KEY POINTS
- Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, whom President-elect Donald Trump appointed to lead a new government efficiency team, said they intend to call federal employees back to the office five days a week.
- Companies such as Amazon and The Washington Post are adopting a similar policy in 2025.
- But many companies will keep remote or hybrid work arrangements, largely because they boost profits, economists said.
- Some view return-to-office mandates as a stealthy way to reduce employee head count.
Rip Disabled people I guess.
And this is coming from the same peoppe saying “just get a job”.
You gotta provide accomodations my guy.
I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if they re-invent Aktion T4 and kill all the undesirables. It’s just much more efficient, you know?
What i don’t get in all of this: There are already companies that did go out of business because too many people just left, due to them not being able to do WFH. Personally, I do like going to the office 1-2 times a week, but even I would leave the company if the got rid of WFH completely. There’s near full employment everywhere, especially tech companies already have to go the extra mile to get people to work for them. Why would anyone stay at a company that does not do WFH, if that’s one thing they got to enjoy?
This is why they’re also fighting for those visas. They want to hire people but don’t want to pay US wages. And when your residency depends on your employment, you’re going to be much less likely to call out bullshit or whatever
These large tech companies are relying upon their brand to keep talent. Amazon and the rest all believe people will put up with shit to have their company listed on someone’s CV.
Or it’s all about quiet layoffs.
“I’ll be in the office when Elon is in the office.”
Yeah is this guy showing up to Tesla, Twitter, and SpaceX every single day?
Didnt you hear he personally unlocked the Trump hotel bomb for law enforcement and sent them the surveillance footage of it being charged?
First remote job I had was in 2010 making barely more than minimum wage for tier 1 phone support. These guys are off their rockers.
I believe most jobs that can be done from home can be automated by AI within the next 5 years.
It doesn’t matter whether AI can do the jobs of humans, it only matters whether management believes that AI can do the job of a human.
And literally everyone without billions in their bank account will suffer from that. But line go up, so it must be great!
If it means I can have my old job back with the compensation and terms I dictate, then by all means, go ahead, give ai a try!
Narrator: It did not mean that.
What’s the old job? And what’s keeping you from it now?
I guess people misread. I meant go ahead and have an AI take my job. Then when it fails miserably, and they need me back, id be rehired on my terms. Know a few people who got that deal.
Oh! Yes that.
It’s in my union contract. Your move, hair plugs.
As someone who was mostly remote since 2015 I’m pretty confused
Me too (exact same year)! It weirds me out when people are like “you never went back to the office?” Back? Why would I go in the first place? 🤣
Remote since 2014… People are crazy
Hell, my uncle was an attorney who was fully remote in the 80s.
Check your privilege!
Clearly you’re living a life of luxury and privilege unlike ordinary hard-working folk like… (tries to keep straight face)… Elon Musk.
Funny part is that for a few of those years I was actually helping Tesla and SpaceX as part of my fully remote job.
Doing drugs and shit-posting is hard work.
Doing drugs and shit-posting REMOTELY is hard work. ;)
Don’t forget Diablo IV #1
He is “playing” Path Of Exile 2 as well. Someone is on his account at least.
Don’t forget all the effort he put in for years to not scream from the top of his lungs that he’s a nazi. It’s tough, I bet he even broke a sweat.
Me too. Musk can’t actually manage people, but he can pretend more convincingly if he can see them in person and yell at them. There are a lot of managers like that and there are far more executives.
My company looked at the actual business results from the period of COVID remote work. Productivity went up, so they decided to keep things that way. It also allowed them to get rid of all their office space, except for a sparsely populated headquarters building, which is saving them a lot of money.
Most studies have shown that workers were more efficient when working remotely. Why would any executive want to reduce efficiency and increase infrastructure costs? The Return-To-Office push is not rational. It represents an inability to adapt to changing conditions. If boards were doing their jobs, they would be quietly showing those executives the door and looking for better people to run their companies.
Commercial real estate. That’s why.
The Return-To-Office push is not rational.
Like most stupid things in our world, it’s about emotions.
This topic is funny to me because I worked for a place that was all about data. Data driven decisions. They had tshirts made that said like “Data > Feelings”.
And yet when people brought up to the CEO stuff like studies showing WFH or 4-day-workweeks were effective, he just said “Nah, we’re not doing that.”. No discussion. No looking at the data. Just no.
To his credit, that CEO did run a profitable startup with barely any funding, so he wasn’t a total fool. But on that kind of stuff he was a total gutfeel asshole.
People who run startups, even the successful ones, tend to be awful to their employees. I should say, especially the successful ones.
It’s not irrational it just has more to do with corporate real estate and control than productivity or employee satisfaction. Large companies don’t do anything solely for the benefit of their employees.
I think it is irrational, in the sense that executives’ sole legal responsibility, at least in the US, is to make as much money as possible for their shareholders. Favoring control over productivity is a violation of that. They are gratifying their egos instead of doing their jobs.
Of course, in a sane world, how they treat their employees would be an issue, not just profitability.
Especially with land prices trending upwards. You don’t want to be the exec who has to explain that yes, productivity is up 15%, but you’re sitting on a skyscraper that nobody wants to buy because it’s worth $60mil or whatever.
If no one wants to buy it at $60mil then it is not worth that much.
Line goes up, not down.
The owner of a previous company is a lot like that. He is way more comfortable walking around and seeing people toiling away. I told him I’m perfectly capable of sitting in the office and looking busy for 8 hours.
He treats the place like a convenience store and assumes everyone is stealing from the till.
Don’t try to make it make sense.
This never works well with propaganda.
I’ve been working remotely long before the pandemic and I will continue to do so - I’m far from being alone in that. Also, we are still in the “covid-era”, we just collectively decided to pretend we aren’t.
Elon after 2024/12/04:
Seems like he has a pretty exposed area there above the neck…
Well, Elon is smarter than that. That’s why you see him carrying little X on his shoulders everywhere now…
I mean, that’s the trolley problem. Someone would pull the lever to kill the billionaire even if it meant hurting a child. Sucks, but musk’s continued existence is probably going to harm millions of children.
That’s the big baby and you get bonus points for a clean takedown.
Fuck it, I’m saying it, I’m less productive when I work from home. I get to fuck off easier and I do genuinely miss in person collaboration on complex problems.
That said, I’m probably never going to work another job that is more than 2 day hybrid. If every company in the world decided they would go back to 100% in person, I’d have to go back to working harder but as long as some companies care a tiny bit about the wellbeing of their workers, there will be this continuous push/pull of most companies wanting to squeeze every ounce of juice out of every worker.
Tech is a weird industry tho. There are some companies that just rely on churn and burn through employees (cough cough spacex cough cough amazon cough cough). I’m lucky to have ended up in a specific sector where there is a lot of attrition due to frustration so they kind of just deal with the fact that they aren’t gonna get 100% out of everyone.
All that is to say is that there are some interesting dynamics at play and I’ll hold the line, but there is a grain of truth in there but fuck capitalism, not everything has to be done as efficiently and as profitable as possible. Let people just live and work and chill
I don’t really find “I fuck off more at home” especially compelling. That sounds like a problem for you and your manager to deal with, and not something that everyone else needs to suffer for.
Fuck it, I’m saying it, I’m less productive when I work from home. I get to fuck off easier and I do genuinely miss in person collaboration on complex problems.
This is me right here. But I go in 3 times a week into the office for my BioTech job. Works great for me.
I appreciate you sharing your opinion even though it may be unpopular.
Stupid fuckers.
I worked at a national company of some fame for nearly 20 years. They have two main offices, one in the midwest and one in New England. Before COVID, it was common for folks to work from home, spread across the United States. We even had some fringe cases where people lived in England or Japan and worked from there. I don’t work there anymore, but I hear post covid they are forcing people to move and work from the office. It really is leadership brain rot, everywhere, regardless of industry.
I expect that he’ll push for some kind of corporate tax credit to companies that have in-person employees. To help tip the scales.
He thinks it’ll increase control, but it’s just as likely to rile up discontent. Especially targeted towards him.
Billionaires need to be taxed out of existance.
At least until everyone has homes, food, healthcare, freedom, and education.
naw. keep the tax around, keep them from coming back.
I was being sarcastic. You can’t have billionaires without exploiting everyone’s basic human needs for food, shelter, safety, healthcare, or freedom, and they’ll figure that out with a proper education.
That’s certainly one of the two ways.
What’s the other one? Saving a ‘t’ in the process?
LikeBillionaires need to be
taxed out of existance.?
No taxation without as… I mean representation?
Elon is probably only carrying that child on his shoulders all the time now as a human shield.
I thought he was practicing to do that with Trump.
It would be nice to see poo trickling down Elon’s back every day
If he’d ever actually parented any of his children he’d have already experienced that at least once.
Which is how you know he knows fuck-all about America, cause we’re kinda indifferent to both collateral casualties and gun violence being the number one cause of death for children.
Is it a reference to the recent alt account thing?
I unironically believe this to be true.
stupid control freaks. Because controlling of their employees is what RTO is about, control and paranoia.
They are stupid paranoid control freaks who fear that their neat buildings stand empty and they cant just throw work at their wage slaves. So this is actually about control, paranoia, and vanity.
That and they don’t understand how to manage people remotely.
That and they don’t understand how to manage people
remotely.FTFY
Largely also true. In my office, my manager is remote anyway, so it doesn’t matter if I’m in my local office or home office.
One of the benefits of working from home has been that my manager can no longer use standing staring at me as his main means of judging whether I’m doing work. The whole business of needing to see people working just smacks of shitty management.
So their reasons is control, paranoia, vanity, incompetence when it comes to remote management and their undivided devotion to the American Dollar.
something something spanish inquisition
Man, I don’t even get a comfy chair!
Now wait a minute, I saw your review!
WORK chair. :)
My new Aeron arrived two weeks ago. It replaced my 18 year old … Aeron. It has served me well, and needs just 200 in repairs (new pads, new struts, cylinder) so I may give it to my cousin.
Yeah. Comfy chair, cool lifty desk, sweet river view, floofy cats. I dearly hope we can keep WFBest in our next union contract too.
Don’t forget sweetheart tax breaks from local municipalities on real estate!
Sure you can have this huge complex company, because we know the 1500 people who work from the office will frequent the local Subway for lunch and that’s sales tax!
The stupid thing is I actively do less work in the office.
Almost all desk work should be ad hoc.
Get your shit done. Then do what ever until there’s more work to do.
Many people do for the sole reason that you’re more productive when you’re comfortable and you’re probably going to be more comfortable at home.
pretty much every office I’ve had to work in was either too cold or too hot. Hoodies in the summer and t-shirts in the winter. I don’t have that problem at home.
Most mixed gender offices will have that issue. But also among the same gender one person is comfy at 19°C and another needs 23°C to not be cold.
One of the offices I worked in the HVAC was bizarre. The thermostat was by sales, but the cold air came out of a vent by eng on the other side of the building. Sales was hot, so they’d set a lower temperature. Eng would then get blasted by cold air, and sales would still be hot.
“Nothing to be done about it. Wear a hoodie” said management. Fuck that.
I actively do less work in the office.
This is known. It’s been proven; for introverts and/or ADHD especially, since the interaction is stressful and/or completely disturbing. The difference is stark.
But, for extroverts, the office can be where they thrive, and it’s the environment that lures them in. So unless they adapt (what? Them? But adapting is for the introverts who run the shit) quickly, they’re gonna be fish outta water in short order.
There’s absolutely no automatic tangible benefit to RTO for those jobs that are remote capable (ie anything at a desk with no customer interface). Only a subset works marginally better with people to disturb, and I’ll question even that number or the benefit. The only reason they want you back in is this lie about being unable to manage your ass unless they can see your ass – which is the creepiest way to cover for “sunk cost fallacy” for the space lease.
But yeah, keep some space for extroverts who can’t cope. It’s us being the better people about it.
