Why the companies are doing so, when the employees are comfortable working from home.<p>With WFH I can think of many advantages to both the companies and the employees.
- No commutation, leads to less tired employees
- Healthy food
- No rent - if they are working from their own house, rather than renting a flat near to the office.
- Flexibility of timing - Employee could work little longer if they want since there's no commutation.
- Finance - rent & fuel
- Happiness - since they're with the family.<p>Is it just a corporate management disconnection from the reality or something else ?
It is no surprise to me - I have been 100% remote my entire IT career (decades), almost always working with 100% onsite people.<p>With lots of newly-minted remote workers I have seen HUGE drops in accountability and performance, including many, many folks who just seem to 'disappear' for hours and days at a time, and nobody knows that they are doing.<p>Yes, you can be unproductive in the office - but the temptation and opportunities to do next to nothing on a daily basis are too big a temptation for many people, and becomes a nightmare for the people that are supposed to manage the slackers.<p>Some people are just as productive at home, some people are more productive, but in my experience, the number of people that have become unproductive outweighs the benefit of the relatively smaller number of people who either stay the same, or are more productive.<p>It's unfortunate, but if you have ever had to manage large numbers of people, you know not all folks will work just as hard when nobody is watching.
There is an old fart hierarchy. reminiscent of Ford in 1920, timeclocks, bullying, dominance etc who want to be the top bull in the herd, I suspect many fear for their jobs long term? The jobs suitable for online performance are also suitable for online measurement and supervision (the very etymology bespeaks 'overlook'). They fear a disturbance in their force, and many rightly fear having to learn to say 'do you want fries with that' = relearn a new career at their age!
Many can not, but those that can be, should be, from now on. The pandemic simply jumpstarted the process - now is not the time to go back.
I'm going to add a dimension I don't see often to this.<p>College grad/New Hires are super difficult to onboard remotely. It's already difficult to go from school to a tech job, but add in that you now don't have any sense of what's going on and it's easy to get forgotten even with a good/active mentor.<p>Also lots of young people don't want to stay in their hometown and move to Seattle/SV/SF, and without the office it's very easy to literally have no friends. When I got a job and moved out to the west coast I had to very actively find people to meet up with, I know a bunch of coworkers who didn't and either ended up leaving frequently to go back just to combat mental health issues, or just sitting home alone. Not saying that ALL of your friends need to come from work or whatever, but if you're new to a city and single it's much easier to seed those friendships.<p>Lots of people don't buy the innovation, "talk about x by the watercooler", argument, but I think on a macro scale it's a bigger deal. How many startups are started because two people became friends in SV, lived together and started a new project. That only happens with talent density that you get from tons of smart people being colocated. (And it's something lots of ambitious young people move out to the west coast to get, where I came from most of the best jobs were trade schools, construction and trucking lol, not too many promising startups come from a small town in the middle of nowhere just because there's noone to work with.)<p>So there's def some demand from young people to go into the office which puts a pro in the return to office column for the pointy hairs. Not saying that specific policies are good or bad, just want to outline a datapoint.
I'm not a researcher, but I do have some thoughts on this. Some managers assume that if they can't see you, then you aren't working. This is possibly true for some employees, but I believe bad employees aren't only bad if they work from home. They're likely just bad employees all the time and now they can't be monitored.
People want to "get back to normal", which could include working from a shared office. However, there can be disagreement on whether what used to be "normal" was really good for everyone.
Also, managers need to manage. That is, some people think their job is to make up rules, so if they make up more rules then that gives the appearance that they're really working hard.
There are some real benefits to sharing an office. It can make some types of meetings easier to facilitate. It can be easier to get to know your coworkers if you're in the same place.
Some of us actually like working from the office.<p>I could just buy a rack and make a home gym but the actual gym is better for a number of reasons, same with the office.<p>It's a dedicated place. My home is for relaxation.
Maybe it has to do with managers seeing stuff like this:<p><a href="https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220329-the-coasting-workers-whove-checked-out-of-their-jobs" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220329-the-coasting-w...</a><p>and thinking that having people in the office will reduce that situation.
Because not everyone <i>can</i> work remotely<p>Not effectively<p>It really does take a certain combination of personality type, personal drive, and interest in the work to be effective at remote work
I was at a big tech company during COVID. The simple fact was that entire teams had checked out.<p>It was a similar conversation I had with several mentees, not sure about whether they should just switch teams or leave the company because things weren’t moving forward, and they had no control over the situation.<p>Everyone blamed WFH since the significant decrease in productivity happened after WFH started.
My last company (non-tech and small to medium in size) bought a floor in their building and spent a lot of time and money on making it "welcoming". They fitted it with new desks and chairs, a large kitchen, common areas, small meeting rooms (some for small groups and others for individual phone calls, and more). I got to visit the floor twice before I switched jobs.<p>I'm guessing that the company's interested in gradually moving away from a hybrid work approach and getting people back in their seats. It's the type of company (and industry) where face-to-face communication is deemed as highly important for everyone (those in staff and line positions).<p>And to my point on the shiny new office, I'm sure the ET wants to get their money's worth.
By occam's razor, it's likely that companies have come to the conclusion that work from office works better in most cases. Nothing more or less than that. Now you can disagree with the conclusion, but it does seem to be a growing consensus
To reduce staff without formally having layoffs. I just came across this - <a href="https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1512068287768653829?s=20&t=T4FXp23uBXv8fufcZIz6dg" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1512068287768653829?...</a><p>> when people quit on their own it’s not layoffs. There’s no lawsuits. No bad press. No questions on the business model. No risk of not raising the next investment.
Companies with more intrinsically motivated people seem to do better with WFH, companies with mostly extrinsically motivated people seem to do worse with WFH, that is just my personal observation. Even big tech companies have tons of extrinsically motivated people, people who grinded exam prep for a year to join FAANG just to become a cog in the machine doing not very interesting work, i'm sure there are tons of those people.
We went in for the first time in over 2 years, out of 500 desks about 10-20 desks were occupied, at the end of the day the management sent a email changing onsite policy from 2 days/week to 2 days/month. GG.