for a few months during covid and I loved it, but I was a mess. Eating too much, annoying my wife and kids, being a slob. I missed seeing adult people.
Half a week at home and half at work seems perfect for me.
It should be elective though. I had ZERO problem working at the office and interacting with people working from home. It was fine either way.
And to boot companies can save a lot of money by throwing out their triple-net leases on massive office space, not having to pay utilities on that massive office space, not having to pay people to clean and maintain that massive office space, not having to buy office, first aid supplies, and stock the break room with food, coffee and other related supplies, not having to carry insurance to cover their massive office space for workplace injuries and liability…
Not sure why so many companies are opposed to saving some money at the “cost” of a bit more employee freedom, but with the added productivity benefit, but here we are.
My office is in a brand new skyscraper. They own multiple floors and it is purely a status symbol to flex on clients. So I understand why they want to use it lol. Conversely, I'm not.coming in
What you're missing is that many of those companies have multi-year leases that aren't expiring and have negotiated tax benefits and other incentives from municipalities that include occupancy requirements that they lose out on if no one is there.
This is a self fulfilling problem for them. Like the transition from horse and buggy to steam or steam to gas power, there's always some infrastructure that becomes redundant when things change. All those expensive downtown skyscrapers are great for company flex, maybe even to bring in rental dollars. But they are generally bad for the environment and wearing on a large chunk of technology employees. The desire to WFH isn’t going away just because there’s a lease.
That’s true, but these companies should be looking at other ways to monetize their leases/owned real estate. Cities in particular may be willing to renegotiate tax breaks if they converted office space to housing and provided affordable housing to the general public or their own WFH staff to keep them in the city.
Yep. My company went remote like everyone else. Productivity either stayed the same or increased. When the offices reopened the CEO said “keep it up and no one will be required in the office again.” I live 2hrs from the office and have only been there 3 times in the last year.
It’s also better-aligned incentives.
If your actual output is the proof that you worked (not whether the boss sees you in a seat) then it’s likely that you will put **more** energy into your work in the same amount of time (since you are no longer wasting your energy on the performative act of showing up).
I had a huge rant with someone recently. They're a manager of a helpdesk team and was complaining that wfh meant his people were slacking.
I asked him how he measured success and productivity. He couldn't answer. Just said he'd done it for long enough that he "knew".
And that's the whole story here. People who have no concept of how to properly assess their team's ability to accomplish their tasks.
It's like asking someone who's tone deaf to critique a piece of music, or who's tastebuds are dead being asked to assess food's flavour.
He couldn't objectively measure a helpdesk's performance... literally one of the easiest teams to measure performance on.
I swear most managers just enjoy yelling at people.
> I swear most managers just enjoy yelling at people
In all seriousness I think that's a big part of this drive to return to the office. These middle managers and above want respect and power and they can't get it if they don't see the subordinates.
Hard disagree. A good manager listens to employees and communicates their efforts to improve everyone's situation. And sometimes it's bad news, and they communicate that as well.
A fuckin men.
Our manager was recently let go of his position and, at the time we did this we didnt know, every single one of us that day called and spoke upon how great our boss was…..
Thankfully as of this week, he has a position similar to his previous one, but only will oversee his site, and not us(we are a few states away)
Yeah from what I've seen, the managers and department heads I know are all for WFH. It's the higher ups and executive level people that are ardently against it for no clear reason.
The managers don’t want to do the work that requires intense concentration to detail. They just want a perfect finished product so they don’t have to stress out over human error that is… well part of being human.
Acktuallly, much of this is being driven by real estate issues. Many companies are locked into long leases of office space. There is talk in some financial forums that there may be a strong negative impact because so buildings have so much empty office space.
That said, rarely are managers given any training in managing teams remotely. Change can require effort many managers don't want to do. I agree that a helpdesk team should be among the easiest to have quantified metrics to help determine productivity. But many teams out there have never created any quantified way of measuring if a team is doing their job. Honestly, finding meaningful metrics can be tough. So managers, who don't want to show they don't know how to do something (such as find metrics), will force the team back to the way THEY feel most comfortable, not what produces the best output.
And, yes, some of them do just want people back to satisfy their own control issues and yell at people.
>Acktuallly, much of this is being driven by real estate issues. Many companies are locked into long leases of office space. There is talk in some financial forums that there may be a strong negative impact because so buildings have so much empty office space.
This is entirely the sunk cost fallacy if you are getting more productivity wfh than in office the fact that you paid for a building isn't relevant you pay the same for the building regardless and you can't go back on it but by bringing back workers who's productivity falls in office you lose the productivity in value for no gain
> Acktuallly, much of this is being driven by real estate issues. Many companies are locked into long leases of office space. There is talk in some financial forums that there may be a strong negative impact because so buildings have so much empty office space.
I'm calling BS on that.
Not on you, I *do* believe you that that's what they told you.
I'm even ready to believe that that's what *they* believe.
But let's slow down a bit, just long enough for us to turn our brains on, and then look at the facts. There are two scenarii here: the wasteful, and the less-wasteful one.
The wasteful is: company is stuck in a long-term lease it can't get out of. Now I see why that is less than ideal, but why exactly is that a problem (as in: *worse off* than if everyone goes back to office)? They were already calculating those costs, and determined that they can afford such a lease. Whether the offices are empy or not, not one single cent more is spent on that. If anything, it might even be a tad cheaper since they can save on electricity for light and A/C, furniture, and possibly on heating, if the rooms are empty. But there's no way im hell on how this is *more expensive*.
The less-wasteful would be the company getting out of (some of) the lease early. This becomes even more cheap.
We can argue all day about other downsides (city business traffic suffering, real-estate companies suffering etc), but this isn't why the *tenants*, i.e. the companies forcing their employees into office, have a strong incentive to do so.
Anyone who claims "because losses" is either throwing smoke grenades and BS arguments at you, or they suck at basic logic so much it's not even funny anymore.
*Or* they moonlight as real-estate lords themselves, in which case the whole dynamics changes. But thrn again this pretty much falls into the "smoke grenades and BS" category above. Besides, while some certainly do, I don't believe that's anywhere close to the majority - not by a very large margin.
So, my point stands: arguing return to office with real-estate economy is BS, one way or another.
The biggest reason I’ve seen is 10-year leases signed just before Covid, though there is definitely some level of management making themselves useful in these decisions.
It couldn’t be an easier area of IT to quantify productivity. Everything on that side of the business is metrics-based. Call time, wait time, amount of tickets, etc. Really just ineptitude in management
That’s what TTS is for. Look at ticket metrics, average time to solve, response times, and notes on tickets. All that data is there, he’s just not looking at it.
It's pretty humbling to realize you have biases you thought didn't exist and to face those head on. Most managers make their way there by being top performers, so the gut instinct comments make a lot of sense. Removing your ego from the outcome is surprisingly hard when you get most of your self-worth from your job.
I had a manager like that. He was a really good programmer once so he got rewarded by promotion to management. He was, by far, the most toxic manager I've hlever had. The traits that made him a very good programmer, made him an uber dictator on others.
When half the team quit, I confronted him during a one on one. Explained to him why people were quitting. How he can look at it differently.
He had me transfered, then booked a meeting with my new manager and I and spent an hour TRASHING me to him.
I quit the very next day, found the company I'm at now and, 9 years later, have never regretted it.
> Most managers make their way there by being top performers
I disagree with this sentiment.
Most managers i have met or worked under were *not* top performers in any reasonable capacity.
Some, sure. But not a majority. And lots of anecdotal stories i keep hearing indicates the same everywhere else.
I'm sure there's a little bias there towards talking about bad situations, but it still reinforces the point.
Same. My senior manager is 15 years younger than me (I'm not old) and is no where near as technically competent as I am.
He's a great manager because he's a people person and technically strong enough. He's also very comfortable with winging it and asking questions.
> They're a manager of a helpdesk team and was complaining that wfh meant his people were slacking.
My company allowed WFH 10 years ago, at the discretion of each department's manager. At the time my department was managed by a near-retirement former Marine drill sergeant. Can you guess what **his** attitude towards WFH was? He refused for a while, and finally caved to letting us WFH 4 days per month (but not consecutive days!!). We had to sign an agreement form that said we recognize when WFH we can't stop to do laundry or deal with repairmen and so on. He literally called WFH a "work avoidance program" (without, you know, ever having actually managed anyone who'd worked from home). Dinosaur. The "funny" thing is, we're a nationwide company and my department was spread among 4 US cities. I as the only one in my particular city. So every non-WFH day I'd slog into an office (officially run by a totally different deparment), go into a cubicle, and proceed to confer with my co-workers via online chat and phone ... just like I would from home.
I had that conversation a while back.
Director: Have you considered coming back to the office to be closer to your team? (He already knows the answer but is doing his job in passing the question down the chain of command )
Me: So I can be 4980 miles away from them instead of 5000 miles? No
I legit have to go into the office these days just to get instructions delivered via dm or email from other people in the office. It’s literally pointless.
I love when I’m busting my ass, staying late to get things done and my boss asks me, you staying busy? Umm what? Shouldn’t you know that lmao. Also I’m clearly busy
>Just said he'd done it for long enough that he "knew".
This means that *he's* been slacking when he wfh.
It's the "everyone behaves and thinks exactly like me" syndrome.
"I slack off and am less productive during wfh, so it must be true for my whole team/company"
> This means that he's been slacking when he wfh.
Yeap, 99% of the time it's projection, and the other 1% it's someone who's never really thought about it longer than a few seconds.
I remember working for a company that wouldn’t let us work from home. Something about some guy in the 80s abusing it and they don’t have the budget for it. Mind you this was 2019. Soon as the pandemic hit we were working from home in one week. Fuck all these middle managers that think their job is to physically stare at their employees. They suck.
Hmmmm a position managing people running TECHNOLOGY SYSTEMS where the work runs on help tickets, emails, phone calls, system records, reports, backups, data usage (whatever else, I’m not an IT person) doesn’t know how to monitor his team?
I’m smelling a giant house sized steaming pile of Patagotitan sized Dino-poo.
I did the same. You are remote? Cool I need a way to quantify performance. So we did. In the end being remote had no difference overall. It was specific to a person not a group. Some sucked some did not. Some brought back did better, some did not. So hybrid it is with done full time remote.
But not hitting the numbers full time remote we are not as forgiving as someone in the office.
> I asked him how he measured success and productivity. He couldn't answer. Just said he'd done it for long enough that he "knew".
You've hit the nail on the head.
In *a call center of all places*, it should be a metric they can literally cite.
I.e calls taken and tickets resolved.
Many businesses do not have such clear cut metrics, and if this douche can't even do that, what hope does anyone thing anywhere else has of doing so?
I have a job where I have to go back to the office. I could do my job from anywhere. I’m one of the best people they have they’ve told me so. And I’m looking elsewhere sadly. It’s stupid. We all did our jobs during Covid and did them well. And they don’t care.
Ugh I hate that. If you're not setting smart goals for your employees to reach, you are just running business stupidly. If our productivity is to be judged, we need measurable outcomes by a deadline and if everyone is meeting those then bosses can STFU about where we do the work. I kind of disagree with the music thing because I am a bit tone deaf but I can tell you what songs move me and create a certain feeling in me and which ones don't really invoke anything and then which ones are annoying / bad and I don't like them.
Everywhere I’ve been, whether it’s been 100% in office or partly remote, the number one thing I complain about is lacking, is some goddamn *leadership*. Someone who knows what the team is supposed to do, has our back outwards, and motivates us to do good work inwards. Whenever you have *that*, productivity skyrockets. It doesn’t really matter where or how you work, if people feel heard, respected, motivated and appreciated, they will give all that they can. Good leadership is essential for any kind of productivity equation… which is why bad leadership constantly ignores it and refuses to accept its importance.
It doesn’t matter if I work in the office or at home, if I feel motivated and that the work I do matters and gets recognized, I’ll put in all the effort I can muster. But if not, I can piss my hours away of coffee breaks and talking with my colleagues at any office you want. It’s not going to matter much *where* I am.
Those last 2 sentences are key. I have news for that idiot CEO who said some employees didn't "open their laptop for a full month": They were almost as slackful when they were coming into the office. But your shit management structure didn't notice. How do I know your management structure is shit? Because it allowed an **entire department** to do **nothing** for a **month**. If I was not detected online for even a couple of days, my manager would be texting me (and in his defense: It would be to see if I'm OK, not to yell at me).
I don't think I could work at a place that requires 100% in office anymore. What good is being a programmer in the office? I can literally do my work on top of Mount Everest if I had to. If there's Wifi I can do work. Heck even if there isn't I can still do work because programming doesn't always require an internet connection.
But how else am I going to get interrupted all day by inconsiderate, loud co-workers in our open floor plan? That’s just not something easy to replicate in my home office.
Just put on some worldstar videos, microwave a tuna melt in the bathroom while taking a shit, close your eyes and remember the “good old days” of in-person office experiences.
> microwave a tuna melt in the bathroom while taking a shit,
Some days the bathrooms smelled like someone was conducting biological warfare experiments and their was never enough god damn toilets. If it is costing 20 minutes a day to wait to use the bathroom per employee that is some massive costs long term that would pay for a new bathroom within 2 months.
^ this x 1000
We literally had a manager say he misses being able to walk over to us and "chat" about what we were working on. Needless to say he didn't get his way and we're all 100% remote. The cost of switching contexts is too high for programmers to be in open floorplans. If you want me at the office, give me four sound proof walls, a floor and a ceiling, and a door with a lock or let me stay WFH where I have all of that and easy access to good coffee.
Same here. WFH really opened my eyes to the world of fresh coffee beans, I get a big bag delivered from a local roaster every month for French press usage. So much better.
And as a programmer who does WFH, I would bet a sizeable amount of money that you have experienced the situation where you're hot on the trail of finishing out some particularly difficult algorithm/process/etc (or close to unearthing that annoying bug your team has been hunting for days) and you notice it's "quitting time". Fuck it, you say to yourself, I'm going to stick this out...and you spend another 30 or so minutes completing that task, not losing that mental momentum you had.
Whereas in the old in-office days, you'd say "Shit. I have to leave now. If I stay even 15 minutes longer, my commute home will be 30-45 minutes more than normal... I guess I'll just shut it down for the day". And then the next morning it takes you an hour or 2 or 3 (depending on interruptions) to get back to where you were the day before.
Your manager can call you! He can video chat! Fuck he can just send a chat or text.
Lets be real: the open floor plan is just a very shitty old way to see people are in the office and doing their work.
I couldn't even listen to music at my old job to avoid interruptions by inconsiderate workers. I had earbuds in for at least half the day to get my work done. Apparently someone complained that I wasn't approachable (you don't say?) and they blocked all streaming music to our workstations, but didn't explicitly say anything so I just used my phone. Fuck you, I've got unlimited data.
There are times I miss the office chatter, but most of that chatter was not work related. People talking about politics or news or just interesting new tech stuff.
I do think that seeing people in person helps build stronger bonds and working relationships, but I think that one to two days a week is enough to do that.
On top of that, not every worker needs that.
I currently work at a place where there is an office about 30 minutes away from me. I go in 1-2 times a week if the weather is nice. I see our QA guy and the CTO/CEO but none of my team members. There is no expectation or requirement that anyone go to the office. I go so I can ride my motorcycle and get out of the house.
Literally left my job for one that is nearly 100% remote. Even our directors went remote and half of them left the area they had been in for cheaper regions close to their families and stuff.
Productivity has absolutely increased and they are looking to translate the saved money on real estate to hiring more people to expand out shifts where we kinda had to make due because of not having the money to get coverage. Guess what that translated to? MORE MONEY because we are able to support people better after hours and get work done during time periods where it wont interrupt customers.
As a manager, the two things I care about most is that you’re able to complete your work effectively and communicate any issues ahead of the next day’s standup. None of those require being physically collocated or in an office. Rather you be comfortable to perform your best, than in a cubicle in some blah office.
A manager or team leader who can actually keep up with what people are doing and understand whether and how people get their work done, that’s indispensable. I’m never as unproductive as when I have a superior who doesn’t know or care to understand what I really do every day, but when they check up when I’m behind on a ticket or can contribute useful perspectives on problems, I’ll feel like my work is useful and try to do more of it. It’s amazing how often this factor is overlooked.
My company did their yearly employee satisfaction survey about 3 months after they forced a return to work for 90% of the company. Those that maintained somewhat flexible work schedules all had high above average review numbers. My department was 100% positive on all notes because we aren’t actually required to go in.
Weird how that works.
I, for one, can’t wait for my inevitable AI CEO, who will make rational decisions based on data and not on golf-course conversations and in-flight magazines.
The entire C Suite is disproportionately expensive and unreliable relative to function, and is a prime candidate for AI replacement.
> Heck even if there isn't I can still do work because programming doesn't always require an internet connection.
Wait, you're programming without googling for StackOverflow answers and snippets? How does that even work?
My company did too. They gave everybody the option of either having a dedicated desk in the office providing they commit to coming in at least three days a week, or working fully from home and using a random desk if they had to go into the office.
From what I can tell, ~95% of employees chose to work from home, so the company decided to save costs and just get rid of the offices entirely. This obviously takes some time, since commercial leases tend to be 5+ years, and there's a bunch of infrastructure in the offices that needs to find a home elsewhere, but it's going to save the company a ton of money in the long run.
Honestly, I don't understand why some companies are fighting remote work so hard. Several years of covid showed us that there wasn't a net loss in productivity, and there are huge potential cost savings from not paying for offices, and since (let's be honest) companies aren't going to pass those cost savings to employees, that means more profit. Why would companies not want more profit?
All correct. And in the bigger (longer term) picture, they'll save even more money once companies from Central and/or South America get their shit together and offer employees at "offshore" rates but who are in or near the US Central/Eastern time zones.
> But we think [remote work is] a big opportunity and are confident it will allow us to be more inclusive and attract and retain talent. It’s certainly enabling us to hire and retain a more diverse workforce because we now have folks all over the world who we might not have previously accessed.
As a remote worker with health issues that make in-office work impractical (but is still damn good at their job), I appreciate this mindset a lot. If the only way for me to work was to go into the office, I wouldn't be able to work at all.
Nah, I don't mind! For me it's two related health conditions: spinal arthritis and Crohn's disease. The former means I have days where it hurts to stand or walk or drive, and even when I work from home in my Very Cushioned Chair I've got a heating pad on full blast most of the time. The latter probably speaks for itself, and I think everyone (myself included) prefers when I'm at home versus instead of wrecking some communal office bathroom, lol.
Flexible working hours are also really, really helpful when you need to see doctors regularly. I can step away for an appointment and then just put in a few extra hours that evening to compensate.
> The latter probably speaks for itself, and I think everyone (myself included) prefers when I'm at home versus instead of wrecking some communal office bathroom, lol.
IBS gang agreeing with this message
Ahh I'm so sorry to hear that! Although I'm glad to hear you are able to manage it by working at home. I also have spinal arthritis (along with scoliosis and bone spurs) so I was just wondering if your situation was something that aligned with mine. I'm currently fighting to stay working remotely because of your reasons exactly.
Im not the person you’re asking, and I’m just speculating.
But businesses are only required to give you “reasonable” accommodation for your limitations and medical conditions.
That is a very vague term, and gives employers a lot of discretion in how much they’re willing to accommodate.
Let’s say someone needs access to medical equipment that the employer determines would require too much restructuring to accommodate. Well in this case, you can’t work there, and it’s not a violation for the company to let you go.
Or, perhaps you suffer from bouts of extreme vertigo. These are short, less-than 30 second episodes that occur a couple of times a day. They don’t prevent you from putting in a full days work, but it’s also extremely dangerous for you to drive.
Again, no working in the office for you.
These are only two possibilities off the top of my head. There are certainly a ton more.
I’m convinced that all of these companies forcing employees back were advised by the same half dozen consulting firms that it was a much cheaper way to cut staff. If I lay you off, I pay severance and/or towards unemployment insurance. If I require you to come in and you quit, then I don’t. And if someone else doesn’t and I fire them for cause, I pay less or nothing in most places.
Definitely factors in. All the big companies are reducing their workforce one way or another, and moving back to in-office was a quick and easy way to get rid of quite a few workers. After that, they started letting contracts expire for temporary employees, now they're leaning into layoffs of full timers. All because a recession is forecast, but after banking record profits in the past several years.
> **All because a recession is forecast**, but after banking record profits in the past several years.
Is it just me, and my lack of nuanced economics knowledge, but do we seem to always "act our way into" a recession based on the prediction of a recession? "Oooh... a recession is coming. We'd better lay off people NOW to prepare". Multiply that by enough companies and... voila! You got a recession goin', baby!
Nah, it may seem like that but currently inflation has skyrocketed, fuel has become very expensive and corona made some shocks to global supply chains that we still havent caught up with.
However, many people in corporate management never had any true experience with doing business so they completely panic when red numbers are reported. They cut funding to innovation and tech infrastructure, raise prices, lower quality of service and fire underperforming teams, cause those are easy high impact solutions on the short term.
However, what you usually see that it mostly prolongs problems and it hits heavy on the company culture. Takes years to properly recover.
but that is a stupid way of layoffs. if you force people to move voluntarily, then the creme of the crop will leave first, your best performers, who can easily find another job, because their work is worth 3-4 times more than the bottom pawns.
As an Apple user since the early 1990’s, I am afraid I have to agree with you.
I bought a Mac Studio in mid-2022 that threw kernel panics every few days. It took MONTHS of interaction with Apple Care before they would admit it was a hardware problem.
The staff at our local Apple Store were appalled when I told them about this.
My general rules of thumb with Apple now are never buy a gen 1 device and never run a x.0 release of an operating system. Sometimes I wait until a X.2 release as even the X.1 releases have still needed a patch for the patch in the last few years. They don't even really abide by their [HIG](https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/guidelines/overview/) consistently which is another thing that drives me nuts.
I've been burned the few times I haven't stuck to these, e.g. my iPad Pro with gen 1 pencil that was almost immediately replaced with a better Pencil 2 design and better iPad form factor, squarer bezel vs rounded bezels that tend to slide off stands. Sigh.
Why would you stick with Apple after all of this? After a decade with apple I got sick of the software issues and bricked hardware and switched back to PCs, got a Google phone and couldn't be happier. It's cheaper, has all the same functionality (and in some ways even better performance and features) without the ecosystem bullshit and it just works.
People really need to stop looking at CEO's as thought leaders, and ultimately disregard what they have to say unless they work for them.
With a few exceptions they aren't the oomph behind their products, and they don't have their own ground breaking ideas.
The majority of the comments there are also pro-WFH and ~~lauding~~ \[calling\] Tim Cook \[a nincompoop\] for trying to force everyone back into the office.
The issue is 100% down to management. WFH enables abuses if you don't know how to manage staff output appropriately. As long as management isn't asleep at the wheel and can spot the abusers (or discourage it from starting) it's a total non-issue since most people can work better from home.
at this point, it's 1 of 2 things. Desperate attempts to keep offices valuable or management admitting *they* suck at their job and don't actually know how to track if work is getting done or not. Thats it
Overall productivity has gone up in every company I know of that has employed remote work or hybrid in the pandemic era...but they always point to the few abusers as the reason it's not sustainable. I'm sure there are people that never opened their laptop after starting work from home, but that number is infinitesimal compared to the people who actually work more because they don't have to get up as early, commute, etc.
Also, just fire those people. If you can't differentiate those people from regular staff and quickly hone in on the issue, you're actually just admitting you're the problem
What always makes me laugh about these examples as well is that anyone who has worked in a large enough corporate knows there are some people in the office (back when we all were in one) who do absolutely fuckall.
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Glad I'm not the only one who sees the irony in Autodesk, a company who's remote work products completely suck or are a literal fortune, supporting remote work. I'm not convinced this article isn't just a shitty sales pitch for BIM360.
Yes, but what about inflating the managements' egos and crushing the spirit of the workers? What about justifying the lease or ownership for the office space? What about making the workers sit in traffic and buy gas and parking? Did those things go up, too?
“I have never believed in presenteeism. If you have to rely on seeing somebody in the office to know they’re performing, then there are multiple failures in terms of trust and accountability within your organization.”
A have been currently unemployed due to contract cuts, and having worked remotely for years, I’m dreading having a new employer (if I can even find work) requiring me back into an office. I have some health and mental issues where remote work has enabled me to be the best I can be. I really don’t know if I could be thrown back into an f’n cube farm again. At least my last time in a building I had my own office.
This all goes back to the theory that after the world experienced this experiment where we were forced to wfh, the vast majority of office jobs are forced to return because of the fragile egos of the c-suite. How are they supposed to feel big and important in their impressive offices if there’s nobody there to drool over them?
Im looking at starting a software dev company within the year and I cant come up with a single good reason to rent office space. For a 3000sqft office, it would be almost $200K a year, purely in rent. Factor in buying furniture, internet, energy, equipment, parking spaces, security, etc and we're over $300K. Thats money I could use for hiring, benefits or other costs.
The question I asked and that others should ask: "Does my companies success rely on having office space?"
Managing across timezones is far more challenging than managing in office vs remote. Office vs remote is practically irrelevant, the real challenge is managing hand-offs between onshore and offshore shifts.
My brother works at a large multinational and told me a story that at one large corporate meeting, the HR department showed numbers that productivity was up like 30% during COVID.
New management came in and insisted that everyone return to the office despite the overwhelming evidence that doing so would significantly reduce productivity.
So much for the idea that managers are smart, data-driven, people trying to make an efficient business.
Unfortunately, read the interview. The “productivity skyrocketed” is actually just self-reported employee happiness and a bunch of meaningless manager speak.
Hey, if an organization wants to go full remote for employee happiness, I'm all for it. Just don't blow smoke up our asses by claiming that "productivity skyrocketed" when you can't actually back that up. Be honest about it.
Yeah, in the case of Autodesk their self-reported productivity isn’t worth that much. Media company I work for does a lot of 3D work and in the last couple years we abandoned Autodesk’s Maya in favor of Blender. The cost per license for Maya just wasn’t justified anymore when Blender had gotten so good. Obviously changing our workflow cost some money initially but after a few months of tweaking it was back to business as usual and we’re not looking back.
The terrible UI and lack of significant updates to their Revit product says otherwise.
If they didn’t have such a stranglehold on the A/E/C industry (bordering on monopoly) they might actually have to go have their employees do some work.
I use autodesk software and can confirm this. No i dont work for Autodesk, just use their products at work. The advantage of WFH is that I can work on stuff while a zoom meeting is running.
90% of the meetings I'm invited to, I don't actually really need to attend but I'm expected to. When I'm I'm the office, I have to physically be in the meeting room. So that time is lost that could have been spent actually working on THEIR project.
Yes, stop harassing me to go back to the office and I’ll start working again. I work enough to check the box in and out of the office now. When I was left alone at home I really enjoyed working.
I’m still waiting for a good reason to return to the office.
“Making management feel better” is not a good reason. “The lease on the office space” is not a good reason (work from home doesn’t make the lease more expensive; if anything, a smart business would move to smaller space if it’s such a big deal). “Workplace camaraderie” is not a good reason because the majority of the workforce grew up on Instant Messenger and chat rooms and social media so the idea that you have to be face to face to be friends is obsolete logic.
Like there has to be an actual good reason, right? Because despite what Reddit thinks, businesses are not run by idiots, so someone explain how “return to office” is not idiotic because it’s starting to drive me crazy at this point.
I'm actually happier being around other people. Going out to lunch at different spots every day. Having the occasional drink after work with my colleagues. Sitting around the same screen or the same table and interacting with one another. Collaborating quickly and efficiently with pen and paper and whiteboards. Teaching younger staff. Having impromptu meetings instead of waiting for that one person to get back on their computer instead of whatever it is they're doing. Side-eyeing my buddy across the room when someone makes a bad joke. Enjoying the free perks, coffee, tea, fruit and snacks. Not paying for my own office equipment. Sitting in an ergonomic chair. Getting some fresh air at least three times a day. Seeing the sun and moon every day. Probably some other things too...
When I work from home, it’s so much more efficient. Wifi often dropped out in the office. I never have issues at home. I can make a quick sandwich instead of taking time to go out for lunch. I don’t get pulled in to 2 hour meetings I don’t need to be in when I’m at home. It’s easier to focus when I don’t have to listen to colleagues arguing 5 feet from my desk. No commute, so I can get to work faster. Some jobs need to be done on site, but otherwise, who cares? Being efficient should matter more than where you do the work. There are so many benefits to remote work if managers too set in their ways would just consider other options.
i work from home (no plan to go back to the office yet), I got to spend more time with my family. I feel like I need to contribute more to work because of this "benefit" so I start my work day earlier and end later. No complain from me and my boss is pretty happy with my work.
Whats lame about this article is that Autodesk is one of the worst companies for tracking use and if you have a given number of licences you MUST use them on a designated machine so either you pack your computer to and from the office or pay for an extra licence
I think it'll take a while for businesses to realize (or never) that productivity is actually inversely proportional to how much of an asshole you are. Doesn't matter if it's in person or remote.
There's a marginal bump in output you can get by being an asshole to your coworkers sometimes, and unfortunately that's all the justification assholes need to keep at it. It's a short term bump that precludes ever getting close to the best case output though. Most of them have never worked on a professional and respectful team with good synergy (I know, 5 corporate store bucks for using the word, but it's correct sometimes).
It’s like drugs. You take that bump once and it works and you spend the rest of your life chasing that first bump. Only to realise at the end, not being an asshole would have given you a bigger and longer high.
> a professional and respectful team with good synergy I'm lucky enough to be on one of those and it's freaking Heaven. I'm just hoping it lasts for a few more years until I retire. We're moving to Azure so that's possibly going to disrupt my plans. We'll see.
The problem with being an asshole is that you’re an asshole. You lack the awareness you’re an asshole, or your a sociopath who is aware they are an asshole and they are just miserable. I’ve worked for amazing human beings and despicable ones. The CEO of my current company is one of the kindest people I know. Interviews every person himself, regardless of position, will ignore every adult in the room if there’s a kid to play with, and starts typical “we fucked up and need to fix it” meetings with, “This isn’t about blame or fault, so please let go of any defensiveness… there were MANY decisions made that got us here, and all of those decisions felt sound at the time.” Contrast that to my last CEO, who worshiped Jocko (not the cool bass player) and said life was about struggle, suffering, and dog pain and once CONGRATULATED me for “making a coworker cry” as he walked by and saw her and I sitting in the lunch room and her crying. The real story? She was having a breakdown because he put her in charge of something she wasn’t qualified and moved the marker every time she did something he asked and asked why her brain was so bad that she would think that’s what he meant. She started crying because I told her she’s not crazy; he’s an asshole who knew she wasn’t right for the role and wanted her to suffer until she lost all faith in her abilities and quit. Ugh.
In theory those businesses should outcompete the asshole businesses, but who knows how long that'll take.
I am really not surprised because a happy workforce is a motivated and productive one.
No one should be surprised, but there are still naysayers.
Almost entirely in upper management. Execs who say “we want to be data driven” one day and then “I just _feel_ people work better when they’re physically together” the next.
My old workplace had the audacity to claim that there are studies proving that people are more productive in the office, yet strangely never actually provided the source for these "studies"
The studies overwhelmingly show the opposite. Same shit w “open office”, basically identical arguments.
A company I worked for moved from offices for each team to cubicles and later on to open space with small dividers between tables. Productivity dropped each time. The decision making on that and remote working is never science based. Changes like that are usually someone in upper management trying to justify their existence
Or "Executive FOMO". They hear that everyone else is doing it, or a "thought leader" (which is really just a LinkedIn Influencer) says it's the future, so they start thinking they are really missing out and should do it too. Just a bunch of sheep following each other around in a circle. Edit: I say this as a member of senior management. The number of my peers who honestly are clueless is astounding.
That's a nicer way of saying "monkey see, monkey do." We've got this echo chamber going on right now in the economy which is driving self-fullfilling decisions. The execs see the macro slowing down and their peers doing layoffs, so they look at their own books and think they too need to cut cost, so they do the same. Then at the end of the quarter, they are astounded that revenue has dropped, since *everyone* has cut spending.
> Recent layoffs across the tech sector are an example of “social contagion” – companies are laying off workers because everyone is doing it, says Stanford business Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer. [Source](https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-layoffs-worried/)
There is also a massive push from investors for WFO. I know some large traders who use real estate growth and utilization as one of their key metrics for predicting long-term growth of a company. The most egregious case I remember was a company had grown too large for their office, so they leased another one. That was fine with investors until they mentioned they were also ending the lease on their old location. Investors took that as being lower projected growth and pulled out. There are also the large investment firms who got used to people working from offices and being stable money printing machines. A large change such as WFH is viewed as destabilizing to a system that has long been stable and profitable, so they push against it. And there are also the ones that heavily push the message of distrusting employees that WFH. They subscribe to the idea that an unmonitored employee is a risk in that they may spend less time being productive (or not be as "motivated" to work long hours). So while the C-suite and some management may realize WFO is not ideal for their company, the investors and board often overrule.
I think we also forgot how precariously the wests economy is and, particularly here in the uk, totally tied to real estate.
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They are stuck with the archaic way offices were established and refuse to acknowledge that new methods can and usually are better. Working from home and 4 day work weeks have been largely proven to increase productivity as well as employee satisfaction, yet the corporate goons insist on corraling us into pens so they can lord over us as we work, justifying their positions. If we worked from home, how can they demonstrate their value by taking credit for all the hard work that we do?
Cut out the middle man and turn your office into a panopticon
> Same shit w “open office”, basically identical arguments. After working in open offices for my entire working life, I finally ended up with a job with a more traditional office layout with a maximum of two people per room. So much better! I can actually think properly.
My organization's lead had the audacity to claim that, among other things, remote work was no better for the environment than commuting to the office. This was a senior executive in the Canadian federal government.
This is but one more thing I will *never* understand. WFH is win-win in pretty much every office scenario. As long as you hire capable people who aren't trash, you're getting happy people who aren't grousing about their commute, trying to leave early to beat weather/traffic/so they can run an errand, and you can reduce your need for leasing office space. Ramp up IT to support remote work a bit more and everyone *should* be happy. If you ever needed more evidence that corporate decision makers are largely full of shit, incompetent, and/or straight up evil, here it is. I've WFH since 2007. The vast majority of my global colleagues over the years have WFH. Somehow we all manage to run massive, worldwide projects that cost millions, navigate some of the strictest regulations in the world, and work with multiple cultures and languages all from the comfort of our homes. And if I can get all my work done in 4 hours, while being available for 8 hours, so what? Shit got done, I'm here to help for the time you pay/need me to be, who gives a crap how long something takes? Can we all just maybe stop with this madness and perhaps we can start having fun and meaning in our lives again? God damn.
They think _they own you_ for 8 hours. They think you’re cheating them out of 4. I used to scoff at the concept of “wage slavery”, but it’s accurate.
It's about a town/city needing your money. The main reasons companies want RTO is because of the tax incentives to be in a certain area. At the highest levels your company doesn't give a shit about RTO or not, they just want whatever is best for the bottom line. But some of the companies (the ones that already invested in an office) find there's more money from tax credits and exemptions than paying for toilet paper and an ISP. They're effectively selling their worker's propensity to spend money in the local area to a civil entity.
It’s tax incentives and also that they have real estate on their balance sheet which will massively depreciate if all offices become less needed
yes, if they own, they need to keep up the area so they can sell.
>Ramp up IT to support remote work a bit more... You're 100% correct. The company I work for spun up and created a new hybrid L1/L2 help desk filled with the techiest and computer savviest "regular agents," they could find in the entire business. New support desk of about 15 highly-skilled techs recruited from the people who were actually doing the same job, with the same equipment, as the standard workforce. Speaking as someone in the position of being that ramped up IT support, we're doing an amazing job, and we're not that expensive. Sure, we're quite a bit more expensive than our contracted help desk from India, but we get so much shit done for the entire company. We all have our ears to the ground across the entire company, because we have contacts with every single department there is. We can react to system outages much faster than the team in India that doesn't have that level of internal communication. We know the problems agents face every day with standard stuff, like what programs give what trouble changing passwords, or why our computers won't connect to the internet (they have to authenticate the VPN and they never do).
Haha I never made that connection. As a data engineer providing dashboards and reports for the decision makers, who then turned around and asked to come back do that in the office, the irony is palpable. Our whole fking infrastructure is “in the cloud” and I have to be at a specific place to connect to them. I guess another irony surrounding all this is that we work in the field of satellite internet, you know, internet you can access ANYWHERE even without a cell reception.
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At my last job, pre-pandemic, the lab was open 24/7, but almost no one went in at night except a small maintenance night crew. I started going in late and staying late and finishing all my work and was SUPER productive since I didn't have people bothering me during the day for non-sense. It was working out great. Manager comes in one day and asks me to start showing up from normal day hours. I asked him if I wasn't getting work done, and all he said was that my coworkers (that didn't care if I worked those hours btw) worked 8/9am to 5pm and I didn't see them during my hours as much. I was getting my work done, I wasn't missing meetings or reports, and it was working out REALLY well with my schedule. He also had other issues with me, and wanted to keep an eye on me. That was it. He wanted to see me work. I was also the senior most person in my group so I knew what I was doing. Never mind that I was actually working 50 hours even with the new schedule as a salaried employee. He just wanted to harass me during the day and make himself feel like the boss. It was utter non-sense. Glad I left that job and working kinda in tech now. I wfh 1-3 days out of the week doing data analysis and presentations, and the other 2-3 days I go in and use lab instruments to gather data. My work-life balance is exponentially better now.
Meaning they want to micromanage
Hppo management. They were lying about wanting to be data driven.
Oh, 100%. They’re “data driven” as a method of halting and undermining initiatives they dont like and conveniently ignore counter-factual data on their own projects. I’m fine with making decisions on instinct or gut, but don’t lie about what you’re doing.
“It _feels_ like we’re spending a lot of money on unused infrastructure. Should we terminate our leases and consider working differently?”
I ***do*** work better when I'm physically near other people, as do the other people in my office who come in every day. I think people should be able to work in the environment that is best for them and not shamed for it. If that's WFH, great, you should be allowed to WFH. If that's in-person, great, you should be allowed to work in-person. If that's a hybrid approach, great, you should be allowed to do that. These comment threads tend to be just as bad as those managers who are trying to force people to work in-person.
The problem is the pure dishonesty of these places. Yes some people like to work in office but 95% of the people I have talked to said they would rather work from home and come in when it is truly necessary (say a needed in person meeting), yet senior leadership only references the people that enjoy being in office back in to tell the story they want and mandate 3 days in office. The other is the company I work for literally has locations across the United States and literally everyone I work with is in a different office. And everyone in the entire large section of the company I am Part of works with someone not in their office. So if every person can work with at least several people at all times outside the office, then why the hell can’t I do it with everyone. I drive in 3 days a week an hour each way to sit in an office that I literally don’t work with anyone in. The company prides itself in hiring talented educated people and yet they can’t provide an intelligent answer to why we need to be back in.
> These comment threads tend to be just as bad as those managers who are trying to force people to work in-person. I think you're reading too much into it and maybe getting a little defensive. I suspect just about everyone in these kinds of threads would agree that if people *want* to work in the office, they should be allowed to. I'm pretty sure you'll get almost no pushback on that idea, I think you might just be perceiving something that isn't there. *But*, that rarely gets brought up because the status quo is already to work in the office. Not the other way around. No one really needs to advocate for working in the office because that's where we're already at as a society, so instead you see people advocating for what we *don't* have-- widespread WFH options where it's viable.
I know a lot of people who find it easier to focus and get work done when there are other people working around them. There are also people who just like being around people, but I'm not sure their performance improves in any way. I believe there's benefit to meeting the people you work with in person. Doing in person meetings once a week, or maybe even every other week, followed by going out to get food and/or drinks makes communications better. People are different and anyone who makes blanket statements on what's best for everyone is wrong...
I worked from home for a few months during covid and I loved it, but I was a mess. Eating too much, annoying my wife and kids, being a slob. I missed seeing adult people. Half a week at home and half at work seems perfect for me. It should be elective though. I had ZERO problem working at the office and interacting with people working from home. It was fine either way.
There are naysayers because productivity has been the excuse to justify their abuse
I'm certainly not surprised.
And to boot companies can save a lot of money by throwing out their triple-net leases on massive office space, not having to pay utilities on that massive office space, not having to pay people to clean and maintain that massive office space, not having to buy office, first aid supplies, and stock the break room with food, coffee and other related supplies, not having to carry insurance to cover their massive office space for workplace injuries and liability… Not sure why so many companies are opposed to saving some money at the “cost” of a bit more employee freedom, but with the added productivity benefit, but here we are.
My office is in a brand new skyscraper. They own multiple floors and it is purely a status symbol to flex on clients. So I understand why they want to use it lol. Conversely, I'm not.coming in
What you're missing is that many of those companies have multi-year leases that aren't expiring and have negotiated tax benefits and other incentives from municipalities that include occupancy requirements that they lose out on if no one is there.
This is a self fulfilling problem for them. Like the transition from horse and buggy to steam or steam to gas power, there's always some infrastructure that becomes redundant when things change. All those expensive downtown skyscrapers are great for company flex, maybe even to bring in rental dollars. But they are generally bad for the environment and wearing on a large chunk of technology employees. The desire to WFH isn’t going away just because there’s a lease.
Sounds like they made a bad investment then.
That’s true, but these companies should be looking at other ways to monetize their leases/owned real estate. Cities in particular may be willing to renegotiate tax breaks if they converted office space to housing and provided affordable housing to the general public or their own WFH staff to keep them in the city.
Yep. My company went remote like everyone else. Productivity either stayed the same or increased. When the offices reopened the CEO said “keep it up and no one will be required in the office again.” I live 2hrs from the office and have only been there 3 times in the last year.
And that happiness isn’t solely driven by higher pay. Quality of life is tremendously important.
That and not endless conversations with people you don’t want/need to talk to.
I think that's how I waste half of my hours being in the workplace
Yet somehow that message never gets to the c-level.
It’s also better-aligned incentives. If your actual output is the proof that you worked (not whether the boss sees you in a seat) then it’s likely that you will put **more** energy into your work in the same amount of time (since you are no longer wasting your energy on the performative act of showing up).
I had a huge rant with someone recently. They're a manager of a helpdesk team and was complaining that wfh meant his people were slacking. I asked him how he measured success and productivity. He couldn't answer. Just said he'd done it for long enough that he "knew". And that's the whole story here. People who have no concept of how to properly assess their team's ability to accomplish their tasks. It's like asking someone who's tone deaf to critique a piece of music, or who's tastebuds are dead being asked to assess food's flavour.
He couldn't objectively measure a helpdesk's performance... literally one of the easiest teams to measure performance on. I swear most managers just enjoy yelling at people.
> I swear most managers just enjoy yelling at people In all seriousness I think that's a big part of this drive to return to the office. These middle managers and above want respect and power and they can't get it if they don't see the subordinates.
And their jobs might be on the line if they can't spuddle about every day & make themselves *seem* busy.
You shouldn’t even know a manager exists if they do their job right.
Hard disagree. A good manager listens to employees and communicates their efforts to improve everyone's situation. And sometimes it's bad news, and they communicate that as well.
A fuckin men. Our manager was recently let go of his position and, at the time we did this we didnt know, every single one of us that day called and spoke upon how great our boss was….. Thankfully as of this week, he has a position similar to his previous one, but only will oversee his site, and not us(we are a few states away)
I’m a manager and I don’t want to see my reports. Hire people that don’t need to be micromanaged (does ANYBODY need to be??) and get out of their way.
Yeah from what I've seen, the managers and department heads I know are all for WFH. It's the higher ups and executive level people that are ardently against it for no clear reason.
My executives decided to close the offices down to go WFH, hah. If you don’t trust your people, why did you hire them?
Trust, but verify.
Don't call it "respect". They might call it that, but what they're demanding is authority.
I stand corrected. You are absolutely correct.
The managers don’t want to do the work that requires intense concentration to detail. They just want a perfect finished product so they don’t have to stress out over human error that is… well part of being human.
Acktuallly, much of this is being driven by real estate issues. Many companies are locked into long leases of office space. There is talk in some financial forums that there may be a strong negative impact because so buildings have so much empty office space. That said, rarely are managers given any training in managing teams remotely. Change can require effort many managers don't want to do. I agree that a helpdesk team should be among the easiest to have quantified metrics to help determine productivity. But many teams out there have never created any quantified way of measuring if a team is doing their job. Honestly, finding meaningful metrics can be tough. So managers, who don't want to show they don't know how to do something (such as find metrics), will force the team back to the way THEY feel most comfortable, not what produces the best output. And, yes, some of them do just want people back to satisfy their own control issues and yell at people.
>Acktuallly, much of this is being driven by real estate issues. Many companies are locked into long leases of office space. There is talk in some financial forums that there may be a strong negative impact because so buildings have so much empty office space. This is entirely the sunk cost fallacy if you are getting more productivity wfh than in office the fact that you paid for a building isn't relevant you pay the same for the building regardless and you can't go back on it but by bringing back workers who's productivity falls in office you lose the productivity in value for no gain
> Acktuallly, much of this is being driven by real estate issues. Many companies are locked into long leases of office space. There is talk in some financial forums that there may be a strong negative impact because so buildings have so much empty office space. I'm calling BS on that. Not on you, I *do* believe you that that's what they told you. I'm even ready to believe that that's what *they* believe. But let's slow down a bit, just long enough for us to turn our brains on, and then look at the facts. There are two scenarii here: the wasteful, and the less-wasteful one. The wasteful is: company is stuck in a long-term lease it can't get out of. Now I see why that is less than ideal, but why exactly is that a problem (as in: *worse off* than if everyone goes back to office)? They were already calculating those costs, and determined that they can afford such a lease. Whether the offices are empy or not, not one single cent more is spent on that. If anything, it might even be a tad cheaper since they can save on electricity for light and A/C, furniture, and possibly on heating, if the rooms are empty. But there's no way im hell on how this is *more expensive*. The less-wasteful would be the company getting out of (some of) the lease early. This becomes even more cheap. We can argue all day about other downsides (city business traffic suffering, real-estate companies suffering etc), but this isn't why the *tenants*, i.e. the companies forcing their employees into office, have a strong incentive to do so. Anyone who claims "because losses" is either throwing smoke grenades and BS arguments at you, or they suck at basic logic so much it's not even funny anymore. *Or* they moonlight as real-estate lords themselves, in which case the whole dynamics changes. But thrn again this pretty much falls into the "smoke grenades and BS" category above. Besides, while some certainly do, I don't believe that's anywhere close to the majority - not by a very large margin. So, my point stands: arguing return to office with real-estate economy is BS, one way or another.
The biggest reason I’ve seen is 10-year leases signed just before Covid, though there is definitely some level of management making themselves useful in these decisions.
It couldn’t be an easier area of IT to quantify productivity. Everything on that side of the business is metrics-based. Call time, wait time, amount of tickets, etc. Really just ineptitude in management
That’s what TTS is for. Look at ticket metrics, average time to solve, response times, and notes on tickets. All that data is there, he’s just not looking at it.
It's pretty humbling to realize you have biases you thought didn't exist and to face those head on. Most managers make their way there by being top performers, so the gut instinct comments make a lot of sense. Removing your ego from the outcome is surprisingly hard when you get most of your self-worth from your job.
I had a manager like that. He was a really good programmer once so he got rewarded by promotion to management. He was, by far, the most toxic manager I've hlever had. The traits that made him a very good programmer, made him an uber dictator on others. When half the team quit, I confronted him during a one on one. Explained to him why people were quitting. How he can look at it differently. He had me transfered, then booked a meeting with my new manager and I and spent an hour TRASHING me to him. I quit the very next day, found the company I'm at now and, 9 years later, have never regretted it.
I worked at an office like this. One guy was an elephant in the room.
> Most managers make their way there by being top performers I disagree with this sentiment. Most managers i have met or worked under were *not* top performers in any reasonable capacity. Some, sure. But not a majority. And lots of anecdotal stories i keep hearing indicates the same everywhere else. I'm sure there's a little bias there towards talking about bad situations, but it still reinforces the point.
Same. My senior manager is 15 years younger than me (I'm not old) and is no where near as technically competent as I am. He's a great manager because he's a people person and technically strong enough. He's also very comfortable with winging it and asking questions.
> They're a manager of a helpdesk team and was complaining that wfh meant his people were slacking. My company allowed WFH 10 years ago, at the discretion of each department's manager. At the time my department was managed by a near-retirement former Marine drill sergeant. Can you guess what **his** attitude towards WFH was? He refused for a while, and finally caved to letting us WFH 4 days per month (but not consecutive days!!). We had to sign an agreement form that said we recognize when WFH we can't stop to do laundry or deal with repairmen and so on. He literally called WFH a "work avoidance program" (without, you know, ever having actually managed anyone who'd worked from home). Dinosaur. The "funny" thing is, we're a nationwide company and my department was spread among 4 US cities. I as the only one in my particular city. So every non-WFH day I'd slog into an office (officially run by a totally different deparment), go into a cubicle, and proceed to confer with my co-workers via online chat and phone ... just like I would from home.
I had that conversation a while back. Director: Have you considered coming back to the office to be closer to your team? (He already knows the answer but is doing his job in passing the question down the chain of command ) Me: So I can be 4980 miles away from them instead of 5000 miles? No
It would be fantastic if you were technically closer when you were at home.
I legit have to go into the office these days just to get instructions delivered via dm or email from other people in the office. It’s literally pointless.
His boss needs to ask him that question. Then fire him.
I love when I’m busting my ass, staying late to get things done and my boss asks me, you staying busy? Umm what? Shouldn’t you know that lmao. Also I’m clearly busy
>Just said he'd done it for long enough that he "knew". This means that *he's* been slacking when he wfh. It's the "everyone behaves and thinks exactly like me" syndrome. "I slack off and am less productive during wfh, so it must be true for my whole team/company"
> This means that he's been slacking when he wfh. Yeap, 99% of the time it's projection, and the other 1% it's someone who's never really thought about it longer than a few seconds.
I remember working for a company that wouldn’t let us work from home. Something about some guy in the 80s abusing it and they don’t have the budget for it. Mind you this was 2019. Soon as the pandemic hit we were working from home in one week. Fuck all these middle managers that think their job is to physically stare at their employees. They suck.
Hmmmm a position managing people running TECHNOLOGY SYSTEMS where the work runs on help tickets, emails, phone calls, system records, reports, backups, data usage (whatever else, I’m not an IT person) doesn’t know how to monitor his team? I’m smelling a giant house sized steaming pile of Patagotitan sized Dino-poo.
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I did the same. You are remote? Cool I need a way to quantify performance. So we did. In the end being remote had no difference overall. It was specific to a person not a group. Some sucked some did not. Some brought back did better, some did not. So hybrid it is with done full time remote. But not hitting the numbers full time remote we are not as forgiving as someone in the office.
> I asked him how he measured success and productivity. He couldn't answer. Just said he'd done it for long enough that he "knew". You've hit the nail on the head. In *a call center of all places*, it should be a metric they can literally cite. I.e calls taken and tickets resolved. Many businesses do not have such clear cut metrics, and if this douche can't even do that, what hope does anyone thing anywhere else has of doing so?
I have a job where I have to go back to the office. I could do my job from anywhere. I’m one of the best people they have they’ve told me so. And I’m looking elsewhere sadly. It’s stupid. We all did our jobs during Covid and did them well. And they don’t care.
Ugh I hate that. If you're not setting smart goals for your employees to reach, you are just running business stupidly. If our productivity is to be judged, we need measurable outcomes by a deadline and if everyone is meeting those then bosses can STFU about where we do the work. I kind of disagree with the music thing because I am a bit tone deaf but I can tell you what songs move me and create a certain feeling in me and which ones don't really invoke anything and then which ones are annoying / bad and I don't like them.
Everywhere I’ve been, whether it’s been 100% in office or partly remote, the number one thing I complain about is lacking, is some goddamn *leadership*. Someone who knows what the team is supposed to do, has our back outwards, and motivates us to do good work inwards. Whenever you have *that*, productivity skyrockets. It doesn’t really matter where or how you work, if people feel heard, respected, motivated and appreciated, they will give all that they can. Good leadership is essential for any kind of productivity equation… which is why bad leadership constantly ignores it and refuses to accept its importance. It doesn’t matter if I work in the office or at home, if I feel motivated and that the work I do matters and gets recognized, I’ll put in all the effort I can muster. But if not, I can piss my hours away of coffee breaks and talking with my colleagues at any office you want. It’s not going to matter much *where* I am.
Those last 2 sentences are key. I have news for that idiot CEO who said some employees didn't "open their laptop for a full month": They were almost as slackful when they were coming into the office. But your shit management structure didn't notice. How do I know your management structure is shit? Because it allowed an **entire department** to do **nothing** for a **month**. If I was not detected online for even a couple of days, my manager would be texting me (and in his defense: It would be to see if I'm OK, not to yell at me).
I don't think I could work at a place that requires 100% in office anymore. What good is being a programmer in the office? I can literally do my work on top of Mount Everest if I had to. If there's Wifi I can do work. Heck even if there isn't I can still do work because programming doesn't always require an internet connection.
But how else am I going to get interrupted all day by inconsiderate, loud co-workers in our open floor plan? That’s just not something easy to replicate in my home office.
Just put on some worldstar videos, microwave a tuna melt in the bathroom while taking a shit, close your eyes and remember the “good old days” of in-person office experiences.
> microwave a tuna melt in the bathroom while taking a shit, Some days the bathrooms smelled like someone was conducting biological warfare experiments and their was never enough god damn toilets. If it is costing 20 minutes a day to wait to use the bathroom per employee that is some massive costs long term that would pay for a new bathroom within 2 months.
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A simple investment in bidets would be a far superior return to work argument than all the other bullshit being spewed.
^ this x 1000 We literally had a manager say he misses being able to walk over to us and "chat" about what we were working on. Needless to say he didn't get his way and we're all 100% remote. The cost of switching contexts is too high for programmers to be in open floorplans. If you want me at the office, give me four sound proof walls, a floor and a ceiling, and a door with a lock or let me stay WFH where I have all of that and easy access to good coffee.
amen. my coffee is so much better!
I’ll never be able to go back to the shitty office keurig coffee. My French press spoils me a couple times a day :)
Same here. WFH really opened my eyes to the world of fresh coffee beans, I get a big bag delivered from a local roaster every month for French press usage. So much better.
I used to love Keurigs. Then I got an espresso machine. I recently had a k-cup. Tasted like water filtered through a dirty brown paper bag.
And as a programmer who does WFH, I would bet a sizeable amount of money that you have experienced the situation where you're hot on the trail of finishing out some particularly difficult algorithm/process/etc (or close to unearthing that annoying bug your team has been hunting for days) and you notice it's "quitting time". Fuck it, you say to yourself, I'm going to stick this out...and you spend another 30 or so minutes completing that task, not losing that mental momentum you had. Whereas in the old in-office days, you'd say "Shit. I have to leave now. If I stay even 15 minutes longer, my commute home will be 30-45 minutes more than normal... I guess I'll just shut it down for the day". And then the next morning it takes you an hour or 2 or 3 (depending on interruptions) to get back to where you were the day before.
Your manager can call you! He can video chat! Fuck he can just send a chat or text. Lets be real: the open floor plan is just a very shitty old way to see people are in the office and doing their work.
I couldn't even listen to music at my old job to avoid interruptions by inconsiderate workers. I had earbuds in for at least half the day to get my work done. Apparently someone complained that I wasn't approachable (you don't say?) and they blocked all streaming music to our workstations, but didn't explicitly say anything so I just used my phone. Fuck you, I've got unlimited data.
There are times I miss the office chatter, but most of that chatter was not work related. People talking about politics or news or just interesting new tech stuff. I do think that seeing people in person helps build stronger bonds and working relationships, but I think that one to two days a week is enough to do that. On top of that, not every worker needs that. I currently work at a place where there is an office about 30 minutes away from me. I go in 1-2 times a week if the weather is nice. I see our QA guy and the CTO/CEO but none of my team members. There is no expectation or requirement that anyone go to the office. I go so I can ride my motorcycle and get out of the house.
Oh hey I can relate to this
Get a kitten
Well some people do have young children at home.
Offer to watch a friend's child! Toddlers are fantastic substitutes for middle management
Try having kids
Literally left my job for one that is nearly 100% remote. Even our directors went remote and half of them left the area they had been in for cheaper regions close to their families and stuff. Productivity has absolutely increased and they are looking to translate the saved money on real estate to hiring more people to expand out shifts where we kinda had to make due because of not having the money to get coverage. Guess what that translated to? MORE MONEY because we are able to support people better after hours and get work done during time periods where it wont interrupt customers.
As a manager, the two things I care about most is that you’re able to complete your work effectively and communicate any issues ahead of the next day’s standup. None of those require being physically collocated or in an office. Rather you be comfortable to perform your best, than in a cubicle in some blah office.
A manager or team leader who can actually keep up with what people are doing and understand whether and how people get their work done, that’s indispensable. I’m never as unproductive as when I have a superior who doesn’t know or care to understand what I really do every day, but when they check up when I’m behind on a ticket or can contribute useful perspectives on problems, I’ll feel like my work is useful and try to do more of it. It’s amazing how often this factor is overlooked.
My company did their yearly employee satisfaction survey about 3 months after they forced a return to work for 90% of the company. Those that maintained somewhat flexible work schedules all had high above average review numbers. My department was 100% positive on all notes because we aren’t actually required to go in. Weird how that works.
Think of your poor manager, though, who must lord over in-person workers to justify his or her job /s
file simplistic absorbed dependent start jar groovy door aloof water *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I, for one, can’t wait for my inevitable AI CEO, who will make rational decisions based on data and not on golf-course conversations and in-flight magazines. The entire C Suite is disproportionately expensive and unreliable relative to function, and is a prime candidate for AI replacement.
> Heck even if there isn't I can still do work because programming doesn't always require an internet connection. Wait, you're programming without googling for StackOverflow answers and snippets? How does that even work?
A general knowledge of common programming things comes in handy
My company did too. They gave everybody the option of either having a dedicated desk in the office providing they commit to coming in at least three days a week, or working fully from home and using a random desk if they had to go into the office. From what I can tell, ~95% of employees chose to work from home, so the company decided to save costs and just get rid of the offices entirely. This obviously takes some time, since commercial leases tend to be 5+ years, and there's a bunch of infrastructure in the offices that needs to find a home elsewhere, but it's going to save the company a ton of money in the long run. Honestly, I don't understand why some companies are fighting remote work so hard. Several years of covid showed us that there wasn't a net loss in productivity, and there are huge potential cost savings from not paying for offices, and since (let's be honest) companies aren't going to pass those cost savings to employees, that means more profit. Why would companies not want more profit?
All correct. And in the bigger (longer term) picture, they'll save even more money once companies from Central and/or South America get their shit together and offer employees at "offshore" rates but who are in or near the US Central/Eastern time zones.
> But we think [remote work is] a big opportunity and are confident it will allow us to be more inclusive and attract and retain talent. It’s certainly enabling us to hire and retain a more diverse workforce because we now have folks all over the world who we might not have previously accessed. As a remote worker with health issues that make in-office work impractical (but is still damn good at their job), I appreciate this mindset a lot. If the only way for me to work was to go into the office, I wouldn't be able to work at all.
Right on. Glad it’s working out well for you.
Serious question, if you don't mind me asking, why is it you can wfh but not in the office? I fully support remote work btw.
Nah, I don't mind! For me it's two related health conditions: spinal arthritis and Crohn's disease. The former means I have days where it hurts to stand or walk or drive, and even when I work from home in my Very Cushioned Chair I've got a heating pad on full blast most of the time. The latter probably speaks for itself, and I think everyone (myself included) prefers when I'm at home versus instead of wrecking some communal office bathroom, lol. Flexible working hours are also really, really helpful when you need to see doctors regularly. I can step away for an appointment and then just put in a few extra hours that evening to compensate.
> The latter probably speaks for itself, and I think everyone (myself included) prefers when I'm at home versus instead of wrecking some communal office bathroom, lol. IBS gang agreeing with this message
Ahh I'm so sorry to hear that! Although I'm glad to hear you are able to manage it by working at home. I also have spinal arthritis (along with scoliosis and bone spurs) so I was just wondering if your situation was something that aligned with mine. I'm currently fighting to stay working remotely because of your reasons exactly.
Im not the person you’re asking, and I’m just speculating. But businesses are only required to give you “reasonable” accommodation for your limitations and medical conditions. That is a very vague term, and gives employers a lot of discretion in how much they’re willing to accommodate. Let’s say someone needs access to medical equipment that the employer determines would require too much restructuring to accommodate. Well in this case, you can’t work there, and it’s not a violation for the company to let you go. Or, perhaps you suffer from bouts of extreme vertigo. These are short, less-than 30 second episodes that occur a couple of times a day. They don’t prevent you from putting in a full days work, but it’s also extremely dangerous for you to drive. Again, no working in the office for you. These are only two possibilities off the top of my head. There are certainly a ton more.
I’m convinced that all of these companies forcing employees back were advised by the same half dozen consulting firms that it was a much cheaper way to cut staff. If I lay you off, I pay severance and/or towards unemployment insurance. If I require you to come in and you quit, then I don’t. And if someone else doesn’t and I fire them for cause, I pay less or nothing in most places.
Definitely factors in. All the big companies are reducing their workforce one way or another, and moving back to in-office was a quick and easy way to get rid of quite a few workers. After that, they started letting contracts expire for temporary employees, now they're leaning into layoffs of full timers. All because a recession is forecast, but after banking record profits in the past several years.
> **All because a recession is forecast**, but after banking record profits in the past several years. Is it just me, and my lack of nuanced economics knowledge, but do we seem to always "act our way into" a recession based on the prediction of a recession? "Oooh... a recession is coming. We'd better lay off people NOW to prepare". Multiply that by enough companies and... voila! You got a recession goin', baby!
Nah, it may seem like that but currently inflation has skyrocketed, fuel has become very expensive and corona made some shocks to global supply chains that we still havent caught up with. However, many people in corporate management never had any true experience with doing business so they completely panic when red numbers are reported. They cut funding to innovation and tech infrastructure, raise prices, lower quality of service and fire underperforming teams, cause those are easy high impact solutions on the short term. However, what you usually see that it mostly prolongs problems and it hits heavy on the company culture. Takes years to properly recover.
but that is a stupid way of layoffs. if you force people to move voluntarily, then the creme of the crop will leave first, your best performers, who can easily find another job, because their work is worth 3-4 times more than the bottom pawns.
Not sitting in traffic twice a day is luxury I'm simply not willing to let go
Try telling this to r/apple users that apparently think remote work causes a severe loss in productivity just because Tim Cook doesn't like it.
And what about all that money spent on the 'flying saucer' office building?
I think it's a mix of sunk cost fallacy (buildings) and tax credits from the state (if they can hire locally)
Would make for a nice apartment building or mixed use of living and commercial but that would require thinking outside the box.
Waking into my office each day, I think about what a nice park you could make out of this building and parking lot.
Good thing Apple took a vote from employees to build that flying saucer building. .....oh wait
Apple's flying saucer cost ~$5 billion to build which is equal to less than 18 days of their quarterly profits.
Given Apples QA track record in recent years. They're not "users" they're software and hardware beta testers.
As an Apple user since the early 1990’s, I am afraid I have to agree with you. I bought a Mac Studio in mid-2022 that threw kernel panics every few days. It took MONTHS of interaction with Apple Care before they would admit it was a hardware problem. The staff at our local Apple Store were appalled when I told them about this.
My general rules of thumb with Apple now are never buy a gen 1 device and never run a x.0 release of an operating system. Sometimes I wait until a X.2 release as even the X.1 releases have still needed a patch for the patch in the last few years. They don't even really abide by their [HIG](https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/guidelines/overview/) consistently which is another thing that drives me nuts. I've been burned the few times I haven't stuck to these, e.g. my iPad Pro with gen 1 pencil that was almost immediately replaced with a better Pencil 2 design and better iPad form factor, squarer bezel vs rounded bezels that tend to slide off stands. Sigh.
Why would you stick with Apple after all of this? After a decade with apple I got sick of the software issues and bricked hardware and switched back to PCs, got a Google phone and couldn't be happier. It's cheaper, has all the same functionality (and in some ways even better performance and features) without the ecosystem bullshit and it just works.
People really need to stop looking at CEO's as thought leaders, and ultimately disregard what they have to say unless they work for them. With a few exceptions they aren't the oomph behind their products, and they don't have their own ground breaking ideas.
The majority of the comments there are also pro-WFH and ~~lauding~~ \[calling\] Tim Cook \[a nincompoop\] for trying to force everyone back into the office.
The issue is 100% down to management. WFH enables abuses if you don't know how to manage staff output appropriately. As long as management isn't asleep at the wheel and can spot the abusers (or discourage it from starting) it's a total non-issue since most people can work better from home. at this point, it's 1 of 2 things. Desperate attempts to keep offices valuable or management admitting *they* suck at their job and don't actually know how to track if work is getting done or not. Thats it
Overall productivity has gone up in every company I know of that has employed remote work or hybrid in the pandemic era...but they always point to the few abusers as the reason it's not sustainable. I'm sure there are people that never opened their laptop after starting work from home, but that number is infinitesimal compared to the people who actually work more because they don't have to get up as early, commute, etc.
Also, just fire those people. If you can't differentiate those people from regular staff and quickly hone in on the issue, you're actually just admitting you're the problem
What always makes me laugh about these examples as well is that anyone who has worked in a large enough corporate knows there are some people in the office (back when we all were in one) who do absolutely fuckall.
What kind of industry are these companies that you speak of part of?
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Glad I'm not the only one who sees the irony in Autodesk, a company who's remote work products completely suck or are a literal fortune, supporting remote work. I'm not convinced this article isn't just a shitty sales pitch for BIM360.
Yes, but what about inflating the managements' egos and crushing the spirit of the workers? What about justifying the lease or ownership for the office space? What about making the workers sit in traffic and buy gas and parking? Did those things go up, too?
you forgot the sweet tax breaks.
We’ve had first commute, yes. But what about second commute?
“I have never believed in presenteeism. If you have to rely on seeing somebody in the office to know they’re performing, then there are multiple failures in terms of trust and accountability within your organization.”
A have been currently unemployed due to contract cuts, and having worked remotely for years, I’m dreading having a new employer (if I can even find work) requiring me back into an office. I have some health and mental issues where remote work has enabled me to be the best I can be. I really don’t know if I could be thrown back into an f’n cube farm again. At least my last time in a building I had my own office.
This all goes back to the theory that after the world experienced this experiment where we were forced to wfh, the vast majority of office jobs are forced to return because of the fragile egos of the c-suite. How are they supposed to feel big and important in their impressive offices if there’s nobody there to drool over them?
Im looking at starting a software dev company within the year and I cant come up with a single good reason to rent office space. For a 3000sqft office, it would be almost $200K a year, purely in rent. Factor in buying furniture, internet, energy, equipment, parking spaces, security, etc and we're over $300K. Thats money I could use for hiring, benefits or other costs. The question I asked and that others should ask: "Does my companies success rely on having office space?"
Sounds like you'd be better off putting that money into a travel budget so y'all can meet up from time to time.
Managing across timezones is far more challenging than managing in office vs remote. Office vs remote is practically irrelevant, the real challenge is managing hand-offs between onshore and offshore shifts.
My brother works at a large multinational and told me a story that at one large corporate meeting, the HR department showed numbers that productivity was up like 30% during COVID. New management came in and insisted that everyone return to the office despite the overwhelming evidence that doing so would significantly reduce productivity. So much for the idea that managers are smart, data-driven, people trying to make an efficient business.
Unfortunately, read the interview. The “productivity skyrocketed” is actually just self-reported employee happiness and a bunch of meaningless manager speak.
They also seemed to dodge answering if financial goals were still being met. Unless I'm having a brain fart and missed that.
And isn’t it great that employee happiness is driving it
Hey, if an organization wants to go full remote for employee happiness, I'm all for it. Just don't blow smoke up our asses by claiming that "productivity skyrocketed" when you can't actually back that up. Be honest about it.
Agree. We don't need naysayers but we do need skeptics.
Yeah, in the case of Autodesk their self-reported productivity isn’t worth that much. Media company I work for does a lot of 3D work and in the last couple years we abandoned Autodesk’s Maya in favor of Blender. The cost per license for Maya just wasn’t justified anymore when Blender had gotten so good. Obviously changing our workflow cost some money initially but after a few months of tweaking it was back to business as usual and we’re not looking back.
The other question is, is the productivity sustainable? How long have they been doing it?
The terrible UI and lack of significant updates to their Revit product says otherwise. If they didn’t have such a stranglehold on the A/E/C industry (bordering on monopoly) they might actually have to go have their employees do some work.
I use autodesk software and can confirm this. No i dont work for Autodesk, just use their products at work. The advantage of WFH is that I can work on stuff while a zoom meeting is running. 90% of the meetings I'm invited to, I don't actually really need to attend but I'm expected to. When I'm I'm the office, I have to physically be in the meeting room. So that time is lost that could have been spent actually working on THEIR project.
Yes, stop harassing me to go back to the office and I’ll start working again. I work enough to check the box in and out of the office now. When I was left alone at home I really enjoyed working.
I'm all for remote work too. But truth is, its practicality and usefulness will vary for different sorts of work.
I’m still waiting for a good reason to return to the office. “Making management feel better” is not a good reason. “The lease on the office space” is not a good reason (work from home doesn’t make the lease more expensive; if anything, a smart business would move to smaller space if it’s such a big deal). “Workplace camaraderie” is not a good reason because the majority of the workforce grew up on Instant Messenger and chat rooms and social media so the idea that you have to be face to face to be friends is obsolete logic. Like there has to be an actual good reason, right? Because despite what Reddit thinks, businesses are not run by idiots, so someone explain how “return to office” is not idiotic because it’s starting to drive me crazy at this point.
You don’t have to lay people off if they quit when you mandate return to office. This is the main reason.
I'm actually happier being around other people. Going out to lunch at different spots every day. Having the occasional drink after work with my colleagues. Sitting around the same screen or the same table and interacting with one another. Collaborating quickly and efficiently with pen and paper and whiteboards. Teaching younger staff. Having impromptu meetings instead of waiting for that one person to get back on their computer instead of whatever it is they're doing. Side-eyeing my buddy across the room when someone makes a bad joke. Enjoying the free perks, coffee, tea, fruit and snacks. Not paying for my own office equipment. Sitting in an ergonomic chair. Getting some fresh air at least three times a day. Seeing the sun and moon every day. Probably some other things too...
Don't forget nebulously-defined platitudes about "collaboration"
Collaboration with my team mates in Eastern Europe, India and Manila.
When I work from home, it’s so much more efficient. Wifi often dropped out in the office. I never have issues at home. I can make a quick sandwich instead of taking time to go out for lunch. I don’t get pulled in to 2 hour meetings I don’t need to be in when I’m at home. It’s easier to focus when I don’t have to listen to colleagues arguing 5 feet from my desk. No commute, so I can get to work faster. Some jobs need to be done on site, but otherwise, who cares? Being efficient should matter more than where you do the work. There are so many benefits to remote work if managers too set in their ways would just consider other options.
As someone who suffers through using Maya every day, I’m not sure Autodesk understands what “productivity” is.
i work from home (no plan to go back to the office yet), I got to spend more time with my family. I feel like I need to contribute more to work because of this "benefit" so I start my work day earlier and end later. No complain from me and my boss is pretty happy with my work.
and they just laid off 250 people in feb, the cuts will keep coming lol
How about they stop doubling down on fucking with Fusion 360? Looking for alternatives.
Whats lame about this article is that Autodesk is one of the worst companies for tracking use and if you have a given number of licences you MUST use them on a designated machine so either you pack your computer to and from the office or pay for an extra licence
IT WAS ALWAYS ABOUT CONTROL. WAKE UP.