Earlier in the pandemic many news and magazine organizations would proudly write about how working from home always actually can lead to over working and being too “productive”. I am yet to collect some evidence on it but I think we remember a good amount about this.
Now after a bunch of companies want their remote workers back at the office, every one of those companies are being almost propaganda machines which do not cite sound scientific studies but cite each other and interviews with higher ups in top companies that “remote workers are less productive”. This is further cementing the general public’s opinion on this matter.
And research that shows the opposite is buried deep within any search results.
Have you noticed this? Please share what you have observed. I’m going paranoid about this.
Reminder that Google itself is one of the companies that wants to end remote work so their real estate doesn’t dive in value.
So don’t be surprised about how search results reflect this bias as well.
When you’ve fully digested that, think about who owns the systems that keep capitalism in place.
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Yeah its the PR machine in action.
People working from home aren’t consuming much anymore.
Of course there’s commercial property leases and micromanaging bosses, but I think the uptick in this messaging is in response to people spending less money.
Less money on cars, gas, clothes, eating out, fancy coffee, hair/nails, dry cleaning, kid/animal care, gym (?), and probably so much more that I’m not thinking of.
And when we do spend money on those things, they’re lasting longer and we’re getting more discerning. When I do consider spending money on eating out, I’ll def choose going hungry over getting something lower quality.
Hell yeah. I eat out like twice a month now but both are carefully planned experiences at excellent restaurants.
Same. I use reclaimed commute time to get groceries and cook now. Wife is thrilled now when I call it ‘my’ kitchen (it was hers by default when my commute + work had me out of the house 12 hours a day), and I can whip up a decent meal these days pretty quickly without having to go out
Productivity was never the point of work. Increases in productivity thus was never a boon to those in charge.
but the ai revolution though
In a lot of ways it’s still more marketing than a revolution. AI can’t do my job yet. Not saying it never will but we’re a lot farther away from that than most people think.
You’re not crazy.
Fact is, at the beginning, remote work was a requirement for companies to keep operating (aka, printing money for the execs and shareholders), so it was freely discussed as a positive thing.
Now that shareholders and execs can require RTO, the narrative is reversed. If you look at most of the articles surrounding WFH “not working” there’s a very high chance that the motivation for such statements revolves around what management says about WFH, with no actual data to corroborate the message.
If you do your own research, a lot of what was true for WFH at the start of the pandemic is still true. The numbers and studies show that on the whole in the majority of circumstances, WFH increases productivity and makes workers happier overall. There are a few exceptions to this, I’m sure of that, and for each person, WFH or in office should be a personal choice, but it’s not. You should be allowed to work where you feel most productive and happy. As long as it doesn’t negatively impact your output, then it shouldn’t matter, but to execs, it does matter.
IMO, the motivation for forced RTO is twofold: first, control. The company you work for wants to exert control over you, so you have to do something that maybe you’re not a big fan of doing, simply because they say so. Additionally, they have more control over your day to day actions while you’re at the office. When you get to converse with others, monitoring how much time you’re spending away from your desk, the ability to walk up to you and grill you for any reason (or no reason). The second, is justifying office expenses. Either to be able to write it off, or pay their real estate owning buddies so those people can get money that could otherwise go to, IDK, wages (lol, it wouldn’t, but you know), and by having the vast majority of their workforce in house all the time, they can keep that going.
I’m sure there’s more to it, but that’s my impression. Fact is, very few companies are allowing RTO to be just an option. Everything is either part-in-office (aka hybrid), or forced full time RTO. Full remote positions are evaporating.
Companies exerting control is most of my issue personally. When you realize how much of your life they own and control, you don’t want to give that back. And I never will.
I think allot of Banks have a ton of assets tied up in commercial real estate. This is the real reason they are pushing everyone to go back to work. A lot of powerful people will loss money if the commercial real estate market crashes.
What I don’t understand is, why do companies who don’t make money from real estate give a shit? When everyone at my job who could work from home went home to work, our CEO’s reaction was, “If everyone can work from home, why the hell were we paying all this money for rent?”
To the extent possible, everyone is still working from home, and where the organization couldn’t get out of leases, they’re planning to let them expire. They’re not spending more money to have people work on site just because they have sunk costs in a lease.
I don’t care if remote workers are less productive (although I’ve seen no evidence that they are).
You can’t convince me that spending an hour every morning travelling to get to an office, in order to sit in front of the exact two screens I have at home, is a good use of my time, nor is spending an hour getting home again.
That’s about 450 hours a year for me. 18 whole days. Those days are mine now, and you’re not having them back.
I have at home, is a good use of my time, nor is spending an hour getting home again.
Yeah, but those are YOUR hours and THEY don’t pay for it, so those hours don’t matter. In fact, it’d be better if you don’t get those hours to yourself. Maybe you’ll have more time to apply to other jobs or something.
What about 2-3 days a week and an extra week or two of PTO to compensate? I’m trying to think of ways to incentivize more office work that will appeal to stingy boomer leadership and the younger ‘fuck offices’ crowd.
I think the only deal I’d take to return to the office every day is a 4 day week. If I have to commute, I also want 4 weeks off.
Ackshually, they’re two distinct sets of two screens. Unless you’re taking your two monitors to work and back home every day.
(sorry for the pedantry I’m ashamed)
If we wanted to take the pedantry to the next level, we could get into a metaphysical discussion about whether the word “screen” refers to the physical appliance displaying the content or the content itself. When you “share your screen” in a Teams meeting, you don’t box up your monitor and mail it to your coworkers. 🤔
I do, am I doing it wrong…?
You are technically correct, the best kind of correct.
I wish I had the same setup at work as at home. My home dev environment cost 5 times as much.
Yeah when I was originally told I could just work from home forever I invested in a giant monitor and all kinds of tools. Now they changed their mind and want me to go in to an Office with shared desks. No thanks
It’s nice to have less traffic for blue collar as well.
Ah if Hartford CT wasnt a traffic hell
I’d say it’s not all black or white. In my industry (software) most of my friends and colleagues have strong opinions about staying remote. It’s mostly along the lines of “either let me continue to work from home or find someone else”. Also most of the headhunter messages I get on LinkedIn offer up to 100% remote jobs. Of course this is all anecdotal and depends heavily on the field of work. But maybe it’s worth considering that you have the power to shape your own future. If you do not want to work in an office, you’ll find something else. Don’t let those corporations fool you.
I think remote work is here to stay exactly because of what you’ve said. Companies always want highly skilled workers and experts. Those people have a lot of leverage when it comes to offers and hiring. Offering and maintaining remote work is a big plus when weighing offers, especially when you consider who these knowledge workers are.
They’re at least 5 years out of college and many have started families. And they’ve realized that they want to spend more time with their family and kids and not waste it commuting to work. Most are probably 10+ years of experience in their relevant industry and with 12-15 year olds. I feel like that demographic had a massive awakening with COVID about where their priorities lie.
I think it’s unlikely for remote work to stay at just the experienced knowledge professional level. Hell with 3 years of semi relevant experience I was able to leverage +$5000 on my salary for a remote job. Companies need more and more skilled office workers. This opposition to remote work won’t last, I think.
See I’m in software dev and I am constantly getting recruiter calls asking me for in-office work. I’m the guy saying “you literally cannot pay me enough to go back in an office”… but I’d gladly take 2/3 or maybe even 1/2 my current pay for a 4-day, 32 hour work week.
Working from home is legitimately amazing. My bud oes not need to sit at your desk with your lame chair and keyboard. He has a much faster pc at home with the big clicky-clackies. Ten hour work day? He will bring that shizz down to 6-8 with the same productivity and can play games on the side.
I get that it doesn’t work for everyone, especially those with task management issues, but out of the 40 people I know, 2 do better in an office.
I think the companies were lying to us when covid started. They said working from home was awesome and we could still do our jobs well so investors wouldn’t get scared. But now they want us to come back to the office and they say working from home is bad for us. They are just trying to trick us into doing what they want.
I mean, it’s just capitalism. Beginning of the pandemic: thank god for remote work, don’t worry investors we’re not going out of business. End of pandemic: welp, I have to justify my position and why we’re paying all this real estate get back in the office so I can micro-manage you and create useless meetings no one needs so no one realizes that I don’t really do anything around here.
Yes, I have observed this and it is very frustrating. In many cases, these “articles” are opinion pieces being circulated by those with a financial interest in commercial real estate (or someone carrying the water of someone who has such an interest). Those who have any sort of financial interest in commercial real estate are going to be against remote work for obvious reasons.
Cities and real estate moguls arguing that people have to engage in an absolutely fruitless, draining, exhausting, expensive commute to keep a handful of people rich. They want to punish you to keep some elite people rich.
What needs to happen is workers need to fight back as much as possible. If your job can be done remotely, make it a priority to work for a company that allows you to do your job remotely. There’s NOTHING about my job that requires me to go into an office. I have worked successfully at home for many years and if my organization required me to come in, I would do everything I could to leave and find something else that allowed me to telework. If you’re looking for a job and have the luxury of being a little bit choosy, let recruiters know you will ONLY consider remote options.
Anecdotally, I think these opinion pieces are way overblown. My spouse was recently contacted by a recruiter about a job. The job was not remote and my spouse told the recruiter they would only consider remote-only options. The recruiter sighed and said, “That is what I keep getting told.”
It’s about money and control. Money invested in and harvested from owning commercial properties. Control from making employees do things they don’t want to, just to beat them down and “keep them in line”. A lot of bosses exercise power for its own sake, unfortunately.
I have empathy for folks who want to collaborate, and/or be mentored, and/or socialize at work. I no longer want or need those things from my job, but…I came up that way so it would be hypocritical of me to say that others shouldn’t want them.
On the other hand, cars are destroying everything and commuting in 2023 (if you don’t truly need to) is just dumb. Progress always comes with some amount of pain and adjustment.
Yes and here is some irony I found.
My company requires us to take various learning course throughout the year. Some assigned - some pick your own. A lot of it is the usual B.S. that everyone has to do.
I was browsing thru the managerial list and picked one of the ones that sounded interesting the other day about ‘How to be a better Manager’ and smack in the middle of the first chapter was this big video with this woman giving this speech about being accepting of people who wanted/needed to work from home or telecommute.
My ears instantly perked up.
The video went on to throw up all this data showing how more and more people were doing this and it had this graph from 2012 on and how this was the natural progression in the workplace and how we as managers needed to be accepting of peoples position and feelings toward this and learn to be accommodating as we would see more of it.
I was like WTF??!
When the course ended I scrolled through it looking for a date and I believe it was 2017.
Amazing how the tune has changed but the data hasn’t.
Middle management wants to have a reason to exist. They want people driving to work spending money on the way there and back. Landlords care about their giant office buildings not being rented that should instead just be replaced with affordable housing.
No doubt you’re right about some middle management and I see this said a lot. Anecdotally I don’t believe I’ve met any middle management that want to be back in the office. If I’m honest I don’t think I’ve ever met middle management that enjoys middle management, it’s a ton of fucking stress keeping senior management happy with heir batshit detached requests and interpreting it into something moderately sensible so individual contributors can be productive and actually achieve the shit that needs done.
Meanwhile Steve can’t seem to wrap his head round the fact that just because he likes formatting his code a particular way isn’t a good reason to ignore the team coding standards, Cheryl and Sushant have decided to book expensive holidays for the same week without clearing the leave first - so I’ll be spending Christmas supporting the app on top of everything else even though I booked it off in the system in January and ultimately I hate this fucking job because I can’t do the thing I’m actually fucking good at.
Preach. I hate almost every day as a manager of managers, and I don’t give a rat’s ass if any of them or their employees ever come into the office ever again. If their content is completed on-time and it’s quality work, they could make it while living in Nepal for all I care, but of course we’re being forced to come back to the office 50% of the time to do the same work we did at home for three years.
I’m doing what I can to encourage people to apply for exemptions and approving all of them that I can before someone decides I’m “not supporting the return-to-work initiative” enough and fires me. Frankly at this point it’ll be a relief.
Businesses wanted to seem like they cared about people’s health and safety at the beginning of the pandemic, now commercial property values are tanking and that means the ruling class loses a vector from which they can siphon wealth away from the working class.
