This leaked today from inside webmd, the most bullshit corpo HR video I think I’ve ever seen.
To break down the obvious ones:
- Employees who are obviously either drinking wayyy too much company koolaid or who know that their jobs will end if they aren’t in this video
- An extremely out of touch CEO who wants things back the old way without giving any concrete data proving that it’s better beyond conjecture
- A company with “internet” in the name who literally doesn’t understand the concept of the internet
- Threatening and bullying language to force people back in office.
- and just a nice touch, the office is of course not near mass transit or anything and requires driving in
- Did anyone notice they were all on green screen, kinda proving that there was no need for them to be in person?
As a manager, here are my observations. They’re qualitative, not quantitative.
I actually really agree with you on these points. I’m hybrid right now and it works well for me. In office I get to socialize, I do have better meetings, and I do feel like we come out with good ideas. But then the other days I’m at home, and those are my heads-down get shit done days. I get more done at home, but we come up with better ideas on what to do in office.
I’m in software, so I push for our scrum process to allow for that. I schedule meeting days in office, where we have sprint close, sprint plannings, retros and everything in office - and then you can go home for the rest of it.
Yeah, that’s it exactly. My organization is also software, by the way, but embedded real time control stuff in a very engineering-centric company.
Finally, a sensible comment. Also a manager for a bunch of years, and I completely agree. The best is a hybrid setup, and my team comes into the office together on the same agreed days. I think this is a good balance, and I personally wouldn’t want to work in a fully remote role, as it makes collaboration an informal human connections very difficult.