[HN Gopher] 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-offi... ___________________________________________________________________ 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans Author : pg_1234 Score : 117 points Date : 2023-08-11 20:52 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com) | NullPrefix wrote: | >We will be one of those 20% companies | lnsru wrote: | My brilliant manager still has his home office day during team | meeting. So the whole team sits with headsets on their desks and | talks to the manager who's sitting at home. That's how return to | the office plan works for the peasants. Good that I am leaving | soon. | [deleted] | pengaru wrote: | > Good that I am leaving soon. | | I get the impression the manager is thinking the same thing. | kzrdude wrote: | In that situation we would use a meeting room. The dynamic | would make the manager feel like they are the outsider in that | case, though. | dylan604 wrote: | They literally are the outsider in that case though | wildrhythms wrote: | You seem to think these managers have even a shred of self- | awareness... | sharts wrote: | Rule #1 for effective management from any reputable ivy | league executive MBA program is to have less self-awareness | than any of your subordinates. | ahi wrote: | The passive aggressive fix for this is to meet in the | conference room and put him on the big screen. In the before | times I worked on teams with just 1 or 2 remote and this | practice was (unintentionally) awful for them. | justrealist wrote: | Make sure to mutter whenever possible, and make all decisions | via 1-1 asides. | | If possible, have a whiteboard way at the back of the room | where it's visible but incomprehensible. | | And order food! Have some cookies, croissants, pizza | delivered right as the meeting starts. | dmoy wrote: | > If possible, have a whiteboard way at the back of the | room where it's visible but incomprehensible. | | Bonus points if it's at a steep angle from the camera, | making only one side of it slightly comprehensible, as the | other side diminishes into unreadable scribbles | dylan604 wrote: | >And order food! Have some cookies, croissants, pizza | delivered right as the meeting starts. | | as if the snacks one has in their own home are so | undesirable that this is the compelling factor. such a good | post left on such a weak point. | justrealist wrote: | The indignity of getting excluded from free cake is not | an economic calculus. | | Lots of people could go to the grocery store and buy | themselves a sheet cake. They don't. | adamkf wrote: | Here's the quote from the [actual | whitepaper](https://envoy.com/wp- | content/uploads/2023/08/Workplace_Data_...) from Envoy that this | article references: | | > 80% of executives say they would have approached their | company's return-to-office strategy differently if they had | access to workplace data to inform their decision-making. | | Envoy's not exactly an unbiased source here, since they sell | software to collect this data. | sebastianconcpt wrote: | Things like this are starting to feel like they are requesting | for people to Quiet Quit and jump jobs. | hackitup7 wrote: | The problem that I've observed is that far too many bosses made | their decisions about remote based on emotion, despite the fact | that it is incredibly obviously a decision that should be made | based on logic. | | Not saying that one answer was right or wrong. Just that it has | shocked me to hear otherwise smart people using subjective | emotional decision making on this topic, when it's so clearly | just an economic / incentive decision. | curo wrote: | Fyi, CNBC (a news site) is citing a figure in a white paper by | Envoy, an employee analytics platform, that leaders regret not | having more employee analytics. | | > "73% workplace leaders believe that easier access to data would | enable them to drive smarter decisions about their space, | programs, and policies... " | | > "80% of executives say they would have approached their | company's return-to-office strategy differently if they had | access to workplace data to inform their decision-making. | | Here's the source: | | https://envoy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Workplace_Data_... | dumpsterlid wrote: | [dead] | evantbyrne wrote: | I was recently offered a long-term contract job that was double | anything I would expect my salary to be. Why? Because the company | instituted a policy of not hiring new remote employees. So the | workaround to get the help they need is to hire contractors that | aren't beholden to silly employee policies. | itronitron wrote: | >> The sunk cost of unused office space has been a major factor | in companies' decisions to change their RTO approach, says | Kacher. | | I'm not sure that the author, or the company executives, know | what a sunk cost is. Just to clarify, since there is a younger | generation on HN now, 'sunk cost' is something you have spent | money on that you can't get back. | | The 'sunk cost fallacy' is the mistaken belief that you have to | use a resource you have already spent money on (sunk cost into). | mschuster91 wrote: | > I'm not sure that the author, or the company executives, know | what a sunk cost is. Just to clarify, since there is a younger | generation on HN now, 'sunk cost' is something you have spent | money on that you can't get back. | | Depending on how long your office lease runs - and many run | 5-10 years - it _effectively is_ sunk cost because, short of a | bankruptcy, you can 't get out of that super expensive office | space that's now sitting 80%+ empty if you don't find some | other sucker willing to sublet from you. Best case is you find | someone with a sublease, but with a heavy discount so all | you're getting from that is a bit lower running cost. | zuminator wrote: | I'm not quite seeing your point. Are you saying the article's | usage is inconsistent with the meaning of sunk cost? In some | cases companies have multi-year leases for office space that is | drastically underutilized due to WFH. Does that not count as a | sunk cost in your opinion? It's true rent is paid on an ongoing | prorated basis but to quote from Investopedia, "Sunk costs also | cover certain expenses that are committed but yet to [be] | paid." [0] | | Like I said, maybe I'm just missing the point you're making? | | [0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sunkcost.asp | | (edit: upon posting I see others have already raised this | question) | suprjami wrote: | The sunk cost fallacy is that you should _continue_ spending | money on something you 've already spent money on. | | Make a bad expensive investment but give it up and move on? | That's fine. | | Make a bad expensive investment then keep pouring money into it | because you've already spent so much and can't throw away all | this money now? That's the sunk cost fallacy. | [deleted] | downWidOutaFite wrote: | I think a lot of weak tech leaders took their RTO clues from | Elon. When Elon took over twitter he started a very successful | anti-programmer propaganda campaign, calling us spoiled, overly | pampered, overly paid, etc. | ChuckMcM wrote: | I had lunch, not too long ago, with a senior executive of a | silicon valley tech company that was moaning about how much of a | pain it was to get people to come into the office and how it felt | like things would never return to the way they were. And I told | them I actually knew of a way to get 100% of their employees to | return to the office happily. When they asked what this magic | bullet was I said, "Go back to offices, with doors." | | It isn't that complicated. Even if you have to work out of your | bedroom when you are home you can close your door and focus, that | just isn't the same in open plan office space. | phpisthebest wrote: | Yes, if you want to return to office... I better have an | office. Not a desk in a "modern open collaboration space" or | what every they used to call them | rabuse wrote: | The "everything is loud as fuck and echoes" area is the term. | Headphones required all hours. | toomuchtodo wrote: | I get to have lunch with my partner every day and see them when | I take breaks working from home. That'll never happen at an | office, and it's more valuable than any comp to me. I would not | entertain on site even at 500k/year (legit offer from a high | frequency trading firm in Chicago for an infosec cloud/iam | engineer role). I can always make more money, and I only need | so much to live well, but I have a finite amount of time and | I'm spending the time I have left wisely. | | https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html | kneebonian wrote: | Not going to lie spending some "quality time" with my wife | during the middle of the work day has been pretty freaking | awesome and a very hard perk to cap. | rabuse wrote: | I'm the same with this. Both and me my partner work remote, | and we spend so much more quality time together, and are able | to take breaks with each other. I can't see giving that up. | cableshaft wrote: | That might get more people back to the office, but still | probably not the majority of them. I have a 1-2 hour commute | each way to the office. I did it for three weeks while I was | not staffed on a project, but as soon as I got staffed on | another project I stopped going to the office. | | My commute sucks, the office environment is way inferior to my | home, and the lack of flexibility sucks. The only thing I | looked forward to while I was commuting was trying out a new | restaurant in the big city for lunch. I was practically pulling | my hair out of boredom the last two hours every day (had work I | could and did somewhat do, but I could no longer focus on it | because I was so sick of the office). | | Them giving me my own office at work wouldn't change anything. | alfalfasprout wrote: | that would require folks moving back to the bay area. No way in | hell I'd want to do that. That would require sacrificing my | wife's career and our quality of life significantly. | tester756 wrote: | So, you found simple solution for very complicated dynamic and | you actually believe you solved this problem? | | I don't care about offices with doors. | | Sure, they're better, but still it doesn't solve my issues - I | care about commute - time and money, especially time. | | I've been commuting like 3h / day before WFH and I don't want | to go back unless you pay me at least 2.5x | WirelessGigabit wrote: | Even if you pay me 2.5x. I don't want to. I like living out | there. No traffic, no people around me. I walk outside an I'm | in the desert. Solitude. | samstave wrote: | I am 1,000% with Chuck... | | My best, most productives were in offices with doors and one | other space-mate and we both liked the door closed and the | light off. I rebuilt Compaq 4U rackmount servers in the dark | in that office. I loved it. | | - | | I hated Intel cubes - even though the cube was ~7' tall and | the ceilings were ~13' - they still sucked. | | I've hated every open office. (fb being the worst) | | -- | | The WAYMO campus should just be little auto-driving "cubicle | pods" that roam around and find the magnettic connection to | the person you want to talk to and you both agree to meet - | and then on the SmartMAC (like tarmac) the little pods just | route you to eachother and dock. | | Think Conways Game of Conferencing - and all the little pods | can form SNAKE like elements, or TETRIS Rooms - gimme a big | L! | dt3ft wrote: | Only this would make me consider going back to the office: a | 5 hour workday, paid as 8. The 3 remaining hours would be | compensating for the commute, which includes the time to get | dressed. Commuting costs and food should be compensated as | well. | | Nothing else. Even with the above, I would still prefer a | hybrid or remote positions as long as I have a choice. | | Standing on a crowded train is not something I want to do | every day (once a week is plenty), there is simply nothing | the company can offer to make me reconsider. | rabuse wrote: | Not to mention the people who have children at home, and the | massive savings of not having to pay for daycare. That's | major. | vladslav wrote: | Can't agree more. I don't care about a personal cubicle with | a door. But I care how much time I spend in traffic on my way | to and back from the office. | macintux wrote: | I haven't had an office with a door in 20 years, but you're | absolutely right. Somehow a white noise generator isn't quite | the same. | atleastoptimal wrote: | I understand the merits of WFH and in-person work. One thing that | is however funny is the guilt tripping used by employers who have | this straw-man version of a lazy WFH employee, and more so, | employers who have a delusion that their workplace is important | enough that people need to sacrifice a large portion of their | lives just for the opportunity to be there in person. | | 90% of jobs aren't people's "passions" and have no chance at | becoming some big world changing venture. Lots of employers like | to delude themselves that their company is some big important, | cutting-edge enterprise that's making a real impact in the world. | People just work because they need to. Claiming that WFH is bad | because you can't bounce ideas off other employees and get into | the real world-changing "deep work" is silly because that's just | the employer overvaluing the importance of their company. Those | companies do exist, but they're in the minority, and employers | smart enough to have founded/run those kinds of companies usually | are smart enough to see the merits of a hybrid policy. | water9 wrote: | Acting like all humans will work equally as hard when they are | supervised vs unsupervised is completely naive | fyrn_ wrote: | That only makes sense if the employees in question don't | produce anything measurable | atleastoptimal wrote: | It's also naive to assume that the work people do when | supervised is always valuable and not optimizing for the | appearance of work, rather than work itself. | r00fus wrote: | Thing is, I'm just as supervised at work, honestly (which is | to say, not at all). | | I still have 1:1s with my manager, am still accountable for | my targets and organizational goals, and generally do the | same thing whether I'm WFH or in office. | | Office work has several advantages: 1) I like discussing in | person with coworkers - sometimes coming up with | fun/interesting ideas 2) office itself is more conducive to a | particular type of work 3) I get some isolation from the | family | | But that commute... | ryanSrich wrote: | > One thing that is however funny is the guilt tripping used by | employers who have this straw-man version of a lazy WFH | employee | | Which is also a hilarious self-own on the part of the company | because they: | | 1.) hired the person | | 2.) have such a shitty remote work structure that the same | employee is somehow more productive in the office | | All of these companies that aren't remote first, or were forced | into remote because of the pandemic have put in roughly 0% | effort to make remote actually work. | | It's not like you can just pick up the office culture and move | it to slack. You have to actually make an effort to build the | process, tools, and workflows that allow employees to be | effective remote workers. | judge2020 wrote: | > employers who have a delusion that their workplace is | important enough that people need to sacrifice a large portion | of their lives just for the opportunity to be there in person. | | Being in the office only works with others in the office, so | it's a balancing act between this (likely minority) group that | wants RTO and the group that excels when working in their own | curated, controlled environment. | sharts wrote: | These very same employers will never take a pay cut for said | "passion" that they have for their product (which they probably | don't even use much either). | | They want to only pay others per keyboard keystroke but can't | accept that often the most efficient/productive workers don't | need to be busy. They spend a lot of their time thinking so | that they can generate more impact with fewer keystrokes. | | Treat people like adults and, surprisingly, get adult results. | Set strategic goals, not daily quotas for minutia work. | atleastoptimal wrote: | There are two issues in the psychology of employers that keep | them from doing this. | | 1. They care more about control than doing the right thing. | | 2. They don't get satisfaction from improvements that don't | come directly from their doing | | Very stringent quotas, asinine team building activities, and | of course, mandatory in-office policies construct a narrative | for the company that no good thing that happens is from | anywhere but the top-down. They can look at improvements in | the bottom line and concoct a much more salient narrative | that they were responsible for it; that their employees were | nannied and hand-held to success. It's much more satisfying | for an egomaniac to reckon with this conclusion than the | still gratifying albeit less viscerally satisfying one that | granting workers respect and independence will merit the best | outcomes. | kneebonian wrote: | > 90% of jobs aren't people's "passions" | | I'd also like to add that even if you are in a field and doing | work you are "passionate" about you'll spend between 25-75% of | your time doing boring administrative bull hockey that no one | is passionate about. Whether it's feeling out a time sheet, or | watching HR videos on harassing coworkers. | troupe wrote: | I find it funny that when people were required to be home, | employers talked about what great productivity they were | getting with people at home. Then when it isn't required | anymore, they want everyone back in the office | for...productivity. My guess is that most employers really have | no way to measure if an employee is being productive or not so | managers are just reporting what makes them look good...and now | we are back to where managers will look better with lots of | people running around the office. | dragonwriter wrote: | > I find it funny that when people were required to be home, | employers talked about what great productivity they were | getting with people at home. Then when it isn't required | anymore, they want everyone back in the office | for...productivity | | Whatever management's current whim is represents not only a | reasonable but the only effective way to serve shareholder | interests, amd to do anything differently would be a | irresponsible and anyone disagreeing is objectively working | against the interest of the firm, and any prior contrary | statements about what is best for the firm are nonoperational | and any reference to them is a bad faith distraction. | | Oceania, Inc., has always been at war with EastAsia, LLC. | [deleted] | Waterluvian wrote: | Management and entrepreneurism is incredibly cult-like and I | find it increasingly difficult to quietly sit through all | their ridiculous sermons. | mkl95 wrote: | > My guess is that most employers really have no way to | measure if an employee is being productive or not so managers | are just reporting what makes them look good...and now we are | back to where managers will look better with lots of people | running around the office. | | My guess is that CEOs and VCs have some obscure reason to | force people back into the office. Perhaps related to real | estate, especially considering how hard to sell it is and how | much higher the interest rates are. Middle management will | typically eat up whatever narrative C-level feeds them. | rabuse wrote: | I honestly think it's mostly a huge ego boost to flex with. | "Look at how GIANT our new billion dollar HQ is, and look | at all of these people working for ME!" | dragonwriter wrote: | Even if your firm isn't exposed to real estate, its | probable that a lot if its shareholders are and are | interested in ending the slump in commercial real estate. | | Plus, while the overall employment situation is strong, the | tech downsizing wave may not be over and if you can get | people to self-select out, you can maybe avoid having to | officially have layoffs. | mkl95 wrote: | > Lots of employers like to delude themselves that their | company is some big important, cutting-edge enterprise that's | making a real impact in the world. | | Pretty much. The only time I've considered going back to in- | person work since the pandemic was for a FAANG. If you think | your employees want to go back to the office, you are either a | big tech company or you are deluded | ecshafer wrote: | "Hybrid" is just in office work with a fancy name. A company I | worked for pushed heavy for RTO and said "Its part time | Hybrid". But we already had 1+ days (at managers discretion) | WFH a week before covid hit. Hybrid was In office Tuesday | through Thursday with remote Monday and Friday. This was | actually less flexible than 1 or maybe more as you need it WFH | that we had it prior. | system16 wrote: | My company forced a three day a week hybrid, despite major | pushback from the employees and a lot of resignations after it | was implemented. They're now trying to nudge people to come in | every day. | | On Mondays and Fridays the CEO comes in, pacing around, unamused | the big fancy space is sitting empty. | | All the executives want to force full time RTO but of course they | come in late (if at all) or leave early whenever they want as | nobody monitors their schedule. Rules for thee and not for me. | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | Not necessarily saying this is invalid, but this is a submarine | article: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html | darth_avocado wrote: | They're not regretting the decisions. They're regretting the fact | their poor decision making capabilities are on full display. | | Most of these "bosses" would still be caught doubling down on the | RTO narrative and threatening people to show up to work. | | Bosses with Elon style of management, please take a warning. A | weekly email threatening to fire people if they don't show up in | the office 5 days a week only works the first three times you | send it. After a while, half the people leave and the other half | don't show up to work anyway daring you to fire them all the | while laughing at how ridiculous you sound. | dylan604 wrote: | Doe these threatening emails convey any kind of warning to | prospective new employees? Not just in the WFH/RTO topic, but | if they are this draconian in one area, would it not be safe to | assume it would span other areas as well? | | Even if I was looking for a new job where the WFH issue didn't | exist, I'd personally still be hesitant about working at a | place managed by people doubling down like that | vntx wrote: | It would to me. Any employer who wouldn't negotiate on | something like this for a job that does not require being in- | office is potentially toxic. | | Commuting can be expensive and even potentially dangerous. | Car, insurance, gas, dangerous traffic, time wasted driving | at least 2x a day. | | There's also the potentially unproductive office | environments: loud, annoying co-workers, constant | interruptions, etc. | | RTO has costs, WFH has benefits and employers who don't | recognize that should be shunned. If the reason they require | you to come back is because they wisely rented office space | and didn't even consult the employees on whether the workers | would return, that should tell you how much you can trust | management and how much they value you as an employee. | darth_avocado wrote: | You're not wrong, but it's not that obvious to people. Most | people look at this from a perspective of "ohh I'm okay with | RTO so I don't care" or "ohh I like RTO and people should | stop complaining and being so entitled". What they fail to | realize is that soon it will be your paid parental leave cut | down to two weeks or medical plans moved to cheaper options | with less coverage, what are you going to do then? | [deleted] | sharts wrote: | Not only that but those that stay are the "yes" men/women who | are either bootlickers or accept that they aren't valued much | and thus will put in minimal genuine effort and just comply | with stupid directives to the letter. | | In the end you just don't get that diversity of thought through | disagreement/evolution/personal ownership that you otherwise | get when people feel comfortable enough to genuinely show up | and be mission-driven. | [deleted] | bediger4000 wrote: | They regret boiling the frog too fast | mydriasis wrote: | > The sunk cost of unused office space has been a major factor in | companies' decisions to change their RTO approach, says Kacher. | | > In New York City, office space costs, on average, about $16,000 | a year per employee, the New York Times reports. | | Oof. | nine_zeros wrote: | And yet, believe it or not, they still want to beat the RTO | drum. | ren_engineer wrote: | I knew from the start that this was a major reason so many | companies want RTO, no executive wants to look like a fool in | front of their board for wasting millions or more on office | space. Even more so when you have bigger companies that have | billions invested in real estate across major cities | WWLink wrote: | That's an unfortunate thing with how businesses operate. They | shouldn't have to look like a fool in front of their board. | Executives are not psychics. I get that their job is to | foresee things like that, but sometimes you just.. can't. | | Having everyone work in the office all the time was an | accepted norm that everyone was ok with. Nobody (really) saw | this coming and if they did, everyone would've thought they | were nuts. If the CEO decided "hey let's try WFH!" they | probably would've been removed by the board. So it's pretty | unfair for the board to be like "this guy's an idiot for not | trying WFH in the past!" | | They could play it off as "wow turns out we were wrong about | WFH, this is going to be great in the long term! Right now | here's how we might use that extra space" - they could detail | things like improving retention by bringing back private | offices for people who want to work in the office, subletting | the space, and other things. | paulmd wrote: | > they could detail things like improving retention by ... | subletting the space | | nope, that's actually _the root of the problem_ , nobody | else wants to be in the office either so the commercial | real-estate market is in slow-motion meltdown for the last | 3 years. even if you fervently believe that WFH is the | better path, you simply cannot exit your commercial real- | estate investments right now without locking in big losses. | | at the landlord level the game is to simply let the office | space go vacant rather than write down the notional value | of the property (which is going to be based on X years of | rents, and if you lock in a lower rent value you just | dropped the value of your investment). But at the tenant | level if you want out, it's not like you can just find | someone else to sublet your space either, because the | building is full of unoccupied offices already. Nobody | wants to sign a deal that realizes the losses that exist on | paper. | | So instead the move is to force everyone back to the office | so it looks like there's value being generated from the | property, as opposed to a white elephant standing empty, | which is effectively what it is. And yeah, middle managers | and CEOs have every incentive to push for people back in | the office from their own ends too... the feeling of | power/control and the facilitation of their own | communication-focused work as opposed to the output- | oriented work of the actual ICs. | | -- | | Anecdotally, my current employer has had some weird | communication mis-steps where my manager clumsily relayed | some "we really want everyone to be at the all-hands this | month, in-person if you can!" and it came off as more of a | "more layoffs incoming" tone when actually the problem was | more that this was boardroom politics around being seen to | be using the expensive building we just bought a couple | months before the pandemic started. And this is a company | that is all-in on remote work already, we have people | everywhere (I and another coworker are at least 4 hours | from the closest satellite office) and we're nearshoring | some junior roles etc. We will never get everyone into an | office because that's not the strategy, but even we are not | immune to the "we bought the building and can't exit" | politics. | | Last employer, same thing, but they _are_ going all-in on | forcing everyone back to office... despite having hired a | bunch of people remote during covid for a project. Since | the project crashed I guess they dropped all the | contractors and are hiring from a bodyshop, and I guess | maybe they 're doing local hiring for that. But between IC | turnover due to the project being a shitshow, and heads | rolling in the team leads due to the project failure, and | dropping all the people they hired on remote since COVID... | I think they basically turned over the entire team that | existed pre-covid minus like three people. So they are | starting from (almost) scratch anyway. | agumonkey wrote: | It was not a norm, until ubiquitous high speed networking | and computing there was no choice but to be in the same | place to work together. | charlieyu1 wrote: | The smarter ones would find some way to reduce their cost on | office spaces. | jurassic wrote: | I like that for the present moment there are a diversity of | approaches and people can somewhat self-select into a work | culture that fits their preferences and needs. If you make abrupt | changes I don't like, rest assured I will be using my new time | commuting on the train to prospect new job opportunities. But | good for those who want and prefer an in-office culture. | Voluntary association is a wonderful thing. | | I mainly reserve scorn for companies issuing abrupt ultimatums to | employees they hired remotely that they must relocate long | distances or be fired. Nobody established in an area with a | partner that also works, potentially has family nearby or kids in | school is going to accept that. That move signals a toxic brew of | tyranny and cowardice from execs who don't want to take | responsibility for doing a real layoff. Grindr, looking at you | this week. | faeriechangling wrote: | Return to office is a massive sink cost fallacy and effort for | executives to save face after strangling their companies | profitability by signing long unnecessary leases. Rather than | shrugging at what COVID wrought and going "meh, act of god, this | unused office space is a write-off" fart huffing executives want | to bend reality to their will by declaring work from home a huge | problem and return to office the only way to save their | companies. | | In doing so, they replace an understandable situation in which | the were blindsided by an extremely low probability act of god, | with an intentional hoisting upon their own petards. It's | incredible to me how many people have OPENLY cited how much | they're paying for office space as a reason for their return to | office policies. | | The US government accountability office framed unused office | space as an environmental and financial problem. Not the office | space itself but the fact it was unused is clearly the problem. | So of course the solution is to have your workers burn a whack of | oil during an oil shortage, burning through their own money, to | "save" the environment and government finances by making them | commute to these offices so they can't be say converted to | residential housing or something useful. The true costs of such | idiocy are hidden by shoving a large portion of the costs onto | the workforce who are expected to ask for no additional | compensation for the extra unpaid work and uncompensated expenses | they're taking on. | | This doesn't actually work because workers actually vote with | their feet and do punish their employers for such chicanery. Or | they simply don't comply with policy knowing that nobody is | either paying attention or has the guts/inclination to actually | fire them. How much do you really expect people to do purely | performative labour that COSTS them money when non-compliance or | finding a different job can make such a difference in their | financial well being and quality of life? | JohnFen wrote: | > and say they would have approached their plans differently if | they had a better understanding of what their employees wanted | | The poor employers. If only there was some way they could have | gained that understanding. Without actually listening to | employees and taking them seriously, of course. Don't let's be | silly now. | karaterobot wrote: | > Some leaders lamented the challenge of measuring the success of | in-office policies, while others said it's been hard to make | long-term real estate investments without knowing how employees | might feel about being in the office weeks, or even months, from | now. | | In other words, the two most obvious objections to RTO turned out | to be correct. That is, that when the leadership says that being | in the office is more productive, they are speaking from desire | rather than evidence, and that the sunk cost of a commercial | lease had more weight in the decision than the employees' | opinions did. Two things they could have avoided with one minute | of reflection. | | On the other hand, I'm pleasantly surprised that 80% of | executives were willing to admit they could have done a better | job. I'd expect most of them to say it went flawlessly, in a | voice which echoed off the cubicle walls of a nearly empty | office. | ilc wrote: | What they say in an anon survey, and what they say to their | employees may be very different things. | throwaway14356 wrote: | if people quit you have the evidence | judge2020 wrote: | Most employers instituting hybrid or RTO will have a way to | apply for an exception, which is just a filter to keep high | value employees (by approving their fully remote requests) | while cutting employees without needing to write severance | checks - a "soft layoff" if you will. | pg_1234 wrote: | basically because they picked a fight and lost | | no actual remorse | ramesh31 wrote: | > basically because they picked a fight and lost | | Did they lose? | | Pretty sure the prevailing sentiment among the C-level has | effectively become "Get back to your cube and shut up because | we said so, or little Timmy won't be getting his braces." here | in the US. | throwaway892238 wrote: | I decided I will never again work in an office, for the rest of | my life. It's a lifestyle choice. I refuse to put up with the | B.S. anymore. I'm lucky that I've had a long career and my skills | are very much in demand, so I will always be able to find a | remote job somewhere. | | People doing jobs with more qualified candidates in the pool will | probably have a harder time, and that sucks. For them, I hope | they can band together as a union and force companies to hire | them remote. There is no excuse anymore about it not working, | because the whole planet did it through a friggin' pandemic, and | work actually improved. We just have to stick to our guns, | because the suits will continue to try to ruin our lives as long | as it benefits them. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-08-11 23:00 UTC)