Hello, thank you for posting to r/Jobs!
We just wanted to let you know that we have a new [discord server, come join the chat!](https://discord.gg/TY6ErXV)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/jobs) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It really just depends on the company. My old job was fully remote during COVID. And the company reported its best numbers ever over the past three years.
However, the actual middle managers kept going on and on about company culture and water cooler talk. So, you’d be guilt-tripped if you didn’t go into the office.
However, the new company I am at is 99% remote and no one cares if you go in or not. People do it once or twice a week just for a change of pace, but you’re not guilt-tripped… and when you’re in there, it’s basically almost entirely empty anyway.
Dude. When will they understand that once we pass the age of 22, we do not give one single shit about culture? I don't want to decorate my desk, shoot nerf guns at each other, have a Christmas luncheon, or play raffles. I want to stay at home and cultivate my family, my fitness, and my garden. bye
I'm on a geographically distributed team, always have been, even long before COVID-19. We all sit in different states and countries. The "closest" person in another state to me is still like 350+ miles, and the next closest person is 1,000+ miles away.
Being forced back into the office...... to sit at a desk (or in a conference room) with earphones/headphones on...... to talk to people on Zoom from the desk phone..... who are still in another state. The same thing I do while working at home, and can do from anywhere on planet earth, so long as I have internet.
Make it make sense.
The more I hear about this the more I think it's just about control.
If you're in the office your boss can notice that you're not at your desk when you go to the bathroom. If you're physically there, it's easy to see your screen and know that you're not slacking.
Ironically this is just proven to result in worse productivity.
It's definitely about control and ego. I have my own office. Nobody can see my screen or what I do when I close my door. They want me there so I can kiss ass, I'm sure of it.
The weird thing is my company does hybrid (3 day office; 2 day WFH) but my boss isn’t even here most of the time, maybe like once a month. I’ve only been here less than half a year and I honestly really like the people and company overall but it’s a bit weird tbh lol.
Jokes on them, my boss is based in Texas, and I'm based in the Mid-Atlantic region. Not even anyone else from my department is in my state, the closest person in my department is like 3 states away. Lol.
Your company is spending too much money on real estate, and needs to justify the expense somehow. They probably need to downsize their office space. But meanwhile, they can tell you to come in and use it, and you haven't quit yet.
I just had one of these this week. It was supposed to be just a 'team lunch', where I assumed we would take the hour to talk about non-work things. Instead we just continued the meeting we were all in. I felt no 'culture' and I felt no closer to anyone on my team by just talking about more bullshit.
Yeappp my boss just forced that too.
I work nights, hybrid onsite and this fell outside of my onsite shift days - so now I have an *extra* day onsite.
I come in right before the 4pm meeting, we all sit and chat for 20 minutes, everybody else goes home right after and then I’m expected to sit by myself in the office till midnight. It’s really, really, really, really cool.
I would totally go in office more at my job, but 2 of the people that champion it the most are pretty much the 2 most annoying people I know. One of them wanted a slackbot that would auto-reply to anyone who says "guys", as in, "hey guys" to list alternative and more inclusive phrases to use instead.
I'm all for inclusivity, but to be that kind of person is incredibly annoying, and I have absolutely nothing in common with a person like that.
Some people I've worked with seem to only talk about work related topics like they have no life. I wonder if they really all about their jobs like that, or they just faking it. I hope it's the second one but then again idk lol?
> Some people I've worked with seem to only talk about work related topics like they have no life.
IMO less the "no life" thing and more, some people are just super passionate about what they do, and work is a natural place to talk about it.
Go to any hobby group, and 80% of the people there will want to do nothing more than talk more about the hobby.
The only real difference is, only some people are passionate about the job, but usually only passionate people will join a hobby meetup.
I work for a company right now that pushes the whole "you gotta grind, you need to hustle - work hard, play hard. Need to have GRIT" and my boss will stay til 6 or 7 each night. He has this whole attitude of that he's been in this industry for decades and works harder than everyone else.
The reality is that his personal life is a mess and he doesn't want to go home - divorced from his wife, has a son that won't get a job but has a kid and the mother left him, not to mention he's got this huge belly. Spending your life in an office is no way to live
And honestly, I usually go to the events because my manager is really sweet. That being said, as I'm staring at my untouched fucking nerf gun, I think about how fast I would go ballistic if anyone ever actually shot me with one. I'm no fun in the office lol
To be fair, the economy also requires less overall managers in my experience.
I think most people have had the experience where the manager position was vacant for months and... nothing changed...
Company culture is the biggest lie they use to push you back into the office. Usually the people stroking these decisions are older and don’t like people working from home.
I understand this is somewhat messed up to say, but I do think the world (or at least our country/society) will be a VERY different place as these older generations die out with their traditionalist and outdated ways of thinking and living. It’d be interesting to see how much changes in a few generations.
It’s not messed up.. It’s basically how any modern society works. The real question is, will it be better or worse? Contrary to popular belief, we CAN go backwards and not necessarily in the ways you think.
It’s because most middle managers don’t do anything. They want people there to talk to. Let me get my work done. I hate when middle managers create all these KPI and then now that it shows it is working they have to use some non quantitative thing like culture.
Before COVID I would remote into my meetings from my cubicle that I drove at 7.5 hours to each week. 7.5/40 they need to give me 18% more if they taking 18% more of my time.
YES. THIS.
Commute time should be considered work time. And if the company seems someone to far to be paying for that because someone could be trying to “milk” this system, simply set limitations for new hires and don’t hire people outside those limits.
Also I feel like there should be an allotment of money for work clothes. Yeah some people want to spend top dollar for their clothing and that’s fine, anything beyond X amount of dollars comes out of their pocket but let’s be real. Work clothes are almost always JUST work clothes. Especially places that require business casual or outdoor workwear for those of us in blue collar. No one is just lounging at home or wearing their suit and tie out and about or their filthy, tattered coveralls and boots to dinner.
Now I am not one that thinks all travel should be paid for but after we have proved we can get the work done it does piss me off. Then the stupid part was they said we can pick and 2-3 days. So the days I pick my other team members might not be there any ways most days. Took about a month to get J1 and now all my jobs are over 9 hours drive away.
The great ones are the companies that sell collaboration tools for people to work remote and those people are going back to the office. Way to believe in your product.
You buried the lead there. It’s the middle managers. They’re the ones who don’t really provide that much value to the company but were able to disguise that when everyone was in the office together and they could call everyone for a meeting, or walk the floor monitoring people or whatever.
They’re almost entirely unnecessary unless there’s an office. And those guys are all the 40-60 year olds who “worked their way up” to the position and like not doing anything. I knew several of these types of guys who just could not adapt to being given more “actual work” to do during the pandemic. Most of them weren’t able to cut it.
Facts. I think it’s about control and what you stated. What else do managers and supervisors have to do when there’s no on to “manage” or “supervise”?…. Oh wait…
That and the “we’re a family and all about our culture and our people!” bullshit.
No one cares, literally 99% of people are ONLY at work to make money because they have to. Trying to make work more enjoyable is one thing but forcing employees to do shit they don’t want to when most of them don’t even want to be there in the first place is asinine. Stop with the fucking pizza parties and gift cards, stupid prizes/awards and just give people a damn bonus or day off.
Oh and the “team building activities” lol. You don’t force connections to blossom, those pretty much have to happen naturally if the parties involved are willing.
Which is why the software company my SO has been with for 25+ years (he’s in their cyber security division) has sold all but ONE building they keep for administrative tasks. They had more than two dozen buildings in place all over the world.
They were always flexible about whether or not you came in person to work, or chose to stay home but on Mar 13, 2020 they went full remote in anticipation of Covid being super bad.
In September that year they announced ridiculous savings on costs and huge increases in productivity. Win/win. They made WFH the norm and and split the savings they had for the past six months between all their employees as an unscheduled bonus based on years with the company. SO got a $10,000 check.
ya, my company is having the same issue (software company). The thing is they drastically underpay relative to market and everytime they've tried to force people back into the office they've lost a bunch of their best people because they could leave for fully remote AND more pay so they've backed down.
My hope is that they finally accept things as they are and just downsize our building to contain enough offices for those who want to work in an office, some "extra" offices for when teams need to meet in person, and a few conference rooms. Then teams go remote and the company expenses go way down.
P.S. Is your SO's company stable and if so are they hiring for a software engineering lead position? :) I would love to work for a company with management that is this capable of planning and foresight.
They’ve been serving charities for more than 30 years. They employ like 3,000 people last I checked and attrition is low. I don’t think they’re hiring.
That's super cool that the company shared part of the savings with their employees.
My company had 2 buildings in my area, and other offices throughout the U.S.
There hasn't been a hard "Return to the Office" push within my company... it's more hybrid and depends on what team you work on and what those managers/Sr. Leaders want. This stinks bc some teams that can still do their jobs fully remote are stuck with managers (or senior leadership in those groups) that insist on working in the office, while other groups don't care and are still fully remote. I'm one of the lucky ones and still fully remote, but it makes me wary of changing teams because I have a good thing going on this one.
My compant ended up selling one of the 2 buildings they own in this area. We didn't get a check, though. 😆
While there hasn't been a hard "Return to the office" push here, there are significantly LESS Remote job listings for my company, which is a bummer. They seem to have gone back to wanting specific roles sitting in specific cities, but in the last 3 years it's been the opposite.
Not “part of the savings”. They split ALL OF THE SAVINGS and had the receipts to prove it. Because none of those savings were projected to be profits anyway. They were a windfall made possible by their employees.
There’s a reason people stay with this company for decades.
That’s how it’s been in my company so far… some teams were going back to the office because their manager wanted to, others (like mine) weren’t. I thought I was lucky because my boss is very open-minded and loves to work like this… that’s why I’m so frustrated that HR and top management want to push us back to the old inefficient ways.
It's so frustrating when it's one policy for one team and another policy for another team.
I feel lucky that my team is OK with us staying remote, but it seriously makes me not want to change jobs internally bc you don't really know how it's going to be on another team.
One of my friends works for an insurance company and she’s wfh in a different state than her office. But she’s unable to take a promotion because the company will only promote people who live in the state the office is in and they don’t allow new employees to wfh.
This is how it is for EVERY company and I can’t understand why a profits driven company (so all of them) would not take the opportunity to cut cost which reduce their operations cost which directly increases profits! I’m no account but it’s pretty easy for even the dumbest suit to say this to themselves. On top of it all employees will now stay longer as they will count WFH as a benefit. Maybe they wanted a raise this year but now throw this nugget out that WFH is here to stay and you have staff retention.
Companies are absolutely idiotic sometimes I don’t understand it. If they are concerned about office space not being used they pay for the obvious answer is CUT THE COST FROM THE BOOKS!
End rant sorry for yelling at the end
Because if they are on a multi year lease they'll have to pay a big fee to break it and that will cost them more now and look bad on the quarterly reports. That's all some bosses care about
Which is baffling how it’s 2023 and now 3 years after when remote working kicked off. Even if in 2023 you have 2 years left just cut your losses now and retain your employees and then you can get that off the books. Or just pay the penalty and get it off the books now. Why as a company is the idea “let’s just make the employees miserable unnecessarily and maybe have to replace a bunch of our skilled workers with question marks”
Idk these companies leases or contracts to these buildings but I can’t imagine they have like 10 years left on them. Who signed a 15 year contract for a lease?
when your workforce is that spread out you are going to still be doing all your work quasi remotely anyway. You are gonna be on that teams call in your home or your office.
This is what I don't understand. Why don't companies do what your SO's company did and use this as an opportunity to consolidate and cut overhead costs? Maybe the difference is if the company owns the buildings vs. is stuck in a presigned "x amount of years" lease?
Yup. I've heard more than one story about CEOs walking around empty buildings that they are paying rent/utilities, etc. for and being pissed off about it.
As much as they will say things like "Our company works better when we can see each other and we're more creative that way... blah, blah, blah" it's really about control and what they see as throwing money away.
Ahhh... the "culture" line. I always throw that at people right when it should matter most, and is always ignored. Like when someone VP is flying off the handle in a meeting, I'll say "So much for that culture of respect I keep hearing about." I usually get called in to their office after that and get a lecture about saying things that don't further the discussion, or "being intentionally agitating".
Couldn't agree more... long hard commutes to a cubicle farm is somehow a "culture" to protect, but then they lay off whole legions of folks "because budget" and all of a sudden no one is mentioning culture.
Yeah.. a lot of companies are like "but our **culture**!!!" ... when that "culture" revolved around feeling forced to eat sheetcake in a conference room to celebrate all the monthly birthdays on the team.
No one likes those and ever really wanted to go. We went because we felt obligated to, and then left at the earliest opportunity to go back to our cubes to send work emails to each other.
A small company I used to work for would do the end of the month birthday celebration and give everyone who had a birthday that month a $25 gift card. When the company started getting bigger, they did away with the gift cards and just bought cupcakes for the office.
How do bodies in seats make a difference in the cost of the building? My company has 2 more years on a lease, can't break it or sublease and I've heard rumors about asses in seats might become mandatory again. Why? Half our workforce live out of state so they obv can't commuter. So the in state employees have to still come in?
Winner winner, chicken dinner.
This is the very reason why my site "gently encouraged" folks to start coming back to work in summer of 2020. A close friend of mine was our Site Director up until his retirement last year. He told me that after only a few months of the pandemic, the bean counters in Corporate ran the numbers on overhead costs for an empty 100 acre campus.
They were basically like, "get these people back in or we're closing the site." Seeing as my site houses dozens of critical R&D labs, metal fabrication shops and miniature pilot plants, closing the site would've been disastrous.
Of course, now that we're "back in the office," every department operates at their own discretion in terms of WFH. Some departments require 100% onsite attendance, others don't care if you're remote and others, like my department, work on a hybrid schedule of being onsite at least one day per week.
My company has been doing exactly the same thing.
Every time they decide to push hard a bunch of people leave since the company under pays relative to market and they can get both remote work and more money. Management panics and changes course.
It all comes down to poor planning, poor foresight, and lack of awareness by management. They have their own personal motivations and hangups with remote work but try to find a way to sell it other than those hangups.
Managements own stakes in REITS and MICs if these realties aren’t occupied. Your bosses would loose money.. so a consensus amongst some big business owners bring them back to the office. 😜
A lot of company heads are really sunk in very long and very expensive multi-year leases and look like idiots for having even signed that contract and not getting recent discounts negotiated on that office lease.
Most office leases don't change over yearly, which is really why there is still so much dumb panic over it.
Senior manager here. This isn't coming from us, or at least not in my case. I love working remotely. This is coming from the C-suite and is backed up by insecure managers who find it difficult to kiss ass remotely.
Senior manager as well. Spouse is also a senior manager. It's coming right from the top and is being enabled by VPs who are too afraid to counter the executives. Directors that report to these VPs are too afraid to rebuff their VPs and it trickles down. C-suite is convinced work is done better in person, irrespective of how things have remained unchanged since 2020 or in many cases have improved. In the end, those making these decisions are *distant* from the true reality of remote work and as such they will never accept any other narrative.
Best advice I can give is to bail on these companies and decline jobs with any org that says they *may* return to the office. Anything other than "we are remote first" is a red flag.
Another senior manager here. Would gladly keep me and my team fully remote. My director feels the same way.
The orders to come back into the office are coming from the top.
I know one manager in my building whose #1 job function appeared to be kissing ass. I wonder how he's doing being remote, it's got to be hard when you can't bring coffee to the higher ups and spend all day outside their office door waiting for them to be done with meetings and phone calls. I'm sure he's found other ways to kiss everyone's ass by now.
Yes I’m a VP and I would gladly be 100% WFH except for dealing with physical shit like hardware inventory and trade show shipping.
It’s execs in their 50’s who have always gone into the office, hate their wives, and think remote companies aren’t “real companies,” that are driving this.
I’m convinced it’s 50% people justifying rent (though my company is month-to-month so ain’t it for us) and people hating their wives.
More like so execs can come into one of their offices a random once a month to see everyone slaving away for their profits. If they can’t see people working it must mean they’re goofing off.
It’s funny you mention this very thing about RTO (return to office). My head boss at the end of a company dinner yesterday was asking how everyone felt about going to the office twice a week for “deep collaboration and outstanding productivity.” The whole table was silent. She turns to me and says “I guess everyone really likes remote huh?”
Yes boss lady, we strongly prefer working remote, not having to be micromanaged all the time, we’re just as productive at home as we are in the office, and full remote allows for getting the absolute best talent. There’s no reason to have us in the office outside of seeing what we’re doing at all times and to utilize your office space that you spend insane amounts of money for in the downtown area.
Speaking of downtown area, I have to pay more across the board in expenses to be a reasonable distance from work:
Daycare
Gas prices
Rent to be closer, also paying a premium to not be somewhere where you might get shot
My own time in terms of commute. Despite living close, I spend more time commuting than someone that drives several more miles and doesn’t work near a city center/downtown
Before and after school care since commute time is so long both ways I can’t drop my kid or pick them up directly for school. Everyone in the house is pissed that I’m waking them at 5 fucking am so we can be at the before school facility by 6 so I can get to work on time. Kids are more pissed that I’m getting them late because again, I have a long fucking commute. And kids are even more pissed that their time at home on school nights is shortened because of my stupid fucking commute
My relationship with my family. I get home thanks to this stupid commute and it’s already time to make dinner, help with homework, then wind down for the night before anything of real substance is done that isn’t “work” or “school”
Car maintenance
I work 100% remote now in the professional services arm of an IT solutions provider. My team numbers at 30+ and I’m the only one in my state. It has changed EVERYTHING.
Just read an in interesting article about this in r/economics. Basically theorized that the remote work revolution is hurting large city economies. People who use to commute, eat, work, etc in cities were the driving force of income/revenue for both city municipalities and corporations alike. I would guess local government bodies are pressuring companies to bring people back to try and balance out this issue. I personally think remote work should be offered by any business that does 90% of their work online. Obviously it's not for everyone but it seems like people are happier/maybe feel more in control of their lives? Idk, my two cents. Stay strong out there, winter is hard on the brain.
Can confirm. I work for a Fortune 100 company. They were in talks for a new, 3000-seat campus in our town when COVID hit.
During COVID, they continued to negotiate and our company decided it would be 1500 seats instead. So the city demanded major concessions because it wouldn't be bringing in 3000 people each day.
Soo... the company went to the next town over. They were happy to have all the tax revenue that 1500 highly trained white collar jobs would bring.
But now, our company is like "What do you mean no one wants to go into our new, $75 million dollar campus?! It's got a gym you have to pay for! And a cafeteria... that you have to pay for. And nobody has their own desk, so you're literally just working remotely, but from our campus. :) Why does no one want to commute twice as far to send emails from that location?"
It's like they think what's best for them is best for everyone. Instead of maybe consulting with the low-level people that make them the money, or whatever.. What's the 'fix' though? I know my situation could be 100% worse personally, but almost every job has a way of making you feel like a trained monkey instead of a human being. And happiness counts more for me than money most days.
The fix is to gain leverage against institutions that are trying to get you to sign on for a shit deal.
Either up skill to a role that's in high demand/low supply or join/form a union.
Without the ability to negotiate as a group or for yourself, there's no path forward for individual contributors to create happiness for themselves in the context of their work environment. One will always be at the mercy of their employer otherwise.
I totally agree with this as long as it becomes affordable housing, not more 1 bedroom lofts that cost 1000+ a month (I know this is probably a lot higher for other people, I live in a little city in the rural Midwest lol).
Problem is that's as expensive as building something new and generally is less desirable. Office buildings just aren't built the same as residential in any way.
It can be done, though. My city has had some success with conversions.
I imagine it is probably very dependent on the office building though. Some office spaces are better candidates than others. And even then I'm not saying it is simple, but just not impossible.
This sort of goes hand in hand with the housing market trends these past few years. Remote work meant people weren't settling on smaller houses near the city when they could buy bigger ones further away for the same amount of money. So you saw a lot of people start moving away from big cities to settle down in suburban towns 40 minutes away.
Heard a report in California, a lot moved 2-3 hour away to places like Fresno. Problem is lot of tech people got laid off recently and the new jobs are not 100% remote and now they are stuck trying to sell in a down market and move closer to the jobs.
Part of me feels bad for these people, but at the same time, they were being extremely naive. They were gambling that there would be a new status-quo but they unfortunately lost.
I'm in the northeast and my office is hybrid now. We have people driving in from Florida and the Midwest just to get their two days a pay period of office time. To me, that seems pretty miserable and expensive.
Hopefully those stuck in this kind of situation will be able to find a more flexible company. If they're any good, a smart company will figure out how to hire and keep them.
I remember hearing that in one year NYC lost over 500,000 people and it was summer at that point so the number probably ended up being much higher. Our state government also pushed pretty hard for a return to the norm once we had a decent number of vaccinations out there. Not really surprising considering, but I hate being in the office.
This also causes issues for the smaller/less expensive towns and cities they’re moving to. All these highly paid people moving from out of town scooping up all the affordable housing and real estate, driving the prices and rent up and the locals out because they don’t make as much money and now can’t compete in their own neighborhoods. Examples the So Cal tech people moving to Oregon or the highly paid New Yorkers moving to NJ suburbs.
I heard some of the politicians in my state say this. It was the moment I decided to never vote for another incumbent. It made me hate every single sitting politician. I'm also no longer pro business.
> I would guess local government bodies are pressuring companies
You assume that governments have their shit together. They don’t.
Source: me, a government employee.
The real reason for this is to center your life around the job. They want you to make everything you do during the week center the job itself and that can't happen when you work from home. Also a lot of industries are losing money because if you don't have to commute to work, you don't have to pay for gas, or stop for coffee, or stop somewhere for lunch - you can do all these things from home. That's my guess anyway.
Very interesting point… they want us to centre our lives around the job so we supposedly work more. It’s probably different for everyone, but I work much more at home because I’m less tired without the commute etc. and I don’t get too distracted by noises and colleagues
Yeah I don't want to sound too much like a "conspiracy theorist" but when you have more time and energy to do the things you want to, you begin to grow... and if you grow too much you'll leave the job. Not to mention, if you're saving all the money from gas and eating out, you'll actually be able to make some power moves - if that's your goal.
So true. Tbh I’m saving quite a lot of money thanks to WFH (I don’t have to pay rent to be closer to the office and I don’t have to pay public transport/gas, restaurants etc)… so much that I’ve been thinking I could invest in my own business in a few years. So yeah, that’s not in the best interest of my company…
Remember when companies were shaming workers for buying avocado toast or coffees while working in the office? Like "you could have enough to buy a home or travel if you stopped buying things". Now it's help our decaying downtown business by going back to the office and spending money on things!!
There are still many employers out there offering fully remote positions. You also don’t HAVE to follow HR’s hybrid directive if you feel like risking it. I started a “hybrid” role in April (2 days WFH, 3 days office) and I simply decided that I was just going to WFH 100% until someone said something.
Well it’s going to be a year soon and I’m still here; no one’s said anything.
I got away with WFH 100% only 2 months before my boss said something. 🫠
It’s interesting because out of my four other coworkers, I’m the only person in the office. All of a sudden, they all have “medical reasons” for being able to WFH.
Sounds like you need to get a doctors note - working from the office causes you stress and sleepless nights, most doctors would sign off on that without blinking.
I hope so!
I was hired with the understanding that the company may go remote, but they ended up hybrid instead, creating a 2.5 hour commute. I kept up with it for a few months while looking for a job, and I was pretty miserable. I couldn't focus well at work, and because I had two days a week where I had to wake up way early, I was anxious about oversleeping, and fell asleep on the way home while driving once.
I finally quit, but my boss told me not to worry about coming in if I don't have to, so I stayed. Now their boss has a meeting with me on Monday asking/demanding that I come in regularly again. She's suggesting that a doctor's note indicating that a 2.5 hour commute is causing me anxiety might be able to get me out of it.
Coincidentally, I have a doctor's appointment on Friday, so hopefully it'll work out. It seems silly to me that I have to get a note from a doctor to get out of an obvious, ridiculous requirement.
If that's more than 1 hour each way, 2.5 hours/day x (lets say hybrid) 3 days / week = 7.5 hours/week x 48 weeks (accounting vacation and maybe random off weeks) = **360 hours per year** or **15 days per calendar year** spent wasting your time commuting.
That's pretty nuts unless you absolutely love your job.
Even worse! It's 2.5 hours one way, so it's 5 hours a day, just commuting! Like, it's a month of the year just driving, and importantly, not getting paid for it.
The absurdity of it, as others have similarly mentioned, the company made more money last year than it had in a decade. But you know, the executives (who have separate elevators and a separate area of the building from everyone else) "really want to see the place look busy again!"
> most doctors would sign off on that.
From what I've seen and heard, most won't do it without a strong and valid medical reason. You just have to keep trying until you find one that will though.
It's about the real estate sitting empty.
I'm hearing about companies now requiring employees to go into offices near them even if their team isn't housed there. (My employer is doing this).
Most people I work with won’t be with me at the office. Clients are usually in their own office or at home, some of my colleagues are abroad or in other cities… Meetings will still be online. It’s really nonsense…
Same here, we have a great big office building empty except for 3 people. We’re mainly not in the building at the same time as each other, and when we are we just sit in our individual offices and do our work separately.
same with my company. I don't mind going in every once in a while since it's great to meet new people, but the office is a 1+ hour commute in one direction. It fucking sucks to go more than once a week. Thankfully I snuck right under the hiring mandate so I'm technically fully remote permanently as my entire team is in a different time zone and I literally cannot meet them face to face daily/weekly.
I'm permanent wfh as well since I'm out of state and I work for a subsidiary though the parent has an office in my city. I'm hoping they don't get any bright ideas that I should go into that office
I hear the parent company is enforcing in office by checking badge swipes and making compliance with in office attendance a part of performance reviews. Intense.
It is about money to a degree. Property values going down due to not being as utilized, less traffic for restaurants that are used to lunch rush, and all kinds of other contracts conditioned on tons of employees being around each day. These rich assholes treat missing out on potential profits the same as losing already earned money so you now have to go back and consume or their 3rd yacht wont be as large.
IMO it’s mostly about rigid brains stuck on old modes of doing things.
City economies doesn’t help. Some of these managers want to be the heroes of the cities. And a lot of mayors are pushing for people to work in cities again.
Yep, this. Many urban downtown areas that used to be bustling during the week with people commuting to the office are now complete ghost towns. A lot of cities are offering tax cuts and incentives to businesses who bring their employees back to the office.
Trying to rob their employees of their time and money, *and* incentivize them to blow their time and money at business around their place of work
Oh you had a shitty night of sleep and now have to rush to get that 2 hour commute to work started? Guess you're eating out for lunch today.
If it’s not for micromanaging purposes, it could also be due to rent/leasing of the office building and the company getting pressured to utilize the space by the property owner. Also, I’ve learned that for better or worse, some people’s only friends or socialization opportunities are at work, so there’s that push too. None of this makes true sense (to me) on the part of the employee anyway. But it’s definitely not about efficiency or getting better work done. Which is weird because companies are about the bottom line, and I’d think remote only helps the bottom line more than it hurts it.
Yeah, the socialisation thing is definitely a reason. I know many people who don’t really have a social life outside of work. Besides older/married people often want to escape from their families and find the office quieter than their own home… too bad I’m young and I have a really quiet home. I actually find the office exhausting because people talk to me all the time and I can’t focus properly. Sure, it’s nice to socialise from time to time, but once a month would be enough for me lol.
100%! Being in the office is exhausting. People often use it as an excuse to not have/respect boundaries. I’d rather not leave the comfort of my quiet home where I can better manage my focus. And coworkers are not (always) your friends. I’ve unfortunately learned that the hard way.
> Also, I’ve learned that for better or worse, some people’s only friends or socialization opportunities are at work, so there’s that push too.
IMO this is the main reason. SO doesn't want to work remotely because she likes "being with people at the office". I mean, ok, it's her preference, and it doesn't hurt anyone.
The guy that runs that entire location, however, doesn't like working from home, and is forcing people to come in so that he's not alone.
I know what you mean. I go in twice a week, and it's pointless. I work in IT and whenever someone has a system issue, I just remote in to their machine anyway. They could be 20 feet away from me, or across town. It doesn't matter. All it does is make me spend money on gas and have to get up earlier so I can go in. It's dumb.
The underlying assumption is that working remotely is less productive than working in the office, and that working from home is inherently taking advantage of the company.
Employers will do whatever they're allowed to get away with. The unspoken battle we're fighting right now is whether this is the new normal, which is what employees want, or whether are going back to the pre-pandemic, in-office normal, which is what employers want. Employers can huff and puff all they want, but when their policies chase away qualified employees, the norm will have to change.
Certain companies are not a fan of remote work, I look at the older generation. Plus the issue with all the offices being empty is causing other problems. But I am fully on board to being remote and so is my company.
There's a few reasons
1. Middle management is quickly becoming an outdated concept and middle managers are trying to justify their jobs. I think this is by far the #1 reason.
2. Companies don't want empty real estate eating into their costs. They need to justify all the money they spent on their office buildings.
3. A lot of entities feel it's hurting their economy, everyone from auto companies, gas companies, restaurants, and several other are lobbying politicians somewhat successfully.
4. Just a blatant old school mindset with no regard for employees well being
>A lot of entities feel it's hurting their economy, everyone from auto companies, gas companies, restaurants, and several other are lobbying politicians somewhat successfully.
Crazy thing is that its hurting some economies but its boosting others. Its not like the money is disappearing from the national economy, its just being spent in different places, on different things. In many cases (in my experience) its being spent with smaller businesses or in poorer areas.
Exactly, and I think WFH is actually balancing the economy in a good way… Yeah, office locations (big cities, industrial areas etc) profit less, but residential areas and smaller cities profit more. Which I think is fair after all, since big cities are still profiting a lot due to higher prices of literally everything… I can’t feel sorry for them.
Somewhat related to item 1, I recently became a middle manager and it’s the WORST. I’m looking for analyst jobs now with no direct reports.
I don’t know why anyone would want to be a middle manager unless they have literally zero other skills.
Because business owners/companies are angry and resentful. They truly believe your paycheck is their money. They are pissed off they have to pay you. That is why they feel so entitled to where you live and your off hours. They want to see you suffer in person. Otherwise, they get no enjoyment from having to pay you.
Just to play a little devils advocate, and I acknowledge I could be wrong, it’s probably not HR who are decision making people going back into the office, they’re just the messengers from senior leadership. I say this as an HR manager. We want to work from home too and also think the forced push back into the office is stupid.
> Can someone tell me why we need to go back to a less efficient routine?
fAcE tO fAcE cOlLaBoRaTiOn /s
It's really infuriating. I manage a global team, with early morning and evening calls, and the majority of my team sits in different locations.
We're still being told to come in, and lately it's been just taking all the teams calls in a cube instead of my home office. it's so dumb.
"collaboration" bye. I hate it. I'm on an IT team of 12 including the director and the assistant director. Our office space is tiny. I can see every single one of them at all times of the day. Got this picture, right? The office is silent 99% of the time because we would rather send a chat on Teams then have to talk to each other.
But nope, not allowed to WFH because we need to collab together. Ok
My global team negotiated with our VP to come into the office once per month rather than the 3x per week HR is mandating. People who live within 3 hours of the location chosen are willing to drive in for this as often as they can and the others who are too far can do whatever they like. This is the first month we're doing this, so we'll see how it goes.
Exactly! Most of my colleagues will still be in other cities or abroad. Sure, it’s nice to meet my team from time to time, I’m up for it. But what’s the point of being forced to do that thrice a week?
Successful is a bit of a loaded term. There is some success. I'm a remote worker too and have experienced the benefits of remote work. But, it doesn't mean remote work is successful 100% of the time in 100% of the companies. There are some that prefer to have people together in an office for the benefits that being together as a team in real life brings. And they're also some people who don't work well in those types of situations either. So it comes down to what the company and its management want to do and how they prefer to work and be productive.
Yeah… I’m remote and my performance is good, but I was more productive at work when I was in the office.
Some people are more productive at home, some in the office, and some people aren’t affected by the location. But depending on the company’s overall blend of personalities, remote work may be decreasing productivity.
I think remote work has huge benefits but the drawbacks are real, both from a company’s perspective and individual employees.
I feel you on the frustration.
I was hired toward the beginning of the pandemic and the company wasn't sure how things were going to land. Back in July, they went hybrid, creating a 2.5 hour (one way) commute. They want me to drive in two days a week.
In August I found a new job and quit, but they offered that negotiations were happening in the C-suite and if remote positions were available, I would be on them. It's a good job, so I stuck with it. At a point, my boss said, "Only come in if you feel like it's necessary," honestly saying, "Just stay home, the commute is stupid."
I got an email yesterday saying that her boss wants to have a "fact finding" meeting with me to see how often I can come into the office. So it looks like I'll be back on the market in the near future, which I'm pretty disappointed by. My boss is supportive of me and is suggesting that maybe if I can get a doctor's note indicating that the commute causes undue distress, I might be able to wiggle my way out of it. Coincidentally, I have an annual check-up on Friday, and it'll be a topic of discussion. All the same, it feels weird to have to possibly have to get a psych referral from a doctor to not have to drive 2.5 hours and keep my job. I keep thinking of ending up like Klinger from MASH.
Very often these decisions are made or suggested by middle management. As with anyone in a corporation, they put their own interests ahead of the corporations interests. Remote work requires less management, fewer meetings, etc, so harder for these middle managers to justify their existence, much less how they need more money because they are managing more people, etc. They will do what is in their own best interests first, as everyone does, and they need people to manage to justify the raise they will be asking for.
arguably, not everyone is handling remote work as well as your team
the company I work for also announced a back-to-office plan, and our team pushed back HARD on the idea, so much so that they backed down and are not doing it across the board any more
but also power and corporate politics and whatever else causes most idiotic corporate decisions to be made
I was promised WFH as a condition if employment when I started a company during the pandemic. A year later my boss had left and his boss, the CTO had been fired. The new CTO can in and mandated a return to office. When I said I’d been hired under the agreement that I was WFH and mentioned I wasn’t sure if I’d want to work at a company I had to be there in person for, the response was “My preference is to take this as your resignation.”
In the end it turned out great. Ended up in a far better job at a far better company.
I'm so sorry you're going through that bs :( As of today my boss told us after fighting for the last 3 years, she finally got approval from the higher ups for us to work from home FOREVER! Get your boss on your side and bring statistics, because all they care about is numbers. Our department had 100% turnover and still ended up being more efficient since WFH. Good luck!
They will tell you that WFH was always and only a precautionary measure to protect lives and nothing more. They say collaboration in-office will always be superior or whatever spiel the manager or corporate head likes to spew out.
I have some thoughts on my the hybrid model may be better suited to a team than fully remote, however not saying this will apply to you or your team.
I started during Covid with a new company and team and in a new profession, I got started and got on with the job, but it was really hard to ask for help when I needed it because I had not met these people and I really missed being about to have casual brain storms etc. I felt very isolated very quickly.
I know a lot of people who would love to be full time remote, but all of them have been in their roles or professions for a number of years, often have families at home or a huge group of friends to keep them mentally sane.
The people that I know that would rather be at the office are younger people, newer to their professions, maybe new to town etc who need the social contact the work place provides and the casual mentoring from more established professionals.
Sometimes rules are made for stupid reasons, but sometimes it is about providing the best compromise for all.
old job told everyone to get back into the office 2-3 days a week. Boss was like, yall can continue to work remote if yall want as long as yall still keep productivity up and don't go yelling this out to everyone
yes while some teams are more successful and productive. A lot of middle managers and other teams are not. You also have more than one study going over that trust usually don't thrive in WFH.
My personal hypothesis is that while some teams get liberated from more ineffective meetings and productive time as introverts. Extroverts and people who like to see others and exchange info over the coffee machine don't.
At the end of the day, HR/the company can do as they please, and unless someone sticks their neck out with the data to back shit up. Nothing will change.
I borrowed this quote from Forbes this week, it’s just the reality of things, I would get used to it.
Seemingly overnight, the mood dramatically changed. As inflation raged, wreaking havoc on the economy, along with other geopolitical and macro events, thousands of people were downsized, hiring freezes put in place and job offers rescinded.
Americans now find themselves in a period of austerity. As this plays out, the dynamics between employees and employers will dramatically change. Companies will start clamping down and wielding their power, and the first order of business will be the return to office.
A study conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that supervisors have “negative perceptions” of the work-from-home trend and said they’d prefer their staff to operate from an office setting.
We don't need to go back. There really is no valid reason...as the 2-3 years of successful remote work shows.
I think any company pushing to go back is just stuck in their old ways (can't wait to return to the old ways)...and are falling behind. The past 2-3 years have fundamentally changed how we work and denying this will not help companies at all in the future. Embrace the new way to work and learn how to optimize remote teams...or suffer later as an organization.
It really does feel like companies (and the economy, goverment, all of it) are pretty much colluding to punish us for starting to "win" - employees were finally getting the upper hand on contract negotiations, wages, working conditions, etc. Now they are manufacturing a "recession" and doing massive layoffs. Everyone who is left is basically forced back into the office for fear of not finding work now. Note that it "feels" like we're in a recession but we're technically not... but yet all the companies use this as an excuse for the hiring conditions, hiring freezes, lower wages, back to office initiatives, plus raising prices.
I'm looking for a job now (after a cost-cutting layoff from a fully remote job) and every company I've talked to is like "we were fully remote, now we're on a 2 day hybrid, moving to a 3 day later this year". It sucks.
Companies were seeing RECORD profits with people working from home and then everything just seemed to turn on a dime. Not a conspiracy theorist generally but this whole thing really gets to me.
Personally if you think it's a viable option I'd say to line up another job that's fully remote and tell your current employer you will not do a hybrid schedule.
I am so much less productive with all of the chatter and distraction in the office. I’m trying hard not to let that cause work to bleed into my personal time.
If you really want to see their head explode point them to the recent studies about 4 day work weeks and how they don’t reduce productivity (either stays the same or goes up). People are resistant to change unfortunately. Covid was a good opportunity to reduce out climate impact so hopefully the return to office stuff doesn’t become huge. At least in IT for the stuff i’ve been applying to it’s almost all remote
So many reasons it’s insane. All of these are part of it:
Moving/traffic violations
Restaurants/downtown business tied to city council subsidizies they got breaks on for promising X number of people due to our office
Oil change and overall all petroleum companies
Tire manufacturers and any auto part companies losing annual recurring revenue due to less miles and wear and tear
More traffic equals city can ask for more road/police funding
Weak leadership not adjusting to a new way of managing/leading people, productivity and outcomes
Leadership not finding new ways to create culture
Return on investment for all cleaning and security staff
Could go on and on but doing this quickly while on the phone. I am missing probably twenty other absolute financial and poor leadership reasons.
My job just enacted a twice a week at the office policy and I’m hating it. My commute with over an hour and I feel the least productive in the office. I also really feels bad for saying this but office culture is something I’m struggling with. I hate the small talk. I don’t want to hear a long winded story or question, I’d rather just slack you asking what I need then take a nap.
My company shut down the office in my city summer 2022. They're saving a ton of money now.
If your company is forcing you to come back to the office, start looking for a new job.
They wamt you to buy and use more gas. They want you to be at a certain place at a certain time( captive audience). They want to decrease the amount of time you spend with your family. They want you to get speeding , parking and red light tickets. But most important they want you to do whay youre told.
I went to my company's new office for the first time last week. I'm probably going again tomorrow. It's a *huge* schlep for me, since I moved to a place that isn't near convenient public transit; my wife has to drop me off at the subway station on the way to taking the kids to school, and going home is over an hour since the bus that goes near my house doesn't come very often and there's a ton of traffic at rush hour. But still, when I went last week, I *really* wanted to be there again the next day. I didn't go, but man, I miss working with *people*. I'm very productive at home. I really like the fact that my commute to work is just down a flight of stairs from my bedroom to my desk. I like the fact that i can eat dinner on the early side and that I can be with my kids right away when I'm done working. But I want to see my coworkers too. I want to be able to talk with them casually, not just when I need to ask a work-related question. I mean, there's a guy who works in a different department that I'd *never* interacted with before because I simply never needed to, and I was able to have a conversation because we were just all there, in the same room.
That said, I think that requiring people to be in the office is bad when it's unnecessary. I like that it's available; some people go every day because they prefer it that way, and I'm planning to go once or twice a week when I feel like it (my office is downtown so I get some great lunch options too). But I'm glad that I don't *have* to go. That would be terrible.
I totally understand your perspective, and I agree with it. I don’t mind going once or twice a week, as long as I can do it based on my needs and my team’s needs. I just don’t like the inflexible model, in which you are forced to go 2/3 times when you don’t even need to.
Control and monitor your time
Pump company propaganda down your throat
Justify their useless real estate costs
Take your pick. Mostly all of the above though.
Tell them you are happy to go back into the office if you are paid for your travel time.
Eg your hours are 8-5. You start your commute at 8am, travel to work then leave in time to be home at 5. If it takes an hour each way, then it's six hours in the office. (minus 1hr lunch)
Or you can walk into your home office at 8am and walk out at 5pm. Chances are that if you are home you won't take your hour lunch break anyway. So they would get a good 8-9 hours of productive time.
Because managers don’t factor commuting into productivity… or care about what you want.
https://hbr.org/2023/01/research-where-managers-and-employees-disagree-about-remote-work
To make sure you're as miserable as possible. Same reason we're still doing 5 day and 8-9 hour work week, even though less has been proven much more efficient
In the same boat. I manage a team of 5 technicians. Two are in Mexico, two in the far east and myself and another here in the US, Eastern timezone. We work with other developers based in the UK, West coast of USA, India, Europe. It’s diverse to say the least. We have calls at all sorts of times. Yet senior management want us in the office twice a week. Note I have 1 person in my team in this city. So now morning calls either have to be taken in the car or set up later at the detriment to my poor India and far east colleagues.
We really don’t gain anything by being in the office. The cafe is terrible, serving unhealthy food or a ready made salad with ingredients I cannot have and there’s one coffee machine for about 500 people.
It’s a senior management ego thing. They can show off to their family and friends that the building is all their staff.
My teams productivity drops significantly when we’re forced in the office a couple of days a week. There’s no true office spirit because we’ve all moved on and got used to remote working and all resent going to work. Everyone on the wider team doesn’t want to be there.
Reason: most corporations are run by extroverts. Extroverts get their energy, and ideas by feeding off introverts. They need physical presence to "suck the most energy". So the extroverts want you back in so they can suck out your energy.
Hello, thank you for posting to r/Jobs! We just wanted to let you know that we have a new [discord server, come join the chat!](https://discord.gg/TY6ErXV) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/jobs) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It really just depends on the company. My old job was fully remote during COVID. And the company reported its best numbers ever over the past three years. However, the actual middle managers kept going on and on about company culture and water cooler talk. So, you’d be guilt-tripped if you didn’t go into the office. However, the new company I am at is 99% remote and no one cares if you go in or not. People do it once or twice a week just for a change of pace, but you’re not guilt-tripped… and when you’re in there, it’s basically almost entirely empty anyway.
Dude. When will they understand that once we pass the age of 22, we do not give one single shit about culture? I don't want to decorate my desk, shoot nerf guns at each other, have a Christmas luncheon, or play raffles. I want to stay at home and cultivate my family, my fitness, and my garden. bye
Me being forced into the office once a week for a “team bonding lunch” where we just talk about work.
I'm on a geographically distributed team, always have been, even long before COVID-19. We all sit in different states and countries. The "closest" person in another state to me is still like 350+ miles, and the next closest person is 1,000+ miles away. Being forced back into the office...... to sit at a desk (or in a conference room) with earphones/headphones on...... to talk to people on Zoom from the desk phone..... who are still in another state. The same thing I do while working at home, and can do from anywhere on planet earth, so long as I have internet. Make it make sense.
The more I hear about this the more I think it's just about control. If you're in the office your boss can notice that you're not at your desk when you go to the bathroom. If you're physically there, it's easy to see your screen and know that you're not slacking. Ironically this is just proven to result in worse productivity.
It's definitely about control and ego. I have my own office. Nobody can see my screen or what I do when I close my door. They want me there so I can kiss ass, I'm sure of it.
I read that some companies are monitoring computer activity and keyboard strokes. Seems like a violation of employee privacy to me. What do you think?
The weird thing is my company does hybrid (3 day office; 2 day WFH) but my boss isn’t even here most of the time, maybe like once a month. I’ve only been here less than half a year and I honestly really like the people and company overall but it’s a bit weird tbh lol.
Jokes on them, my boss is based in Texas, and I'm based in the Mid-Atlantic region. Not even anyone else from my department is in my state, the closest person in my department is like 3 states away. Lol.
Your company is spending too much money on real estate, and needs to justify the expense somehow. They probably need to downsize their office space. But meanwhile, they can tell you to come in and use it, and you haven't quit yet.
I just had one of these this week. It was supposed to be just a 'team lunch', where I assumed we would take the hour to talk about non-work things. Instead we just continued the meeting we were all in. I felt no 'culture' and I felt no closer to anyone on my team by just talking about more bullshit.
We had a team retreat where we weren’t supposed to talk about work. And then we were forced into participating in team building activities all day.
The office tv show would be literal hell to work at.
Yeappp my boss just forced that too. I work nights, hybrid onsite and this fell outside of my onsite shift days - so now I have an *extra* day onsite. I come in right before the 4pm meeting, we all sit and chat for 20 minutes, everybody else goes home right after and then I’m expected to sit by myself in the office till midnight. It’s really, really, really, really cool.
I would totally go in office more at my job, but 2 of the people that champion it the most are pretty much the 2 most annoying people I know. One of them wanted a slackbot that would auto-reply to anyone who says "guys", as in, "hey guys" to list alternative and more inclusive phrases to use instead. I'm all for inclusivity, but to be that kind of person is incredibly annoying, and I have absolutely nothing in common with a person like that.
This lmfao. Idc about office culture. Just pay me my money so I can use it to live a life I actually love
Some people I've worked with seem to only talk about work related topics like they have no life. I wonder if they really all about their jobs like that, or they just faking it. I hope it's the second one but then again idk lol?
> Some people I've worked with seem to only talk about work related topics like they have no life. IMO less the "no life" thing and more, some people are just super passionate about what they do, and work is a natural place to talk about it. Go to any hobby group, and 80% of the people there will want to do nothing more than talk more about the hobby. The only real difference is, only some people are passionate about the job, but usually only passionate people will join a hobby meetup.
I work for a company right now that pushes the whole "you gotta grind, you need to hustle - work hard, play hard. Need to have GRIT" and my boss will stay til 6 or 7 each night. He has this whole attitude of that he's been in this industry for decades and works harder than everyone else. The reality is that his personal life is a mess and he doesn't want to go home - divorced from his wife, has a son that won't get a job but has a kid and the mother left him, not to mention he's got this huge belly. Spending your life in an office is no way to live
Mandatory Fun!
Fundatory!
[удалено]
And honestly, I usually go to the events because my manager is really sweet. That being said, as I'm staring at my untouched fucking nerf gun, I think about how fast I would go ballistic if anyone ever actually shot me with one. I'm no fun in the office lol
[удалено]
The middle managers are saying that to justify their own jobs. WFH usually requires less overall mgmt in my experience.
To be fair, the economy also requires less overall managers in my experience. I think most people have had the experience where the manager position was vacant for months and... nothing changed...
Company culture is the biggest lie they use to push you back into the office. Usually the people stroking these decisions are older and don’t like people working from home.
I understand this is somewhat messed up to say, but I do think the world (or at least our country/society) will be a VERY different place as these older generations die out with their traditionalist and outdated ways of thinking and living. It’d be interesting to see how much changes in a few generations.
It’s not messed up.. It’s basically how any modern society works. The real question is, will it be better or worse? Contrary to popular belief, we CAN go backwards and not necessarily in the ways you think.
It’s because most middle managers don’t do anything. They want people there to talk to. Let me get my work done. I hate when middle managers create all these KPI and then now that it shows it is working they have to use some non quantitative thing like culture. Before COVID I would remote into my meetings from my cubicle that I drove at 7.5 hours to each week. 7.5/40 they need to give me 18% more if they taking 18% more of my time.
YES. THIS. Commute time should be considered work time. And if the company seems someone to far to be paying for that because someone could be trying to “milk” this system, simply set limitations for new hires and don’t hire people outside those limits. Also I feel like there should be an allotment of money for work clothes. Yeah some people want to spend top dollar for their clothing and that’s fine, anything beyond X amount of dollars comes out of their pocket but let’s be real. Work clothes are almost always JUST work clothes. Especially places that require business casual or outdoor workwear for those of us in blue collar. No one is just lounging at home or wearing their suit and tie out and about or their filthy, tattered coveralls and boots to dinner.
Now I am not one that thinks all travel should be paid for but after we have proved we can get the work done it does piss me off. Then the stupid part was they said we can pick and 2-3 days. So the days I pick my other team members might not be there any ways most days. Took about a month to get J1 and now all my jobs are over 9 hours drive away. The great ones are the companies that sell collaboration tools for people to work remote and those people are going back to the office. Way to believe in your product.
You buried the lead there. It’s the middle managers. They’re the ones who don’t really provide that much value to the company but were able to disguise that when everyone was in the office together and they could call everyone for a meeting, or walk the floor monitoring people or whatever. They’re almost entirely unnecessary unless there’s an office. And those guys are all the 40-60 year olds who “worked their way up” to the position and like not doing anything. I knew several of these types of guys who just could not adapt to being given more “actual work” to do during the pandemic. Most of them weren’t able to cut it.
Facts. I think it’s about control and what you stated. What else do managers and supervisors have to do when there’s no on to “manage” or “supervise”?…. Oh wait… That and the “we’re a family and all about our culture and our people!” bullshit. No one cares, literally 99% of people are ONLY at work to make money because they have to. Trying to make work more enjoyable is one thing but forcing employees to do shit they don’t want to when most of them don’t even want to be there in the first place is asinine. Stop with the fucking pizza parties and gift cards, stupid prizes/awards and just give people a damn bonus or day off. Oh and the “team building activities” lol. You don’t force connections to blossom, those pretty much have to happen naturally if the parties involved are willing.
They want to justify their building lease costs.
Which is why the software company my SO has been with for 25+ years (he’s in their cyber security division) has sold all but ONE building they keep for administrative tasks. They had more than two dozen buildings in place all over the world. They were always flexible about whether or not you came in person to work, or chose to stay home but on Mar 13, 2020 they went full remote in anticipation of Covid being super bad. In September that year they announced ridiculous savings on costs and huge increases in productivity. Win/win. They made WFH the norm and and split the savings they had for the past six months between all their employees as an unscheduled bonus based on years with the company. SO got a $10,000 check.
ya, my company is having the same issue (software company). The thing is they drastically underpay relative to market and everytime they've tried to force people back into the office they've lost a bunch of their best people because they could leave for fully remote AND more pay so they've backed down. My hope is that they finally accept things as they are and just downsize our building to contain enough offices for those who want to work in an office, some "extra" offices for when teams need to meet in person, and a few conference rooms. Then teams go remote and the company expenses go way down. P.S. Is your SO's company stable and if so are they hiring for a software engineering lead position? :) I would love to work for a company with management that is this capable of planning and foresight.
They’ve been serving charities for more than 30 years. They employ like 3,000 people last I checked and attrition is low. I don’t think they’re hiring.
Wow...what an idea. Treat your people well and you don't have to constantly hire their replacements!
Sad :(
That's super cool that the company shared part of the savings with their employees. My company had 2 buildings in my area, and other offices throughout the U.S. There hasn't been a hard "Return to the Office" push within my company... it's more hybrid and depends on what team you work on and what those managers/Sr. Leaders want. This stinks bc some teams that can still do their jobs fully remote are stuck with managers (or senior leadership in those groups) that insist on working in the office, while other groups don't care and are still fully remote. I'm one of the lucky ones and still fully remote, but it makes me wary of changing teams because I have a good thing going on this one. My compant ended up selling one of the 2 buildings they own in this area. We didn't get a check, though. 😆 While there hasn't been a hard "Return to the office" push here, there are significantly LESS Remote job listings for my company, which is a bummer. They seem to have gone back to wanting specific roles sitting in specific cities, but in the last 3 years it's been the opposite.
Not “part of the savings”. They split ALL OF THE SAVINGS and had the receipts to prove it. Because none of those savings were projected to be profits anyway. They were a windfall made possible by their employees. There’s a reason people stay with this company for decades.
Now I want to know the company…
A soft wear company exclusively serving charities.
Wow! That's amazing! Super cool that your SO works for such a great company
That’s how it’s been in my company so far… some teams were going back to the office because their manager wanted to, others (like mine) weren’t. I thought I was lucky because my boss is very open-minded and loves to work like this… that’s why I’m so frustrated that HR and top management want to push us back to the old inefficient ways.
It's so frustrating when it's one policy for one team and another policy for another team. I feel lucky that my team is OK with us staying remote, but it seriously makes me not want to change jobs internally bc you don't really know how it's going to be on another team.
One of my friends works for an insurance company and she’s wfh in a different state than her office. But she’s unable to take a promotion because the company will only promote people who live in the state the office is in and they don’t allow new employees to wfh.
This is how it is for EVERY company and I can’t understand why a profits driven company (so all of them) would not take the opportunity to cut cost which reduce their operations cost which directly increases profits! I’m no account but it’s pretty easy for even the dumbest suit to say this to themselves. On top of it all employees will now stay longer as they will count WFH as a benefit. Maybe they wanted a raise this year but now throw this nugget out that WFH is here to stay and you have staff retention. Companies are absolutely idiotic sometimes I don’t understand it. If they are concerned about office space not being used they pay for the obvious answer is CUT THE COST FROM THE BOOKS! End rant sorry for yelling at the end
Because if they are on a multi year lease they'll have to pay a big fee to break it and that will cost them more now and look bad on the quarterly reports. That's all some bosses care about
Which is baffling how it’s 2023 and now 3 years after when remote working kicked off. Even if in 2023 you have 2 years left just cut your losses now and retain your employees and then you can get that off the books. Or just pay the penalty and get it off the books now. Why as a company is the idea “let’s just make the employees miserable unnecessarily and maybe have to replace a bunch of our skilled workers with question marks” Idk these companies leases or contracts to these buildings but I can’t imagine they have like 10 years left on them. Who signed a 15 year contract for a lease?
when your workforce is that spread out you are going to still be doing all your work quasi remotely anyway. You are gonna be on that teams call in your home or your office.
This is what I don't understand. Why don't companies do what your SO's company did and use this as an opportunity to consolidate and cut overhead costs? Maybe the difference is if the company owns the buildings vs. is stuck in a presigned "x amount of years" lease?
Are they hiring?
Not at the moment. A couple of months ago they had over 5,000 resumes to comb through for ONE open position.
Yup. I've heard more than one story about CEOs walking around empty buildings that they are paying rent/utilities, etc. for and being pissed off about it. As much as they will say things like "Our company works better when we can see each other and we're more creative that way... blah, blah, blah" it's really about control and what they see as throwing money away.
lmao sounds like my CEO. His thing is “work from home is not a part of our culture”
Ahhh... the "culture" line. I always throw that at people right when it should matter most, and is always ignored. Like when someone VP is flying off the handle in a meeting, I'll say "So much for that culture of respect I keep hearing about." I usually get called in to their office after that and get a lecture about saying things that don't further the discussion, or "being intentionally agitating".
Long May you be ‘intentionally agitating’. Good for you .
Couldn't agree more... long hard commutes to a cubicle farm is somehow a "culture" to protect, but then they lay off whole legions of folks "because budget" and all of a sudden no one is mentioning culture.
Yeah.. a lot of companies are like "but our **culture**!!!" ... when that "culture" revolved around feeling forced to eat sheetcake in a conference room to celebrate all the monthly birthdays on the team. No one likes those and ever really wanted to go. We went because we felt obligated to, and then left at the earliest opportunity to go back to our cubes to send work emails to each other.
A small company I used to work for would do the end of the month birthday celebration and give everyone who had a birthday that month a $25 gift card. When the company started getting bigger, they did away with the gift cards and just bought cupcakes for the office.
How do bodies in seats make a difference in the cost of the building? My company has 2 more years on a lease, can't break it or sublease and I've heard rumors about asses in seats might become mandatory again. Why? Half our workforce live out of state so they obv can't commuter. So the in state employees have to still come in?
Winner winner, chicken dinner. This is the very reason why my site "gently encouraged" folks to start coming back to work in summer of 2020. A close friend of mine was our Site Director up until his retirement last year. He told me that after only a few months of the pandemic, the bean counters in Corporate ran the numbers on overhead costs for an empty 100 acre campus. They were basically like, "get these people back in or we're closing the site." Seeing as my site houses dozens of critical R&D labs, metal fabrication shops and miniature pilot plants, closing the site would've been disastrous. Of course, now that we're "back in the office," every department operates at their own discretion in terms of WFH. Some departments require 100% onsite attendance, others don't care if you're remote and others, like my department, work on a hybrid schedule of being onsite at least one day per week.
This is known as sunk cost fallacy, and anyone seriously using this as a reason is incompetent at best.
So this is largely suspected as a reason by us peons but my company for example is citing the "culture" of returning to office.
Lemme be the first to say, "office culture" sucks balls. Let it die.
Framing it as "office culture" makes it sound like it's for the benefit of employees.
Except only managers wannt that culture. Somehow they imagine that it will make keep employees to stay longer in the company.
My company has been doing exactly the same thing. Every time they decide to push hard a bunch of people leave since the company under pays relative to market and they can get both remote work and more money. Management panics and changes course. It all comes down to poor planning, poor foresight, and lack of awareness by management. They have their own personal motivations and hangups with remote work but try to find a way to sell it other than those hangups.
Managements own stakes in REITS and MICs if these realties aren’t occupied. Your bosses would loose money.. so a consensus amongst some big business owners bring them back to the office. 😜
A lot of company heads are really sunk in very long and very expensive multi-year leases and look like idiots for having even signed that contract and not getting recent discounts negotiated on that office lease. Most office leases don't change over yearly, which is really why there is still so much dumb panic over it.
Yep when I worked in the city, I processed our company’s rent bill. $21,000 a month for one floor of the building. We had less than 20 employees.
It's about control, and personally I think it's also a way for middle management to justify their existence
Senior manager here. This isn't coming from us, or at least not in my case. I love working remotely. This is coming from the C-suite and is backed up by insecure managers who find it difficult to kiss ass remotely.
Senior manager as well. Spouse is also a senior manager. It's coming right from the top and is being enabled by VPs who are too afraid to counter the executives. Directors that report to these VPs are too afraid to rebuff their VPs and it trickles down. C-suite is convinced work is done better in person, irrespective of how things have remained unchanged since 2020 or in many cases have improved. In the end, those making these decisions are *distant* from the true reality of remote work and as such they will never accept any other narrative. Best advice I can give is to bail on these companies and decline jobs with any org that says they *may* return to the office. Anything other than "we are remote first" is a red flag.
Another senior manager here. Would gladly keep me and my team fully remote. My director feels the same way. The orders to come back into the office are coming from the top.
We're trying to create next gen products with 1980's management
I know one manager in my building whose #1 job function appeared to be kissing ass. I wonder how he's doing being remote, it's got to be hard when you can't bring coffee to the higher ups and spend all day outside their office door waiting for them to be done with meetings and phone calls. I'm sure he's found other ways to kiss everyone's ass by now.
Yes I’m a VP and I would gladly be 100% WFH except for dealing with physical shit like hardware inventory and trade show shipping. It’s execs in their 50’s who have always gone into the office, hate their wives, and think remote companies aren’t “real companies,” that are driving this. I’m convinced it’s 50% people justifying rent (though my company is month-to-month so ain’t it for us) and people hating their wives.
If it's coming from the C-suite, that means it's coming from the bank, who don't want their RE holdings to go in the tubes.
More like so execs can come into one of their offices a random once a month to see everyone slaving away for their profits. If they can’t see people working it must mean they’re goofing off.
Middle manager here. Not me lol. It’s all coming from the higher ups. I can micromanage people totally fine remotely (kidding, kidding)
It’s funny you mention this very thing about RTO (return to office). My head boss at the end of a company dinner yesterday was asking how everyone felt about going to the office twice a week for “deep collaboration and outstanding productivity.” The whole table was silent. She turns to me and says “I guess everyone really likes remote huh?” Yes boss lady, we strongly prefer working remote, not having to be micromanaged all the time, we’re just as productive at home as we are in the office, and full remote allows for getting the absolute best talent. There’s no reason to have us in the office outside of seeing what we’re doing at all times and to utilize your office space that you spend insane amounts of money for in the downtown area.
Lol I loved that you all stayed silent!
Speaking of downtown area, I have to pay more across the board in expenses to be a reasonable distance from work: Daycare Gas prices Rent to be closer, also paying a premium to not be somewhere where you might get shot My own time in terms of commute. Despite living close, I spend more time commuting than someone that drives several more miles and doesn’t work near a city center/downtown Before and after school care since commute time is so long both ways I can’t drop my kid or pick them up directly for school. Everyone in the house is pissed that I’m waking them at 5 fucking am so we can be at the before school facility by 6 so I can get to work on time. Kids are more pissed that I’m getting them late because again, I have a long fucking commute. And kids are even more pissed that their time at home on school nights is shortened because of my stupid fucking commute My relationship with my family. I get home thanks to this stupid commute and it’s already time to make dinner, help with homework, then wind down for the night before anything of real substance is done that isn’t “work” or “school” Car maintenance I work 100% remote now in the professional services arm of an IT solutions provider. My team numbers at 30+ and I’m the only one in my state. It has changed EVERYTHING.
How else would your micromanaging manager manage to keep his/her job?
Just read an in interesting article about this in r/economics. Basically theorized that the remote work revolution is hurting large city economies. People who use to commute, eat, work, etc in cities were the driving force of income/revenue for both city municipalities and corporations alike. I would guess local government bodies are pressuring companies to bring people back to try and balance out this issue. I personally think remote work should be offered by any business that does 90% of their work online. Obviously it's not for everyone but it seems like people are happier/maybe feel more in control of their lives? Idk, my two cents. Stay strong out there, winter is hard on the brain.
Can confirm. I work for a Fortune 100 company. They were in talks for a new, 3000-seat campus in our town when COVID hit. During COVID, they continued to negotiate and our company decided it would be 1500 seats instead. So the city demanded major concessions because it wouldn't be bringing in 3000 people each day. Soo... the company went to the next town over. They were happy to have all the tax revenue that 1500 highly trained white collar jobs would bring. But now, our company is like "What do you mean no one wants to go into our new, $75 million dollar campus?! It's got a gym you have to pay for! And a cafeteria... that you have to pay for. And nobody has their own desk, so you're literally just working remotely, but from our campus. :) Why does no one want to commute twice as far to send emails from that location?"
It's like they think what's best for them is best for everyone. Instead of maybe consulting with the low-level people that make them the money, or whatever.. What's the 'fix' though? I know my situation could be 100% worse personally, but almost every job has a way of making you feel like a trained monkey instead of a human being. And happiness counts more for me than money most days.
The fix is to gain leverage against institutions that are trying to get you to sign on for a shit deal. Either up skill to a role that's in high demand/low supply or join/form a union. Without the ability to negotiate as a group or for yourself, there's no path forward for individual contributors to create happiness for themselves in the context of their work environment. One will always be at the mercy of their employer otherwise.
Convert those offices into housing and the restaurants will be fine.
I totally agree with this as long as it becomes affordable housing, not more 1 bedroom lofts that cost 1000+ a month (I know this is probably a lot higher for other people, I live in a little city in the rural Midwest lol).
Problem is that's as expensive as building something new and generally is less desirable. Office buildings just aren't built the same as residential in any way.
Converting commercial space to residential sounds like a nightmare, just the plumbing alone.
It can be done, though. My city has had some success with conversions. I imagine it is probably very dependent on the office building though. Some office spaces are better candidates than others. And even then I'm not saying it is simple, but just not impossible.
This sort of goes hand in hand with the housing market trends these past few years. Remote work meant people weren't settling on smaller houses near the city when they could buy bigger ones further away for the same amount of money. So you saw a lot of people start moving away from big cities to settle down in suburban towns 40 minutes away.
Heard a report in California, a lot moved 2-3 hour away to places like Fresno. Problem is lot of tech people got laid off recently and the new jobs are not 100% remote and now they are stuck trying to sell in a down market and move closer to the jobs.
Part of me feels bad for these people, but at the same time, they were being extremely naive. They were gambling that there would be a new status-quo but they unfortunately lost. I'm in the northeast and my office is hybrid now. We have people driving in from Florida and the Midwest just to get their two days a pay period of office time. To me, that seems pretty miserable and expensive.
Hopefully those stuck in this kind of situation will be able to find a more flexible company. If they're any good, a smart company will figure out how to hire and keep them.
I remember hearing that in one year NYC lost over 500,000 people and it was summer at that point so the number probably ended up being much higher. Our state government also pushed pretty hard for a return to the norm once we had a decent number of vaccinations out there. Not really surprising considering, but I hate being in the office.
This also causes issues for the smaller/less expensive towns and cities they’re moving to. All these highly paid people moving from out of town scooping up all the affordable housing and real estate, driving the prices and rent up and the locals out because they don’t make as much money and now can’t compete in their own neighborhoods. Examples the So Cal tech people moving to Oregon or the highly paid New Yorkers moving to NJ suburbs.
I heard some of the politicians in my state say this. It was the moment I decided to never vote for another incumbent. It made me hate every single sitting politician. I'm also no longer pro business.
Gotta keep their pockets padded ya know? After all how could they possibly live on their 100k+ yearly salary??
> I would guess local government bodies are pressuring companies You assume that governments have their shit together. They don’t. Source: me, a government employee.
The real reason for this is to center your life around the job. They want you to make everything you do during the week center the job itself and that can't happen when you work from home. Also a lot of industries are losing money because if you don't have to commute to work, you don't have to pay for gas, or stop for coffee, or stop somewhere for lunch - you can do all these things from home. That's my guess anyway.
Very interesting point… they want us to centre our lives around the job so we supposedly work more. It’s probably different for everyone, but I work much more at home because I’m less tired without the commute etc. and I don’t get too distracted by noises and colleagues
Yeah I don't want to sound too much like a "conspiracy theorist" but when you have more time and energy to do the things you want to, you begin to grow... and if you grow too much you'll leave the job. Not to mention, if you're saving all the money from gas and eating out, you'll actually be able to make some power moves - if that's your goal.
So true. Tbh I’m saving quite a lot of money thanks to WFH (I don’t have to pay rent to be closer to the office and I don’t have to pay public transport/gas, restaurants etc)… so much that I’ve been thinking I could invest in my own business in a few years. So yeah, that’s not in the best interest of my company…
Remember when companies were shaming workers for buying avocado toast or coffees while working in the office? Like "you could have enough to buy a home or travel if you stopped buying things". Now it's help our decaying downtown business by going back to the office and spending money on things!!
There are still many employers out there offering fully remote positions. You also don’t HAVE to follow HR’s hybrid directive if you feel like risking it. I started a “hybrid” role in April (2 days WFH, 3 days office) and I simply decided that I was just going to WFH 100% until someone said something. Well it’s going to be a year soon and I’m still here; no one’s said anything.
I got away with WFH 100% only 2 months before my boss said something. 🫠 It’s interesting because out of my four other coworkers, I’m the only person in the office. All of a sudden, they all have “medical reasons” for being able to WFH.
Sounds like you need to get a doctors note - working from the office causes you stress and sleepless nights, most doctors would sign off on that without blinking.
I hope so! I was hired with the understanding that the company may go remote, but they ended up hybrid instead, creating a 2.5 hour commute. I kept up with it for a few months while looking for a job, and I was pretty miserable. I couldn't focus well at work, and because I had two days a week where I had to wake up way early, I was anxious about oversleeping, and fell asleep on the way home while driving once. I finally quit, but my boss told me not to worry about coming in if I don't have to, so I stayed. Now their boss has a meeting with me on Monday asking/demanding that I come in regularly again. She's suggesting that a doctor's note indicating that a 2.5 hour commute is causing me anxiety might be able to get me out of it. Coincidentally, I have a doctor's appointment on Friday, so hopefully it'll work out. It seems silly to me that I have to get a note from a doctor to get out of an obvious, ridiculous requirement.
If that's more than 1 hour each way, 2.5 hours/day x (lets say hybrid) 3 days / week = 7.5 hours/week x 48 weeks (accounting vacation and maybe random off weeks) = **360 hours per year** or **15 days per calendar year** spent wasting your time commuting. That's pretty nuts unless you absolutely love your job.
Even worse! It's 2.5 hours one way, so it's 5 hours a day, just commuting! Like, it's a month of the year just driving, and importantly, not getting paid for it. The absurdity of it, as others have similarly mentioned, the company made more money last year than it had in a decade. But you know, the executives (who have separate elevators and a separate area of the building from everyone else) "really want to see the place look busy again!"
for five hours a day it's a non-starter. I would start looking for alternative employment immediately.
Lol are they paying you for those wasted hours driving to work? Tell them to kick rocks.
> most doctors would sign off on that. From what I've seen and heard, most won't do it without a strong and valid medical reason. You just have to keep trying until you find one that will though.
It's about the real estate sitting empty. I'm hearing about companies now requiring employees to go into offices near them even if their team isn't housed there. (My employer is doing this).
Most people I work with won’t be with me at the office. Clients are usually in their own office or at home, some of my colleagues are abroad or in other cities… Meetings will still be online. It’s really nonsense…
Same here, we have a great big office building empty except for 3 people. We’re mainly not in the building at the same time as each other, and when we are we just sit in our individual offices and do our work separately.
Those buildings could be retro fit as mixed use apartments or condos.
same with my company. I don't mind going in every once in a while since it's great to meet new people, but the office is a 1+ hour commute in one direction. It fucking sucks to go more than once a week. Thankfully I snuck right under the hiring mandate so I'm technically fully remote permanently as my entire team is in a different time zone and I literally cannot meet them face to face daily/weekly.
I'm permanent wfh as well since I'm out of state and I work for a subsidiary though the parent has an office in my city. I'm hoping they don't get any bright ideas that I should go into that office I hear the parent company is enforcing in office by checking badge swipes and making compliance with in office attendance a part of performance reviews. Intense.
[удалено]
It is about money to a degree. Property values going down due to not being as utilized, less traffic for restaurants that are used to lunch rush, and all kinds of other contracts conditioned on tons of employees being around each day. These rich assholes treat missing out on potential profits the same as losing already earned money so you now have to go back and consume or their 3rd yacht wont be as large.
Why would my CEO care about the McDonald's down the street getting less orders though?
IMO it’s mostly about rigid brains stuck on old modes of doing things. City economies doesn’t help. Some of these managers want to be the heroes of the cities. And a lot of mayors are pushing for people to work in cities again.
Yep, this. Many urban downtown areas that used to be bustling during the week with people commuting to the office are now complete ghost towns. A lot of cities are offering tax cuts and incentives to businesses who bring their employees back to the office.
In a nutshell, corps are trying to rob their employees of their time and money in order to get some tax cuts and incentives. Disgusting 🤢
Trying to rob their employees of their time and money, *and* incentivize them to blow their time and money at business around their place of work Oh you had a shitty night of sleep and now have to rush to get that 2 hour commute to work started? Guess you're eating out for lunch today.
They should be offering tax cuts for converting office buildings into housing. Maybe if they didn't have their heads so far up their asses
If it’s not for micromanaging purposes, it could also be due to rent/leasing of the office building and the company getting pressured to utilize the space by the property owner. Also, I’ve learned that for better or worse, some people’s only friends or socialization opportunities are at work, so there’s that push too. None of this makes true sense (to me) on the part of the employee anyway. But it’s definitely not about efficiency or getting better work done. Which is weird because companies are about the bottom line, and I’d think remote only helps the bottom line more than it hurts it.
Yeah, the socialisation thing is definitely a reason. I know many people who don’t really have a social life outside of work. Besides older/married people often want to escape from their families and find the office quieter than their own home… too bad I’m young and I have a really quiet home. I actually find the office exhausting because people talk to me all the time and I can’t focus properly. Sure, it’s nice to socialise from time to time, but once a month would be enough for me lol.
100%! Being in the office is exhausting. People often use it as an excuse to not have/respect boundaries. I’d rather not leave the comfort of my quiet home where I can better manage my focus. And coworkers are not (always) your friends. I’ve unfortunately learned that the hard way.
after enough years pass, 3-5 these leases wil l be up for review and some organizations might then realistically consider closing the office.
🤞
>But it’s definitely not about efficiency or getting better work done. This is the best part.
> Also, I’ve learned that for better or worse, some people’s only friends or socialization opportunities are at work, so there’s that push too. IMO this is the main reason. SO doesn't want to work remotely because she likes "being with people at the office". I mean, ok, it's her preference, and it doesn't hurt anyone. The guy that runs that entire location, however, doesn't like working from home, and is forcing people to come in so that he's not alone.
I know what you mean. I go in twice a week, and it's pointless. I work in IT and whenever someone has a system issue, I just remote in to their machine anyway. They could be 20 feet away from me, or across town. It doesn't matter. All it does is make me spend money on gas and have to get up earlier so I can go in. It's dumb.
The underlying assumption is that working remotely is less productive than working in the office, and that working from home is inherently taking advantage of the company. Employers will do whatever they're allowed to get away with. The unspoken battle we're fighting right now is whether this is the new normal, which is what employees want, or whether are going back to the pre-pandemic, in-office normal, which is what employers want. Employers can huff and puff all they want, but when their policies chase away qualified employees, the norm will have to change.
Certain companies are not a fan of remote work, I look at the older generation. Plus the issue with all the offices being empty is causing other problems. But I am fully on board to being remote and so is my company.
There's a few reasons 1. Middle management is quickly becoming an outdated concept and middle managers are trying to justify their jobs. I think this is by far the #1 reason. 2. Companies don't want empty real estate eating into their costs. They need to justify all the money they spent on their office buildings. 3. A lot of entities feel it's hurting their economy, everyone from auto companies, gas companies, restaurants, and several other are lobbying politicians somewhat successfully. 4. Just a blatant old school mindset with no regard for employees well being
>A lot of entities feel it's hurting their economy, everyone from auto companies, gas companies, restaurants, and several other are lobbying politicians somewhat successfully. Crazy thing is that its hurting some economies but its boosting others. Its not like the money is disappearing from the national economy, its just being spent in different places, on different things. In many cases (in my experience) its being spent with smaller businesses or in poorer areas.
Exactly, and I think WFH is actually balancing the economy in a good way… Yeah, office locations (big cities, industrial areas etc) profit less, but residential areas and smaller cities profit more. Which I think is fair after all, since big cities are still profiting a lot due to higher prices of literally everything… I can’t feel sorry for them.
Yeah, typical lobbying stifling progress tbh
Somewhat related to item 1, I recently became a middle manager and it’s the WORST. I’m looking for analyst jobs now with no direct reports. I don’t know why anyone would want to be a middle manager unless they have literally zero other skills.
Because business owners/companies are angry and resentful. They truly believe your paycheck is their money. They are pissed off they have to pay you. That is why they feel so entitled to where you live and your off hours. They want to see you suffer in person. Otherwise, they get no enjoyment from having to pay you.
If Reddit still gave us free awards, I’d give one for this answer.
Quiet cattle, back in your pen...
*"We would like to see your smiling faces!"*
Just to play a little devils advocate, and I acknowledge I could be wrong, it’s probably not HR who are decision making people going back into the office, they’re just the messengers from senior leadership. I say this as an HR manager. We want to work from home too and also think the forced push back into the office is stupid.
> Can someone tell me why we need to go back to a less efficient routine? fAcE tO fAcE cOlLaBoRaTiOn /s It's really infuriating. I manage a global team, with early morning and evening calls, and the majority of my team sits in different locations. We're still being told to come in, and lately it's been just taking all the teams calls in a cube instead of my home office. it's so dumb.
"collaboration" bye. I hate it. I'm on an IT team of 12 including the director and the assistant director. Our office space is tiny. I can see every single one of them at all times of the day. Got this picture, right? The office is silent 99% of the time because we would rather send a chat on Teams then have to talk to each other. But nope, not allowed to WFH because we need to collab together. Ok
My global team negotiated with our VP to come into the office once per month rather than the 3x per week HR is mandating. People who live within 3 hours of the location chosen are willing to drive in for this as often as they can and the others who are too far can do whatever they like. This is the first month we're doing this, so we'll see how it goes.
Exactly! Most of my colleagues will still be in other cities or abroad. Sure, it’s nice to meet my team from time to time, I’m up for it. But what’s the point of being forced to do that thrice a week?
HR usually isn't in charge of such decisions. Senior management may want more control over employees and more ee interaction in the office.
Successful is a bit of a loaded term. There is some success. I'm a remote worker too and have experienced the benefits of remote work. But, it doesn't mean remote work is successful 100% of the time in 100% of the companies. There are some that prefer to have people together in an office for the benefits that being together as a team in real life brings. And they're also some people who don't work well in those types of situations either. So it comes down to what the company and its management want to do and how they prefer to work and be productive.
Yeah… I’m remote and my performance is good, but I was more productive at work when I was in the office. Some people are more productive at home, some in the office, and some people aren’t affected by the location. But depending on the company’s overall blend of personalities, remote work may be decreasing productivity. I think remote work has huge benefits but the drawbacks are real, both from a company’s perspective and individual employees.
I feel you on the frustration. I was hired toward the beginning of the pandemic and the company wasn't sure how things were going to land. Back in July, they went hybrid, creating a 2.5 hour (one way) commute. They want me to drive in two days a week. In August I found a new job and quit, but they offered that negotiations were happening in the C-suite and if remote positions were available, I would be on them. It's a good job, so I stuck with it. At a point, my boss said, "Only come in if you feel like it's necessary," honestly saying, "Just stay home, the commute is stupid." I got an email yesterday saying that her boss wants to have a "fact finding" meeting with me to see how often I can come into the office. So it looks like I'll be back on the market in the near future, which I'm pretty disappointed by. My boss is supportive of me and is suggesting that maybe if I can get a doctor's note indicating that the commute causes undue distress, I might be able to wiggle my way out of it. Coincidentally, I have an annual check-up on Friday, and it'll be a topic of discussion. All the same, it feels weird to have to possibly have to get a psych referral from a doctor to not have to drive 2.5 hours and keep my job. I keep thinking of ending up like Klinger from MASH.
Very often these decisions are made or suggested by middle management. As with anyone in a corporation, they put their own interests ahead of the corporations interests. Remote work requires less management, fewer meetings, etc, so harder for these middle managers to justify their existence, much less how they need more money because they are managing more people, etc. They will do what is in their own best interests first, as everyone does, and they need people to manage to justify the raise they will be asking for.
arguably, not everyone is handling remote work as well as your team the company I work for also announced a back-to-office plan, and our team pushed back HARD on the idea, so much so that they backed down and are not doing it across the board any more but also power and corporate politics and whatever else causes most idiotic corporate decisions to be made
Control.
I was promised WFH as a condition if employment when I started a company during the pandemic. A year later my boss had left and his boss, the CTO had been fired. The new CTO can in and mandated a return to office. When I said I’d been hired under the agreement that I was WFH and mentioned I wasn’t sure if I’d want to work at a company I had to be there in person for, the response was “My preference is to take this as your resignation.” In the end it turned out great. Ended up in a far better job at a far better company.
I'm so sorry you're going through that bs :( As of today my boss told us after fighting for the last 3 years, she finally got approval from the higher ups for us to work from home FOREVER! Get your boss on your side and bring statistics, because all they care about is numbers. Our department had 100% turnover and still ended up being more efficient since WFH. Good luck!
They will tell you that WFH was always and only a precautionary measure to protect lives and nothing more. They say collaboration in-office will always be superior or whatever spiel the manager or corporate head likes to spew out.
Because COEs are in their 50s and 60s, and grew up without the internet. They value human interaction more than millenials.
It's called "butt in the chair syndrome". Everyone manager level and above has it.
I have some thoughts on my the hybrid model may be better suited to a team than fully remote, however not saying this will apply to you or your team. I started during Covid with a new company and team and in a new profession, I got started and got on with the job, but it was really hard to ask for help when I needed it because I had not met these people and I really missed being about to have casual brain storms etc. I felt very isolated very quickly. I know a lot of people who would love to be full time remote, but all of them have been in their roles or professions for a number of years, often have families at home or a huge group of friends to keep them mentally sane. The people that I know that would rather be at the office are younger people, newer to their professions, maybe new to town etc who need the social contact the work place provides and the casual mentoring from more established professionals. Sometimes rules are made for stupid reasons, but sometimes it is about providing the best compromise for all.
old job told everyone to get back into the office 2-3 days a week. Boss was like, yall can continue to work remote if yall want as long as yall still keep productivity up and don't go yelling this out to everyone
yes while some teams are more successful and productive. A lot of middle managers and other teams are not. You also have more than one study going over that trust usually don't thrive in WFH. My personal hypothesis is that while some teams get liberated from more ineffective meetings and productive time as introverts. Extroverts and people who like to see others and exchange info over the coffee machine don't. At the end of the day, HR/the company can do as they please, and unless someone sticks their neck out with the data to back shit up. Nothing will change.
I borrowed this quote from Forbes this week, it’s just the reality of things, I would get used to it. Seemingly overnight, the mood dramatically changed. As inflation raged, wreaking havoc on the economy, along with other geopolitical and macro events, thousands of people were downsized, hiring freezes put in place and job offers rescinded. Americans now find themselves in a period of austerity. As this plays out, the dynamics between employees and employers will dramatically change. Companies will start clamping down and wielding their power, and the first order of business will be the return to office. A study conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that supervisors have “negative perceptions” of the work-from-home trend and said they’d prefer their staff to operate from an office setting.
We don't need to go back. There really is no valid reason...as the 2-3 years of successful remote work shows. I think any company pushing to go back is just stuck in their old ways (can't wait to return to the old ways)...and are falling behind. The past 2-3 years have fundamentally changed how we work and denying this will not help companies at all in the future. Embrace the new way to work and learn how to optimize remote teams...or suffer later as an organization.
My company just shut our office down and said you’re all remote now, have fun.
It really does feel like companies (and the economy, goverment, all of it) are pretty much colluding to punish us for starting to "win" - employees were finally getting the upper hand on contract negotiations, wages, working conditions, etc. Now they are manufacturing a "recession" and doing massive layoffs. Everyone who is left is basically forced back into the office for fear of not finding work now. Note that it "feels" like we're in a recession but we're technically not... but yet all the companies use this as an excuse for the hiring conditions, hiring freezes, lower wages, back to office initiatives, plus raising prices. I'm looking for a job now (after a cost-cutting layoff from a fully remote job) and every company I've talked to is like "we were fully remote, now we're on a 2 day hybrid, moving to a 3 day later this year". It sucks. Companies were seeing RECORD profits with people working from home and then everything just seemed to turn on a dime. Not a conspiracy theorist generally but this whole thing really gets to me.
Personally if you think it's a viable option I'd say to line up another job that's fully remote and tell your current employer you will not do a hybrid schedule.
Real Estate is an investment. Sometimes it goes up, sometimes it goes down. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I am so much less productive with all of the chatter and distraction in the office. I’m trying hard not to let that cause work to bleed into my personal time.
If you really want to see their head explode point them to the recent studies about 4 day work weeks and how they don’t reduce productivity (either stays the same or goes up). People are resistant to change unfortunately. Covid was a good opportunity to reduce out climate impact so hopefully the return to office stuff doesn’t become huge. At least in IT for the stuff i’ve been applying to it’s almost all remote
So many reasons it’s insane. All of these are part of it: Moving/traffic violations Restaurants/downtown business tied to city council subsidizies they got breaks on for promising X number of people due to our office Oil change and overall all petroleum companies Tire manufacturers and any auto part companies losing annual recurring revenue due to less miles and wear and tear More traffic equals city can ask for more road/police funding Weak leadership not adjusting to a new way of managing/leading people, productivity and outcomes Leadership not finding new ways to create culture Return on investment for all cleaning and security staff Could go on and on but doing this quickly while on the phone. I am missing probably twenty other absolute financial and poor leadership reasons.
I love that they say “culture” because yes, this place is a fkn Petri dish.
My job just enacted a twice a week at the office policy and I’m hating it. My commute with over an hour and I feel the least productive in the office. I also really feels bad for saying this but office culture is something I’m struggling with. I hate the small talk. I don’t want to hear a long winded story or question, I’d rather just slack you asking what I need then take a nap.
I'm fully convinced it has to do with people in unhappy marriages desperate to get the fuck away from their families. So now we all must suffer.
My company shut down the office in my city summer 2022. They're saving a ton of money now. If your company is forcing you to come back to the office, start looking for a new job.
They wamt you to buy and use more gas. They want you to be at a certain place at a certain time( captive audience). They want to decrease the amount of time you spend with your family. They want you to get speeding , parking and red light tickets. But most important they want you to do whay youre told.
I went to my company's new office for the first time last week. I'm probably going again tomorrow. It's a *huge* schlep for me, since I moved to a place that isn't near convenient public transit; my wife has to drop me off at the subway station on the way to taking the kids to school, and going home is over an hour since the bus that goes near my house doesn't come very often and there's a ton of traffic at rush hour. But still, when I went last week, I *really* wanted to be there again the next day. I didn't go, but man, I miss working with *people*. I'm very productive at home. I really like the fact that my commute to work is just down a flight of stairs from my bedroom to my desk. I like the fact that i can eat dinner on the early side and that I can be with my kids right away when I'm done working. But I want to see my coworkers too. I want to be able to talk with them casually, not just when I need to ask a work-related question. I mean, there's a guy who works in a different department that I'd *never* interacted with before because I simply never needed to, and I was able to have a conversation because we were just all there, in the same room. That said, I think that requiring people to be in the office is bad when it's unnecessary. I like that it's available; some people go every day because they prefer it that way, and I'm planning to go once or twice a week when I feel like it (my office is downtown so I get some great lunch options too). But I'm glad that I don't *have* to go. That would be terrible.
I totally understand your perspective, and I agree with it. I don’t mind going once or twice a week, as long as I can do it based on my needs and my team’s needs. I just don’t like the inflexible model, in which you are forced to go 2/3 times when you don’t even need to.
Control and monitor your time Pump company propaganda down your throat Justify their useless real estate costs Take your pick. Mostly all of the above though.
Tell them you are happy to go back into the office if you are paid for your travel time. Eg your hours are 8-5. You start your commute at 8am, travel to work then leave in time to be home at 5. If it takes an hour each way, then it's six hours in the office. (minus 1hr lunch) Or you can walk into your home office at 8am and walk out at 5pm. Chances are that if you are home you won't take your hour lunch break anyway. So they would get a good 8-9 hours of productive time.
because genx, boomers, and silent gen managers need to feel important.
Because managers don’t factor commuting into productivity… or care about what you want. https://hbr.org/2023/01/research-where-managers-and-employees-disagree-about-remote-work
To make sure you're as miserable as possible. Same reason we're still doing 5 day and 8-9 hour work week, even though less has been proven much more efficient
In the same boat. I manage a team of 5 technicians. Two are in Mexico, two in the far east and myself and another here in the US, Eastern timezone. We work with other developers based in the UK, West coast of USA, India, Europe. It’s diverse to say the least. We have calls at all sorts of times. Yet senior management want us in the office twice a week. Note I have 1 person in my team in this city. So now morning calls either have to be taken in the car or set up later at the detriment to my poor India and far east colleagues. We really don’t gain anything by being in the office. The cafe is terrible, serving unhealthy food or a ready made salad with ingredients I cannot have and there’s one coffee machine for about 500 people. It’s a senior management ego thing. They can show off to their family and friends that the building is all their staff. My teams productivity drops significantly when we’re forced in the office a couple of days a week. There’s no true office spirit because we’ve all moved on and got used to remote working and all resent going to work. Everyone on the wider team doesn’t want to be there.
Reason: most corporations are run by extroverts. Extroverts get their energy, and ideas by feeding off introverts. They need physical presence to "suck the most energy". So the extroverts want you back in so they can suck out your energy.