Why return-to-office mandates fail::The question over whether to allow employees to work from home has been settled. Here’s the new normal.
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Because the best performing employees will leave for more money in other remote roles, dumping a ton of work on the remaining workers who are either a) mediocre, or b) incompetent extroverts who can’t wait to spend all day talking about fantasy football with a captive audience.
A remote work perk is the new onsite barista and free lunches. People don’t want free Korean BBQ, they want to not commute for 3 hours a day.
Top tech talent will always go to the companies with the best perks and comp.
People want both.
I work for a company that made the audacious decision to let people work how they feel they work best.
They got the feedback that there are some things that some people miss about working together in an office.
So once a month they have catering brought in to bait people into coming in and seeing their coworkers face to face, optionally.My loose observation is that pizza fails the 20 minute drive test, but any BBQ passes.
I live an hour away because housing prices are literally 1/3 what I would pay closer, so I only go in if everyone on my team is and the food is up to snuff.
Point is, people want BBQ and less commuting, and we should make it clear that we expect both.
Yeah. Ironically the one thing that actually made me come to the office more often is the free lunch coupons they started giving out. I still don’t come in often, but definitely more often than before.
My loose observation is that pizza fails the 20 minute drive test, but any BBQ passes.
Have you tried biryani?
Yup, it’s great. We haven’t gotten it from work, but I’m sure it would bring in a lot of people.
I find with ADHD I can focus a lot better from home but get a lot of motivation through social feedback, so the current hybrid arrangement tends to be a happy medium.
Top tech talent could suddenly apply to any job instead of the few nearby companies, exploding their options. If anything, even remote companies should send Korean BBQ to each employee’s house.
Captive audience because they’re trapped in the office with them.
Trapped in an “open collaborative space”, yes.
Ugh. If I need to collaborate with my colleagues, I’ll visit their office; I don’t need (or want) to hear every phone call they make or their music escaping their headphones.
I cannot stress enough how much I hate open plan offices and am so glad I do not work in one.
Dude, did fucking Josh Allen have a season, or what? Week after week, he just kept it steady and helped me win my league!
Did you see that ludicrous display last night?
The thing about Arsenal is, they always try to walk it in
This genuinely spiked my blood pressure. I hope you’re fucking happy
Let me solve this apparently unsolvable mystery for them. You spent the last 40 years making offices soul crushing hellscapes that are grounds for psychological warfare while helping contribute to increasing commutes. People had Stockholm syndrome for a bit then they got shown a better way and they’d rather not give up a large part of their day to be tormented in a place they they don’t need to be to do their job.
So when you try to force it the large majority are fighting back and you’re surprised? No ping pong, pool, mandatory fun, free drinks don’t offset the bullshit that is modern office design in-fact a lot of us would rather you keep all those give us a little padding in the ol paycheck and I can get my own soda and ping pong table
Besides: Fuck modern office design. Even in my company in Austria, other departments often have cushy 2-3 employee offices, plenty of space, really nice.
What do software developers get? Massive rooms with 13 people inside and no seperators for “collaboration”. But while you’re in online meeting A and your colleague is in online meeting B you can’t even focus on your own thoughts.
Overcrowding is the biggest issue I have with working at office. Too many people sharing a space. It feels claustrophobic and lack privacy
Not having access to natural light is what really drives me insane. During the winter, it’s possible to spend all your daylight hours at work, so you basically alternate between harsh artificial light and darkness.
Mandatory fun was always my least favorite god damn part. It isn’t fun if you have to force me to have fun.
My company took a different approach. It wasn’t mandatory but if a group of people wanted to get together and do something once a week, They would pay for dinner for however many people showed up and they had free soft drinks and beer. We’ve had board games, d&d, crafting, we even had a bar night where company would pick up the first drink.
I honestly miss all that terribly, but not more than is offset by not having to commute 30 min each way every day.
LOL I’ve always said that beer waffle Tuesday and a Foosball table aren’t worth working with entitled idiots.
People will choose a workplace in which they have greater control, over one with nicer accommodations.
But if people don’t go back to the office, commercial real estate will crash, they’ll convert it all into affordable housing, and my curb appeal will lose its sweet, sweet premium value.
Let’s not pretend there isn’t a micromanaging control issue involved in this, but the core is all about real estate.
Are you telling me I could afford a Center City apartment if we don’t return to the office? Sign me up
I don’t know if the affordable part will be particularly accurate.
I’m in a position to have knowledge about multiple bargaining committees working on their first union contracts. The demand to RTO is literally entirely the ego of CEOs and other executives that believe their opinion is more valuable than research. They also know that employees will never accept “because we say so”, so they cling to flimsy or highly biased data as evidence, without ever showing their sources or methods.
Another aspect that is likely overlooked: they’re counting on people to quit. It’s an opportunity to have a self-selecting layoff without massive payouts or running into the WARN act. Apple has made this more than apparent by mandating RTO at a location, and then relocating that office to Texas. They still have other labor laws to deal with, but they don’t care about talent retention.
The issue with the self-selecting layoffs is that it’s usually the best talent that leaves. Not that they care, as it won’t negatively impact this quarter’s numbers. But funny/sad to see them all confused a year later when number go down.
Have them come to office or fire them and loose maybe 50% of my company (code) knowledge while no new hires know what to do and the remaining coworkers are not trained fully in the task?
Easy choice.
I should become a CEO if I can think much beyond the horizon.
My prior employer did an unforseen and sudden about face on wfh after embracing it fully. Guess who wasn’t the least bit surprised to hear a couple of months later that several old coworkers got WARNed…guess enough of us didn’t quit to get their financials where they wanted them.
because nobody wants to return to the office.
there. mystery solved, Sherlock.
EDIT: WRT the article: because the reasons given are always bullshit unsupported by fact.
It doesn’t help that the people mandating return to office are working from home when they demand it.
Previously our office was 2/3 WFH/office hybrid, which everyone interpreted as “2 days from home regardless of how long week was.” They recently put their foot down and said it’s actually 3 days in the office no matter how long the week is…but also all managers have to be in the office 5 days.
So my personal experience contradicts your claim. Do you have any evidence to back it up?
Every single all hands I’ve been in since return to work was a thing. ;)
I can’t make any sense of this. If your argument is that it sometimes happens, I would be surprised if it were untrue. But your claim implied that it’s common, rather than just your personal experience.
There was a fun video that got a lot of public views from WebMD in the last ~week. Wherein some of the execs appeared to be mandating RTO from a green screen of an office.
Just the biggest example that comes immediately to mind.
I would need to know more because what if they were currently all out of the office and they were mandating everyone, including themselves, go back in? It was the same thing when my company announced it, we were all at home and the head of my division, also at home, had a meeting where he, from home, told us all that we would be returning to the office.
Now he’s back in the office 5 days a week and we’re all 3 days.
Working from home has its pros and cons. Fortunately, in my experience, the pros are all mine and the cons are all someone else’s. That kind of colours my judgement.
You, too, do the morning meetings on the shitter?
I know it’s a joke but I could barely join a meeting in my underwear without the paranoia of clicking the video, let alone without them
Happened with someone’s audio once, for some reason the sound of him pissing and sighing in satisfaction wasn’t getting filtered out. I just sat there wondering why nobody was muting him yet couldn’t bring myself to do it because of how funny and awkward it was.
Wasn’t there some city official somewhere (Jermany?) who had a wank during a meeting with camera on?
We don’t have the data, says the company that tracks their employees and customers relentlessly.
The data doesn’t say what we want it to so we’re ignoring it.
It has become a fake discussion already.
It is not the question anymore whether work at home is better or work at the office. It is not the question whether you go back to the place where you have worked before.
It is big bosses fabricating excuses for laying off people.
How? They have closed your old office long ago. Now they tell you that another place in a different state is “your” office. Now go and “return” to there. Or they have hired you for WfH with no plans to ever work in an office, and now they tell you to “return” to somewhere.
And then you can watch them moaning and whining how so many of their employees people just do not want to “return”, and therefore they need stronger policies…
I quit my job because my boss demanded RTO. They asked me to come back after they rescinded the RTO.
They asked me to come back
on their knees? LOL
Did you?
No, I already had a new job that was founded on remote.
To be fair many companies who said you have to return to work did this as they knew they had to do lay offs. It is cheaper if people just leave and you don’t have to pay a severance pay.
And more often than not, the people that left were the higher performing employees. Penny-wise, pound-foolish.
Sounds like a problem for 4 quarters from now, today we give out executive bonuses and cash out on the stock price increase!
Please don’t think you have to be fair over that kind of behaviour
Im not gonna click the link. I am gonna live under the assumption that, because that thumbnail is next to the headline, that chick is to blame.
Fuck you old lady. Let us work from home.
If people can talk without being tracked they might unionize.
There’s such a disconnect between the discussion on line about this and my experience in the real world.
I work in tech and it’s probably at least partially situational, but everyone in my office that I talk to about this agrees that working in office is more productive. Everyone wants the flexibility to work from home, and my company is still hybrid, but it’s universally agreed that the office is better. Granted I know some people left after we went hybrid from full wfh, and I’m sure some of those who left would be in disagreement.
But for instance, I’m a senior engineer and the juniors often ask for help from me multiple times during the day…if we’re both in the office. If one or both of us is home, I rarely hear from them. I don’t see how this isn’t a clear indication of lost productivity and learning from them.
But when you see this discussion online, the people arguing that WFH is just as good or better drown out the other voices.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand that commuting sucks and for the employees who is better, and I hope it stays that way. But I struggle to believe that from a business productivity perspective it’s better to be fully remote.
So the people who stayed at your company after WFH was taken away are the ones that think the office is better.
Definitely an engineer.
I explicitly pointed that out. I also gave a good reason why. But my experience in talking about this also extends beyond just people I work with.
But I would also like to point out that at least 80% of our team stayed on after hybrid was announced.
I agree that in office can be more productive. Otherside of the coin, many places aren’t a single monolithic office or even campus. These giant tech companies forcing RTO results in people driving into an office to get the same experience as at home. (Aka on zoom calls all day)
I dunno, you really come across as an engineer who doesn’t like to use Zoom or Teams. Yes it can be easy to point at a piece of paper in front of someone, but there’s nothing to stop you from getting on a call a couple of times a day for a few minutes each.
I was 100% WFH for about a decade before the pandemic. I’m perfectly fine with both teams and zoom. When I finally got my previous company on board for webex (the company was split in 2 small locations, and then me WFH), and then eventually a move to teams, it was great. I like in person meetings better, for sure, but I’ve long been very comfortable using video meetings.
And while I agree there is nothing actually stopping people from jumping on zoom, my experience is that there is a lot more psychological friction because it doesn’t happen nearly as much as it does when we are in the same physical space. And this doesn’t even touch on all the times I’m talking to someone else about something, and another person overhears me and either has a similar question or something to add. And it almost reads as if you are saying I should schedule meetings with these people to meet a couple of times a day, but that would be even more painful.
People on my team have a question, I start up Zoom and we chat for 5 minutes. I have a question for my boss that’s too big for Slack? Well we’ll just Zoom for a few minutes.
You definitely don’t want an ad hoc ticketing system, but nothing wrong with ad hoc meetings, especially if you’re trying to capture the random encounters that occur in the office.
But this is my point. . .when I’m in the office they’ll just turn around and ask me, on average, close to 3 questions a day. If it averages below 3 questions per week when one or both of us is WFH, I wouldn’t be surprised.
I’m not saying that there is no way to make it happen, but that it simply doesn’t happen. (Although I will say the ad hoc jump-in is something that can’t happen over video chat. . .unless everyone is always in the room, which is even worse than working in an office lol) I can’t explain why, but the barrier to initiating a conversation is much higher when it’s not just “turn around and ask” and instead “send a message.”
