[deleted]
I thought the point was to get people to resign so they didn’t have to pay severance?
[deleted]
Submitted 11 months ago by SuperSpaceFan@lemmy.ca to workreform@lemmy.world
Comments
Dave@lemmy.nz 11 months ago
SuperSpaceFan@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
[deleted]Speculater@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Hybrid model is such a stupid fucking compromise. Come in when a scrum or meeting is needed. Leave everyone else the fuck alone if they’re hitting targets.
winterayars@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Maybe enough people resigned.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 11 months ago
CEOs will admit nothing.
Shareholders like to hear that employees are having to come to the office, being fired, or pissing in bottles. It means more money for the shareholders.
“Every hour we’ll beat our lowest performing employee with a pool ball in a sock.”
The line goes up.
stockRot@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Why are shareholders happy to hear that businesses are spending unnecessary money on renting office spaces?
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Because they’re disconnected from reality. Same reason they’re fine with co2 emissions even though they live in the same biosphere.
go_go_gadget@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Because most shareholders are boomers.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 11 months ago
Because they also hold shares in the companies that rent offices.
None of these businesses have given up their office spaces. They’re also likely on very long term contracts. Not using them is wasting money.
crsu@lemmy.world 11 months ago
They own REITs
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 11 months ago
They don’t, it’s a statement that people are repeating because they heard it from someone else, with nobody stopping to actually think about it.
There is no conspiracy by CEOs to get people back to the office to prop up real estate values.
SCB@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Shareholders like to hear that employees are having to come to the office, being fired, or pissing in bottles. It means more money for the shareholders.
How would any of these things necessarily correlate to more money?
Blackmist@feddit.uk 11 months ago
Because line goes up.
It doesn’t matter how profitable the company is. It only matters how much the people who want to buy your shares are prepared to pay for them.
jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 11 months ago
I sincerely thought this headline was from the onion. I don’t think a lot of CEOs have the humility to admit fault.
Nomecks@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
It’s impossible to hide the productivity losses from shareholders.
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 11 months ago
When has easily identified objective reality ever discouraged CEOs?
The data showed the same thing on a smaller scale BEFORE the pandemic and they still almost universally demanded that people needlessly commute to perform location-agnostic tasks.
That they haven’t learned any lessons is par for the course.
excitingburp@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It wasn’t ever about productivity, it was about control.
Zeshade@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s not about control, it’s about trying to protect the economy from uncertainty.
SquiffSquiff@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s absolutely about control. Example. I did a short spell at a hedge fund earlier this year and they were hyper-focussed about staff being onsite. Didn’t even have seating in the kitchen or a dining area. Just bank after bank of fixed desks with people yelling at each other on video calls to other people in the same office. Control, control, control.
GrindingGears@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
It’s 1,000% about control. The boomers just fall apart and crumple to their knees begging for mercy, when they think about all those people at home doing their laundry and watching TV while they work. Which I 100% do by the way, yet I’m still way more productive in both my professional and personal life. Which might have something to do with not spending two hours a day in traffic and dealing with unnecessary distractions and curveballs at the whim of my office mates all day long.
GrundlButter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
If by economy you mean business owners, business real estate, and the stock market, yes. The RTO mandates certainly aren’t about protecting the workers or productivity though.
Remember, the workers, buying power, and productivity are part of “the economy” too, it’s not just what the stock market is doing. RTO mandates are harming that for jobs that can be done remotely.
instamat@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Alternate headline: CEOs still out of touch with rank and file employees, continue to set policy based on enormous egos and to assuage shareholders
FlaminGoku@reddthat.com 11 months ago
Additional descriptor: Because McKinsey and the other big 3 PM’s are pushing the same narrative with every client.
BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Admit wrongdoing? Ahahahahwhwhhahahahahahahahahahah
xmunk@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
CEOs will never admit shit until they’re paid to do so.
bostonbananarama@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Absolutely this. All the metrics already tell us that productivity does not decline from allowing employees to work from home. Why would additional data suddenly cause CEOs to admit what’s already known?
psud@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I have seen productivity drop when my team had to move from WFH to hybrid minimum 3 days a week in the office. People resent being told to come into the office to meet coworkers online, work on computers. Commute to do exactly as they would do at home.
Suavevillain@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Just let people work remote. It is the best way for me to be productive and not have to spend extra money on travel.
DannyMac@lemmy.world 11 months ago
“You want something that doesn’t affect our bottom line and improves your life? Fuck you! I pulled myself up by the bootstraps… They were golden and provided by my daddy, but I pulled myself up all the same!”
–Billionaires, probably
unreasonabro@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Anybody with a job that isn’t in a warehouse will tell you productivity went up with work from home, not down. Fuck the media for always sleeping through reality.
assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Not to mention, you aren’t as aware of down time when you’re there in person. You’re at the office, so most tasks you do still feel like work. If you’re a knowledge worker you might spend 4 hours getting actual work done, and you can see that way more easily at home. I think that’s why people have been more productive, because they think they’re falling behind when they really aren’t.
Plus, being in a familiar environment and not needing to wake up early for commutes is massive.
Shyfer@ttrpg.network 11 months ago
Also didn’t help teachers at all. But ya, for all office workers who aren’t social and especially for those of us who had a long commute, wfh was a godsend.
IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Guess what I’m doing for 45-60 minutes each day while NOT driving to/from an office…
RoughCuts@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Watching anime waiting for 9:00 to roll around
GrindingGears@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Up by like 200+ percent. Plus everyone from a work from home environment, at least that I know of, is like oh I didn’t get this done today and now I have a quiet 20 minutes after putting the kids to bed, so let’s just clickety-clack here for a bit.
Yet I don’t ever hear about those stories in the media…
hark@lemmy.world 11 months ago
CEOs won’t admit anything. We had some downsizing over the pandemic but they still want us in the office while claiming that we all miss the “magic meeting in an elevator/hallway moments” and that supposedly collaboration is greatly enhanced. Meanwhile when asked if we’d have adequate facilities, there was a pause before being told an empty “…yes”. So what are the adequate facilities? Open spaces and unassigned seating so you don’t know where you’ll be sitting the next day. Instead of a well-furnished home office with peace and quiet, I will get to enjoy a spartan open space with many distractions.
Real estate prices has been mentioned as a reason for CEOs to do this and I’m sure that plays a part since they’re often invested in such things, but also, it’s likely a way to get people to quit so that they don’t have to have formal layoffs.
birthday_attack@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I love leaving my standing desk and ergonomic equipment behind so that I can use objectively worse equipment with the promise that “renovations are coming to your team in the next few years.” My boss hunts for open seating in the neighboring office building so that they can actually use a standing desk on the days we have to come in, which is antithetical to the “spirit of collaboration” RTO is supposed to foster.
Like either let us use our own setup or invest in an office setup that is tolerable for people to use. We all know that they don’t give a shit about employees, but they could at least pretend they’re considering our experience when forcing these decisions on us.
sighofannoyance@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Instead of a well-furnished home office
I hope this is isn’t seen as derailing the subject at hand, but just out of curiosity, what do you consider a well furnished home office?
davad@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Not the original commenter, but for me it’s a comfortable chair, desk, and computer set up in a quiet room with a door I can close. Nice speakers and/or headphones and a small couch are a plus.
hark@lemmy.world 11 months ago
A private office with a comfortable chair, a large desk, multiple monitors, and all the equipment I need within reach and always hooked up or within cabinets that only I have access to. Instead they’re providing an open space with no privacy (i.e. full of distractions), shared tables, a single monitor (or using the laptop screen), and shared equipment. Their chairs are comfortable though.
GrindingGears@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
My home office is an oasis compared to any company supplied office that I’ve ever had. 100% climate control. A desk that is 100% the size and layout that I want. Perfect office computer chair, finely dialed in. A decorative environment that is perfectly to my taste, no expense spared, that wasn’t subject to anyone else’s scrutiny or opinions. Private bathroom. Hell there’s even a bed in my office, used for micro naps when needed, but don’t tell the Boomers that. They might spontaneously combust in outrage.
KevonLooney@lemm.ee 11 months ago
It’s not mainly “corporate real estate” or “getting people to quit” that motivates CEOs. Regardless of what your personal experience, CEOs do not own the building or want to spend money on hiring. They legitimately think that “meeting in the hallway” is a good idea because that’s the only time they spend listening to the little people.
You know that you can just ask someone for info like a normal person, but they are legitimately isolated. Many people freeze up if they get a call, email, Slack message, whatever from the Executive Team. CEOs need leadership training to manage remote workers.
hark@lemmy.world 11 months ago
CEOs were already well-detached from reality before the pandemic started and before internet got good enough to allow for a lot of people to work from home.
mp3@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
But they helped their buddies with empty real estate located downtown so it’s all good.
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Again with this claim. Do you really think executives that get paid bonuses based on how well the company performs are going to make poor business decisions to help out their friends?
4am@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Depends on where their investment assets are
ExLisper@linux.community 11 months ago
They didn’t do it because productivity. They did it because real estate prices. Also they like to watch people work.
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Top management did it for their realestate portfolio, middle management did it because if works at home it suddenly becomes obvious most of them are completely superfluous.
hex_m_hell@slrpnk.net 11 months ago
This won’t happen because no one is measuring productivity. If they had any way to measure productivity or even cared about it, there wouldn’t be bullshit jobs. CEOs will never admit this, because it was never the point.
WarmApplePieShrek@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
If there weren’t bullshit jobs, capitalism would collapse.
hex_m_hell@slrpnk.net 11 months ago
These are not mutually exclusive.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
My perspective on this after all my experiences over the past three years or so, working at three different jobs that service hundreds of customer sites and thousands of professional workers, is simply: forcing either work from office, work from home, or a combination of both (aka hybrid), is the wrong move. Your best talent will walk of you force them to do something that they don’t want to do. I have seen coworkers and users alike, find new jobs both when forced to WFH and RTO and even with hybrid.
The take away is, work should be flexible. It should be where the workers are most effectively able to complete their duties. If that’s the office, workers should have the ability to do that. If that’s at home, they should be able to do that. If it’s some combination of home/office, again, they should be able to do that.
If I’ve learned only one thing about work over the pandemic and this “post pandemic” hell, it’s that above all, people want to be able to make that choice for themselves. Any worker worth employing is going to be productive regardless of their location, and for short durations, workers can accept working from home or the office or whatever, even if it’s not their preference (eg, the 2020/1 lockdowns). A bad worker will be able to find ways to look busy will while not doing work regardless of if they’re working remotely or not, though, in my experience most workers just want to put in the effort, and get paid, and they do. Those that are there to do as little as possible and collect a paycheck are actually pretty rare. People want to work. Giving them the option of choosing where and when to do that is empowering and beneficial to their attitude and work ethic; not to mention, it’s also beneficial to their mental health.
Simply, forcing them into either working from home, or the office, or both via “hybrid” is going to have at least a few, wanting to walk.
We have the technology to support both styles of work and taking that choice away from workers will only serve to make those that want the opposite, disgruntled. If you value your workers, then let them choose.
Bluntly, given what I’ve seen from business owners over the same three+ year time period, they don’t care enough about workers to make them happy. It demonstrates a complete lack of shits given about what works want.
If you’re a business owner and you have any consideration for those you employ, give them the choice and you will be rewarded with more work, and better work done by those you employ. Anyone who forces the issue, one way or the other, will have some that are happy and some that are very unhappy about it. Choose wisely.
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Could you please do a TED talk so the C-Suite has some hope of hearing this?
crsu@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Going to need more than that. They would just tighten their lips into a fine concerned line, applaud at the end as if they’d been moved emotionally and in every day life continue as usual changing nothing. Source: every other TED Talk discussing the flaws with our sociological assumptions and things continuing to get worse since the inception of TED Talks bloviating faux concern
FireTower@lemmy.world 11 months ago
When did we stop using the Oracle of Delphi and switch to future of work experts for our predictions?
bouh@lemmy.world 11 months ago
When the god of money took the place of Zeus during the 18th century.
rq0_0@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Return to office mandates were never about productivity. They are about fulfilling obligations to municipalities that gave them tax breaks on real-estate in exchange for hiring a certain number of local employees.
WhyDoYouPersist@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Is being a future of work expert a good-paying career?
RagingRobot@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Idk but they have job stability until society collapses so they have that going. I can’t imagine a future without work
WhyDoYouPersist@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’ll be like Groundhog Day except it’s when we see Mark Zuckerberg withdraw into his bunker. We’ll know there’s no more work to be done!
OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee 11 months ago
No but it will be.
EnderMB@lemmy.world 11 months ago
As an employee at a company that has asked people to come back 3 days a week, and forced those that couldn’t to “voluntarily resign”, I very much doubt this will happen at large companies.
Sure, many companies will shift towards hybrid models, taking smaller office spaces where needed, and letting people work remotely when they want…but RTO became a culture war of sorts rather than a data-driven benefit. To switch back after being so anti-worker would be admitting fault, which CEO’s rarely do.
Even if remote was the future, there are instances where I don’t see it working:
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If remote work is the future, what becomes of migration? Controlled migration is a huge boost for many cities that want the best and brightest to move there. Without a need for employees to move, either migration worldwide drops, or cities/countries find another way to bring people in.
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Big companies have a huge number of applications, and even if the likes of Google and Amazon say “fuck you, 5 days a week in office” you’ll find hundreds of people that’ll happily work there and be treated like shit. It’s not just tech either - finance, law, insurance, lots of industries that have tried to bring people back, and who have no shortage of people that’ll take jobs there.
I love working remotely, but I do appreciate that there needs to be a balance. The smartest thing to do would be to have smaller, shared offices for people that want a desk, and to set up “virtual locations” for tax/salary reasons for people that want to be remote. That way, people get the best of both worlds.
legion02@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Oh no cities might have to focus on residents more than business to grow. How terrible.
RaoulDook@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Yeah who gives a fuck about “migration to the cities” like the cities need more crowding?
Personally I would never want to pay the absurd cost of housing in a large city, and I don’t care what jobs are there.
EnderMB@lemmy.world 11 months ago
This IS about residents. Diversity in population is a great thing for many countries, and larger cities in particular. Currently, most cities bring people in on work visas, which they won’t be able to do under current visa laws if jobs are remote. This makes countries less diverse, and means less freedom of movement for people across the world. How would someone from the US move to Berlin if roles there are remote? Long-term, what happens to a society when all immigrants are second or third generation? Likely more right-wing abuse and more people kicking off over small amounts of migration for legal/safety reasons.
go_go_gadget@lemmy.world 11 months ago
cities/countries find another way to bring people in.
What you mean like affordable housing??
Mirshe@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Walkability, excellent public transit…
SCB@lemmy.world 11 months ago
My last job was remote for a fortune 100 company. Large companies are 100% on board with this because it is efficient.
Efficiency always wins in the end.
Nollij@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
I can name a Fortune 100 bank, run by a total asshole, that does not and has never believed in remote work. Efficiency is not a factor there.
EnderMB@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Feel free to name the company. In my experience, no tech companies are, nor are many of the major companies hiring software engineers (Bloomberg, JPMC, Amex, Salesforce, GS, and Capital One) are all being shitty when it comes to RTO.
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SquiffSquiff@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s easy to laugh at the term ‘Future of Work Expert’ because it is inherently ridiculous but some of the actual individuals cited here are people that CEOs will listen to:
- Annie Dean, a panelist and the global head of Team Anywhere at software firm Atlassian, and Meta’s former director of remote work
- Robert Sadow, Scoop’s (‘Powerful planning tools for hybrid employees.’) CEO and cofounder
- Cara Allamano, who heads up people operations at management software firm Lattice—which, like Atlassian, is remote-first
All of these people are very clearly on the ‘remote’ side of the argument but they are also in leadership positions where they are walking it, not just talking it. All of their companies provide tooling solutions for orchestrating staff and projects. At least two of these companies are successful. We already know that the data does not back up RTO mandates. We’re on the Sarah Cycle/Change curve: We’ve done Shock and Anger, we are now at the ‘Bargaining’ stage.
RobertOwnageJunior@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s good to know that there are people in positions of influence who at least have an ounce of logical thiking capacity.
SinningStromgald@lemmy.world 11 months ago
The drain for those companies is happening or has happened and is unlikely to improve just because they finally realize they were wrong.
Kill_John_Lennon@lemmy.world 11 months ago
lol future of work expert. People need to stop upvoting any shitty pro-remote work “article” only because it states something they want to be true.
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Sometimes you upvote posts because you find them interesting in other ways than agreeing with them.
In this case, to let more people laugh at the “experts” severely underestimating the stubbornness of CEOs
thetreesaysbark@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Any particular reason why you find this one ‘shitty’? I don’t know either way whether it’s a good article or not.
crsu@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I’m not the person you’re replying to but I found the article to be shallow in actual details and written in a condescending tone.
chocolateo@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I like working in an office
some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 11 months ago
I would like to believe this. And I even worked at a small (~25 people) company where this did happen. I just don’t think this will be the case for massive companies.
TheDeepState@lemmy.world 11 months ago
How long till 4 day work week?
Daft_ish@lemmy.world 11 months ago
This reads like an onion headline.
MaxPow3r11@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s almost like people don’t want to be slaves for sociopaths to enrich themselves at the expense of all else.
Who could have known?
frezik@midwest.social 11 months ago
This will probably happen as the sunk cost fallacy of existing office space goes away. They have these big office spaces leased out and they’re stuck with that cost. Those leases will expire over the next few years, and a lot of them will decide they don’t need them anymore. Until then, they’re paying for something that isn’t getting use, and there’s mental pressure to force the issue.
clearleaf@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Corporations are known to only care about money, but these days a lot of them are fine with losing money just to prove a stupid point of some kind.
Serpardum@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Fuck that Paywall.
EmergMemeHologram@startrek.website 11 months ago
X [Doubt]
CEOs, admit they used feelings over logic and everyone had to just pretend it made sense?
nickhammes@lemmy.world 11 months ago
The only feelings were probably that they thought the productivity loss would be less than the losses in commercial real estate, and now they’ve either minimized the real estate losses, or realized them, and they feel the equation has flipped
penguin@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
It has nothing to do with real estate. This is often echoed on social media but is baseless.
Even if they did care about real estate value, they’d rather all other companies return to office, boosting those values, while they could then remain remote and take advantage of both the higher real estate values and also the numerous advantages of remote work.
Boosting real estate values in this way is a collective action problem where most companies would need to work together for the greater good (as they see it). But if you hold this world view, that CEOs will screw over their employees for their bottom line, why wouldn’t they also screw over other companies? They would. They would want other companies to work together to fix the real estate values while also benefitting from remote work. So it would all fall apart.
Here are more likely scenarios:
DerArzt@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s even better when my CEO slipped up and admitted in front of the entire company that the return to office policy was based solely on a feeling.