I guess this could just as easily be posted in an anti-work community

  • @[email protected]
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    132 years ago

    Wouldn’t be surprised if this is just to weed out employees so they don’t need to do layoffs. Forcing return to office keeps employees that are “loyal” to the company while potentially trimming down total headcount.

    • @[email protected]
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      22 years ago

      I’ve been saying this since the tech industry has been pushing RTO, I used to work in a large company that hopped on the layoff wave and they were pushing HARRRRDD for RTO. I quit before the bloodbath and found a more fun job :)

    • Beefalo
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      62 years ago

      They’ll have a ton of workers who are hundreds to thousands of miles away, housed elsewhere, with kids in school, who will have to quit rather than somehow go to that office, so yeah.

  • pizza-bagel
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    532 years ago

    Currently looking for another job and EVERY job I have seen that’s hybrid has multiple offices across the country. So basically they make you come into the office to talk to the rest of your team on zoom. Somehow that is more efficient than talking to them on zoom from your house.

    • @[email protected]
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      22 years ago

      My company is starting to do this as well. They say it’s to “build culture in market”. Really they just want to force you to interact with your coworkers to make things feel less transactional and to keep tabs on people

  • scmstr
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    232 years ago

    When you really don’t believe in your own stuff…

  • @[email protected]
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    1482 years ago

    is now asking all employees within 50 miles of a company office to go in at least two days a week on a hybrid schedule.

    I briefly worked for a company that took this approach. The oversight they made was they had 2 offices (different teams in each), but as long as you lived within 50 miles of one of the offices, you had to come in.

    Even if your team was exclusively in office 1, and you lived outside the radius of office 1 BUT were in the radius of office 2…you had to come in to office 2…and teleconference with your team in office 1 🤦

      • @[email protected]
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        72 years ago

        50 mile radius of the office address.

        So if your home was 40 miles away but your commute was 55 miles…you still had to go 🙄

      • ren (a they/them)
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        162 years ago

        most have contingencies that if you are in the 50, then move out of the 50, that’s on you. You still gotta come in.

        • @[email protected]
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          422 years ago

          I know a lawyer in the Boston suburbs who went full WFH during the pandemic. He loved his job but was upset when his boss pushed for him to come back to the office. Boss said he lived too close to the office in Boston to justify it.

          Lawyer moved to Vermont with his girlfriend and still works fully remote for the same law office.

          • @[email protected]
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            52 years ago

            I love it that the lawyer literally laywered his way out of having to return to the office.

      • ares35
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        82 years ago

        see that little shack about 40 miles away, out town road 37, past the old faded barn and the tree that looks like homer simpson?..

        no. the other barn. the one on the edge of that huge dairy farm.

        yea. that’s the one. well, that shack is outhouse at your new office. the office itself is the smaller shack behind it.

        wifi? sure! at the adjacent on-site outdoor gym, there’s an old exercise bike hooked up to a generator to power it.

    • @[email protected]
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      212 years ago

      Wow that’s next level dumb. My job did something similar. Someone whose team was based out of Texas yet they still made the 2 people from MI go to the MI office. And on separate days “so someone was always available”

      Then the same company closed 75% of their massive building and said the hybrid employees have to share cubes with other people. I’m so glad HR made me permanent remote.

    • @[email protected]
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      182 years ago

      50 miles during a commute is way too far. My employer has pushed for people whose commute would be 1 hour maximum during rush hour to try to come into an office once a week. Where I live it can take an hour to go 10-15 miles during rush hour…

    • @[email protected]
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      152 years ago

      There’s a guy at my company that lives in Sacramento, and commutes twice a week to go in the office in mountain view. That’s a 4 hour commute with no traffic.

      His entire team is in the San diego office. There’s literally zero point, but I guess his manager isn’t willing or capable of fighting for an exception to the hybrid mandate.

      • @[email protected]
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        72 years ago

        A friend of mine works for amazon (well, worked). He was fully remote. He moved from seattle to chicago.

        Then they told everyone to go back to the office, lol.

        • Echo Dot
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          82 years ago

          This happened to me although I don’t work for Amazon.

          I have great fun telling them I don’t even live on the same continent anymore. Somehow they thought it was my fault, despite the fact that they said that it was fully remote.

  • @[email protected]
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    602 years ago

    I’d love to understand the logic and benefit of come two days a week. But the real reason, not the bullshit they say

    • Moegle
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      212 years ago

      No idea whether it’s their reason, but anecdotally I’ve found it has a few benefits. If coordinated properly it’s significantly easier to train new(er) staff, it improves cross-organisational understanding to overhear other departments’ conversations either at desks or in break rooms, and it stops people becoming isolated pockets of knowledge and culture because they only ever see or interact with the same one or two people.

    • EnglishMobster
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      742 years ago

      They’ve invested a lot of money in office real estate and hate that it’s going to waste.

      Also, CEOs tend to be extroverts who want to be around people. They’re also sociopaths who think everyone is like them (or they don’t care what others think).

      Combine the two and you get this.

      • @[email protected]
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        272 years ago

        Also no one actually knows how long tasks take.

        If you work from home and only work for 4 hours, lots of managers do not know how to tell if that work you did took 8 hours or 4. In the office they have plausible deniability that they saw you there doing something.

      • @[email protected]
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        102 years ago

        They’ve invested a lot of money in office real estate and hate that it’s going to waste.

        But see this makes no sense. The money invested is gone (or contractually tied up). Using it won’t make it a good investment.

        It’s like if you bought a car and then moved somewhere where you’re like 1 minute walking from work, the grocery store, the hair salon,.and the best restaurants, and you never travel otherwise. The money spent on the car is objectively wasted. Using your car unnecessarily to drive places you (a) wouldn’t normally go to or (b) don’t need a car to get to is not only pointless, but actually costs MORE MONEY because of gas and maintenance (or for a building, energy and cleaning).

        • @[email protected]
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          62 years ago

          There’s more to it. Companies are getting tax breaks and tax exemptions to bring in people to the office to “stimulate” the ecconony.

          • @[email protected]
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            22 years ago

            Ahh. Didn’t know about the tax breaks. Makes sense. You know, as much as if “makes sense” to be forcing people to spend more time and money traveling instead of working or spending time with their families.

    • @[email protected]
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      122 years ago

      Because the people creating these mandates don’t have to suffer them. They come and go as they please, and they don’t work in the pit open office space. They have real offices with furniture, walls, and doors that shut.

    • @[email protected]
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      22 years ago

      I can help you. The benefit is strictly for the maintenance of th bullshit status quo and the logic is, once you’re already coming in two days a week, it’ll be an easier fight to ask for a third. Then a fourth. And so on.

  • @[email protected]
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    2 years ago

    I can’t think of a worse marketing strategy for a company that relies on remote work to remain relevant. This would be like if General Motors forced every employee within 50 miles of an assembly plant to ride a bike to work.

    • @[email protected]
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      692 years ago

      These are fun. For any other CEOs reading along, here’s your new policy/advertisement:

      • Furniture Row could convert every employee workstation to standing only.
      • Starbucks could require every staff member to go caffeine free.
      • Underarmor could set a black tie dress code for all employees.
      • Master lock could shut down their staff gym citing uncontrolled theft from lockers.
      • Grayhound could ban employees from traveling together to events.
      • General Mills could establish a rewards program for employees who participate in a daily morning fast until lunchtime.
      • Atlassian and Salseforce could shift their internal help desks to in-person only with 100% paper records.
      • Peterbilt could start an incentive program that reimburses staff for buying local.
      • Echo Dot
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        82 years ago

        IKEA now only buy from furniture row.

        Boeing ban employees from taking aircraft, citing safety concerns with their aircraft.

        USPS require all packages be delivered by courier - I can actually see that one happening

      • Flying Squid
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        2 years ago
        • Microsoft could require Macs for all employees.

        • Xfinity could only offer dialup at their offices.

        • Dairy Queen could only hire diabetics.

        • The cafeteria at Purdue Farms headquarters could be all-vegan.

        • Barnes and Noble staff must have a library card and check out books regularly.

        • Amazon delivery drivers must have their license suspended.

        • Bed, Bath and Beyond could require their floor staff to only come in if they haven’t showered.

      • Echo Dot
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        52 years ago

        Atlassian and Salseforce could shift their internal help desks to in-person only with 100% paper records.

        That would probably be an improvement for Salesforce. I truly hate their software. It’s god awful.

      • @[email protected]
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        82 years ago

        Starbucks bans coffee in its offices, cites study saying its bad for your health. Stocks herbal tea instead.

    • tal
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      52 years ago

      I don’t think that Zoom specifically advocates for companies to end work in the office.

      Like, say you work for Coca-Cola. Their company health plan probably does not encourage people to drink nothing but Coca-Cola, even if they do make it available in the office.

  • @[email protected]
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    292 years ago

    Seems like a way of culling staff without having to pay severance… make it so shit that people leave, but make allowances for the key people you need

    • Alto
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      82 years ago

      That (along with feeding managers’ need to micromanage) is the largest reason so many corporations are forcing a return to office

  • Flying Squid
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    242 years ago

    They have to come back to the office, but no getting out of their cubicle to talk. They have to use Zoom for that.

        • @[email protected]
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          22 years ago

          Microsoft is a major contributor to the Linux kernel for decades now. They even were in the top 5 for a while. So yeah, plenty of MS employees use Linux exclusively.

          • @[email protected]M
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            22 years ago

            Well, “plenty” probably just consists of teams such as the WSL development team. I highly doubt anyone in sales, marketing, or development for anything Windows or Windows-application related uses Linux exclusively.

  • @[email protected]
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    22 years ago

    As someone starting out their career in a technical field, I would LOVE to be in the office more if more people from the projects I’m working on were regularly there, but it’s just not feasible to require it.

    Capitalism leaves us with barely any time to live, and so much time has been clawed back from WFH.

    No way I’m advocating it to be mandatory to come into the office more than a single day a week.

  • @[email protected]
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    132 years ago

    Two days is reasonable imo. WFH has its advantages but some things are still better face-to-face, like onboarding.

    • @[email protected]
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      22 years ago

      I agree onboarding is a bad example, I think the social part is better face-to-face. I can understand that not everyone needs that in their job.

    • Unforeseen
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      172 years ago

      Maybe it depends on what kind of employees you are onboarding, but in tech it’s vastly simpler to onboard employees remotely, you want to be sharing screens so even if you were in an office you’d want to be at your own computers.

    • pizza-bagel
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      92 years ago

      My team onboards people remotely no problem. I’d argue it’s better than trying to see what someone is doing over their shoulder.

    • BiggestBulb
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      82 years ago

      I had my work stuff shipped across the country to me. No in-person onboarding required