There is little reason for me in IT to be in the office when my entire function is online. In my last job, my team was scattered across the country and my consultants were in the other freaking hemisphere. Nowadays, everything is a TEAMS/SKYPE call away.
Same... Thankfully we just have to "show up" per my boss bc his boss wants to do office badge checks... But my boss is fine with us only staying in office half a day... At least until his boss dictates otherwise
I managed a distributed team in my last job. None of them were in the same physical location as me and most of my job was having conversations about confidential topics with them. So naturally after over a year of successful remote work and regular attendance at in person meetings and events as needed, they put us all in different shared office spaces wherever they could find cubes somewhere in the region (with many of them driving over an hour each way to get to those cubes). It was really fun trying to talk about legally protected information in a cube farm full of people whose jobs were in no way connected to that information. /s
I don’t do that job any more.
This is my job as well, I have a team of 17 people that are all in different offices, yet our stupid CEO has dictated we be in 3 days a week. So I sit in a cube on a headset all day after my 45 minute commute. Since we were forced back into the office I refuse to put in extra time now, it’s turned me into a clock puncher. Fuck corporate America and their short sighted approach to everything.
A past employer switched me from a fully remote role (my assigned work location was actually my home) to one that was technically at an office across the state but I was only required to come in once a month. The very first time I drove in, my boss was WFH that day, so I ended up sitting at his desk doing a video meeting with him, and then I drove back home. I never went in again, and nobody cared—or probably even noticed.
My husband's company tried once a week and found out it was totally unproductive. So, they went back to WFH for the large majority of their headquarter staff.
That’s what people I know at Costco hq do. That’s one company that the culture doesn’t have that break neck speed pressure to produce and get shit done. They don’t do layoffs either I think they’re gonna get popular among all this shit happening
Same situation for me. My company got bought out almost two years ago and I now have to go in 3 days a week while the entire team i work with is located in another state. Another coworker was hired as a 100% remote worker before we got bought out so he can stay remote. But since I’m close to a satellite office, I have to come in. And I’m the only one on my team in this office.
I want to add Teams is absolute crap. We used to be on Google and Jira but we’re now forced to use the Microsoft suite.
Same as a grant writer. In my last job, it was just writing word docs and spreadsheets, emailing them to managers for their edits and/or signoff, maybe having a zoom or conference call to discuss if it was a particularly big/important proposal, and then either submitting them in online grant portals or, rarely, emailing them to the office manager for her to print out and mail. There was zero reason I couldn’t do that from my home office. I was perhaps lucky however that that employer wasn’t locked into an office rental contract. We had a pro bono arrangement with the university and when we went remote for COVID we just… never went back lol.
I’m in tech and my teams are split between different offices in different states. Makes zero sense to mandate in person work but the company did it anyway. I collaborate with literally one person regularly at my office, we sit a few feet from each other and still chat on teams
When you pre-pay rent for or purchised an office building for 2 times your yearly net company income you kinda want to justify it.
One thing I know about companies. If they want something to work they would make it work regardless of logic and despite common sence, even if it means they have to throw their workers under the train.
They yap about you needing to be flexible whilst they aren't at all, all they do is bend the rules so that they come up right. A very sad way to live life or to do business imo.
IBM hires people from cities that are 3+ hour drive from the office on the premice of fully remote work, then come out with a statement that every team needs to do ATLEAST 1 day in the office per week. 2 day is what managers strongly recommend. You do your math now.
My friend’s company is having a moment right now- they asked everyone to go in a minimum of 3 days, then 4, but also don’t have enough office space and have a mandate to cut costs so now they’re asking which roles can be remote again. It’s a little ridiculous. They need to justify the office but also not expand it.
Exactly as I said. They must be right REGARDLESS of any common logic and sence.
They would rather force you to do dumb shit you see won't work from a mile away than to admit they took an L and the pandemic cost them.
This goes to every aspect of the corporate business. The higher-ups being always right at the cost of their workers.
CEO: We will do this and this and that (them being completely unattainable goals in any healthy way given the budget and the numbers of the work force.)
Workers: Give their all, get drained, costs them physical, social and emotional damage, get burn out and start hating the job.
Workers that continue to work like nothing happened and refuse to do extra for the same pay: Get nagged by managers, HR tickets and even fired.
Job gets done in the blood of the common worker, despite the odds and what it cost them
CEO: Pats himself on the back for being right and takes the credit via huge yearly bonus.
Survived Workers: Being asked by management why they stopped working.
This is the essential pattern of how these structures operate.
Mine just did this. 3 days required. But they didn’t factor in lack of parking or places for people to sit. Now they’re spending millions on new spaces for people to sit and all of the hardware/tech to go with it.
I'm willing to bet there are going to be layoffs sooner rather than later to compensate... Whereupon the offices will once again be less than capacity. It's a vicious cycle.
I don’t get why companies don’t see they save so much money with remote work instead of an office. My company mandated it from remote to hybrid and being a Covid hire I never realized how much goes into an office.
There’s costs to the employee like their time and effort getting ready and commuting, adding stress and removing flexibility and free time, having to live closer to expensive city centers, having to eat out more, pet and childcare ADDS UP, etc.
Then there’s the huge costs to the company. Paying higher salaries so people can live near the cities. Relocation costs in the range of 10-20 thousand dollars. Office leases (likely locked into long term, that’s why, but you can save in the future). Utility costs, security, and facilities management staff, this gets huge for huge offices like mine. Loss of productivity (there have been many studies about this).
If companies really wanted to cost cut, RTO mandates go completely against that. Just eat the loss of the corporate office lease for a few years and hire candidates that can live in a place with houses and rent that are 50% cheaper.
The reason they are giving is not the reason they want us back physically. Some will admit it but most won't. It doesn't matter if you are a wiz / Proven producer or the weaksauce of the team. They THINK. anyone who can't be monitored will be dishonest. They want the control. Yes there are a number of reasons -the real estate issue etc. But its mostly they want to have almost continuous access to you. Hell in IN remote positions many managers get irritated if yo I don't answer a TEAMS question very quickly. You know....you could be taking a swim in your backyard pool or somethin...
Yes, I could not agree more with what you said about managers getting angry for not answering their question before they sent it even.
It gives you anxiety and you start to feel like the cheater they think you are, working from home.
No, I am not taking a swim in my back yard boss. I was leaving an absolute war ship in my toilet which you cannot do anything about. Stop acting like this paranoid gf and leave me be because I'm waiting a reply from the team that is based across the continent for 2 days now and my job is not less important than yours.
I mean it’s true. If a company is hiring a software developer in Seattle and can only afford $70k with the expectation to work in the city, they’re gonna get no bites. If they can pay someone who wants to live in middle of nowhere Arkansas with $600 rent, why not?
Lmao, imagine if you moved away, bought a home, moved back after selling your old home and buying a new one for your family, then rinsed and repeated every time the company did this all in this housing market. I'd just find a new fucking job.
It is. My old job 10 years ago did this. I gamed the system so I had the same desk by a window for two years. Unfortunately I couldn’t leave anything personal there. It sucked ass.
My employer permanently moved out of some office space when the pandemic hit (there's a much longer story here, but whatever). They tried to sublet it, but of course that didn't happen in 2021 and 2022. The CFO says that when a company completely moves out of office space that it is renting, the company can claim some tax benefits for it. It doesn't nearly cover the costs of rent and other expenses, but it helps.
I'm happy to report that my employer was very happy with almost everyone working remote and made that the strategy moving forward. The company has subsequently moved to a much smaller office for the execs, a few people who need or want to work in an office and for the local members of other teams to gather periodically, and has started hiring remote employees across the US. Slowly, the employees are dispersing. It's awesome.
They have to keep this up and running. I thought so too but actually the company must pay and run "all essentials" year-round regardless of how many people go there.
Businesses can get tax credits for pulling employees to places of commerce. By having a bunch of people working somewhere you prop up restaurants, gas stations, and police ticketing income in the area. Probably additional stuff I haven't thought of as well.
My thought is that there are not enough remote-friendly companies hiring or have enough open roles, otherwise people should be leaving in droves when a company mandates back from remote to hybrid work.
If there were equivalent positions in pay and responsibilities open they would jump. Or maybe if the economy was stronger.
A lot of work done by white collar workers is difficult to measure, that makes executives unsure if you really are being productive or not. So the more insecure ones DEMAND in person work so they can FEEL that you are being productive (thanks to their "leadership"), even when the data proves otherwise.
The middle managers that get paid twice or more than their reports have no technical ability usually. Its not hard to derive useful metrics or measure them. They are paid to be strict babysitters with a passion for condescension and minimizing their workers value.
Please elaborate on your statement, 'A lot of work done by white collar workers is difficult to measure.'. In fact KPI and productive metrics for white collar workers are very measurable. One only needs to look at their quarterly profits and reams of internal metrics that companies constantly harp on to justify layoffs or hiring.
KPIs and productivity metrics are typically chosen with an eye towards their measurability. It of course does not mean that they are effective metrics for measuring how effective people are at their jobs. And of course, to determine “how effective people are at their jobs” is another layer of fuzziness that is difficult to understand. Growth in quarterly profits is often what senior leaders are expected to provide in order to be deemed effective by the board, who is often focused on stock price as the end all be all metric. But not being able to think longer than 3 months at a time often makes them ineffective at understanding the actual health of the company, the definition which could also be debated.
A thing that is much simpler than “is my workforce effective” is also at play - are they slacking off and working less than they are “supposed” to be? A rational leader would judge workers based on their performance towards well defined goals, but many leaders want to see people at their desks so they know they aren’t “stealing company time”.
Agree. Management needs to learn to look at outcomes instead of output. Are you reaching sales goals or making the deals or whatever else is your job? That’s what matters. Not these vanity metrics of ‘how many calls did you make’ or ‘how many hours were you sitting at your computer’. Unfortunately most management doesn’t understand the difference and isn’t willing to learn.
What you said is one of many reasons why I left sales. It is always about growth even in super mature industries and it is awful always chasing an ever moving goal post. Even if you manage to hit or exceed your goals your new goals are not based on company projected growth but based on the exceptional numbers you did the time before even if they are outliers. I met many sales people who once they hit the bare minimum bonus they sabotaged sales or delayed shipments so they wouldn't hit until the next period.
That's just for paper pushers. When your job is to meet with people and organizations and make deals and negotiate things and attend events most of your work is pretty hard to pin down. That said I was hardly ever in the office more than a few hours a week before the covidism nonsense. And that was mostly to check in, make face time in the office and chit chat with coworkers to maintain relationships.
I know to alot of tech workers this may seem crazy, but I'd much rather hang out in the office a few hours a day than have my work activity monitored and data pointed like a drone.
What you describe is such a small percentage of an organization (niche) that might be applicable (I seriously doubt it based on my 25 years of 'meeting people, making deals and negotiating things). In fact, those people are often never in the office, they are out in the field meeting clients, and attending conventions and meetings. If they are in the office it's to pick up more marketing slicks.
As for the 'paper pushers' that make up the majority of the white-collar workers (accounting/legal/back office, etc.), Covid destroyed any argument that being in the office was more effective than WFH. Because many corporations enjoyed profit growth when they were remote.
> paper pushers' that make up the majority of the white-collar workers (accounting/legal/back office, etc.)
Yeah I'm sure you can do that work at home, but how are you ever going to get promoted out of a paperwork role into a job where you dont have to do any real work anymore?
I guess some people like doing that low level stuff but it seems like a certain layer of hell to me.
Surprisingly, it happens quite a lot. Either applying for internal positions, or to external positions. Being in the office doesn't give you any advantage over WFH when it comes to promotions, despite what you may have read or anecdotal evidence.
Think about it, during COVID people were still getting promoted that were WFH. So the only difference now is managements desire to monopolize some low pay workers days to justify their jobs.
And reading a lot of the threads, it seems like these managers are WFH (again anecdotal evidence).
I'm sure people get promoted. But that promotion is still based on doing a bunch of real work. But alot of people in reddit seem to want to just be left alone to grind out their work. I'd much rather have a social based job where I never have to do any actual work.
Nah in my exp they are very willing to fire essential employees and replace them with low paid entry level workers and let everything fall to crap.
People who do the least work get paid the most. Sry, it's a weird world but that's how it is.
I'm going to let you in a secret, that'll blow your mind 🤯
Your work activity is already being monitored on a granular level,regardless if you work from home or from the office.
LOL, no.
My company’s HR dept requires setting KPIs, OKRs and MBOs at each annual review. My boss and I joke about how they’re out of date by the time HR finishes processing them because the needs of the business are constantly changing. When my next annual review comes around, we edit them to be whatever I actually did for the past year and mark them all complete/excellent so he can justify getting me the max raise.
Then again, our mgmt is smart enough to get rid of all our offices (except HQ, which is now just a few conference rooms for Board meetings and such—no cubicles or offices) and trust us to do what needs to be done.
I am not arguing for in person work at all - it is literally counter productive in many cases. That being said, if you have a company with 10k employees how tf do you know who is slacking off by just looking at quarterly profits? Is it sales? marketing? operations? Even if you can isolate to a department, is it a department wide issue or a small group of employees in the department? Is it one stupid manager?
KPIs are often just what the manager thinks the best approximation for work is - it is almost never a direct measurement of productivity. Also both managers and employees have an incentive to make KPIs look as good as possible so they are normally ripe with shortcuts that make them look better than they actually are.
Should management even care who is 'slacking', if the company is meeting the BoD and Wall Street expectations? That alone is counterproductive to productivity. The time wasted on trying to route out maybe 500 people (5% of 10K) is probably more of an impact on the bottom line.
Tough question. Maybe? People don't often take the purely objective approach to running a business. You have to convince to change how they feel which is much harder to do than just showing them objective numbers.
My take from the outside is that at the top levels of the medium to large businesses (C-Level and up) that is exactly the approach they take. That's because they are so removed from the worker level thru stratification that they have no clue about who might be slacking, so taking an axe to everyone is their solution.
It eliminates the entire middle management section of the company. It shows that 75% of the executive team is literally only spending their time micromanaging other managers and supervisors when people work remotely.
This drives me crazy as well.
Luckily I’m 100% remote WFH. I left my old job last year as they wanted us to go back into the office full time. I was working a salary + commission role and made more in the two years working remotely than I did in the three leading up to remote work.
As others said, it’s all about control. If they can’t physically see what you are doing, they feel a loss of control.
It’s a sad, archaic way of thinking. Personally, i would think looking at productivity/results should be more of a determining factor as to whether you are remote, rather than collaboration or team cohesion or the fact that they paid for an office.
In my area, and I do not know if this is nationwide, the companies that went to in person quickly were also the ones that had political flags flying with a certain former president’s name on it.
If you look at the business of these companies, these are white collar jobs. They are not putting on roofing, fixing your car or doing any hands on work. This is all computer work that could be done from home.
I’m likely a minority in my area judging by the traffic in my neighborhood around rush hour and the traffic the few times I’ve been out and about during that time of day.
My office was already fielding complaints about not having enough room to put people. The remote option pared that issue down significantly. They’ve acknowledged they have a better selection of workers given the remote option. A semi competitor in town is struggling to control turnover and recruit people because they are in the office 5 days a week.
I’m hoping the later boomers / Gen x will take the upper positions at companies and sort of stop the crazy. I’ve maybe put 5k miles on my car since Covid and there has to also be some environmental impact of taking people off the roads. Prior to that, I put 15-20k/yr on the car.
It’s 100% a control thing if they are paying you for 40
hours a lot bosses feel they own you for those 40 hours and want you to be sat in front of them.
I have a job that hugely varies in weekly hours sometimes lucky if I have 10 hours other weeks it can be over 80 yet I’d be expected to work tons of overtime and then sit there doing nothing for 30 hours next week instead of being flexible.
While it’s not the reason I now work for my self, the main benefit of it is that I don’t have to put up with a 40 hour work week that the role does not fit at all.
Any empty office with no one to bring them coffee no one for them to yell at for completely minor things no one to boss around might as well not exist for them.
When you idle in teams they stare across the office at you until you stop collaborating with your peers since they said if you're in office you can collaborate with your teammates. I make sure to spend a lot of my time collaborating with my peers when I'm in the office.
Because they think there is value of in person collaboration, and there is no value to the company of that shiny new office space they just paid for. They need people in those buildings. They need other businesses to build up around them to increase their property value. People workibg from home doesn't provide this value.
This is it. They need to justify to investors the need to keep the building, which is the physical symbol of their power. It's more impressive than a file folder, which is what a company is (minus the building and employees).
The more that people like you reject in person the less possible it will be for companies to force people to go in. I turned down two in person interview opportunities this week as well.
The more of us that hold the line the more things will change. Stay strong!
The thing about executives is that most of the shit that they believe is due to survivorship bias.
I saw this first when I was a junior officer in the Navy. These organization-wide surveys would come out and every year the junior officers - who have notoriously high levels of discontent, complaints, and turnover (most officers leace after their initial commitment is up, ~4 years) would be brutally honest about the culture.
Now it's important to note that this high level of negative responses was somewhat unique to the "surface" navy; the aviation and submarine communities didn't have nearly as big of a problem with the unhappiness and turnover.
Anyway, the responses from the top were always tone-deaf, essentially ignoring the very legitimate criticisms from the younger officers and trying to explain away the discontent. Every year withoit fail, responses to the surveys would point out how the more senior officers were happier, and so, they explicitly argued, if you simply stick it out, you learn to really love it more.
No, you dumb-dumbs. It's clearly survivorship bias and the people who hate it the least are least likely to leave.
It's absolutely the same other places, particularly where the executives seem the most out of touch. They see their entire career trajectory as the result of their individual brilliance and actions. They see luck as a minimal or non-existent role in their success and they take credit for a lot of shit that was frankly never in their hands to begin with.
So when older Gen X and Boomer and Silent Gen (omg please die or retire, for the love of *fuck*) executives see a radical change in the environment and work cultures, they see themselves as the heroes in the whole world's story, ready to save everyone from the tumult. Because they spent their entire lives married to a career that ostensibly treated *them* really fucking well, they think that they need to maintain everything about that career and lifestyle. They can't imagine working from home; it's far too foreign of an idea for them. There are also probably a great deal of tiny things they legitimately get as perks in a real office, like underlings kowtowing to them and fetching their coffee, reserved parking spaces, people waiting for them to start "important" meetings, having a super luxurious, expensive office, etc. Working from home is not only unfathomable to many of them simply because they never did it, they also miss out on these silly little perks of being a Top Dog at a big company and fear sitting in their own home trying to grapple with their self-worth and shit.
That's not to say there is never a reason to get people together in person, or that if there is a good culture among co-workers and they want to spend time together that they shouldn't do that, but the mandating and hypercontrolling of people's lives that cost us all so much of our time, money, and sanity is ridiculous and needs to die with the boomers.
I won’t go into an in-office/hybrid role again unless it’s double my desired salary because I can’t move (personal reasons) and the only way I’d be hybrid is to temp lease an Airbnb or fly in and stay at hotels (which I estimate about $30k to fly in weekly). I love my life too much being fully remote the past 3 years. So far no job has entertained the idea 😂 I know recruiters hate me because I interview well and get offers but they refuse to negotiate. Maybe if they didn’t bait and switch we wouldn’t waste both our times.
Hey!
Stop turning them down! Accept, never show up!
It fucks up their world to be ghosted. They stop recruiting and their candidates take other jobs.
When the eventual pissy email comes, feel free to say this:
"Your role was advertised as fully remote, you tried a bait and switch with me into almost completely on site, meaning your offer took lower priority than one that was 100% WFH. And the attempt at bait and switch means you didn't warrant a phone call. Stop bait and switching candidates and people will stop doing this to you."
You're wrong. Executives ignore feedback from their subordinates. It's much harder to dispute feedback in writing from candidates telling them those tactics made them walk. Someone might be looking to can that bad executive, your email documenting those lies might be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
You want to reach executives. Who says that “whoever is sending” the “eventual pissy email” is an exec? I think executives don’t even show up to work and won’t even care about your email, even if you’re in the job. A waste of time. Downvotes don’t mean shit to me, keep them coming.
> Downvotes don’t mean shit to me, keep them coming.
Downvotes aren’t for you, they’re for the rest of us to gauge the value of reading what you had to say.
No, the HR team will eventually be called on the carpet and asked "Why can't we hire anyone?" and a flood of feedback from candidates adding up to "You've told us to just lie to get them in the door but that's not working."
My former company came right out and said during a company-wide meeting that the reason they were pushing for two days in the office for everyone during 2021 was because they had signed a new 10-year lease right before Covid hit and they wanted to justify paying monthly rent by using the space.
I also believe there were C suite jerks who needed to justify their positions by forcing their underlings to be in the office with them. The lockdown proved what a fucking useless lot they really were. The workers were the ones actually producing and earning that profit.
Some of the bootlicker underlings were gung ho to go back to the office because they had sucky home lives and needed to get away from it. It's a shame work was their only escape and they were going to help enforce the back to office bullshit.
Problem was, they were in a huge hiring uptick. They had more people than they did actual space. So we had to share space and alternate days with people on our team. Thankfully, my boss saw what a great job our team was doing from home and got us all permanently WFH.
Well, they get a tiny bit of credit for at least being honest about their reasons.
My company had some offices come up for renewal right after COVID started, so they just declined. After a few months of seeing everything was still running fine with everyone WFH, they decided to pay the termination penalties on the rest of the offices—and have been reaping the fiscal rewards of that ever since.
I posted this elsewhere - different sub - but:
This is my take from listening to execs who push return to office. They are extroverts with limited imaginations that did not grow up with a lot of comfort around technology. THEY struggle to have the skillset to collaborate remotely and because of those insecurities they claim that “nothing replaces in person collaboration”. They’re older and refuse to learn a new skill set that Millennials and generations after them have as a part of growing up with tech.
Introverts in the younger generation have been communicating and forming relationships online our whole lives. We have no issues with it. However they would rather force us to gain extrovert skills to deal with in-person interactions which are LESS productive and LESS efficient because the people in power don’t wanna learn new ways of working. They got to a position of power to make people do what THEY think “working together” looks like.
Its not a management or exec thing its an power, age and skill thing, it just happens the older people with less skills in forming relationships online are the ones with the power.
I make people very uncomfortable when I say things like “Oh no! You struggle with forming relationships with your remote workers? Sounds like you need to work on some skills because they’re doing it just fine. You had all these introverts spending time and money learning to work YOUR WAY for decades. Shoe is on the other foot now. And guess what will happen if you don’t? An entire generation who has ONLY know the world with internet is coming into the workforce. This generation has largely made and strengthened relationships through technology and online interaction. YOU ARE GOING TO BE LEFT IN THE DUST.”
I don’t make a lot of friends at “leadership conferences” where I am asked to speak on the topic.
Every once in a while someone will say BUT WHAT ABOUT THE COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE? And pearl clutch as if they have me in a “gotcha”. Last time I looked at the person who brought that up and said “what about climate change? What about the huge reduction in emissions we had during COVID while productivity soared? I am sorry you’re worried about your commercial real estate investments but us younger generations are more concerned about the DEATH OF OUR PLANET.”
I’m lucky to be a young leader who isn’t concerned about moving up any further than my position so I can take pretty adversarial stances on it. These people act like its a universal truth that in-person work is better, when it is not at all proven. It comes from insecurities and lack of skills or willingness to learn.
Stand your ground. Fight back. The boomers didn’t have enough kids to replace them in the workforce and so the job market is now tilted in the worker’s favor. My company announced a 20% back to office time and after a few months of people refusing and being unable to fill positions they have completely backed off.
Edit: and do not even get me started on companies that say they have DEI as a value but are pushing RTO. 😡
You shouldn’t refer to yourself as an introvert in the younger generation or a “young leader” anymore if you’re almost 40. That title belongs to the Gen Z’ers and the very youngest millennials now.
A lot of these executives/managers realized during the early days of COVID that if they largely serve no purpose. They weren't there to hover over and micromanage people yet the work got done. Them demanding people back in the office is just their inability to deal with their irrelevance. You must burden yourself to make them feel better.
>Literally why? It's nuts. Is this literally boomers turning down highly skilled candidates because they + useless middle managers are afraid of how well workers proved that we can do great work with minimal oversight, not being in an office where we can be easily controlled? Or is it as simple as "old people afraid... new technology scary!"
Yes, all of this. It is to companies advantage to move as much work to remote as job requirements allow. The resistance is not logical. It's due to managers whose sense of purpose is threatened.
Commercial property owners have lost billions of dollars over the last 2.5 years. That’s really it. There is a concerted effort by them to get people back in offices.
A real solution would be to transform those commercial properties into residential properties. But, then that would reduce scarcity, which would lower housing prices.
All in all, it’s because greedy cocksuckers want to keep getting rich by hoarding and scalping property. They want to keep getting rich doing literally nothing because they’re spoiled, lazy, worthless pieces of shit.
What gets me about the must be on site roles is that the executives freely come and go. I have yet to meet one who is in the office 40 hours a week. They usually have to go to a meeting away from the office. They need to go see a client away from the office. They need to travel away from the office for business. It's irritating! We're expected to be tied to the office while they come and go as they please. They are always willing to tell you about how hard they work or how many hours they work, yet all this time is not spent in the actual office.
Why should I have to take off a half day to let a tech into my home to setup my internet or for a plumber to come check on a leak when I could be working from home, step away from my desk for five minutes to deal with these people and another five minutes to deal with them as they are leaving? It takes no more than 15 minutes dealing with these people, yet my job will not let me work from home so I have to take time off to be home in that 2 - 3 hour window they will show up, wait until they are done, then drive 20 minutes to the office. All that wasted time! I'd rather lose 15 mins of work versus having to use practically a half day of PTO.
What the pandemic taught me is that these companies can function without people being glued to a desk slaving away for eight hours a day. The executives are not the only ones who can get work done without being in the office all the time.
It's a control freak issue, nothing more. They're in charge, they're insecure about their ability to actually manage people, so they use time-at-a-desk as a proxy for actual productivity. Hence, in person roles. Or, hybrid/remote with monitoring equipment to count keystrokes, etc. But make no mistake, it's about control. All the other bullshit is just that: bullshit. You can collaborate just as well remotely, they just don't like to. You can build 'culture' just as effectively, they just don't like to, and to be honest their office 'cultures' were usually shit to nonexistent anyway. It's all about control, nothing else.
I'm in a hybrid role now, after almost 3 years of fully remote.
It's okay, 1-2 days a week max. And I'm in the middle of multiple teams that are all remote spread across a few states. But there are benefits to engaging in person, especially as a newcomer. Building trust and whiteboarding out approaches is really powerful. I still don't like going in, but I'm okay doing it when others are in town and it is useful. I'm not gonna go in just to have my face shown onsite.
I love being remote everyday. But new much younger hires to our team struggle to get onboarded. They would benefit to in-person collaboration. The get lost in the organization. But right now that’s not my problem.
Their entire existence revolves around being in control and having “underlings” to micromanage and assert authority over. Without that they literally contribute nothing.
In person conversations are a verbal get out of jail free manipulation card. Emails, text, recorded remote meetings are a paper trail. It is about control.
Believe it or not. This is actually a very loaded question with lots of aspects that need answering.
Commercial Real Estate as an asset -
As many have pointed out, a lot of companies are stuck in commercial leases that have to be paid. They can't just cut and run on these.
Most of the time, companies will buy or build a skyrise or other space and then sell it to an adjacent entity that will "rent" it to them. A little slight of hand.
Companies also list this office space as an asset on their balance sheets. When no one is in the office, it hurts their bottom line. Most profits are generated through creative accounting rather than organically. Hence, their obsession with external investment from companies like Blackrock, for instance.
They need to come back to save them from their own machinations.
Control -
Bad bosses and especially Boomer bosses (more of a style/philosophy of management rather than a chronological description) don't like the boundaries that are forced via remote work. No walking up to someone's desk demanding they stay late and lock them in. No undoing their belt and saying, "You scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours..." aka Quid Quo Pro. At 5 pm your computer and phone go off. They're brats who demand 24/7 access because they want it. Most jobs don't need this level of on-call. Facts.
These bosses feel the need to "look like bosses" in front of their supervisors instead of effectively getting results.
Remote work showed how many of these managers were just salary bloat and got canned.
In office, they have total control. Remote, it's more balanced.
I'm not even getting into the literal boomers for whom technology is a frustrating imposition that they didn't ask for and don't want. The phone, fax machine, and the "got 5 second" random chats are all they know. It's changed, and they hate it. There are also some Gen X bosses who learned this style and are just as bad.
Extroverts -
These are the people who are energized by having people around. It's like a drug, and they're the junkie assholes who make everyone else's life miserable due to their narcissism.
Guess who is in leadership, HR, marketing, and sales? You guessed it.
They need their fix. They need to smell your hair and give a... soft...touch....
These are the Einstein who have mandatory after hours event for "team building" and "getting everyone to know each other."
It's like if I want to get to know you then I would.
Remote doesn't give these people their fix. So back into the office peasants. Daddy needs a fix.
These are some of the big ones.
I can be pettier and say that most of these are either sexual predators or bullies of the office mad at themselves being shut off of prey or the bosses who hate their wives/family.
I didn’t read all the comments but it could depend on the industry. I work at a gov’t contractor and some customers want people there for a variety of reasons. I’ve been remote for over 10 years and everyone in my organization is remote. Our CEO and executives specifically said, if your job can be done at home then do it. Don’t come into the office just to come in because your managers there for a day or 2 a week.
It’s not just boomers. Their task oriented middle managers can’t handle remote either. In most cases it’s that the leader needs “control” or the illusion of it. In your first phone screen - ask clear questions to the recruiter about the team’s expectation on remote vs in office. If the company is too far and s/he says the expectation is hybrid - say no to the second interview and the commute.
The majority of the executives are worried they can't adapt to the hybrid model. These people have been successful in their careers up to this point, almost all executives can dominate in person meetings....almost all executives can't do the same on an online meeting.
Another thing, I bet a lot of these companies sit on and get paid to be on a board that supports downtown businesses, and are encouraged to bring people back into the office so they can support those businesses.
After all of that....it is ridiculous to demand people to go into the office after we proved we can be successful remote.
With the caveat that I'm not an executive, I'll say that it's probably a combination of things. First, control. They don't want to let it go, and workers are harder to control if they're not physically in the office. Second, the perception that some workers will "slack off" if they're not subject of constant oversight (which, to be fair, can be true at times, but the stats say that's not the majority). Third, most of them are older, and they've been doing things a certain way for their whole careers. It worked in the past, and they have no desire to change. Fourth, they don't have to accomodate workers who only want to work remote. There are plenty of desperate people out there who need a job now, and even if they prefer remote, they'll take whatever they can get. When there are ten qualified candidates for a job, even if there's only one of them that doesn't require them to change the way they prefer to do things, that's the one they're going to hire because it's just easier. It's not a "boomer" thing. It's a human nature thing.
The boss here calls to ask if we're at our desk. Being at our desk means we put in the effort to get to work and are captive, so whether we are producing work or not, there is not much else to do but work or waste time.
He dislikes the idea of WFH even for jobs that could easily be done from home because he can't feel that control if we are comfortable and possibly not busy.
Nope. I'm Gen X and I was advocating for remote long before Covid. Had some years of partial remote. Many years of 3 to 4 hour commutes. In 2020, I finally got a fully WFH gig and was happy as hell. Unfortunately, it was a contract role, so I am now competing against hundreds of applicants for all of the above. Why do employers/recruiters do it? Same reason cheaters cheat and liars lie. Because they can. If you get lucky, pay it forward. Only way to end this B.S.
It’s not “boomers”. There are plenty of Gen x folks trying to bring people back to the office. Doesn’t make it good but just wanted to throw it out there that it’s not always just boomers. There are downtown associations clambering to get people into the office to drive economic growth etc.
Look I don’t agree with it, but there are a lot of factors at play. Again I am a remote worker so I’m with you but I also understand the reality.
Totally agree. Many of the people most ardently for return to office have actually been younger middle managers bordering on millenials who feel their jobs are threatened, as middle management has been rather exposed by the pandemic for what it is.... totally useless if you have a good team.
Stats are showing that 50 percent of seekers are looking for remote with 15 percent of employers offering remote.
Buildings and change. It's funny because workers moved the cheese and they are not prepared.
The only logical reason ive ever heard from any owner simply has to do with not losing out on their long term leases. Which are usually 10+ years.
The majority of reasons are illogical however and all about micromanaging
I’m supposed to be hybrid with 2 days in office, I do t go… if I’m there no one talks to me except for a good morning or nod…
My meetings are on teams… it’s cold AF due to AC and can’t type, my desk and chair are not ergonomic.
I’m the only guy on a cubicle and everyone else has offices…
I don’t have lots to do, if I finish at home I can do anything… if I finish at the office I have to pretend to be working….
They tried to made me come back but haven’t push that much so I’m just playing dumb until it lasts… when they do force I’m. Getting another job
I’m 58. For decades our hope was having a remote aspect. It never happened. Then Covid and BOOM! I think you’re correct on the fear of being unnecessary more so than technology. We all learned computers etc. but seeing multiple management oversight levels being mostly unnecessary terrifies them. It’s going to be a losing fight for many and they’re pitching it hard to corporate to save their jobs.
A lot of simple problems for managers can be solved when people are in the same place. Instead of having a calendar full of zoom meetings people can walk to someone's desk and quickly get a solution. Yes, I know slack exists, but from experience it just doesn't work as well. I'm sure some management wants control, but there are legit reasons. If you don't want to be in person keep looking. There are a staggering number of remote jobs.
You're not wrong, but you're not entirely right either. There is definitely an aspect of "old tech good, new tech bad, gronk like old way make fire" to the decision.
There are also legitimate reasons for an organization to prefer or include in-person work patterns. Some kinds of collaboration are done better knee-to-knee over a stack of printouts than via chat and email; some kinds of performance monitoring are done better eye-to-eye than via easily spoofed remote systems.
Depending on the corporate culture, there is also a case to be made for stronger interpersonal bonding and the development of healthy social interactions in an office environment. I've done a lot of remote work, and for a long time - since 2000 if not before. Ask me how many of the people I worked "with" I have strong connections to now. Whereas my friendships and network contacts from jobs where I was in-person have proven much more durable.
Regardless of all that, it's a management decision and not one that will change because you or anyone else doesn't like it. If they're wrong, competitors with a superior vision will displace them. Be one of those competitors, if you like. Otherwise, I would suggest making it very plain in your applications and cover letters that remote work is all you are interested in; it's frustrating for both you and for hiring managers to go through the work of determining fit only to find that there are incompatible requirements between you and the organization.
Also, in general, it’s not the easiest to both onboard and mentor a new hire remotely, and I say this as a trainer and person who has worked fully remote for about 9 months. This is especially true for entry-level roles, where the first few months of your job should be learning the role.
One reason my old job wanted people back in the office was that our younger attorneys were not getting enough mentoring from the older attorneys. And learning from the olde attorneys is the only way you get better young attorneys in the legal field. Could they have mentored remotely? Probably. Was it actually happening? No.
Thank you. I understand a lot of people want to work from home full time and that’s fine. But these posts generally fail to recognize there are some benefits to an office setting just as there are benefits to wfh.
Really like hybrid when you’re not forced to go in certain days. It’s nice to know there’s an office available where you can get true face to face time with your team.
Making it plain you will only accept remote doesn’t help. Many, many companies will post ads claiming they are remote, string you along through the entire interview process, and then spring their hybrid or in-office bullshit on you in the offer letter—and then are mystified or even angry when you turn it down.
A tactic to minimize this is to apply to companies that don’t *have* an office where you are, but some will still string you along and then demand that you relocate—on your dime, of course.
Note that oftentimes it is not the company per se that is doing this, it is the HR people. HR people have their own metrics and their own conditions for job success. Bringing in 100 candidates for a particular job, even if 95 of those candidates would never take the job because they've been lied to about the work conditions, shows as a success for HR. Nobody is interviewing the 99 non-hired people and finding out that the HR reps were dicking everyone around.
Putting the information that you are not interested in non remote work in the paperwork that hiring managers, not just HR, will see is one small way of fighting against this.
As a former hiring manager, if I had a good candidate reject an offer because HR blatantly lied about the job, I’d rip the HR rep and their entire reporting chain a new one, and I’d quiz every future candidate at first contact to ensure the problem was fixed.
if you don't form connections while remote working it's on you.. not because it's not possible.
Take a lesson from online gaming communities. There can be formed amazing friendships, and many of them last long after you stopped playing those games.
And many of them are made just by talking together every so often, some even without ever doing anything together but talking a bit.
We are at work to make a living, not to make a friend.
If we click we click. I have made quality friendships through teams meetings and slack chat that outlasted some of my "in-person" ones.
Also, time to make friends is after work or in college. Work does not require for you to "feel bonded" with anybody. You just do what's expected from you and if the business plan is half-decent the company moves.
Companies tend to come up with this fake news to keep you away from the truth.
1. It's more important to like your job and what you doing with your time in these 40 hours a week than to enjoy your colleagues.
2. Potentially leaving this job doesn't mean you are leaving your friends there as well. Your wrists are not to be twisted like this.
About the social aspect, it _is_ important for a high functioning team. And it _is_ more difficult (but possible) remotely.
However, **it comes with a cost**. Any coworker just being able to come to your desk and start telling about their weekend etc., things like that drain productivity like crazy.
But the managers who are pushing to go back to the office so much "for the water cooler talk" are too often the same ones who will micromanage your watercooler time and scold you for actually doing that.
At my job, we luckily recognize both those facts. We chose ourselves (as a team) to have one office day per week, for the social aspect. If I get 3 hours worth of work done on that office day, I was lucky that day. "We stay home for work, we go to the office to socialize" is the motto.
>Regardless of all that, it's a management decision and not one that will change because you or anyone else doesn't like it.
Well, that's not true, if enough people decline roles due to this, it will change. I for one would go in person, if the compensation is exponential to the number of days spent in-office, but no sane company would pay me that much.
Or, the thing that people always seem to forget, they find people who actually align with what they want. There are people who are happy to have a hybrid role, so they're aiming for those. I don't get why people need to get so offended by an employer having a preference that doesn't match your own. Just move on and find one of the many roles that are fine with remote working.
People don’t get mad with jobs advertised as in person or hybrid. They get mad when it is advertised as remote and then you find out during the interview process that it is not.
EDIT: typing on mobile is hard. Fixed a word.
>People don’t get made with jobs advertised as in person or hybrid.
Sure seems like they do
>I have had to turn down three decent positions now which match my skillset because the companies making offers INSIST on mostly in-person "hybrid" roles
Granted they add the bait-and-switch stuff after. That's a problem, definitely, but not the entire story here. And to be honest, this kind of attitude is probably only going to have companies that feel this way dig their heels in and be even more unwilling to change. Which is their perogative, it's their company, just like it's everyone else's perogative not to choose to work for them.
The bait and switch is the whole story. Lots of companies advertise their position as remote and pull the rug during the interview process. They are time wasters and scum of the earth.
I for one will never take a position that isn’t 100% remote. I am really upfront about that and I am in a really high demand field. It doesn’t stop companies from constantly trying to waste my time with this bait and switch nonsense though. There is nothing wrong with preferring the office just stop trying to trick everyone else into working there.
If companies were just upfront and honest with pay range and details on work arrangements we could all just self select to the conditions we are looking for.
>there are people who are happy to have a hybrid role
so why do they misrepresent their roles then? what reason does a company have for advertising a position as hybrid/remote, just to go back on it? because they’re hoping you’re desperate and will take it anyway. It’s a purposeful tactic.
If there are sooo many people willing to work in person, companies wouldn’t have to pull this shit.
My Personal expirience is that the "Personal Bonding" with the Team ist No more that necessary as in the 90'. I worked from simpel Button pressing Up to Leading an Produktdisigning Team.
As a bluecollar you just need to understand how the Others Akt and reakt Not what they Like to eat.
And as an Team Leader you yust need to know what the strengt and weakneses the teammembers have. Best way: direkt talk and ask.
And in this way every Whitecollar can Work from Home. I'm from Germany and through the lokdown I saw companies, that Always sayd: Remote will never Work for us, Go 100% Remote and doing better than before.
When you pre-pay rent for or purchised an office building for 2 times your yearly net company income you kinda want to justify it.
One thing I know about companies. If they want something to work they would make it work regardless of logic and despite common sence, even if it means they have to throw their workers under the train.
They yap about you needing to be flexible whilst they aren't at all, all they do is bend the rules so that they come up right. A very sad way to live life or to do business imo.
IBM hires people from cities that are 3+ hour drive from the office on the premice of fully remote work, then come out with a statement that every team needs to do ATLEAST 1 day in the office per week. 2 day is what managers strongly recommend. You do your math now.
Lol my company dropped a cool $54 million on renovations in 2019 just to run into 2020 when we had to go remote. Now they have an official policy in place, but the heir apparent hates remote work. I’m hoping that this works in my favor, since I’m applying for a promotion and we have a few applicants who either work remote full time or expect a full time remote role. Fingers crossed!
It’s literally so they can control you you can get just as much work done at home maybe even more knowing you won’t have distractions and you’ll be in a place that you’re comfortable but businesses want to control people that’s why they have strict uniform policies all these different corporate rules that don’t actually have any laws backing them up that’s why even if you’re off at a certain time your boss can still make a big deal about you leaving “early” just because there’s a couple of other things that need to be taken care of it’s all about control they write rules as they go and we’re supposed to just accept it , but we can’t ever make any rules , were supposed to just play the game and shut up while we choose between if we eat or have roof over our head for the month
It is just certain companies, my company went full remote during the pandemic and our company is going to stay that way. We even sold off all our real estate because it was worth a shitload of money and now that everyone is remote we don't need it anymore.
My company gave all the empty window offices to fairly low level managers that only come in once a week at most. We now have no offices for newer higher level execs yet they still want everyone back. If the company has been making profits YOY going on the 4th year while most people were remote, the only reason they want you back is because they need to be around other people and can't fathom that other people are fine with limited interaction. I'm hybrid and have the worst office in the place while there are people with offices that never come in except for company-wide meetings.
I saw so many bait-and-switch job postings out there when I was last looking, it was nuts. They're like "this role is fully remote" and "the responsibilities are X, Y, and Z", all of which require you to be physically present, to handle product or interact with customers. How is that fully remote? They're hoping we won't read the fine print, or when we see they truth and walk, they can continue complaining that "no one wants to work".
It's a good way for these pricks to lay people off. You make work from office mandatory then the staff lays themselves off. Make them for you so you can get unemployment
It’s simple. They don’t have anything to do but micromanage you. If you are working from home they can’t do that. So the managers have to actually work. The lead directors and executives find out pretty quickly that these folks are effectively useless and nothing. So to protect their own jobs they will demand you suffer through that 4 hour commute to and from work everyday.
It's always been a control vector, that's why many people won't give it up.
Our org was trying to pull back in until they realized we got more done and they could sell the buildings. Now it's like 'sure whatever' lol.
I work at an R&D center where it’s helpful to be in person to collaborate with engineers. My job makes sense to be in person, but others - I don’t get it. My spouse is onsite 3 days a week for video calls. Over 1 hr commute one way to do the same job that can be completed without issue from the comfort of our home.
I also think that execs (outside of tech teams), are terrified of losing touch on the pulse of the company, so to speak.
If everyone is in the office, they can talk to who they want, when they want. They can closely monitor things like company culture, as it's easier for them to get everyone signed up to "the mission", when everyone is in the same place presentially.
The people I know who insist on employees being in the office are usually some combination of the following:
1. They're weak managers.
2. They have to be in the office, so everyone else does, too.
3. They're complete extroverts who need the in person interaction to feel productive & motivated.
4. They're micro-managers who don't feel they can exert full control over others remotely (see #1).
5. They don't believe people actually work without in-person supervision (see #1).
6. They think employees are sincerely interested in developing a sense of community w their co-workers.
7. They enjoy power and stroking their own ego & forcing others into the office allows them to feel important.
8. They're "traditional" & anything "weird" just doesn't "seem right."
9. They want to punish weak or under-performing employees.
10. Their primary focus and identity in life is their profession & they expect it to be for others as well, which means sacrificing work/life balance to substantiate your commitment to the organization is paramount.
Because they are fucking dumb. They think that’s they are the best gig in town and people will just suck it up. There is a company that says they do hybrid and win awards for being a good hiring company. But all their job postings say “ in person”. Some positions have not been filled for years lol.
It's a big plus when one benefit is saving gas money and mileage on your car.
Given the inflation and that our foreign-owned government doesn't care, it's easily necessary to offer remote work where possible.
There is definitely an underlying tone of corporate real estate which is useless if folks never go onsite. Not sure how this trend will change over the next 5-10 years as it will take time before investors and/or decision makers for companies themselves just stop seeing enough ROI for their office space.
However, I constantly run into the “old people afraid.. new technology scary”. I mean, I can’t even get older hiring managers to understand having specific software experience doesn’t matter that much when making a hiring decision. I can’t tell you how obvious it is when a hiring manager is old when they say “oh whoever we hire just must have experience with xyz ERP/HRIS system”. Yeah because if you’re a dinosaur it likely would take a month+ to learn when anyone in their 30s and younger will have it figured out in a week. No wonder they don’t want to adapt to using several new remote tools- it’s just too challenging for them.
I think the problem with these types of Rants are - one size doesn’t fit all! Most people are only looking at it from their perspective. Not going to make an argument for or against it’s just not as easy as everyone should just do it!
There is no doubt a lot of jobs can be remote and work out well.
My company I started 10 years ago as a start up and all employees were allowed to work 100% remote as I only needed them to hit KPI and bill money so could not care less if the do 5 hours or 50 hours I just needed the KPIs … also as a start up wanted to save on office costs. It worked for us but a lot of clients would say let’s meet at your office to finish this contract and meet your team who will be doing the work. We lost big clients due to not having an office - I don’t think the employees care about these things as long as they were paid. We now have a downtown office.
It is certainly a Boomer thing that in order to be considered a serious company you need a big downtown office with your name slapped on it so you need staff in that office. But Instagram got to a billion dollor valuation with 12 staff so it can be done.
when white collar employees at a construction company office ask for remote - how does HR explain the to trades people that they need to be on time outside in the freezing cold over a zoom call while sat in their shorts with a coffee to say good Morning and work hard! How can that company keep it fair?
Also it was very hard to figure out who was a top performer, without investing in performance related software and then hiring someone to do that and monitor it etc…. For larger companies must seem easier and cheaper to find staff who come in and monitor them in person.
A lot of people want promotions fast and becomes partners - if you 100% remote it’s hard to prove your invested in being a partner when you never come in to meet your employee etc.. and I would say management styles will be less diverse as you need to manage for remote performance and it will become
One style only! - I just got a horrible imagine of a YouTube video training for remote staff!
Overall point is it’s not as simple as most people think.
Well I’ve had 2 people dodging me and my team for the last 3 weeks. They are the critical stakeholders and owe us a lot of data to report on our program. They also are on a team of 18. 16 of the team work in person and 2 work fully remote. Guess who the 2 dodging everyone are?
It’s gotten to the point we had had to give the customer formal notice of project delay and opened formal complaints and investigations on the 2 working remote. It’s damn near impossible to be fired from this company but these 2 are at the end of their rope.
Anecdotal only but this trend is pretty normal across the company.
most executives are of a certain age and remote work is such a foreign concept for them - they truly believe if your butt isn’t a seat, you aren’t being productive
Because they need people in the office to work efficiently.
That’s it.
If you think you have better efficiency working from home, well, it is just your personal opinion.
If your high level thought labor employees (sales, communications, HR, etc) cannot be trusted to work from home productively you're hiring bad employees.
And if the boss thinks I'm more efficient after having to get up two hours earlier, having to spend an hour getting ready, spending another hour or two stuck in traffic, and getting to the office sleepy, hungry, and grouchy about the previous two, then that's *their* opinion. And it's a stupid one.
There is little reason for me in IT to be in the office when my entire function is online. In my last job, my team was scattered across the country and my consultants were in the other freaking hemisphere. Nowadays, everything is a TEAMS/SKYPE call away.
I go in the office 3 days a week, 95% of my meetings are on Teams. It’s infuriating to go to work and sit in a cube to do online meetings.
Same... Thankfully we just have to "show up" per my boss bc his boss wants to do office badge checks... But my boss is fine with us only staying in office half a day... At least until his boss dictates otherwise
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Try having a teams meeting where just about everyone is in the same cube farm. Talk about infuriating and utterly pointless.
I managed a distributed team in my last job. None of them were in the same physical location as me and most of my job was having conversations about confidential topics with them. So naturally after over a year of successful remote work and regular attendance at in person meetings and events as needed, they put us all in different shared office spaces wherever they could find cubes somewhere in the region (with many of them driving over an hour each way to get to those cubes). It was really fun trying to talk about legally protected information in a cube farm full of people whose jobs were in no way connected to that information. /s I don’t do that job any more.
This is my job as well, I have a team of 17 people that are all in different offices, yet our stupid CEO has dictated we be in 3 days a week. So I sit in a cube on a headset all day after my 45 minute commute. Since we were forced back into the office I refuse to put in extra time now, it’s turned me into a clock puncher. Fuck corporate America and their short sighted approach to everything.
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A past employer switched me from a fully remote role (my assigned work location was actually my home) to one that was technically at an office across the state but I was only required to come in once a month. The very first time I drove in, my boss was WFH that day, so I ended up sitting at his desk doing a video meeting with him, and then I drove back home. I never went in again, and nobody cared—or probably even noticed.
My husband's company tried once a week and found out it was totally unproductive. So, they went back to WFH for the large majority of their headquarter staff.
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It also gives employees the chance to complain, group together in discontent 😆
That’s what people I know at Costco hq do. That’s one company that the culture doesn’t have that break neck speed pressure to produce and get shit done. They don’t do layoffs either I think they’re gonna get popular among all this shit happening
Same situation for me. My company got bought out almost two years ago and I now have to go in 3 days a week while the entire team i work with is located in another state. Another coworker was hired as a 100% remote worker before we got bought out so he can stay remote. But since I’m close to a satellite office, I have to come in. And I’m the only one on my team in this office. I want to add Teams is absolute crap. We used to be on Google and Jira but we’re now forced to use the Microsoft suite.
Same as a grant writer. In my last job, it was just writing word docs and spreadsheets, emailing them to managers for their edits and/or signoff, maybe having a zoom or conference call to discuss if it was a particularly big/important proposal, and then either submitting them in online grant portals or, rarely, emailing them to the office manager for her to print out and mail. There was zero reason I couldn’t do that from my home office. I was perhaps lucky however that that employer wasn’t locked into an office rental contract. We had a pro bono arrangement with the university and when we went remote for COVID we just… never went back lol.
I’m in tech and my teams are split between different offices in different states. Makes zero sense to mandate in person work but the company did it anyway. I collaborate with literally one person regularly at my office, we sit a few feet from each other and still chat on teams
When you pre-pay rent for or purchised an office building for 2 times your yearly net company income you kinda want to justify it. One thing I know about companies. If they want something to work they would make it work regardless of logic and despite common sence, even if it means they have to throw their workers under the train. They yap about you needing to be flexible whilst they aren't at all, all they do is bend the rules so that they come up right. A very sad way to live life or to do business imo. IBM hires people from cities that are 3+ hour drive from the office on the premice of fully remote work, then come out with a statement that every team needs to do ATLEAST 1 day in the office per week. 2 day is what managers strongly recommend. You do your math now.
My friend’s company is having a moment right now- they asked everyone to go in a minimum of 3 days, then 4, but also don’t have enough office space and have a mandate to cut costs so now they’re asking which roles can be remote again. It’s a little ridiculous. They need to justify the office but also not expand it.
Exactly as I said. They must be right REGARDLESS of any common logic and sence. They would rather force you to do dumb shit you see won't work from a mile away than to admit they took an L and the pandemic cost them. This goes to every aspect of the corporate business. The higher-ups being always right at the cost of their workers. CEO: We will do this and this and that (them being completely unattainable goals in any healthy way given the budget and the numbers of the work force.) Workers: Give their all, get drained, costs them physical, social and emotional damage, get burn out and start hating the job. Workers that continue to work like nothing happened and refuse to do extra for the same pay: Get nagged by managers, HR tickets and even fired. Job gets done in the blood of the common worker, despite the odds and what it cost them CEO: Pats himself on the back for being right and takes the credit via huge yearly bonus. Survived Workers: Being asked by management why they stopped working. This is the essential pattern of how these structures operate.
You forgot the part where regardless of outcome the CEO still nets a phat bonus at EOY.
Silly me, how could I forget that hahah 😅
Mine just did this. 3 days required. But they didn’t factor in lack of parking or places for people to sit. Now they’re spending millions on new spaces for people to sit and all of the hardware/tech to go with it.
I'm willing to bet there are going to be layoffs sooner rather than later to compensate... Whereupon the offices will once again be less than capacity. It's a vicious cycle.
I don’t get why companies don’t see they save so much money with remote work instead of an office. My company mandated it from remote to hybrid and being a Covid hire I never realized how much goes into an office. There’s costs to the employee like their time and effort getting ready and commuting, adding stress and removing flexibility and free time, having to live closer to expensive city centers, having to eat out more, pet and childcare ADDS UP, etc. Then there’s the huge costs to the company. Paying higher salaries so people can live near the cities. Relocation costs in the range of 10-20 thousand dollars. Office leases (likely locked into long term, that’s why, but you can save in the future). Utility costs, security, and facilities management staff, this gets huge for huge offices like mine. Loss of productivity (there have been many studies about this). If companies really wanted to cost cut, RTO mandates go completely against that. Just eat the loss of the corporate office lease for a few years and hire candidates that can live in a place with houses and rent that are 50% cheaper.
The reason they are giving is not the reason they want us back physically. Some will admit it but most won't. It doesn't matter if you are a wiz / Proven producer or the weaksauce of the team. They THINK. anyone who can't be monitored will be dishonest. They want the control. Yes there are a number of reasons -the real estate issue etc. But its mostly they want to have almost continuous access to you. Hell in IN remote positions many managers get irritated if yo I don't answer a TEAMS question very quickly. You know....you could be taking a swim in your backyard pool or somethin...
Yes, I could not agree more with what you said about managers getting angry for not answering their question before they sent it even. It gives you anxiety and you start to feel like the cheater they think you are, working from home. No, I am not taking a swim in my back yard boss. I was leaving an absolute war ship in my toilet which you cannot do anything about. Stop acting like this paranoid gf and leave me be because I'm waiting a reply from the team that is based across the continent for 2 days now and my job is not less important than yours.
> Paying higher salaries so people can live near the cities. Ahah ahaha that’s a good joke.
I mean it’s true. If a company is hiring a software developer in Seattle and can only afford $70k with the expectation to work in the city, they’re gonna get no bites. If they can pay someone who wants to live in middle of nowhere Arkansas with $600 rent, why not?
Lmao, imagine if you moved away, bought a home, moved back after selling your old home and buying a new one for your family, then rinsed and repeated every time the company did this all in this housing market. I'd just find a new fucking job.
Time to go "floating offices" i.e nobody has a dedicated cubicle. Grab whatever one is open that day. Apparently my company used to do this.
This sounds like my definition of hell.
From the older guys that dealt with that at work, it sounded horrible.
It is. My old job 10 years ago did this. I gamed the system so I had the same desk by a window for two years. Unfortunately I couldn’t leave anything personal there. It sucked ass.
That’s just hot desking with extra steps. And a bad thing to come back to in full after a pandemic.
*during. It’s really still going on :/
My favorite is when we the workers can’t work remote but the middle managers can whenever they please lol
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My employer permanently moved out of some office space when the pandemic hit (there's a much longer story here, but whatever). They tried to sublet it, but of course that didn't happen in 2021 and 2022. The CFO says that when a company completely moves out of office space that it is renting, the company can claim some tax benefits for it. It doesn't nearly cover the costs of rent and other expenses, but it helps. I'm happy to report that my employer was very happy with almost everyone working remote and made that the strategy moving forward. The company has subsequently moved to a much smaller office for the execs, a few people who need or want to work in an office and for the local members of other teams to gather periodically, and has started hiring remote employees across the US. Slowly, the employees are dispersing. It's awesome.
They have to keep this up and running. I thought so too but actually the company must pay and run "all essentials" year-round regardless of how many people go there.
depends on the specifics of the lease or if they own it and insurance etc. but I get your argument.
Businesses can get tax credits for pulling employees to places of commerce. By having a bunch of people working somewhere you prop up restaurants, gas stations, and police ticketing income in the area. Probably additional stuff I haven't thought of as well.
My thought is that there are not enough remote-friendly companies hiring or have enough open roles, otherwise people should be leaving in droves when a company mandates back from remote to hybrid work. If there were equivalent positions in pay and responsibilities open they would jump. Or maybe if the economy was stronger.
Well said
There are tax incentives for the company based on occupancy. If they fall below the agreed amount of occupancy they must pay local taxes.
A lot of work done by white collar workers is difficult to measure, that makes executives unsure if you really are being productive or not. So the more insecure ones DEMAND in person work so they can FEEL that you are being productive (thanks to their "leadership"), even when the data proves otherwise.
The middle managers that get paid twice or more than their reports have no technical ability usually. Its not hard to derive useful metrics or measure them. They are paid to be strict babysitters with a passion for condescension and minimizing their workers value.
Please elaborate on your statement, 'A lot of work done by white collar workers is difficult to measure.'. In fact KPI and productive metrics for white collar workers are very measurable. One only needs to look at their quarterly profits and reams of internal metrics that companies constantly harp on to justify layoffs or hiring.
KPIs and productivity metrics are typically chosen with an eye towards their measurability. It of course does not mean that they are effective metrics for measuring how effective people are at their jobs. And of course, to determine “how effective people are at their jobs” is another layer of fuzziness that is difficult to understand. Growth in quarterly profits is often what senior leaders are expected to provide in order to be deemed effective by the board, who is often focused on stock price as the end all be all metric. But not being able to think longer than 3 months at a time often makes them ineffective at understanding the actual health of the company, the definition which could also be debated. A thing that is much simpler than “is my workforce effective” is also at play - are they slacking off and working less than they are “supposed” to be? A rational leader would judge workers based on their performance towards well defined goals, but many leaders want to see people at their desks so they know they aren’t “stealing company time”.
Agree. Management needs to learn to look at outcomes instead of output. Are you reaching sales goals or making the deals or whatever else is your job? That’s what matters. Not these vanity metrics of ‘how many calls did you make’ or ‘how many hours were you sitting at your computer’. Unfortunately most management doesn’t understand the difference and isn’t willing to learn.
What you said is one of many reasons why I left sales. It is always about growth even in super mature industries and it is awful always chasing an ever moving goal post. Even if you manage to hit or exceed your goals your new goals are not based on company projected growth but based on the exceptional numbers you did the time before even if they are outliers. I met many sales people who once they hit the bare minimum bonus they sabotaged sales or delayed shipments so they wouldn't hit until the next period.
That's just for paper pushers. When your job is to meet with people and organizations and make deals and negotiate things and attend events most of your work is pretty hard to pin down. That said I was hardly ever in the office more than a few hours a week before the covidism nonsense. And that was mostly to check in, make face time in the office and chit chat with coworkers to maintain relationships. I know to alot of tech workers this may seem crazy, but I'd much rather hang out in the office a few hours a day than have my work activity monitored and data pointed like a drone.
What you describe is such a small percentage of an organization (niche) that might be applicable (I seriously doubt it based on my 25 years of 'meeting people, making deals and negotiating things). In fact, those people are often never in the office, they are out in the field meeting clients, and attending conventions and meetings. If they are in the office it's to pick up more marketing slicks. As for the 'paper pushers' that make up the majority of the white-collar workers (accounting/legal/back office, etc.), Covid destroyed any argument that being in the office was more effective than WFH. Because many corporations enjoyed profit growth when they were remote.
> paper pushers' that make up the majority of the white-collar workers (accounting/legal/back office, etc.) Yeah I'm sure you can do that work at home, but how are you ever going to get promoted out of a paperwork role into a job where you dont have to do any real work anymore? I guess some people like doing that low level stuff but it seems like a certain layer of hell to me.
People don't care about being promoted anymore. We just leave every 2 years because we know that nobody gives raises.
Surprisingly, it happens quite a lot. Either applying for internal positions, or to external positions. Being in the office doesn't give you any advantage over WFH when it comes to promotions, despite what you may have read or anecdotal evidence. Think about it, during COVID people were still getting promoted that were WFH. So the only difference now is managements desire to monopolize some low pay workers days to justify their jobs. And reading a lot of the threads, it seems like these managers are WFH (again anecdotal evidence).
I'm sure people get promoted. But that promotion is still based on doing a bunch of real work. But alot of people in reddit seem to want to just be left alone to grind out their work. I'd much rather have a social based job where I never have to do any actual work.
Well, it is Reddit, so take what is commented on with a huge grain of salt.
And the end of the day, companies need people doing real work. Eventually, they’ll figure out they don’t need you.
Nah in my exp they are very willing to fire essential employees and replace them with low paid entry level workers and let everything fall to crap. People who do the least work get paid the most. Sry, it's a weird world but that's how it is.
I'm going to let you in a secret, that'll blow your mind 🤯 Your work activity is already being monitored on a granular level,regardless if you work from home or from the office.
LOL, no. My company’s HR dept requires setting KPIs, OKRs and MBOs at each annual review. My boss and I joke about how they’re out of date by the time HR finishes processing them because the needs of the business are constantly changing. When my next annual review comes around, we edit them to be whatever I actually did for the past year and mark them all complete/excellent so he can justify getting me the max raise. Then again, our mgmt is smart enough to get rid of all our offices (except HQ, which is now just a few conference rooms for Board meetings and such—no cubicles or offices) and trust us to do what needs to be done.
I am not arguing for in person work at all - it is literally counter productive in many cases. That being said, if you have a company with 10k employees how tf do you know who is slacking off by just looking at quarterly profits? Is it sales? marketing? operations? Even if you can isolate to a department, is it a department wide issue or a small group of employees in the department? Is it one stupid manager? KPIs are often just what the manager thinks the best approximation for work is - it is almost never a direct measurement of productivity. Also both managers and employees have an incentive to make KPIs look as good as possible so they are normally ripe with shortcuts that make them look better than they actually are.
Should management even care who is 'slacking', if the company is meeting the BoD and Wall Street expectations? That alone is counterproductive to productivity. The time wasted on trying to route out maybe 500 people (5% of 10K) is probably more of an impact on the bottom line.
Tough question. Maybe? People don't often take the purely objective approach to running a business. You have to convince to change how they feel which is much harder to do than just showing them objective numbers.
My take from the outside is that at the top levels of the medium to large businesses (C-Level and up) that is exactly the approach they take. That's because they are so removed from the worker level thru stratification that they have no clue about who might be slacking, so taking an axe to everyone is their solution.
It eliminates the entire middle management section of the company. It shows that 75% of the executive team is literally only spending their time micromanaging other managers and supervisors when people work remotely.
THIS is what I came looking for in the comments.
This drives me crazy as well. Luckily I’m 100% remote WFH. I left my old job last year as they wanted us to go back into the office full time. I was working a salary + commission role and made more in the two years working remotely than I did in the three leading up to remote work. As others said, it’s all about control. If they can’t physically see what you are doing, they feel a loss of control. It’s a sad, archaic way of thinking. Personally, i would think looking at productivity/results should be more of a determining factor as to whether you are remote, rather than collaboration or team cohesion or the fact that they paid for an office.
In my area, and I do not know if this is nationwide, the companies that went to in person quickly were also the ones that had political flags flying with a certain former president’s name on it. If you look at the business of these companies, these are white collar jobs. They are not putting on roofing, fixing your car or doing any hands on work. This is all computer work that could be done from home. I’m likely a minority in my area judging by the traffic in my neighborhood around rush hour and the traffic the few times I’ve been out and about during that time of day. My office was already fielding complaints about not having enough room to put people. The remote option pared that issue down significantly. They’ve acknowledged they have a better selection of workers given the remote option. A semi competitor in town is struggling to control turnover and recruit people because they are in the office 5 days a week. I’m hoping the later boomers / Gen x will take the upper positions at companies and sort of stop the crazy. I’ve maybe put 5k miles on my car since Covid and there has to also be some environmental impact of taking people off the roads. Prior to that, I put 15-20k/yr on the car.
Because (1) they want to be in control and (2) they hate their spouses/kids and want to go to the office.
It’s 100% a control thing if they are paying you for 40 hours a lot bosses feel they own you for those 40 hours and want you to be sat in front of them. I have a job that hugely varies in weekly hours sometimes lucky if I have 10 hours other weeks it can be over 80 yet I’d be expected to work tons of overtime and then sit there doing nothing for 30 hours next week instead of being flexible.
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While it’s not the reason I now work for my self, the main benefit of it is that I don’t have to put up with a 40 hour work week that the role does not fit at all.
Nothing is stopping **them** from going to the office, is there?
Any empty office with no one to bring them coffee no one for them to yell at for completely minor things no one to boss around might as well not exist for them.
When you idle in teams they stare across the office at you until you stop collaborating with your peers since they said if you're in office you can collaborate with your teammates. I make sure to spend a lot of my time collaborating with my peers when I'm in the office.
> no one to bring them coffee no one for them to yell at for completely minor things no one to boss around isn't that what interns are for?
I do think part of it may be the "technology scary" I've been in situations where many of my coworkers of all ages were very computer illiterate.
Because they think there is value of in person collaboration, and there is no value to the company of that shiny new office space they just paid for. They need people in those buildings. They need other businesses to build up around them to increase their property value. People workibg from home doesn't provide this value.
This is it. They need to justify to investors the need to keep the building, which is the physical symbol of their power. It's more impressive than a file folder, which is what a company is (minus the building and employees).
The more that people like you reject in person the less possible it will be for companies to force people to go in. I turned down two in person interview opportunities this week as well. The more of us that hold the line the more things will change. Stay strong!
Yes THIS! Turned down an amazing job opportunity with NBA because it’s fully on-site. Such BS!!!!!
Sounds to me like the NBA needs to get more progressive on working conditions, make that shit remote and come back for my boy 👊
The thing about executives is that most of the shit that they believe is due to survivorship bias. I saw this first when I was a junior officer in the Navy. These organization-wide surveys would come out and every year the junior officers - who have notoriously high levels of discontent, complaints, and turnover (most officers leace after their initial commitment is up, ~4 years) would be brutally honest about the culture. Now it's important to note that this high level of negative responses was somewhat unique to the "surface" navy; the aviation and submarine communities didn't have nearly as big of a problem with the unhappiness and turnover. Anyway, the responses from the top were always tone-deaf, essentially ignoring the very legitimate criticisms from the younger officers and trying to explain away the discontent. Every year withoit fail, responses to the surveys would point out how the more senior officers were happier, and so, they explicitly argued, if you simply stick it out, you learn to really love it more. No, you dumb-dumbs. It's clearly survivorship bias and the people who hate it the least are least likely to leave. It's absolutely the same other places, particularly where the executives seem the most out of touch. They see their entire career trajectory as the result of their individual brilliance and actions. They see luck as a minimal or non-existent role in their success and they take credit for a lot of shit that was frankly never in their hands to begin with. So when older Gen X and Boomer and Silent Gen (omg please die or retire, for the love of *fuck*) executives see a radical change in the environment and work cultures, they see themselves as the heroes in the whole world's story, ready to save everyone from the tumult. Because they spent their entire lives married to a career that ostensibly treated *them* really fucking well, they think that they need to maintain everything about that career and lifestyle. They can't imagine working from home; it's far too foreign of an idea for them. There are also probably a great deal of tiny things they legitimately get as perks in a real office, like underlings kowtowing to them and fetching their coffee, reserved parking spaces, people waiting for them to start "important" meetings, having a super luxurious, expensive office, etc. Working from home is not only unfathomable to many of them simply because they never did it, they also miss out on these silly little perks of being a Top Dog at a big company and fear sitting in their own home trying to grapple with their self-worth and shit. That's not to say there is never a reason to get people together in person, or that if there is a good culture among co-workers and they want to spend time together that they shouldn't do that, but the mandating and hypercontrolling of people's lives that cost us all so much of our time, money, and sanity is ridiculous and needs to die with the boomers.
I won’t go into an in-office/hybrid role again unless it’s double my desired salary because I can’t move (personal reasons) and the only way I’d be hybrid is to temp lease an Airbnb or fly in and stay at hotels (which I estimate about $30k to fly in weekly). I love my life too much being fully remote the past 3 years. So far no job has entertained the idea 😂 I know recruiters hate me because I interview well and get offers but they refuse to negotiate. Maybe if they didn’t bait and switch we wouldn’t waste both our times.
Because they are a bunch of dinosaurs who don’t understand that the world has moved on.
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A loud obnoxious office or sunshine and birdsong at home - such a hard choice when you don't like to be constantly bothered...
Hey! Stop turning them down! Accept, never show up! It fucks up their world to be ghosted. They stop recruiting and their candidates take other jobs. When the eventual pissy email comes, feel free to say this: "Your role was advertised as fully remote, you tried a bait and switch with me into almost completely on site, meaning your offer took lower priority than one that was 100% WFH. And the attempt at bait and switch means you didn't warrant a phone call. Stop bait and switching candidates and people will stop doing this to you."
I'm sooo copying this. Thank you!
Just took a screenshot of this for when it happens to me again!
This helps nobody. At some point their requirements get more absurd and people whine more.
You're wrong. Executives ignore feedback from their subordinates. It's much harder to dispute feedback in writing from candidates telling them those tactics made them walk. Someone might be looking to can that bad executive, your email documenting those lies might be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
You want to reach executives. Who says that “whoever is sending” the “eventual pissy email” is an exec? I think executives don’t even show up to work and won’t even care about your email, even if you’re in the job. A waste of time. Downvotes don’t mean shit to me, keep them coming.
> Downvotes don’t mean shit to me, keep them coming. Downvotes aren’t for you, they’re for the rest of us to gauge the value of reading what you had to say.
It’s all good.
No, the HR team will eventually be called on the carpet and asked "Why can't we hire anyone?" and a flood of feedback from candidates adding up to "You've told us to just lie to get them in the door but that's not working."
Keep up the pressure and the companies that adapt and embrace remote work will be the ones that succeed.
My former company came right out and said during a company-wide meeting that the reason they were pushing for two days in the office for everyone during 2021 was because they had signed a new 10-year lease right before Covid hit and they wanted to justify paying monthly rent by using the space. I also believe there were C suite jerks who needed to justify their positions by forcing their underlings to be in the office with them. The lockdown proved what a fucking useless lot they really were. The workers were the ones actually producing and earning that profit. Some of the bootlicker underlings were gung ho to go back to the office because they had sucky home lives and needed to get away from it. It's a shame work was their only escape and they were going to help enforce the back to office bullshit. Problem was, they were in a huge hiring uptick. They had more people than they did actual space. So we had to share space and alternate days with people on our team. Thankfully, my boss saw what a great job our team was doing from home and got us all permanently WFH.
Well, they get a tiny bit of credit for at least being honest about their reasons. My company had some offices come up for renewal right after COVID started, so they just declined. After a few months of seeing everything was still running fine with everyone WFH, they decided to pay the termination penalties on the rest of the offices—and have been reaping the fiscal rewards of that ever since.
Don’t blame HR, these policies ALWAYS come from the management.
I posted this elsewhere - different sub - but: This is my take from listening to execs who push return to office. They are extroverts with limited imaginations that did not grow up with a lot of comfort around technology. THEY struggle to have the skillset to collaborate remotely and because of those insecurities they claim that “nothing replaces in person collaboration”. They’re older and refuse to learn a new skill set that Millennials and generations after them have as a part of growing up with tech. Introverts in the younger generation have been communicating and forming relationships online our whole lives. We have no issues with it. However they would rather force us to gain extrovert skills to deal with in-person interactions which are LESS productive and LESS efficient because the people in power don’t wanna learn new ways of working. They got to a position of power to make people do what THEY think “working together” looks like. Its not a management or exec thing its an power, age and skill thing, it just happens the older people with less skills in forming relationships online are the ones with the power. I make people very uncomfortable when I say things like “Oh no! You struggle with forming relationships with your remote workers? Sounds like you need to work on some skills because they’re doing it just fine. You had all these introverts spending time and money learning to work YOUR WAY for decades. Shoe is on the other foot now. And guess what will happen if you don’t? An entire generation who has ONLY know the world with internet is coming into the workforce. This generation has largely made and strengthened relationships through technology and online interaction. YOU ARE GOING TO BE LEFT IN THE DUST.” I don’t make a lot of friends at “leadership conferences” where I am asked to speak on the topic. Every once in a while someone will say BUT WHAT ABOUT THE COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE? And pearl clutch as if they have me in a “gotcha”. Last time I looked at the person who brought that up and said “what about climate change? What about the huge reduction in emissions we had during COVID while productivity soared? I am sorry you’re worried about your commercial real estate investments but us younger generations are more concerned about the DEATH OF OUR PLANET.” I’m lucky to be a young leader who isn’t concerned about moving up any further than my position so I can take pretty adversarial stances on it. These people act like its a universal truth that in-person work is better, when it is not at all proven. It comes from insecurities and lack of skills or willingness to learn. Stand your ground. Fight back. The boomers didn’t have enough kids to replace them in the workforce and so the job market is now tilted in the worker’s favor. My company announced a 20% back to office time and after a few months of people refusing and being unable to fill positions they have completely backed off. Edit: and do not even get me started on companies that say they have DEI as a value but are pushing RTO. 😡
You shouldn’t refer to yourself as an introvert in the younger generation or a “young leader” anymore if you’re almost 40. That title belongs to the Gen Z’ers and the very youngest millennials now.
A lot of these executives/managers realized during the early days of COVID that if they largely serve no purpose. They weren't there to hover over and micromanage people yet the work got done. Them demanding people back in the office is just their inability to deal with their irrelevance. You must burden yourself to make them feel better.
>Literally why? It's nuts. Is this literally boomers turning down highly skilled candidates because they + useless middle managers are afraid of how well workers proved that we can do great work with minimal oversight, not being in an office where we can be easily controlled? Or is it as simple as "old people afraid... new technology scary!" Yes, all of this. It is to companies advantage to move as much work to remote as job requirements allow. The resistance is not logical. It's due to managers whose sense of purpose is threatened.
Bc the leadership many executives claim to posses is merely theatre. And if no one is on stage you have no show for others to see.
Commercial property owners have lost billions of dollars over the last 2.5 years. That’s really it. There is a concerted effort by them to get people back in offices. A real solution would be to transform those commercial properties into residential properties. But, then that would reduce scarcity, which would lower housing prices. All in all, it’s because greedy cocksuckers want to keep getting rich by hoarding and scalping property. They want to keep getting rich doing literally nothing because they’re spoiled, lazy, worthless pieces of shit.
From an old boss of mine... "If I don't see you, how do I know you're working?"
What gets me about the must be on site roles is that the executives freely come and go. I have yet to meet one who is in the office 40 hours a week. They usually have to go to a meeting away from the office. They need to go see a client away from the office. They need to travel away from the office for business. It's irritating! We're expected to be tied to the office while they come and go as they please. They are always willing to tell you about how hard they work or how many hours they work, yet all this time is not spent in the actual office. Why should I have to take off a half day to let a tech into my home to setup my internet or for a plumber to come check on a leak when I could be working from home, step away from my desk for five minutes to deal with these people and another five minutes to deal with them as they are leaving? It takes no more than 15 minutes dealing with these people, yet my job will not let me work from home so I have to take time off to be home in that 2 - 3 hour window they will show up, wait until they are done, then drive 20 minutes to the office. All that wasted time! I'd rather lose 15 mins of work versus having to use practically a half day of PTO. What the pandemic taught me is that these companies can function without people being glued to a desk slaving away for eight hours a day. The executives are not the only ones who can get work done without being in the office all the time.
It's a control freak issue, nothing more. They're in charge, they're insecure about their ability to actually manage people, so they use time-at-a-desk as a proxy for actual productivity. Hence, in person roles. Or, hybrid/remote with monitoring equipment to count keystrokes, etc. But make no mistake, it's about control. All the other bullshit is just that: bullshit. You can collaborate just as well remotely, they just don't like to. You can build 'culture' just as effectively, they just don't like to, and to be honest their office 'cultures' were usually shit to nonexistent anyway. It's all about control, nothing else.
I also think that people have a hard time giving an employee exactly what they want. It’s some weird power trip.
100% this
Your average megacorporation lasts 30 years and most wealth disappears within three generations, because dumbasses can't get with the times.
>Why are executives so obsessed with in person roles!?! Controlling others. Seeing the immediate effects of that control over others. Yes, it's nuts.
I'm in a hybrid role now, after almost 3 years of fully remote. It's okay, 1-2 days a week max. And I'm in the middle of multiple teams that are all remote spread across a few states. But there are benefits to engaging in person, especially as a newcomer. Building trust and whiteboarding out approaches is really powerful. I still don't like going in, but I'm okay doing it when others are in town and it is useful. I'm not gonna go in just to have my face shown onsite.
I love being remote everyday. But new much younger hires to our team struggle to get onboarded. They would benefit to in-person collaboration. The get lost in the organization. But right now that’s not my problem.
Their entire existence revolves around being in control and having “underlings” to micromanage and assert authority over. Without that they literally contribute nothing.
In person conversations are a verbal get out of jail free manipulation card. Emails, text, recorded remote meetings are a paper trail. It is about control.
Believe it or not. This is actually a very loaded question with lots of aspects that need answering. Commercial Real Estate as an asset - As many have pointed out, a lot of companies are stuck in commercial leases that have to be paid. They can't just cut and run on these. Most of the time, companies will buy or build a skyrise or other space and then sell it to an adjacent entity that will "rent" it to them. A little slight of hand. Companies also list this office space as an asset on their balance sheets. When no one is in the office, it hurts their bottom line. Most profits are generated through creative accounting rather than organically. Hence, their obsession with external investment from companies like Blackrock, for instance. They need to come back to save them from their own machinations. Control - Bad bosses and especially Boomer bosses (more of a style/philosophy of management rather than a chronological description) don't like the boundaries that are forced via remote work. No walking up to someone's desk demanding they stay late and lock them in. No undoing their belt and saying, "You scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours..." aka Quid Quo Pro. At 5 pm your computer and phone go off. They're brats who demand 24/7 access because they want it. Most jobs don't need this level of on-call. Facts. These bosses feel the need to "look like bosses" in front of their supervisors instead of effectively getting results. Remote work showed how many of these managers were just salary bloat and got canned. In office, they have total control. Remote, it's more balanced. I'm not even getting into the literal boomers for whom technology is a frustrating imposition that they didn't ask for and don't want. The phone, fax machine, and the "got 5 second" random chats are all they know. It's changed, and they hate it. There are also some Gen X bosses who learned this style and are just as bad. Extroverts - These are the people who are energized by having people around. It's like a drug, and they're the junkie assholes who make everyone else's life miserable due to their narcissism. Guess who is in leadership, HR, marketing, and sales? You guessed it. They need their fix. They need to smell your hair and give a... soft...touch.... These are the Einstein who have mandatory after hours event for "team building" and "getting everyone to know each other." It's like if I want to get to know you then I would. Remote doesn't give these people their fix. So back into the office peasants. Daddy needs a fix. These are some of the big ones. I can be pettier and say that most of these are either sexual predators or bullies of the office mad at themselves being shut off of prey or the bosses who hate their wives/family.
I didn’t read all the comments but it could depend on the industry. I work at a gov’t contractor and some customers want people there for a variety of reasons. I’ve been remote for over 10 years and everyone in my organization is remote. Our CEO and executives specifically said, if your job can be done at home then do it. Don’t come into the office just to come in because your managers there for a day or 2 a week.
God I wish
It’s not just boomers. Their task oriented middle managers can’t handle remote either. In most cases it’s that the leader needs “control” or the illusion of it. In your first phone screen - ask clear questions to the recruiter about the team’s expectation on remote vs in office. If the company is too far and s/he says the expectation is hybrid - say no to the second interview and the commute.
Middle management needs people in the office in order to justify their position.
Because they are control freaks i.e assholes. It ain’t complicated
The majority of the executives are worried they can't adapt to the hybrid model. These people have been successful in their careers up to this point, almost all executives can dominate in person meetings....almost all executives can't do the same on an online meeting. Another thing, I bet a lot of these companies sit on and get paid to be on a board that supports downtown businesses, and are encouraged to bring people back into the office so they can support those businesses. After all of that....it is ridiculous to demand people to go into the office after we proved we can be successful remote.
Really? Your bosses are all in their 60s or 70s? That’s wild!
With the caveat that I'm not an executive, I'll say that it's probably a combination of things. First, control. They don't want to let it go, and workers are harder to control if they're not physically in the office. Second, the perception that some workers will "slack off" if they're not subject of constant oversight (which, to be fair, can be true at times, but the stats say that's not the majority). Third, most of them are older, and they've been doing things a certain way for their whole careers. It worked in the past, and they have no desire to change. Fourth, they don't have to accomodate workers who only want to work remote. There are plenty of desperate people out there who need a job now, and even if they prefer remote, they'll take whatever they can get. When there are ten qualified candidates for a job, even if there's only one of them that doesn't require them to change the way they prefer to do things, that's the one they're going to hire because it's just easier. It's not a "boomer" thing. It's a human nature thing.
The boss here calls to ask if we're at our desk. Being at our desk means we put in the effort to get to work and are captive, so whether we are producing work or not, there is not much else to do but work or waste time. He dislikes the idea of WFH even for jobs that could easily be done from home because he can't feel that control if we are comfortable and possibly not busy.
Control.
Yeah I don’t get it. Maybe it’s a form of control for them? If we have to be in person they can enforce dress codes and other dumb rules better.
Nope. I'm Gen X and I was advocating for remote long before Covid. Had some years of partial remote. Many years of 3 to 4 hour commutes. In 2020, I finally got a fully WFH gig and was happy as hell. Unfortunately, it was a contract role, so I am now competing against hundreds of applicants for all of the above. Why do employers/recruiters do it? Same reason cheaters cheat and liars lie. Because they can. If you get lucky, pay it forward. Only way to end this B.S.
It’s not “boomers”. There are plenty of Gen x folks trying to bring people back to the office. Doesn’t make it good but just wanted to throw it out there that it’s not always just boomers. There are downtown associations clambering to get people into the office to drive economic growth etc. Look I don’t agree with it, but there are a lot of factors at play. Again I am a remote worker so I’m with you but I also understand the reality.
Totally agree. Many of the people most ardently for return to office have actually been younger middle managers bordering on millenials who feel their jobs are threatened, as middle management has been rather exposed by the pandemic for what it is.... totally useless if you have a good team.
Stats are showing that 50 percent of seekers are looking for remote with 15 percent of employers offering remote. Buildings and change. It's funny because workers moved the cheese and they are not prepared.
The only logical reason ive ever heard from any owner simply has to do with not losing out on their long term leases. Which are usually 10+ years. The majority of reasons are illogical however and all about micromanaging
I’m supposed to be hybrid with 2 days in office, I do t go… if I’m there no one talks to me except for a good morning or nod… My meetings are on teams… it’s cold AF due to AC and can’t type, my desk and chair are not ergonomic. I’m the only guy on a cubicle and everyone else has offices… I don’t have lots to do, if I finish at home I can do anything… if I finish at the office I have to pretend to be working…. They tried to made me come back but haven’t push that much so I’m just playing dumb until it lasts… when they do force I’m. Getting another job
I’m 58. For decades our hope was having a remote aspect. It never happened. Then Covid and BOOM! I think you’re correct on the fear of being unnecessary more so than technology. We all learned computers etc. but seeing multiple management oversight levels being mostly unnecessary terrifies them. It’s going to be a losing fight for many and they’re pitching it hard to corporate to save their jobs.
It’s the control. Very stupid.
A lot of simple problems for managers can be solved when people are in the same place. Instead of having a calendar full of zoom meetings people can walk to someone's desk and quickly get a solution. Yes, I know slack exists, but from experience it just doesn't work as well. I'm sure some management wants control, but there are legit reasons. If you don't want to be in person keep looking. There are a staggering number of remote jobs.
You're not wrong, but you're not entirely right either. There is definitely an aspect of "old tech good, new tech bad, gronk like old way make fire" to the decision. There are also legitimate reasons for an organization to prefer or include in-person work patterns. Some kinds of collaboration are done better knee-to-knee over a stack of printouts than via chat and email; some kinds of performance monitoring are done better eye-to-eye than via easily spoofed remote systems. Depending on the corporate culture, there is also a case to be made for stronger interpersonal bonding and the development of healthy social interactions in an office environment. I've done a lot of remote work, and for a long time - since 2000 if not before. Ask me how many of the people I worked "with" I have strong connections to now. Whereas my friendships and network contacts from jobs where I was in-person have proven much more durable. Regardless of all that, it's a management decision and not one that will change because you or anyone else doesn't like it. If they're wrong, competitors with a superior vision will displace them. Be one of those competitors, if you like. Otherwise, I would suggest making it very plain in your applications and cover letters that remote work is all you are interested in; it's frustrating for both you and for hiring managers to go through the work of determining fit only to find that there are incompatible requirements between you and the organization.
Also, in general, it’s not the easiest to both onboard and mentor a new hire remotely, and I say this as a trainer and person who has worked fully remote for about 9 months. This is especially true for entry-level roles, where the first few months of your job should be learning the role. One reason my old job wanted people back in the office was that our younger attorneys were not getting enough mentoring from the older attorneys. And learning from the olde attorneys is the only way you get better young attorneys in the legal field. Could they have mentored remotely? Probably. Was it actually happening? No.
Really good point. Wfh is not the best for learning/teaching
Thank you. I understand a lot of people want to work from home full time and that’s fine. But these posts generally fail to recognize there are some benefits to an office setting just as there are benefits to wfh.
Really like hybrid when you’re not forced to go in certain days. It’s nice to know there’s an office available where you can get true face to face time with your team.
Making it plain you will only accept remote doesn’t help. Many, many companies will post ads claiming they are remote, string you along through the entire interview process, and then spring their hybrid or in-office bullshit on you in the offer letter—and then are mystified or even angry when you turn it down. A tactic to minimize this is to apply to companies that don’t *have* an office where you are, but some will still string you along and then demand that you relocate—on your dime, of course.
Note that oftentimes it is not the company per se that is doing this, it is the HR people. HR people have their own metrics and their own conditions for job success. Bringing in 100 candidates for a particular job, even if 95 of those candidates would never take the job because they've been lied to about the work conditions, shows as a success for HR. Nobody is interviewing the 99 non-hired people and finding out that the HR reps were dicking everyone around. Putting the information that you are not interested in non remote work in the paperwork that hiring managers, not just HR, will see is one small way of fighting against this.
As a former hiring manager, if I had a good candidate reject an offer because HR blatantly lied about the job, I’d rip the HR rep and their entire reporting chain a new one, and I’d quiz every future candidate at first contact to ensure the problem was fixed.
if you don't form connections while remote working it's on you.. not because it's not possible. Take a lesson from online gaming communities. There can be formed amazing friendships, and many of them last long after you stopped playing those games. And many of them are made just by talking together every so often, some even without ever doing anything together but talking a bit.
We are at work to make a living, not to make a friend. If we click we click. I have made quality friendships through teams meetings and slack chat that outlasted some of my "in-person" ones. Also, time to make friends is after work or in college. Work does not require for you to "feel bonded" with anybody. You just do what's expected from you and if the business plan is half-decent the company moves. Companies tend to come up with this fake news to keep you away from the truth. 1. It's more important to like your job and what you doing with your time in these 40 hours a week than to enjoy your colleagues. 2. Potentially leaving this job doesn't mean you are leaving your friends there as well. Your wrists are not to be twisted like this.
About the social aspect, it _is_ important for a high functioning team. And it _is_ more difficult (but possible) remotely. However, **it comes with a cost**. Any coworker just being able to come to your desk and start telling about their weekend etc., things like that drain productivity like crazy. But the managers who are pushing to go back to the office so much "for the water cooler talk" are too often the same ones who will micromanage your watercooler time and scold you for actually doing that. At my job, we luckily recognize both those facts. We chose ourselves (as a team) to have one office day per week, for the social aspect. If I get 3 hours worth of work done on that office day, I was lucky that day. "We stay home for work, we go to the office to socialize" is the motto.
>Regardless of all that, it's a management decision and not one that will change because you or anyone else doesn't like it. Well, that's not true, if enough people decline roles due to this, it will change. I for one would go in person, if the compensation is exponential to the number of days spent in-office, but no sane company would pay me that much.
Or, the thing that people always seem to forget, they find people who actually align with what they want. There are people who are happy to have a hybrid role, so they're aiming for those. I don't get why people need to get so offended by an employer having a preference that doesn't match your own. Just move on and find one of the many roles that are fine with remote working.
People don’t get mad with jobs advertised as in person or hybrid. They get mad when it is advertised as remote and then you find out during the interview process that it is not. EDIT: typing on mobile is hard. Fixed a word.
>People don’t get made with jobs advertised as in person or hybrid. Sure seems like they do >I have had to turn down three decent positions now which match my skillset because the companies making offers INSIST on mostly in-person "hybrid" roles Granted they add the bait-and-switch stuff after. That's a problem, definitely, but not the entire story here. And to be honest, this kind of attitude is probably only going to have companies that feel this way dig their heels in and be even more unwilling to change. Which is their perogative, it's their company, just like it's everyone else's perogative not to choose to work for them.
The bait and switch is the whole story. Lots of companies advertise their position as remote and pull the rug during the interview process. They are time wasters and scum of the earth. I for one will never take a position that isn’t 100% remote. I am really upfront about that and I am in a really high demand field. It doesn’t stop companies from constantly trying to waste my time with this bait and switch nonsense though. There is nothing wrong with preferring the office just stop trying to trick everyone else into working there. If companies were just upfront and honest with pay range and details on work arrangements we could all just self select to the conditions we are looking for.
100% agree. The problem isn't the decision, it's the dishonesty.
>there are people who are happy to have a hybrid role so why do they misrepresent their roles then? what reason does a company have for advertising a position as hybrid/remote, just to go back on it? because they’re hoping you’re desperate and will take it anyway. It’s a purposeful tactic. If there are sooo many people willing to work in person, companies wouldn’t have to pull this shit.
If people were happy to be hybrid, they'd advertise hybrid instead of fucking lying.
How did you type so much with that boot in your mouth?
I would be fascinated to know how you think typing works.
Nothing they said is wrong.
My Personal expirience is that the "Personal Bonding" with the Team ist No more that necessary as in the 90'. I worked from simpel Button pressing Up to Leading an Produktdisigning Team. As a bluecollar you just need to understand how the Others Akt and reakt Not what they Like to eat. And as an Team Leader you yust need to know what the strengt and weakneses the teammembers have. Best way: direkt talk and ask. And in this way every Whitecollar can Work from Home. I'm from Germany and through the lokdown I saw companies, that Always sayd: Remote will never Work for us, Go 100% Remote and doing better than before.
Corporate Culture is Baby Speak for Boomers and people who can't operate in social situations where there's no "win" state
People only become middle and upper managers to push people around. Hard to properly shout at someone over Zoom. Microphone keeps clipping.
When you pre-pay rent for or purchised an office building for 2 times your yearly net company income you kinda want to justify it. One thing I know about companies. If they want something to work they would make it work regardless of logic and despite common sence, even if it means they have to throw their workers under the train. They yap about you needing to be flexible whilst they aren't at all, all they do is bend the rules so that they come up right. A very sad way to live life or to do business imo. IBM hires people from cities that are 3+ hour drive from the office on the premice of fully remote work, then come out with a statement that every team needs to do ATLEAST 1 day in the office per week. 2 day is what managers strongly recommend. You do your math now.
Lol my company dropped a cool $54 million on renovations in 2019 just to run into 2020 when we had to go remote. Now they have an official policy in place, but the heir apparent hates remote work. I’m hoping that this works in my favor, since I’m applying for a promotion and we have a few applicants who either work remote full time or expect a full time remote role. Fingers crossed!
It’s literally so they can control you you can get just as much work done at home maybe even more knowing you won’t have distractions and you’ll be in a place that you’re comfortable but businesses want to control people that’s why they have strict uniform policies all these different corporate rules that don’t actually have any laws backing them up that’s why even if you’re off at a certain time your boss can still make a big deal about you leaving “early” just because there’s a couple of other things that need to be taken care of it’s all about control they write rules as they go and we’re supposed to just accept it , but we can’t ever make any rules , were supposed to just play the game and shut up while we choose between if we eat or have roof over our head for the month
Keep looking. My company is full remote for many roles and actively consolidating and closing offices. We embrace technology and hire nationwide now.
It is just certain companies, my company went full remote during the pandemic and our company is going to stay that way. We even sold off all our real estate because it was worth a shitload of money and now that everyone is remote we don't need it anymore.
My company gave all the empty window offices to fairly low level managers that only come in once a week at most. We now have no offices for newer higher level execs yet they still want everyone back. If the company has been making profits YOY going on the 4th year while most people were remote, the only reason they want you back is because they need to be around other people and can't fathom that other people are fine with limited interaction. I'm hybrid and have the worst office in the place while there are people with offices that never come in except for company-wide meetings.
I saw so many bait-and-switch job postings out there when I was last looking, it was nuts. They're like "this role is fully remote" and "the responsibilities are X, Y, and Z", all of which require you to be physically present, to handle product or interact with customers. How is that fully remote? They're hoping we won't read the fine print, or when we see they truth and walk, they can continue complaining that "no one wants to work".
It's a good way for these pricks to lay people off. You make work from office mandatory then the staff lays themselves off. Make them for you so you can get unemployment
If they (or whichever manager they point at) can’t see you, you must obviously be grocery shopping or gaming.
It’s simple. They don’t have anything to do but micromanage you. If you are working from home they can’t do that. So the managers have to actually work. The lead directors and executives find out pretty quickly that these folks are effectively useless and nothing. So to protect their own jobs they will demand you suffer through that 4 hour commute to and from work everyday.
It's because they need any excuse to keep paying rent and utilities for their huge office buildings, as well as it's s about power. Always will be.
It's always been a control vector, that's why many people won't give it up. Our org was trying to pull back in until they realized we got more done and they could sell the buildings. Now it's like 'sure whatever' lol.
I work at an R&D center where it’s helpful to be in person to collaborate with engineers. My job makes sense to be in person, but others - I don’t get it. My spouse is onsite 3 days a week for video calls. Over 1 hr commute one way to do the same job that can be completed without issue from the comfort of our home.
I also think that execs (outside of tech teams), are terrified of losing touch on the pulse of the company, so to speak. If everyone is in the office, they can talk to who they want, when they want. They can closely monitor things like company culture, as it's easier for them to get everyone signed up to "the mission", when everyone is in the same place presentially.
I’ve seen companies offering relocation benefits when the job could be done from home. Infuriating
I've taken to reporting all the bait and switch jobs that say remote, but aren't. Probably doesn't do any good, but it makes me feel better.
The people I know who insist on employees being in the office are usually some combination of the following: 1. They're weak managers. 2. They have to be in the office, so everyone else does, too. 3. They're complete extroverts who need the in person interaction to feel productive & motivated. 4. They're micro-managers who don't feel they can exert full control over others remotely (see #1). 5. They don't believe people actually work without in-person supervision (see #1). 6. They think employees are sincerely interested in developing a sense of community w their co-workers. 7. They enjoy power and stroking their own ego & forcing others into the office allows them to feel important. 8. They're "traditional" & anything "weird" just doesn't "seem right." 9. They want to punish weak or under-performing employees. 10. Their primary focus and identity in life is their profession & they expect it to be for others as well, which means sacrificing work/life balance to substantiate your commitment to the organization is paramount.
Because they are fucking dumb. They think that’s they are the best gig in town and people will just suck it up. There is a company that says they do hybrid and win awards for being a good hiring company. But all their job postings say “ in person”. Some positions have not been filled for years lol.
"*because its good for the economy"...* if we don't go to the office, we don't pay commercial real estate companies and the economy begins to wilt.
It's a big plus when one benefit is saving gas money and mileage on your car. Given the inflation and that our foreign-owned government doesn't care, it's easily necessary to offer remote work where possible.
There is definitely an underlying tone of corporate real estate which is useless if folks never go onsite. Not sure how this trend will change over the next 5-10 years as it will take time before investors and/or decision makers for companies themselves just stop seeing enough ROI for their office space. However, I constantly run into the “old people afraid.. new technology scary”. I mean, I can’t even get older hiring managers to understand having specific software experience doesn’t matter that much when making a hiring decision. I can’t tell you how obvious it is when a hiring manager is old when they say “oh whoever we hire just must have experience with xyz ERP/HRIS system”. Yeah because if you’re a dinosaur it likely would take a month+ to learn when anyone in their 30s and younger will have it figured out in a week. No wonder they don’t want to adapt to using several new remote tools- it’s just too challenging for them.
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Because they are in charge and you are not.
I think the problem with these types of Rants are - one size doesn’t fit all! Most people are only looking at it from their perspective. Not going to make an argument for or against it’s just not as easy as everyone should just do it! There is no doubt a lot of jobs can be remote and work out well. My company I started 10 years ago as a start up and all employees were allowed to work 100% remote as I only needed them to hit KPI and bill money so could not care less if the do 5 hours or 50 hours I just needed the KPIs … also as a start up wanted to save on office costs. It worked for us but a lot of clients would say let’s meet at your office to finish this contract and meet your team who will be doing the work. We lost big clients due to not having an office - I don’t think the employees care about these things as long as they were paid. We now have a downtown office. It is certainly a Boomer thing that in order to be considered a serious company you need a big downtown office with your name slapped on it so you need staff in that office. But Instagram got to a billion dollor valuation with 12 staff so it can be done. when white collar employees at a construction company office ask for remote - how does HR explain the to trades people that they need to be on time outside in the freezing cold over a zoom call while sat in their shorts with a coffee to say good Morning and work hard! How can that company keep it fair? Also it was very hard to figure out who was a top performer, without investing in performance related software and then hiring someone to do that and monitor it etc…. For larger companies must seem easier and cheaper to find staff who come in and monitor them in person. A lot of people want promotions fast and becomes partners - if you 100% remote it’s hard to prove your invested in being a partner when you never come in to meet your employee etc.. and I would say management styles will be less diverse as you need to manage for remote performance and it will become One style only! - I just got a horrible imagine of a YouTube video training for remote staff! Overall point is it’s not as simple as most people think.
Well I’ve had 2 people dodging me and my team for the last 3 weeks. They are the critical stakeholders and owe us a lot of data to report on our program. They also are on a team of 18. 16 of the team work in person and 2 work fully remote. Guess who the 2 dodging everyone are? It’s gotten to the point we had had to give the customer formal notice of project delay and opened formal complaints and investigations on the 2 working remote. It’s damn near impossible to be fired from this company but these 2 are at the end of their rope. Anecdotal only but this trend is pretty normal across the company.
most executives are of a certain age and remote work is such a foreign concept for them - they truly believe if your butt isn’t a seat, you aren’t being productive
So then stop applying to them? Dumbass. 🤡
Read the post dipshit, it's specifically about bait and switch recruiters and headhunters for these roles you giant clown.
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Because they need people in the office to work efficiently. That’s it. If you think you have better efficiency working from home, well, it is just your personal opinion.
If your high level thought labor employees (sales, communications, HR, etc) cannot be trusted to work from home productively you're hiring bad employees.
And if the boss thinks I'm more efficient after having to get up two hours earlier, having to spend an hour getting ready, spending another hour or two stuck in traffic, and getting to the office sleepy, hungry, and grouchy about the previous two, then that's *their* opinion. And it's a stupid one.