"One we're working on is what we're calling Orange Card. We hope to turn every team member's ID into a charge card. The card will only activate after someone badges in for the day and will only work to purchase food at restaurants that are within a 10-minute walk from the office with pre-tax dollars."<p>Sooo, you get a slight discount on your lunch if you come into work, and you have to do it in a certain predefined radius. This is definitely the kind of plan a middle manager with not much to do during the day would come up with.
> Based on our internal surveys, about 10% of our team wants to come in every day.<p>How many don’t want to come in to the office at all, or less than once a week?<p>>We want to make the environment such that 100% of our team wants to come in at least some days.<p>If my current company insisted I come back to the office, I’d quit in a heartbeat, and I love my job. I think it’s be hard to make me want to come in “some days”, if “some days” is more than twice a month. I can’t be productive at an office, and I can’t connect as well with people. My home office is the perfect place for productivity, and I find nearly everything about sitting in an office, especially an open floor plan office, commuting, traffic, public transit, all of it, somewhere on the spectrum of detestable. I feel there’s a serious disconnect between a lot of these CEOs and their employees. The CEOs believe in something, and they want all of the employees to align with their beliefs. The reality is that most of us in the tech community seem to prefer remote work, and the reality is that most of us don’t really want to socialize with our coworkers all day and have “hallway conversations”. A lot of us are introverts and find it taxing and forced and awkward.<p>The pandemic is showed me how great work can be, when given autonomy and flexibility. I’m happier, I spend more time with my family, and I’m more effective at work. The second an employer forced me to come into the office regularly, or makes me feel like a second class citizen for working remotely even, I’ll quit and go somewhere that values me more.
I like this. But I'll play the Devil's Advocate for a moment. Not to dismiss these milestones but to further consider alternatives.<p>"The Covid Event" was a one-off...<p>- How long will these improvements last?<p>- What was the culture like previously that prevented these things (e.g., meeting participation) in the past?<p>- Has the underlying culture changed or has the broader context temporarily (?) forced these changes?<p>- What has suffered or not improved? Certainly, it can't be all great news.<p>- If the market is becoming more employee-centric how does CF intend to compete for talent?<p>- Aside from a (one year) sales bump, what other metrics are there that are people - employees and customers - driven?<p>- How does this compare to other companies? Are there others who have not benefitted from The Covid Event? What can we learn from this delta?<p>Interesting times. Change is opportunity. So much more to learn. So much to prepare for going forward.
> "we are now open to hiring for nearly all of our roles in any location where we have a legal entity setup that allows us to hire"<p>I understand that to employ someone remote you need to have a legal entity in the jurisdiction of that person, it makes sense. But it seems this would be a major obstacle against reaping the full benefits of an all out remote strategy. Knowing the resourcefulness of corporations, my guess there are ways to minimize this restriction, either already present or in the pipeline.<p>Does anyone have an overview of what such remedies might be?
This sounds smart:
“One of the few rules that we plan on starting with is that in meetings if any person is remote then everyone in the meeting is remote.”