This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
CEOs DO NOT WORK HUNDRED HOUR WEEKS.
CEOs DO NOT WORK HUNDRED HOUR WEEKS.
CEOs DO NOT WORK HUNDRED HOUR WEEKS.
CEOs DO NOT WORK HUNDRED HOUR WEEKS.
NOBODY FUCKEN DOES, YOU'D BE A BRAIN DEAD ZOMBIE
My main take on the pandemic is that employers involuntarily gave their employees a huge benefit set by having to go remote. They had to give this benefit set not just to their buddies or a select few, but to people they consider undeserving or do not trust.
All of their moves since have reflected that they want to put the cat back in the bag.
It's not about productivity at all and never has been. The studies even called the bluff by comparing productivity and determined that productivity is higher with WFH. The reaction to that has been to ignore the data and lean back into gut feel, because high level management isn't really about productivity.
You can tell this simply by the fact that their natural environment is the office and very few things in an office environment are actually about productivity. The reason they want return to office is the same reason they wanted open offices: control. It's easier for them to hover behind you in an open office plan. It's easier for them to order you around when they don't have to call you first.
It's all about control, and likely always has been.
As a manager, I can confirm that productivity drops in the office (even my own). I've got team members that choose to go to the office (moreso than me). I encourage them to work however they prefer, and want. You can work anywhere around the world however you wish, including at some nice beach, as long as it doesn't affect the project.
You sound like a not-dickhead ;-)
A lot of that control is about perceived obedience and perceived productivity.
In many areas you’ll find that ACTUAL productivity matters far less than perceived productivity.
And it’s easier to perceived productivity when you can walk a floor and see people work as you walk by.
This is 100% true and I had to learn it the hard way; perception matters just as much, if not more than getting the job done.
high level management isn't really about productivity
High level management is about preserving your position as a high level manager and securing the maximum compensation for it.
Good, they'll be left with second rate wage slaves while other companies who trust their employees will be more productive and competitive as a result.
They don’t care. They need to lead/rule over/command people. Second rate or not.
So many don’t understand just how wildly inefficient bureaucratic hierarchies are; what happens isn’t the most profitable thing, it’s the whim of whoever managed to claw their way highest up.
Basically, the decisions are the manifestation of the artificial stupidity of brute force.
How are the MBAs going to pull all their power poses if we work at home?
Through Teams, Webex, Zoom, etc like they already do … all the newer nimble companies don’t care where you are.
Trust. You’re right, it completely comes down to trust. If you can’t trust the people you hire to work without someone looming over them or watching everything they do, then you shouldn’t have hired that person.
Managers are managers because they're good at playing power games, not because they're good at their jobs. These games are harder to play if people aren't there. That's why they're so scared.
When I got my newest job the boss was bragging about I can work as much overtime as I want at 1.5x. like bitch I want undertime, let me work less!
As a manager, I empower my team to work remotely as much as possible 🤷
Rule for my team is I don’t care where you are as long as shit gets done and I can find you if I need you.
Some managers are actually really good at resolving conflicts without bias and keeping the team functioning smoothly. In tech at least, people who make things aren't always that great at interacting with other people.
Of course, the kind of manager I'm talking about doesn't care how/when/where the work gets done, and they don't micro-manage.
Seems like the commercial real estate collapse has a lot to do with it too.
Eh, that may play a role for the big firms, but most of the small to mid sized businesses just lease their real estate. They'd realistically come out ahead by downsizing their offices.
I think what we are seeing is management really struggling to adapt and find reliable metrics for performance management as well as to promote employee retention and engagement without the social bonds of an office culture.
How so?
Super simplified version: the office buildings are losing value due to low occupation. Owners of those buildings lose money if the value goes down. Those owners do not want that.
And those owners can almost always find a compassionate ear from their loyal rich CEOs who don't want to upset a however many years relationship of "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" kinda thing.
My understanding is as follows: A lot of corporate debt is backed by the real estate. For example, McDonald's food operations are far less valuable than its real estate portfolio. If that property is now worthless because no one wants it and it's unoccupied, banks now have assets worth less than what's owed on them. That in turn means when the loan term ends, banks can't just re-finance the debt, because the collateral that secured the loan in the first place isn't worth what the debt is. That means big problems for companies who now need those loans as a source of cash to pay off the old loans. They now have to scrape up actual cash to pay, leading to more austerity. Because corps can't pay the banks, the banks lose out on revenue, which means they have to tighten their belts, and so on and so on in a self-reinforcing spiral. If the corps default, the banks can seize the assets, but again, they're worthless, so it's a one-two punch.
It's a giant shell game, and from what I've read economists are afraid a 2008-style crash may be in the works due to the cycle of debt above.
To add what other folks have said... Banks have a conflict of interest in regards to employees coming back into the office: They hold the mortgages on all that office space. If the work-from-home trend doesn't let up they stand to lose trillions of dollars.
The bigger the bank the more they stand to lose. This is why banks like Goldman Sachs are extremely vocal about bringing people back into the office and grasp at every little thing that can find to back their claims that, "it's better". Even if the arguments they're making are based on 100% bullshit.
Example: You'll often hear big bank executives say things like, "teams that work near each other work better" knowing full well that their global workforce doesn't actually "sit near each other". On any given internal team employees will live all over the damned world so even if every one of them came back into the office they still wouldn't be anywhere near each other.
We know this is 100% bullshit anyway because if they actually stood behind these words they'd issue mandates that huge amounts of employees be relocated to the same physical locations and that hiring could only happen locally. They're not going to do that though because they know what they're saying is bullshit.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
"Because the labor market is looser and there's more talent to be hired, I think the employers think they'll be able to get their way," Dr Grace Lordan, associate professor in behavioral science at the London School of Economics told Insider.
A certain kind of CEO — noticeably skewing male and older, she said — is drawing from this "command and control" playbook as a way to rebuild an employee base that fits their idea of being productive and diligent.
"This belief of a certain cohort of people, and they are represented across all sectors, that presentee-ism is productivity, for them it's perfectly rational that if somebody doesn't want to come into the office then that basically means they're not somebody who wants to add value to the firm," Lordan added.
Elon Musk is consistently adamant about workers at his companies from X to Tesla being present in office, going as far as calling remote work "morally wrong."
A number of firms that benefited from a pandemic bump in business, particularly in tech, went on a hiring spree — triggering the "Great Resignation" as workers quit for ever-higher salaries and perks.
That attitude means certain types of employees will lose out — and return-to-office mandates will likely hurt diversity too if they are strictly enforced.
The original article contains 512 words, the summary contains 215 words. Saved 58%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
For a lot of positions. Remote work is not just the past and the present. It is also the future.
Yep. Once the old boomer CEOs die off, I have a feeling remote work will be more readily available.
It was never about productivity. It was always about control.
And by "look like" we mean "totally are"
Additionally, people have been saying this since day 1. How is this news?
These dingles are gonna flex like this just before another Covid surge, I guess?
Sure would be a shame if a lot of those office buildings burned down for no reason...
