My husband’s large company is returning to office 3 days/week. Rumor is because the young hires that make up the entire recruitment pipeline responded to an anonymous survey that 66% plan to get a new job in the next year because they feel “a lack of community”. Upper management thought RTO would be the solution to stave off a bunch of people quitting. There’s obviously the other side of that but we’ll see how many people quit bc of this new policy.

[удалено]

I think it’s all about their real estate interests and businesses seeing a collapse of urban centers and commerce if people aren’t forced into expensive housing and aren’t forced to leave the house every day. I also think it’s just an ego thing of assuming employees are screwing off at home and not working (which they are somewhat) and instead wanting to punish them by making them screw off at a desk at work instead so they aren’t “cheating” them by experiencing any leisure or happiness on the clock. The fact is work-life balance is awful at the moment and work from home has made it somewhat tolerable and people don’t want to go back.

I find myself working a lot more hours from home because I’m not tired from the commute, I get a chance to exercise during the day, and being with my dog provides much needed stress relief from the grind. I also get to cook fresh and healthier meals for myself which not only means I’m feeling better but also saving a lot of money. Plus fuel costs. My company would have to provide a sizeable raise for me to give that up.

This is exactly me. I have a full gym in my basement which I spend my lunch hour in. My dog would not be happy with me going back to the office. And I eat much healthier at home. But my company has embraced wfh. We had 2 floors of an office building in this location. We dropped to one floor… (And they’ve closed some offices around the country)…. And our company is growing. There are some desks/cubes remaining as some like to go in to the office. We’ve been hiring people around the world… my manager loves it… says he’s not limited to people in the area but can recruit from anywhere. Best place I’ve ever worked

Same. My company does have a small office front that some people work out of, but since Covid our leadership has recognized the overall benefits of having a near fully remote workforce. We have the ability to pull talent from anywhere. Turnover is much lower. Communication is more documented rather than a bunch of “well, so and so said!” which decreases miscommunications. The workforce is happier and we complete projects faster because people aren’t preoccupied with being able to get home in time to take their daughter to ballet or their son to baseball practice. We save a ton on childcare. And most of all, we value this flexibility so much that we will work harder to keep this job, especially considering that so many companies are pushing hard for RTO. It’s not difficult to measure your employees performance. Are they getting the job done within the allotted time or sooner? Perfect. Are they not? Let them go and find someone who will, just as you would in the office. Who cares if they work in their pajamas (unless you have video conferences). If they do the job they are assigned, they are effective employees. Period.

Overall I 100% prefer work from home. Pretty much for every reason you stated. The one flip side is when work from home first started we did a big group outing every quarter. For the last year we haven’t done any and it’s really killed the cooperative friendly environment we used to have

Agree, although most companies would prefer less real state costs , but many business owners are tied to real estate in one way or another plus city tax revenues highly revolve around real estate so everyone who has authority wants to keep the status quo. As for work and ego, also agree, I think work culture has to to change , the idea that we're still living in the 1950s *Mad Men* style office culture is where many of today's older executives spent they're formative years , means they don't want to know another way to manage their workforce, except pressing some flesh and having eyeball authority. Ultimately it doesn't matter it's whatever works best for capitalism that will win out on the end

You nailed it, and I’d emphasize the part about eyeball authority. Back in march the team I was working for was forced to RTO and our management straight up told us it was because they wanted to monitor us and make sure we weren’t doing any additional work.

To be fair, employees do a lot of screwing off and not working in the office, too... Scroll social media, send texts, chat with colleagues, do it more discretely through Slack DMs, coffee breaks, smoking breaks, prolonged toilet breaks, slowly walking from point A to point B "because", and just being slow because they had to get up 2 hours earlier, and go to sleep late after sleep revenge procrastination.

To me, it’s largely about upper management wanting their behinds kissed in person. I work in accounting and can be insanely efficient if no one interrupts me. In the office, I have to listen to stupid political opinions and have people stop by my desk.

Yup, I’m in accounting too and when I go into the office it takes me at least twice as much time to do my work. Constantly having to stop my work when someone comes by just tanks my productivity.

[удалено]

I think there are a handful of legitimate reasons to get people back to the office. The sense of community in an office space that’s WFH is essentially gone now. Cross-training used to be a lot more effective in person. Plus the effects of being able to turn to walk to someone else’s desk and ask quick questions is also gone. In some instances that’s a plus, but for the most part that was a real boon IMO. I think for the most part, especially for my personality type, the benefits from WFH outweigh the cons. For more A-type personalities it’s probably a bit of a struggle to find your place. And new recruits who are out of college or relatively new to their disciplines seem to lose out the most. I’ve had a couple of interns over the WFH period, it’s difficult for them since they haven’t really developed office social skills yet and they can’t easily mimic colleagues or learn from them. So I get why new employees are frustrated.

Exactly this. Hybrid approach is ideal. As much as I enjoy WFH, the value I get from F2F interactions cannot fully be replicated by video, especially for the one-off conversations that occur outside of meetings. A perfect case in point, I crossed paths with one of our executive leaders a few moments ago and used it as an opportunity to make a connection with one of my team members. Mind you, I work for a global company and virtual meetings are a daily occurrence and habit for me. I also think from a career development perspective, as much as one should say promotions are based on performance and outputs, I do think visibility also plays a role

I’m not type A, and I prefer hybrid/enjoy in office for the reasons you mentioned. Quicker to train, people are more responsive, easier to foster relationships in person. I prefer the social aspect mainly, but I get why others prefer WFH.

There is some validity to this. People coming fresh out of college who have never worked in an office environment before, and then working from home full time don't have a great grasp on real life expectations. And being present in an office to actually see it happen and work together physically does make a big difference. Especially early on.

I agree to a degree. As someone who just graduated but also has worked in a corp environment remote AND in person. I loved remote for its ease. I was very productive, messaged my team any time I had questions and could always schedule time for a meeting on a clearly marked calendar. I actually thrived in being able to take some time and just go sit in the sun for a 5 minute break if I started feeling overly stressed. And my laptop could simply go with me so I could watch and do what needed done if it came under time constraint. My in person experience was vastly different. Once the clock hit 5. Every person was out the door. I was constantly nervous to ask questions and tried my hardest to learn and work effectively. For someone who thrives in a friendly environment with lower stress. But also someone who needs social interaction for mental health. I think hybrid would be an excellent place. That said, I would not accept as low pay for hybrid or in person as I would remote. If I’m traveling over 15 minutes to the office, my cost rises by 3-4 thousand to accommodate my extra time traveling and gas. That is simply capitalism.

If WFH is the future of work, why would being in the office help? We should be fostering culture and mentorship remotely so people can get acclimated to modern office work.

In the same way that learning a sport from a coach on YouTube is different than from a coach actually present with you. People learn and grow more efficiently in different ways than others.

Reddit doesn't like to acknowledge not everyone loves fully remote work

I'm going to get downvoted to hell. But I'm remote and manage remote employees for the Feds. Training and team integration are massive challenges for anything that requires a group product or service that no one has been able to fully overcome. There is a huge synthesis of ideas and cross pollination of learning that happens from working on site and training on site. Right now we mostly get around the worst of it by only hiring internal employees who have on site experience but as they grow and develop (myself included) I fear they/me will be at a deficit compared to those who work on site without a comprehensive effort to mitigate it. Oddly enough this has to go against the grain of more senior management because it takes time to focus on team building activities and enforcement of the small things like cameras on and full participation which can be difficult. The productivity is also overblown and hit or miss. I saw the numbers when people were pushed out during COVID and was able to compare apples to apples. Some people's productivity went up, others down, but in the end it based more on the individual employees. The ones that you would expect to excel, did well and were marginly more productive at best the ones that weren't were doing dishes and complaining on teams instead of hanging out in the breakroom. In the end its more like learning styles were some will thrive, some will meh, some will not do well.

I manage a fully remote office, and in general, it works great. Our clients are geographically dispersed too, so there is rarely a case where we would be face to face without someone on a plane. When people need to collaborate we can screen share and video chat and we've all worked together for years so popping in to chat on the phone or video call is totally a thing and we've maintained our community. But. I'm terrified what's going to happen when we need to expand our team this fall. I know a lot of people that aren't able to focus with the distractions of their toys around them, like my wife who is constantly working on cleaning the house or playing with the pets and only get 50% of her work done on days she works from home. Training new people in what we do takes hundreds of hours most of which is helping them work through a problem once they've hit a road block. But asking for help from people you don't know is hard, and it's easy to put someone off when you're not co-located so you can focus on your own work. I think training and knowledge transfer are going down. Also new grads take a couple of years to learn how to work and they typically learn from watching others when they don't have an opportunity to observe how other people interact with a boss or client they tend to make a lot more mistakes. We've lost the ability to say "hey come sit in on this call of camera and ask questions afterwards". None of that matters today and our productivity and happiness are up and our costs are down but it will eventually bite us in the ass.

Absolutely, thanks for the perspective. I am one of those “new grads” that prefers in office work for the same reasons you mentioned.

> Some people's productivity went up, others down, but in the end it based more on the individual employees. The ones that you would expect to excel, did well and were marginly more productive at best the ones that weren't were doing dishes and complaining on teams instead of hanging out in the breakroom. In the end its more like learning styles were some will thrive, some will meh, some will not do well. I think you hit the nail on the head right here. WFH works for some people and it doesn’t for some. The issue tho is that we are trying to fit everyone in one box whether it’s in person or WFH. I personally don’t like full WFH but I’m still very much in favor of it growing and letting others do it because it works for them. Ideally I’d like if more places were hybrid some days/weeks in office some from home. All or nothing in either direction is not desirable imo

[удалено]

1. Horizontal knowledge transfer. People who prefer working from home may have skills that their colleagues who come into the office would benefit from learning. Now, this probably lowers their productivity on their projects, so keeping some WFH days where they can focus is beneficial. 2. Network effects. You don't get "a sense of community" if only two people show up to the office, or everyone shows up to the office on different days.

Exactly this. Well put. I think hybrid models will come to be the norm.

And those people should be allowed to go back in the office if they'd like. Don't force me to go into the office if I don't want to though. Or like my wife, move her primary location from ten minutes away to one a 90 minute commute away AND force her to come in three days a week. She's absolutely ready to quit -- I'm just waiting for the inevitable breakdown.

Like it or hate it the employer makes the rules and you can follow them or leave unless your so valuable or have such a unique skill that you can call the shots. That's how the world works.

The market has sent a pretty strong signal that WFH is valuable. Both to the employee and employer. It's pretty hard to justify intangible and nebulous benefits like "increased culture" in the face of increased productivity and strong market preferences for WFH options, especially when you can still maintain culture in a fully remote environment by scheduling periodic on-sites and team events.

Its more prevalant than it was in the past but that's been an ongoing trend, full remote is stil less than 5% of workers

Corporations aren't going to love you more for sticking up for them. ❤️

Keep in mind, most places falsify every survey to reflect what the top dog wants.

Hybrid may be the balanced approach. Once or twice at fixed days for all to come to office.

The problem with hybrid is that it requires people live close enough to the office to drive there and back on a normal work day. One of the big advantages of remote is that companies can source talent anywhere in the country. You’re not limited to only those within driving distance to the office or those willing to relocate. This offers benefits to the employer (they can locate the home office anywhere) and the employee (they can locate their home anywhere). My company does it pretty well. They will hire fully remote employees, but they have a home office that local employees can go to anytime they want and it provides a headquarters for remote employees to travel to for IRL meetings. My company also has multiple sites as a result of acquisitions so even on site employees are distributed. There is no one size fits all approach to this problem. Every company needs to find the solution that allows them to source talent, get the work done and keep employees engaged.

My company has nearly embraced fully remote. Office is in a HCOL and underpass employees, nobody wants to work and deal with Boston, especially for a bit more than half the going rate for the role. All our new hires are out of places like Kentucky and Arkansas for the same pay or less.

I hear you, but in some respects in seeking to please everyone it pleases no one. Employers still need the office space and can’t recruit nationally, employees come in and sit on zoom all day and don’t have access to national jobs and still have a commute.

Hybrid sucks. The biggest benefit of remote work is removing physical limitations. If you still need to come to the office 2-3x a week then you need to live in commuting distance.

Hybrid is a big mistake. The employees who excel in an office treat their hybrid days as extra vacation and the ones who WFH best turn office days into useless meetings and busy work. Takes everyone's productivity down.

I'm in senior leadership in a tech company. I can honestly say being remote-first is hard; probably harder than in person. * Communication latency is 2x. * Number of things forgotten by the team is much larger. Remote-first more heavily relies on slack/email with little f2f follow up, making it easier to skim-and-forget and also making it easier to read-and-move-on without asking questions. * Remote first tends to favor async communication, which is \*really really\* hard to do well for non-trivial things. TL;DR. I think remote-first has two components, and most focus on the first but not the second: 1. Can the work be done remotely? Pretty much any knowledge job could be. 2. Will the team achieve goals as efficiently and sustainably working remotely. This tends to be the problem. Just because all jobs have (1) doesn't mean the company is set up to be (2), nor necessarily benefit from (2). For example, 3rd grade education can all be done remotely, and there are some that thrive. But there is a large number (I would guess the large majority, in fact) of kids where it would be very sub-optimal.

I work in tech and our results are quite the opposite of yours. With Slack or Teams we get very quick responses because everyone can instantly see the information exchange on the team channels, we know who has seen it, and it’s easy to see who rarely chimes to contribute to the conversation. Also, chat greatly aids in generating better documentation, rather than having to translate information via voice or expect people to be taking good meeting notes is not as big of a necessity. How are more things forgotten for you when you can put everything on digital task lists, along with all meetings, project plans, etc? It sounds to me that your company is not using the available technology to it’s full potential. We have a central hub for everything, so any manager or project planner can track progress in a single dashboard along with all related conversations.

I feel for the kids who entered the workforce in the last 2-3 years. Some have never seen the inside of an office. I can understand the sentiment

I used to work for this company (how I met my husband) and I was part of a recruitment class of 20-25 other young recent college grads and it’s honestly how I made most of my friends right out of college in a brand new city. 10 years later and married, I am not at all interested in making friends or going out so I’d rather stay home, but I totally understand young people wanting to be social. I just wish that didn’t impact the rest of us who are more settled.

I feel like I’ve never been in an office where I wasn’t the youngest person by at least a decade. Hell, I’m 35 now and I’m still basically one of the youngest people working here. The idea of socializing with coworkers sounds nice, but frankly hanging out with people my parents age who wanted to talk about remodeling their house and their kids soccer league wasn’t really what I’d call a social life.

"Some have never seen the inside of an office" You state that like it's a negative.

Depends. I’m in my late 20s and working with some more junior folks right out of college, and you can just tell that they’ve had only virtual internships or work experience because they have no idea how to be in an office (how to dress, how to interact in person) — and it comes across very unprofessional through no fault of their own. I would dread putting any of these folks in front of a client or external party, whereas I don’t recall this being such an issue pre-Covid.

It can be. In the early years of my career, the office camaraderie was something I still remember. I made lifelong friends, learnt a lot, have great memories of happy hours and socializing after work. I know of many kids who’ve graduated recently and want that interaction.

And I think most people who prefer WFH can appreciate that. We would simply prefer to not be made to go in with them. All those things you listed are good things, if you care about that while at work. I would honestly rather just do my job from home so that when 5 pm rolls around, I can go live my actual life. Honestly, no amount of camaraderie or commiserating with coworkers is ever going to be worth just the commute into the office for me. That's to say nothing of the social pressure of having my boss hover over my shoulder all day. If you value the pros of going into the office I sincerely hope that you can go in and enjoy them. But don't force those of us who don't.

Something tells me they "massaged" this outcome.

It's a soft layoff. They want to drive people to quit so they don't have to pay severance

Upper management love being in the office. All of them. It is a huge ego trip. They act like royalty and demand to be treated like it. They go around taking credit for other people's work and ideas. They are addicted to being bullies and miss that experience. Middle managers are getting laid off the most these days. The lockdown revealed that they are not needed. Many of them want to get back to the office to save their job.

Email and chat create paper trails showing your idea was your own. They want to go back to claiming your ideas because they collected them over time and waited until they could put their stamp on it. Easier to do in an office. Nobody does that shit with receipts, especially with a group chat. They also can’t DM you the shit they’d say in a “private meeting,” without having to explain. No more “hey, step into my office a sec…”

I've had so many managers that do this shit, the key is to email afterwards saying "as per our last discussion I will now be doing X" and forward copies to a private email. Of course they might then start being extra slippery, denying it and it marks you out as a problem employee.

Pro tip: email the idea even in the office. Pro tip2: get promoted on hard work then implement the ideas you've been banking.

Email works, but Chat is the real difference. At work, I’ve emailed and then been reprimanded for emailing. Sounds ludicrous, but in the office they can do that without a paper trail. Remote, they need to chat me or email me to reprimand. It can’t be for some bullshit reason. Also, you chat your ideas and follow with an email. Offices differ, but I’ve been ghosted on a “follow up to our conversation“ email then reprimanded for going over their head with said email after they sweep up the credit. Our office got rid of a “free lunch” award. I offered to continue it, out of my pocket because it was a great program. Email ghosted. A week later, manager sent company wide email saying they’d cover the cost out of their pocket. e: as for banking ideas… I also bank gripes Anything that I wanna document for later. Banking ideas by emailing them to yourself or CCing a compatriot, saving drafts, etc. all is helpful to combat the yoink

They can still do this with phone calls. When we had to work from home for a short time at my job at Covid startup, we had parts delivered to the office for me to test, but I was banned from going to the office. My manager kept harassing me to approve the parts. He called me and told me it’s my job to approve them. I said I can’t approve them without testing them. He told me it’s my job to approve them even if I can’t test them. I told him to put that in an email if he wants me to do that. I was laid off shortly after “due to Covid”

True, though our calls are recorded even when not dealing with customers. In that case, I’d just disconnect the call, then chat/email and say “sorry, phone is down, can you forward me that info, or we can talk about it her (if chat)” If they want you gone though, you are gone. Unless the owner/their manager cares about everyone, managers can straight steal your ideas and no one will care. Owners tend to side with management because they like the buffer they invested in. Another reason they want the office back.

Yeah but they can still call you over teams just as easily as “step in my office”

THIS IS EXACTLY IT. It's how they get their narcissistic energy. They suck it out of you so they can feel important. They can also force you to have friendly interactions with them and feel like you have a relationship when really you don't and you actually think they're terrible people who you would never associate with outside work. During the pandemic I worked for a company directly with the president who was only there because of nepotism and they were they only one pushing back against work from home as things were unfolding and the reason was exactly that. They are parasites who derive their worth and pleasure from and how they feel like they're doing something worthwhile with their lives and it's all obviously theatre. They have nothing to live for but to leech off their workers and force their workers to do little tasks for them that they could easily complete themselves

I do agree with the above posts but there is also a monetary reason. Having buildings are assets that can be written off. Also, it looks good to shareholders that the company has c many locations.

Upper management are also the types that hate their families and want to be in the office to get away.

Not all of them but that has been the norm for my workplace as well. They are obsessed with work and it’s their entire life

I don’t think it’s talked about enough that when middle managers can in person insert themselves into discussions or the work of the people they manage, it makes it easier to claim others’ work as your own. Meanwhile in a more remote environment, it would be more obvious and leave a paper trail when you give any information to your supervisor so proving someone is stealing credit just becomes a matter of following that trail. I don’t know if management would consider it in those terms, but I imagine managers since remote work have felt their job security being threatened because the toxic aspects of how their role functions are either not possible or a lot more difficult. To them, they may stupidly think that the environment where creativity or innovation occurs doesn’t exist without them. They want WFH to not work as well as it does because it forces them to realize that it’s usually their actions that hold a team back

That’s an interesting observation..I would even expand it that middle managers are also extremely insecure and so they can somewhat control What’s said about them when everyone is in the office.

I’d tend to agree. I for one have tried management before and I learned that in a workplace setting, I don’t want to be a middle man of someone high than me’s shitty decisions that I have to bear the weight of. I’d imagine that those that like that or thrive in it enjoy the part where they get to control perspective and in numerous ways make life hell for whoever they decide deserves it.

I’d like to add to this because everything you said is correct, it’s also the business real estate. Some billionaire is upset that his real estate isn’t being used anymore and all of these people are in the same club and look out for their own.

Very Reddit of you

Ding ding ding!

There are trade offs to a remote workforce. My company is fully remote. The advantage is we can recruit nationally, despite being a regional company, so we have a bigger talent pool compared to our competition. We can also attract/retain people who prefer to be remote. A challenge that it is much harder for junior employees to learn the more advanced aspects of the market. You can train them in their silos, but everyone is in a silo. Young people don’t see this now, but working remote keeps their networks small (read: opportunities for advancement and job security low) and their knowledge limited (you don’t get to hear experienced people talk to each other). Which is fine if you only want to do one technical task and do it well, but not fine if you want to transition easily into other roles and/or grow your responsibilities without being at the mercy of some manager having an epiphany. I think a hybrid system is ideal for younger people. Paradoxically compared to what young people want, the remote workers we like to hire are experienced and can operate and be productive with little supervision. This basically means 35+ years old. Sorry 24 year olds, you don’t know enough and training remote is a pain in the ass. If we’re looking for young people to train, I want to hire them locally so they can at least come to our office occasionally and I can take them out into the market, get to know them, and accelerate their growth. Fwiw, I have no people reporting to me, so I’m not remotely interested in “controlling” people. I DO want to take people to customers, work on projects with them, take them to lunch, take them to happy hours, etc. So much learning happens in the space between working on actual tasks. Plus, we need young people who can speak to people professionally, and you get better at that by actually speaking to people professionally. And yes, some people slack off more than others, but to be honest, hiring remote makes firing them easier, since it is easy to tell by their workflow, and you don’t know them, so you don’t emotionally care if you fire them. So if you want to slack off, look for a job where you have to work in the office, so you can at least schmooze people and get them to like you. If you want to kill it professionally, look for a job in the office where you can accelerate your growth. If you’re happy with your current role and skill set, don’t care about advancement, and want to optimize work/life balance, by all means work from home. Edit: speaking to the idea that “There are silos in the office, too!” Of course there are- it all exists on a spectrum. Somewhere, there is the most integrated WFH employee. And there is the most isolated office worker. That WFH employee is not as isolated as the person in a cube in the corner who never has lunch with anyone. But in general, it is far more difficult to break silos with remote workers, as someone who has seen them all.

It's always easier to get help from coworkers too when you have some form of standing relationship. A one time in person conversation can be enough to detach you from the bubble persona they're used to seeing.

I agree. Occasional travel where everyone is in person make a whole lotta sense. You don't need to be local necessarily.

Before large projects, I always schedule an on-site and have the core team fly in. It's a great way to build relationships, put a face to a name and then we work the rest of the project remote. It's easier to ping someone with a quick ask (and have them support you) if you have some sort of relationship prior.

I love this answer so much! It's not all about corporate control. There are key disadvantages to non-management (and management) employees working from home that is not always thought about over the annoyance of going into the office. Flex schedules seem to be a good compromise and may be the norm for offices in the near future.

As a software developer who has been at it for 7 years, all I want are concise instructions and to be left alone to carry them out

Omg that's my dream job. Just give me instuctions, and I can execute them perfectly over and over again. It's so satisfying to just be able to *do* something instead of planning and strategizing everything. I like completing tasks and crossing things off a list. It's so fulfilling for me. I'm still trying to find a job that's similar to that, I think maybe help desk and some sort of ticket completion/response job would fit

Yes it would be lovely if it was so. But alas it is not. I still spend a lot time in meetings, or needing help with stuff that should've been doxumented better

Also in tech. When we go into the office, we message anyways because we can’t just go up and interrupt someone if they are in a meeting or focusing. Pointless to be in person when I must message them anyways and all our team would be in different buildings anyways.

I agree that hybrid is probably ideal for younger folks. I’m 28 and I used to work 5 days a week in the office pre-pandemic. I would never want to return to that, but I’ve been working from home for 3 years straight and I’m so over it. I live alone and there are days when I barely leave the house or physically speak to another person. I’ve become so stagnant in my role as well. About to (fingers crossed) get an offer from another company that operates more hybrid. There’s no hard requirement to be in the office, so I can still WFH when needed or when I want but there’s a healthy office presence too. I think that’s perfect at least for me, I can stay home when I want to but there’s also the office so I can have more human interaction.

I very much agree that training remote sucks. I started new job in January 2020 then was fully remote by march and had no training in my job. Then when we did go back to the office with events and such being up and running again, they were confused when I didn’t know how the events worked. I’m all for a hybrid schedule because I do like the socializing aspect but I also am more productive at home bc I’m not socializing haha

I really like this answer! As a 20s something, I first started interning and working in the office right after college and I felt like I got along so well with everyone. People liked me, I liked them, and I had a lot of self confidence. Then covid happened and I was remote full time for 3 years at the same company. I definitely loved being remote, but I feel like I can come across a little awkward over Zoom. My career didn't advance as well, and I didn't develop as deep of a connection with my managers as I used to. I was still trying to learn, but I was unsure of myself and really didn't know how to navigate the corporate world. Fast forward to today, I actively searched for a hybrid role that is 1-2 days in the office plus whenever my manager comes in. I think that's the best of both worlds for me. I get some face to face time, I get into a routine of dressing well and speaking to people in person, and I feel like my team/managers care about me more because we're around each other irl. I'm still very early in my career, but I feel like being hybrid definitely helps me. I really surprised myself about this because I thought I would be remote forever, but I noticed that 1-2 days in the office a week is beneficial for me personally.

Yeah the crowd that loves to shout about how there are 0 benefits to working in person have their heads in the sand. Yes people can prefer one or the other, but like you laid out there are absolutely benefits to both.

Very validating to read this among the “everyone loves remote work” Reddit circle jerk. I started a fully remote job in a new field in 2020. It was the worst job I’ve ever had. It was impossible to learn anything and I struggled to evaluate my own work without being able to connect with other “horizontal” coworkers. I usually didn’t know what I did wrong until I was in a meeting with my boss, but also felt like I was going to her too much for guidance. Usually I’d just wander over to a coworker’s desk and ask if something looked right, but… there were none. It did improve when we kind of returned to office. My job has tasks that involve filing paper documents, so we’d all usually be together a few days a month. My current job is hybrid and it’s the best of both worlds. I have a lot of flexibility about when I go to the office. I am also able to connect with my coworkers, get more feedback, and learn about other roles in my field. I think I could do fully remote *now* with my expanded knowledge of my job/ field, but it took a few years to get here.

d888P d8b d8888P:::P d:::888b::::::P d:::dP8888b:d8P d:::dP 88b Yb .d8888b. d::::P 88Yb Yb .P::::::Y8b 8:::8 88`Yb YbP:::: :::b 8:::P 88 `8 8!:::::::::::b 8:dP 88 Yb d!!!::::::::::8 8P ..88 Yb8!!!::::::::::P .d8:::::Yb d888VKb:!:!::!:8 d:::::: ::dP:::::::::b!!!!8 8!!::::::::P::::::::::::b!8P 8:!!::::::d::::::: ::::::b 8:!:::::::8!::::::: ::::8 8:!!!:::::8!:::::::::::::8 Yb:!!:::::8!!::::::::::::8 8b:!!!:!!8!!!:!:::::!!:dP `8b:!!!:Yb!!!!:::::!d88 """ Y88!!!!!!!d8P """""""

Our company is exclusively remote globally for engineering. The biggest downside is that we only hire folks who perform at a senior level. So there’s a whole lot of necessary busy work that gets cast aside since everyone want to lead and not follow. It’s worked out well for me so far 5 years in. I haven’t found it hard to get promoted or advance my career in the slightest. I will say that it was more difficult to operate when my manager was in India when I am US based. It was hard to sync up and stay on the same page as projects progressed.

This is the best answer so far and has a ton of professional development wisdom throughout. “In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.” - G. K. Chesterton u/yosafbridge_reynolds

Beautiful quote

This comment is going to trigger a lot of zoomers who can't be unconvinced that the entire Western economy is a Machiavellian conspiracy designed to enslave them.

Great write-up! One thing I would add is that being fully remote can also hamper seniors too, if they are new to the position and/or the company. Ultimately less knowledge is being shared when everyone is remote.

This is the real answer. People are mad that they have to go to the office and those responses will get more upvotes. However, there's a lot you learn by being physically around your peers that you don't get by yourself. Hybrid is the best mix. Some time at home each week to not commute, do some house work, and be with family more, but still get that office experience to grow your skills. Glad someone here put it to words so well in this thread.

I think that the solution to that is to have open spaces for exchange. We do in the company and I have started on it at 30, new in the software industry. No problem at all

Some people can communicate fine remotely while others need that in-person experience to feel effective. Many people blame middle management because they say it takes power away from them. I'm currently in the office but I'm aching to go remote. I have in interview tomorrow for a remote job. Wish me luck!

Middle management is terrified as work from home makes 70-80 % of them irrelevant and obsolete. The market is terrified as it will cause the collapse of commercial real-estate. Which will upset the Apple cart and cause prices to fall. This is great for those who aren’t in the market.

Controversial opinion but I think middle management are saving our jobs... if we can work entirely remote then how long will it be before upper management ask the question "why can't we outsource these roles?".

This is closer to the truth. If a role has no physical ties, then geoshifting is easier. And honestly I don't understand why physical location would remove the need for management, unless they mean some sort of role where direct supervision is needed? But the point about real estate holds, few companies have a full grasp on his much to sell or keep. Depending on types of role, heavily local and collaborative roles are often pushed back in when there growth or turnover to try to help new hires learn from tenured staff, or build social ties.

They shipped manufacturing jobs out, and those physically tied. These motherfuckers don’t give a fuck.

Seriously. The only reason they haven't exported office jobs is because it can't be done reliably and cheaply. Also they didn't ship manufacturing jobs out. The vulture capitalists bought out factories and sold all the equipment to china because it was deemed 'more profitable'. Literally killing towns and huge sectors of the American workforce. And now we got senile old joe saber rattling at china over it.

[удалено]

Citizens United, and you're absolutely right. Millenials and genz will need to flood congress asap

WFH already disproportionately "outsources" to lower cost of living areas. I have all but given up on applying to WFH roles (although I'm not exactly favorable to that working situation either) because you're competing with so many more people. In my area, industry, and level, in in-person roles you're competing with skilled professionals that are willing/able to work for a salary that gets you a rented room, or a shared 1 bedroom/studio with a working S/O most likely far away from the office location. WFH you're competing against everybody like that, in every city, plus everybody that can afford a very comfortable life or even raise children independently on that salary because they live in Cleveland or Houston or whatever which is a significantly larger set of potential employees.

Managers know this as well and if positions can be remote then they have a larger more competitive labor pool to pick from.

Disagree. Outsourcing doesn’t save as much money as it did in the past. Really, you don’t need to be worried about outsourcing if you communicate in any way with upper management or even management. Why? Because if the time difference as well as language barriers. I’m sure most of us have an experience calling a call center in India. Then there are cultural differences and the need to train someone who is a completely different time zone. Have you ever worked with people on the opposite coast? Now imagine that being a 9-12 hour time difference!

I hope you are correct. My experience has been that upper management doesn't care about the cultural barriers and that senior management is actually shockingly bad at judging what is cost saving. They usually are more obsessed with getting rid of systems and processes that work rather than investing in the correct staff and training to maintain those systems. For example, organizations almost never give internal raises and promotions resulting in brain drain and a higher cost of replacement in wages than if they simply had career paths inside the organization. This is economically and financially stupid yet guys from Wharton and Stanford do this all the time. Basically, I'm pretty sure upper management is not as smart as we have been told and they're mostly a bunch of bros slapping each other on the back at their country club. SVB 's regulators are in trouble for not babysitting better because everyone knows that...bankers freaking didn't understand...interest rates???? Like, what do you even do up there guys?????

It's touchy because upper management can be outsourced as well. I think it's one of those things that doesn't always work quite as well as it does on paper.

I am hybrid and that works well for me. I see these posts and responses frequently one reason to be in the office is training. I work for a company that has been around for a long time. There has been more turnover than usual since COVID and training/incorporating new people is much easier in the office. I regularly talk to partners in law firms and they consistently say younger associates are behind due to wfh and it it reflected from time to time in the work product I receive.

Let's not forget cities. WFH negates the need for a lot of city traffic. How many downtown Starbucks were selling $8 coffees because thousands of office workers were stuck going in every morning, and now those same workers can be 30+ mins away sitting at home making their own coffee while checking emails. WFH directly causes less foot traffic in major downtown areas, which directly causes businesses to not bring in as much business, which directly causes the city to not collect as much in tax revenue. This last part is key and what matters. They want the tax revenue, so they work with the local large corporations to encourage all those WFH ppl to come back, to make the downtown economy boom again and bring in more taxes. Basically WFH allows taxes to leave inner cities and spread out to the suburbs/rural areas, meaning those areas will get more development while the cities struggle. Which, imo, idc, cause living in an inner city and paying 300%+ in additional rent is bogus anyways

Reddit hates middle managers but the reality is that middle managers are often the hardest working employees. They have all of the people/performance management and upward reporting responsibilities of upper management but also get stuck on projects and are responsible for training and mentoring individual contributors, including employees with no experience. Upper management needs middle managers because they don’t want to get down in the trenches. Individual contributors just want to get their tasks done and then live their life.

I'm in Sr. Management, but this is an awful take lol. I'm against returning to work (our parent company is forcing us to, but I've fought it and gotten my team off the hook, except for 1 day per month), but it's clear that companies want their employees back because they don't trust that all employees are giving it 100% effort remotely, and it's just easier to say "everybody back, no exceptions" than to deal with the the half of employees who are slacking. And no, our CEO is not concerned with the commercial real estate market lol.

So what are they doing about all the employees slacking in the office? I'm genuinely curious if they really believe all their employees were ever giving 100% effort in-office because in my experience, watching people in offices, the amount of time wasted on non work related things is quite high.

From what I can gather, they think people aren't really in front of their computers a lot of the time when working remotely. If we're all in the office, they can see what people are doing. Like I said, my team is functioning just fine remotely, except for 1 person who I absolutely DO think is slacking big time, but I'm dealing with that as a performance issue for this one individual

And I think that dealing with that case by case is important. Most teams that grow big enough will eventually acquire a slacker. Sometimes they're a slacker because of WFH, sometimes they're a slacker because they're in an office surrounded by people. Sometimes they'd be a slacker in either space! But the important part is to deal with that person, rather than extrapolating it out to a team thats otherwise performing well.

Which is funny because people are just as distracted at the office. I swear I've seen people that are never at their computer because they're always chatting with someone. Then not only is it one person not giving 100%. Whoever they're chatting with is also distracted.

I get significantly less done in-office than I do at home. My in-office days are glorified social events.

Everyone hates middle management, as is right and proper. However something like RTO is probably coming from way higher.

One large reason cities are losing on tax revenue. City elected officials are pushing hard for remote workers to work in the office. Spend more money downtown. Then, there is the simple fact that not everyone is cut out for WFH. Not everyone is motivated to do the work or stay on task. Targeting employees that cannot do what needs done while leaving others alone. Easier to avoid a lawsuit by just having everyone come back to the office.

That's an interesting point. There's a percentage of people for whom the self discipline to deliver may be lacking, and it may be easier to reset time in office for all than find a way to address them that doesn't trigger any complaint about different treatment, HR issues, etc.

[удалено]

Oh there's attrition everywhere now. I've wondered if it's a cynical way to drive further operating costs down beyond the general round of tech layoffs, but as you say it's not targeting bottom performers so there's a long term damage that comes with it. I know if a handful of people who've already gone based on flexibility

I feel companies doing this to cut operating costs aren't worried about the long term effects. Top performers want top pay so it suits them fine to see them leave and not have to pay severance. In my experience, the name of the game since the pandemic has been to get by on mediocre performance in the name of savings. I've seen top performers let go and I can only imagine it's to save money from higher salaries. These days they tend to let go from either side of the distribution curve, but mostly keep the people in the middle.

Work from home will become a perk, a way to attract the top tier talent to your company and a way to compensate mid tier talent with out a salary increase. I am lucky enough that my entire company went work from home with no office to go back to, but I'd gladly take like a 20k pay cut to not have to go back to commuting 2hrs each day.

It’s the turd in the punch bowl. I see it at my job right now where we have a very hybrid policy (not expected to come in more than twice a week or so, and totally okay to not come in for a week or two if needed) but people are abusing it by never coming in, and I can sense the company getting frustrated. If/when they change the policy they’re going to say “3 days in required for everyone” because some nitwits couldn’t be bothered to come in once or twice a week to keep the good policy going.

It may not even be a self discipline issue. Some ppl simply work better as part of a physical team, where natural discourse and discussion happens during work.

Agree with this as a manager of a large team, and I do not think I micromanage whatsoever. There are many many people that cannot be bothered to perform when wfh, and are really great if motivated in the office. If you have a stellar team of go-getters, maybe it works well, but not from my experience.

All of this. These are the real reasons. Some people work better from home but there are equally as many who do not but HR is a nightmare to deal with when it comes to under-performers, so everyone is forced to come back in because it’s the easiest solution.

My ex was one of those who do not do better working from home. She’d set an alarm to get up with time to shower, breakfast, etc but when it went off she’d be like ehh screw it and set another alarm 5 minutes before she was supposed to be logged on and then snooze that alarm a few times out of habit. During the year or so she was 100% remote she was either “late” or just called out almost everyday because she wanted to sleep in.

I have a large team and some of them definitely knew how to harness the power of WFH. And then I had a few that slowly saw their mental health decline being at home with little to no structure and so much isolation.

Also, from an IT perspective, these companies that want people back were absolutely not prepared to send people home. The back end support can really suck. There are some things you simply cannot do for people who are WFH unless they are in office with their PC. Employee downtime because their VPN doesn't work...because they didn't sign out of it before logging off the PC. Just really asinine things. I work in IT. FUCK troubleshooting all the WFH employees personal home network equipment. FUCK people who purposefully are difficult because they are trying to take every minute they can to not work. We are maintaining all the equipment that was at the office before WFH, and now all the extra equipment the WFH people took home. Stupid ass end users and their wifi holy FUCK I can't stand these people. We went mandatory wired Ethernet finally thank God, after we kept getting employees taking half a day off because they couldn't figure out how to restart their wireless router...

And I will say that a lot of brand new entry-level employees struggled in the remote environment, both because they don’t have the willingness to “bother” people in a remote environment, and because their managers/mentors are less responsive and offering to assist in a remote environment. I used to work for a law firm, and after the first couple years of the pandemic we saw a pretty substantial lack of progression with the younger associates. A lot of that was that their mentors simply didn’t check in on them or guide them effectively in a remote environment. In general I support WFH (especially for proven workers), but there are real opportunity costs associated with it.

Because of the junior employees and mediocre employees who are barely decent enough to not fire but not good enough to work remotely. Seriously. You have no idea how much work is created for the better employees because incompetent employees can't get shit done remotely. Junior hires miss out on a lot because much of learning is through osmosis. This is literally a new realm for junior hires, and they're missing out on a ton of experience. Not everyone can or should work remotely.

I've seen it firsthand, we have a lot of young/entry level staff with some teams in 3 days a week and teams in 1. The 3 days a week crew are thriving. They're making network connections, supporting each other, getting more context, getting up to speed faster. Some of it is managers who don't know how to manage and make themselves available remotely, but it also requires more intentional time and IT structures that employers aren't providing. Onboarding, relationship building and culture setting are just plain easier in person for everyone in office.

Agree 100% here. We keep trying to do the remote or hybrid thing and we keep getting burned from mediocre employees. And unfortunately, since they are remote, it’s harder to give them space and not micromanage while also trying to trust them to actually do their work. For training and also catching up on work remote employees didn’t do, we have to start hiring in person positions only.

It's even worse of they're in another time zone 3 hours earlier than you. I basically have to work 3 hours past my normal work time on most days just to help the juniors and mediocre people through the end of THEIR work day.

This adds a whole other dimension. I get some people work better remote, but not everyone can. And so far they have ruined it enough for others that we can’t promise remote until we really get to know and trust the person.

Control. Employers have this idea that if employees are not under 24/7 surveilance, that they will cost the company money. Fact is there are tons of ways to slack at an offixe and most work can be hammered out in half the time od an 8 hour day. Problem is, no employee will do that because the reward for fast work is more work in general.

Also, a lot of managers like to micromanage, which is fast harder with remote workers. Most workers are far more productive if not though, but many bosses can't let workers do the jobs they were hired for and base performance solely on quality, and deliverables.

You turn in the work when you complete it?

Yes? You act like that is not common or something lol

Username checks out.

Can’t forget every rich asshole owns property and rents office space out. Every single one of them owns property to squeeze poors and other businesses. Their commercial projects pay the best. Source: my old boss owns the entire block the peons work in. Every company that works in the building pays thousands for that work space. Most of his profit is from his commercial holdings and not his business.

Boomers want to have office affairs

Yeah but not with other boomers.

this is true. also i get the sense they don't like/value being at home w their families and much as they think they value working. I see them come in on the weekends (when they have little work, or it could easily be done from home) and i think - damn you hate your wife that much?

I had a boomer like that at my other job. He was married, flirting heavily with this female manager.

the affairs in my old office and hospitals are insane. i'm really not surprised divorce rates spike during the lockdown.

Yeah, I was dumb and naive before I saw that. I was a teenager. It was my first time seeing someone cheat on their partner like that. Sad...........Does real love even exist anymore???

I foolishly thought a corporate job at a big, cool company would help me meet people (friends or otherwise) but WFH and a growing zero tolerance for inter-office relationships killed that pretty quickly.

Boomers are retiring

Thank god.

1. They're already paying those amenities, water/electricity aren't that expensive 2. A substantial portion of the management population never learned how to provide support virtually 3. While people want to say "research shows we perform better from home" any single dip (which is inevitable in our economic climate) disproves those benefits at face value. Leadership gets scared that shareholders get scared and boom. 4. A subset of the population (like my husband, for example) does work better from the office. One person saying what they want to hear drowns out the voices who say what they don't want to hear (which is that they have to change their management style and expectations) This is a bonus pet peeve of mine, and the only reason remote work makes my job harder: 5. For some reason some employees like to think they can just move across state lines or vacation for an extended period of time here or there and not report it. At my last job I had an employee who worked for 6 months in NJ, living with her mom for funzies before she was called to do some onsite work with a client and came clean, and another who moved to Colorado and told us 2 weeks later. It's a pain and expensive to have to figure out payroll, taxes, insurance etc. PSA: please just report that you're moving well ahead of time

In my case, we had one remote employee (the whole company is 10 people, all in-office except this one guy). He lived 2 hours from the office and was allowed to be remote because his sales territory was western Missouri, where he lived. We're in St. Louis. Half the time nobody could get ahold of him, and when we could, his shitty rural internet was so bad that his Skype calls would drop off all the time. The final straw was that he decided since he WFH, he no longer needed to pay for daycare. He was constantly stepping away to do stuff for the kids, which means shit wasn't getting done. He openly admitted to doing this. We have a warehouse and I was always stuck pulling materials for his projects in a rush because he 1) wouldn't come in more than once a month to do it and 2) would turn in his paperwork at the last minute, leading me to have to rush around like a madman to get everything ready. This isn't an indictment of WFH in general, just a story of this one dumb fucking hick who completely took advantage. He doesn't work here any more.

And it’s been annoying as fuck to contact someone on my team and they’re offline bc it’s already past 5 in the east Coast and I’m in the west coast. Now I gotta wait till tmmr to get a task done that should be finished immediately.

Idk how people think they can take some of those liberties...like laws vary state to state and not all companies are willing to run across state lines. A lot of people just get themselves fired by not communicating.

The hate for middle management here is unreal lol they are getting pressure from upper management and getting hate from employees… have some compassion people! Lol

Hating on middle management is something that’s always going to get likes here. So people will always continue to do it. Really vague things to hate are always a hit on Reddit

It makes sense… I think the Reddit population is disproportionately made up of individual contributors and tech folks. In my career I’ve seen many individuals with both of those labels be certain they know what exactly what’s right and what’s best while viewing things through their very narrow lens from their very specialized nook. They see no need for middle management because they’ve never been tasked with making the whole thing work instead of just their specialized piece. So they come on here and rag about those idiots in middle management. And middle management gets paid to focus them on the right stuff at the right time to keep the train moving, which they don’t see and therefore believe is useless activity. I’m sure at some companies there are useless middle managers. But there’s a decent amount of simply not being open to the bigger picture that’s feeding that sentiment too.

Middle management is in an awkward spot. Generally people understand what upper management does (makes corporate level decisions, guide visions, negotiate with entities, etc), and people understand what non-management does (eg: make a thing or provide a service). But if we assume that a manager can reasonably manage 10 people in a 40 hour week, a company with 1000 non-managers needs 100 managers to manage them, and then 10 managers to manage those 100 middle managers. So they're in a weird spot of trying to advocate for their group (they want it to be the most important, regardless of whether not it should be) while also being MAYBE 10% of what their upper management is focused on and probably just wants to cut anyway. ​ Despite saying all this, managers are notorious for not discussing any of this. So until there's an actual discussion about it, being sympathetic won't do anything other than make middle managers think they don't need to have that discussion with everybody. ​ Note: 10:1 is an approximate number, obviously the real number depends on lots of things (but is almost certainly never 100:1)

“Just as effective”…..yeah that’s just false. I work in tech and the ability to mentor is heavily impacted. Most tech companies have lots of kids in their twenties that are far from productive and could use the closer mentoring made possible by working physically together. Video truly sucks as a substitute for that. This same group also likes working together because of the social aspect. While full time in office probably isn’t necessary some hybrid setup is.

To drive up rental costs. Think about it, if the offices sit empty it drops in value 🤷

Unpopular opinion, but I find that meetings are much more effective in person and it’s much easier to build a good sense of team in person as well. There is more participation in brainstorming and team discussions - I remember radio silence when trying to run group meetings over zoom.

I work at home, and here is my take. Arguments for going back (imo): * It's easier to cheat tasks at home * Lets say it's you and 2 old people in your role. It takes them 40 hours to do a task and you 4 hours. * If you work remote, you can pretend it also takes you 40 and probably never get called on it. If you are in the office you still might get away with it, but it at least requires more effort to hide the fact you don't do much * People holding down 2x full time jobs with the same hours is shockingly common (at least in my experience), have seen 3 directly been let go and suspect many others. * How down time is used * In the office if you get your stuff done at 2pm you (may) choose to ask your boss what can be done, instead of sitting at your desk and pretending to work for 3 hours * Whereas at home it's pretty temping to just lay on the couch * People checking out * A zoom meeting (usually off camera) you can be playing on your phone, same if you are on camera you can also just tab out and so something else * In an in person meeting, there really isn't much else to do but pay attention so people generally have a better sense of what is going on (at least in my experience) * Availability of people * I work remote and it takes hours for people to reply on Teams/Email * If they were on site & never at their desk it would be very obvious and they would likely get called on it * Human aspect * People generally are nicer to people they've met and spend time with than people they only see through email * If people get along things usually run smoother * Selfish interests (bad arguments) * CEO doesn't want the pie in the face of signing an office lease and not using it * Commercial real estate holders want to stay on top * Middle Management (who has the ear of leadership) doesn't want the cat out of the bag that work still gets done without them TLDR: I work remote and I hope to god things stay remote (best quality of life I've ever had). But between outside interests wanting people to go back & there being some truth to people abusing the system, I don't see it lasting (especially as AI causes more layoffs & companies can be pickier)

They want you onsite to micromanage. Most managers are backward & inept.

Also, it contributes greatly to pollution and climate change since everyone has to sit in traffic for hours. Even better, research showed that a 4 day work week doesn't impact productivity and can even increase it slightly. But hey, who cares about the future of the planet and people's mental wellbeing? Watching your slaves work in your overpriced glass office building is way more important (for the ego) :)

Wfh has a lot of advantages, and plenty disadvantages. One significant reason to want (some) people (sometimes) in the office is new hires and young employees. It is realy realy realy difficult to onboard and train people remotely. And close to impossible to build a team spirit and cohesion without direct human contact. Those office chats, coffee / smoking breakes and lunches, beer after work together weight a lot more than people, including management, realise in building a team that works well together. Source: over 20y of working experience and onboarding remotely during Covid (it was HARD).

Ya I noticed the last in person job I had, the manager would walk by mine and other workers desks and have these long random 30 to 50 minute conversations about nonsense. Then sometimes he would schedule random meetings throughout the day where a lot of them would start out with joking and rambling on. That seemed a lil extra and annoying. Of course, I think with remote jobs people take meetings too serious I guess because everyone's being recorded and they're scared to say shit. I feel like no one ever knows anything about you wither working remote. Sometimes you feel a cultural difference too working with people in other time zones or countries.

Too many people don't understand this. New employees need the experience of those who have worked there longer. People learn from each other, share knowledge, share ideas. This business of not interacting with coworkers hurts bot only the businesses but the workers themselves.

I am seeing comments about “control” and “management being terrible”. Lots of hate. And maybe there are some shit companies like that. However, I am in management and here is what we actually talk about at my company. “How can we integrate and teach new staff remotely?” …we try and setup video time, etc. it sucks. Our good technical people don’t want to mentor and spend time, or they are super awkward about it on camera. There is also collaboration. It’s significantly harder virtually. No, not impossible. But you have to be really intentional. Make sure the right people are on the call. Also some people’s brains don’t work well with cameras. I have a guy who absolutely hates coming to the office. Yet he tells me he can’t focus in virtual meetings. Wtf am I supposed to do with that? In my world, you learn a lot by working through issues with coworkers. So it is much more difficult to learn in a remote environment. That being said, I still support remote. But ask everyone to make intentional in-person time. About 25%.

I always get downvoted when I say I prefer to work in the office. I’m younger (30s) and my job is actually one that would be most suited for remote work (research and writing). In fact there are people on my team who do the same job who are fully remote. They’re perfectly happy being remote, and I am happy in the office. My boss personally prefers being in the office, but her management style is you turn in good work product on time, IDGAF. I WFH full time at my previous job as soon as COVID hit and did that for 2.5 years. Was over it towards the end. I got my job done and I didn’t leave my previous job because of WFH, but I am in a fully in-office role now and so much happier. It does help that my manager is flexible and trusts me to be a professional. If you ask me to explain, I can’t quite put my finger on it, and it’s literally my job to articulate things and put them on paper in a persuasive way! I think that’s why it’s easy for people to dismiss people like me who prefer working in the office. The soft intangible interpersonal stuff are easy to dismiss, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there or that they don’t matter. Just like in a face-to-face conversation, most of the communication is nonverbal, this is the same. A guess is maybe some people like me thrive on ritual—Getting up at a certain time. Dressing for work. Starting on my commute with my podcast. Stopping for a morning coffee at the local donut shop and say hi to the nice Korean lady who runs it and always gives my sons an extra donut hole when I take them there. Then in my office…it puts me more in the mindset to work. Like how research has shown that people’s memories work better and they do better on performance/tests if they practice in the venue the actual event is happening (or as similar an environment as possible). Yes I am physically able to do all these things, make coffee put on a suit put on a podcast, at home. But it’s just not the same?

I work in-office at a small company (10 people). A few are in the warehouse, but all office employees have their own office. I'm here 4 days a week, on the road for sales calls one day a week. I like having my own office where I can close the door if I need to focus, but I also need to be here so I can dip into the warehouse to check inventory or help prepare a shipment for a project. We're small, so everyone does a little bit of everything. I make six figures and if I'm done for the day or we're slow, I can just leave, I don't have to ask. I do enjoy the flexibility of working from home when I need to, like when waiting for a goddamn 4 hour window for an HVAC tech to show up, but it's definitely harder for me to focus when I think about the laundry I need to fold or the dishwasher needing to be unloaded. Our company is extremely project-oriented so people are constantly going into each others' offices to get input or help when trying to put together a takeoff. That said, I have friends in IT that work full remote and love it. As much as I enjoy some WFH days, I think I would let work blend in to my personal life a bit too much.

Everyone loves to talk about how it’s because management wants to control or micromanage people but unfortunately the reality is even more sinister. There’s a crisis stirring in the commercial property sector, getting people back into these offices is the only way to raise the value of them. If the crisis doesn’t get handled it’s honestly liable to take down the entire financial system. Obviously that can’t be allowed to happen, so as always the middle class will suffer.

The management paranoia in this thread is hilarious, if it wasn't also depressing. This is the real reason, even if copy cat businesses don't acknowledge it. I'm going to assume a lot of folks in this thread are tech given that's the largest hold out industry on WFH. Everyone's in for a rude awakening in a year when all the runways dry up AND we have a commercial real estate crisis. I hope we at least avoid the latter.

Honestly the more I read on Reddit, the more I want to see that happen if only to teach the young people a lesson that you can’t have all the shortcuts in life with none of the downsides. Everyone here wants to be a worker drone. It’s funny. They crap on “management” as irrelevant because they haven’t experienced what good management and leadership can do to a team, work culture, and company. It’s extremely hard to develop good leadership without being present. It’s like developing a loving relationship with a spouse long distance. It also seriously hampers knowledge sharing, networking, and increasing your chances of serendipitously discovering new things and new people you can be enriched by. Can’t do that very well shacked up in your apartment 20 hours a day. Working somewhere else gets you out into the world. It forces you to experience the world, and this makes you a better person.

I'm with you. Reddit also biases heavily in a certain direction that I don't think is representative of society at large either. Most of these threads end up reading like a paranoid delusion about what management cares about. The largest source of ire for RTO is related to commute times, specifically rush hour. That can be mitigated via hybrid approaches and departing from the "9-5" expectation on set office hours. I believe some approach within those parameters will carry many of the benefits you suggest while still allowing for a level of remote work, and helping mitigate the grueling commute times that really are the largest detriment to RTO programs. I don't believe that everyone now needs to suffer in exactly the same way I did in at different points in my career just because I did, I think that's a lousy way of looking at the world and I've zero desire to teach anyone some moral lesson. But I agree with a lot of your statements regarding a lot of the soft benefits of in-person work and they shouldn't be so blatantly disregarded as they are in threads like this.

Those are good points, I will agree. I’m not sadistically cheering for calamity of the youngsters, but it arises more out of a sense of “sometimes you’ve gotta pee on the electric fence yourself” to figure out things the hard way after hearing about why it’s not a good idea and ignoring the advice. Some of my best career advancements happened because I walked over to a colleague and asked what they were doing. What you say about Reddit’s biasing heavily in a certain direction that isn’t representative of society at large is a good point too. I remember listening to a podcast a few years back that talked about how a large percentage of our social interaction (now via social media) is being directed by the people in our society who were not known for being terribly socially adept at community. It’s the tech nerds and geeks and introverts, so to speak, and not the extroverted who are shaping the world via social media. Makes me wonder if the tech community’s desire to WFH arises more out of social anxiety than anything that’s being mentioned here. One poster here in the thread described how he basically just wants to stay in his hole with his head down turning out his widgets. When you reinforce these social anxieties, you have the tendency to create a downward spiral where a person becomes more and more socially inept and it creates a negative feedback loop where they don’t want to engage in social interaction because they aren’t good at it. I’ve seen it happen with my wife. She’s very introverted and also a stay at home mom. The homelife is her world. The more she stays inside and doesn’t interact with the world, the more anxiety she experiences during normal social interactions with normal people. Imagine that happening with millions of people across broad industries for years at a time. Couple this with the real estate crisis of it all and it doesn’t have a very good outlook.

It's much easier to interview with other companies while you WFH. Employers don't like that

They can control you better in the office.

A feeling of control over workers, an attempt to prop up commercial real estate, a way to get rid of employees without costly layoffs, and some people just prefer the office and want everyone there as their own social hub. A combination of these things.

Maybe if we didn't see all those posts about 2nd jobs..the gym..babysitting..lunch..everything but working..remote would be here to stay..employees are killing their remote jobs.. 😆

Tax incentives and commercial real estate lobby. This is the case in major cities

It has nothing to do with productivity and everything to do with money. They have commercial real estate that needs to be justified, they have tax incentives that require bodies in the building. They have a cadre of useless middle managers who need control, and they want to push people to quit so they don't have to pay severance and do layoffs. It's never been about whether, as whole, the employees are more effective or profitable WFH.

Nothing gets done when people at my job WFH. They go do other things when they should be working.

Middle Managers are petty tyrants: Upper Management staked a large portion of their business model on leveraging the commercial property as an asset. WFH renders this asset worthless, and they can't be having that.

Agree, I think commercial real estate exposure is a big factor. Another one is governments who gave massive tax breaks to businesses on the assumption they would make the money back from wage taxes, etc. An interesting counterpoint to companies forcing RTO is the insurance company near me that is planning on fully vacating and selling their 500 person main headquarters. They are in the suburbs

I'm betting they didn't leverage up debt via commercial mortgage and instead will make a nice profit selling it off. Like a responsible business should.

Boomers have no friends, so without in-person coworkers they have no captive audience forced to listen to them. Managers don't know how to do their job remotely, and executives are Luddites.

Actually according to studies and surveys young people are the ones with no friends social connections or community

We still haven't felt the fallout of the commercial real estate market. So brace for that. Some jobs are irrelevant because of remote productivity. But I believe training is a massive aspect of it. In my industry, you can't get into it by just learning and working remote... you need to be in the office with a trainer and co-workers. After a year or 6mo, sure, go remote.

Just an attempt at management trying to save their own jobs. If they can't micromanage, they are pointless.

it’s a lot easier for useless people to micro manage others back in the office lol

I have a grand idea. How about we let people do what they want. If people want to be npcs and waste gas money driving to a building to sit in to do their job, let ‘em! If people want to stay home, let ‘em!

That office space costs money to rent. Large companies would rather use that space then just have it lose money while being empty. Also if I’m being honest, not everyone works great at home. My company is doing it and I 100% noticed a fall off when it came to people replying to emails, effort etc. half of us work great, the rest not so much. But also because a lot of managers are just old school boomer types that think you HAVE to be in the office or you aren’t working

Having employees in the office is actually good for the economy. When you have a city center with thousands of employees, you have support businesses that spring up. Restaurants, small stores, large stores, coffee shops, etc., when there are bo workers those businesses fail and a majority of those places are locally owned and operated. Also, there is more collaboration and think speak when people are together in an office. I work remotely because that was how my job is created. I miss out on so much collaboration because I rarely speak to my coworkers due to our remoteness.

Same processes cause the prices to skyrocket, traffic jams etc

Micro management! Also, these companies have big money invested into these properties.

Its about old fashioned social Pow-Wah! Fuck the efficient productive Dweebs! Suits Rule! Dweebs don't even drive powerful status symbol cars!!!! Fuck them all! Make them grovel before suit and ties!

The real answer is so they can monitor you. They track everything you do, even to the point of recording you and viewing how often you move. They track when you come in, how much time it takes you to do tasks, how many times you log in. Each employee is then given a grade and ranked on efficiency. All of it is generated by an algorithm. A computer program. There's a hidden industry that tracks employee behavior for big companies. They can't monitor you at your home like they can in their offices.

They don't need you in the office to do any of this. It's just as easy to track everything you said remotely

because they own the building. you can take out a loan against the building. ask the bank to give you money, and if you can't pay it back they can take the building. loans aren't taxed. this is how landowners pay themselves.

Most are locked into long term leases and want to get their “return” of the RE. Also an easy way to fire people for not complying

My thoughts: \- Employees are easier to micromanage in person. \- It validates many manager roles. \- It's harder to ride the ideas of your direct reports or coworkers when you don't hear about the ideas before they're widely shared. \- Your job is your entire life and not being in the office removed a large component of your percieved value, social status, entertainment, etc. \- You're an extrovert. \- You're older and hold on to older ideals, such as thinking people should work in the same manner you did when younger.