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It’s a way to lay off people without laying off people. The rebels will quit. They were probably wanting to quit anyway. The remaining people are fearful and obedient; the perfect employees. It’s kind of smart in a diabolical way.
It’s just so horrible when the job market is so tough! Feeling so stuck
It's like a lot of things in business, the hype got out of control. Business writers did talk about remote work like it was the future, but that always seemed a little farfetched. A lot of top management honestly don't have much respect for their workers, and they happily assert that remote workers are somehow cheating the system. So yeah, they just want the workers where they can see them.
I think also if we're being real, remote work is great for a lot of things, but it's trash for other things. The QOL boost doesn't need explaining, but the tradeoff is that it's super easy for knowledge to become (even more) siloed and people to "just" do their jobs.
When I'm in the office I get tagged by people from different departments to get my perspective on this, that, or whatever else that isn't *my* job, but makes *their* job output better. You lose a lot of that when everyone is virtual because there's more friction in sending someone An Official Ask than "happening" to walk past their desk with something you could use their eyes on. A while back I did a little research project to wrap my head around something and someone from the media team struck up a conversation with me about it... and ended up giving me a completely different way in that completed the picture. I think we tend to underrate how much value comes from those types of unofficial collabs.
So not saying everyone's being a brat for hating RTO, but very much saying that it's a crock that the best work happens* when everyone's sitting at home alone. Flexible hybrid setups is prolly where we should be at
*On aggregate. Not everyone is an independent rockstar who's a virtual social butterfly like the posters on fishbowl :)
I think the issue often gets framed as in-office vs. remote, when it’s really more about whether companies should have a an infantilizing, one size fits all mandate vs. giving people the flexibility to work when and where they need to as their work requires… and holding managers accountable for actually *managing* people in that situation, without an attendance rule to fall back on.
I get it I guess. It’s a lot easier to say “working in person can be really valuable!” (true and hard to argue with) than to examine people’s performance and communicate clearly what meeting and exceeding expectations would look like.
It’s also a great move to make if business is not very good because it gives the appearance you are doing something about that problem although, likely, it makes the problem worse.
An interesting point
From what I've read, it's at least partially an effort to reduce headcount without having to hassle with layoffs. And I'm sure part of it is micromanaging. Some people simply refuse to believe employees can be productive without someone peeping over their shoulder.
Yeah, I don't disagree with any of that.
I think on top of that dynamic is the individual vs collective piece. All the flexibility and "doing what's best for my work practice" stuff is really important AND it's also true that what's best for an individual contributor isn't necessarily what's best for a team/company or even other team members. Our office is flexible rn and there are a lot of days where it feels like coming into the office is a waste of time if you're on certain teams so you can't get much out of it even if you want to because other people aren't buying in. That kinda sucks.
A lot of this is based on the premise that maximizing individual freedom leads to the best collective outcome which is just... not real. *Gestures vaguely at America*
RTO = increases value of commercial real estate = decreases value of residential r/e = investors pull out of residential to move $ to commercial = home prices decrease = home ownership possibilities increase