The pre-pandemic work arrangements were in what is called a meta-stable state.<p>"If the ball is only slightly pushed, it will settle back into its hollow, but a stronger push may start the ball rolling down the slope" [1]<p>They only looked normal because there just aren't many mechanisms for society to explore (at scale) nearby states that might be more adapted but require a lot of energy to reach.<p>We have now tunneled by force into a more stable state. Everybody knows that massive amounts of knowledge work can be done remotely. There are tradeoffs of-course, a new equilibrium must be reached, but it has nothing to do with the old one.<p>That is a good thing. Somehow we should be able to get to better states without going through existential risks.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metastability" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metastability</a>
I’ve been seeing companies that have tried to get people to commute to/from and “work” from their office (any number of days) starting to lose the good people - the ones you want to keep around.<p>I’ve kept in contact with a couple of them and they’re now 100% remote, one is working for a local company the other an international and they seem genuinely so much happier.
Another anecdote to throw in the bucket: they announced that we'll be returning to the office on July 10th, and also that we'll be pausing catered lunches on July 7th.<p>(I know that it's the peak of privilege to complain about not getting free food delivered to work, but this feels like all-stick, and literally no carrots.)
I just don't know how you get the Genie back in the bottle. Will employees come back in eventually probably if forced to enough. will smaller companies see how much of a benefit WFH is and use it as a hiring advantage I would imagine.<p>I wonder if people forced to come back into the office are working a ton of free hours for the company. I can't really stay late because I have that commute now.<p>And every time someone from management sent an email or tried to have a zoom I'd have a hard time not asking in the zoom why it wasn't an in person meeting?<p>And I could see people spending a whole lot of time "collaborating" too.<p>Maybe there needs to be a blog post 50 passive aggressive ways to get back at your employer for making you come back into the office.
I left my previous employer when it was clear they were forcing everyone back to the office.<p>The CEO recently claimed on Twitter and LinkedIn, essentially that people working from home were lazy grifters who did nothing all day.<p>He’s the sort of manager who believes on the one hand that no-one does any work unless he personally is there to crack the whip, and on the other that it’s fine to pay less than market rate salaries because the company culture is so fantastic.<p>Also conveniently forgetting that the best years the company ever had financially was when everyone was remote.<p>Now work for a much smaller fully remote company who love the fact they’re no longer geographically limited for good employees.
> <i>“You can interrupt each other without being rude when you’re in person,” said Mr. Medina, whose company, Outreach, is now in the office on a hybrid basis. “In a Zoom conversation, you have to let somebody finish their thought.”</i><p>How is this not admitting that WFH is superior? If it puts a damper on people like this who feel it's their right to interrupt your thoughts, it's only a good thing. This article title may sound pro-WFH but it's basically pro-WFO and has no data other than CEO "feelings" to back it up. It also doesn't even mention all of the companies that started fully remote and will stay that way. Count me among those who would never WFO again, for any reason.
Funny how they close the article with an in office gossip update as being an example of a major benefit of coming in.<p>Really, couldn't close on something more substantial to the business?
CEO and leadership need peons genuflecting to feel powerful. My wife took a job that promised 2 days wfh. First week they switched it to 1 day because leadership thinks it's easier to build relationships in office. Total bait and switch. Was a year ago and she is still there and enjoys the job. I'm still furious about it but let it go. It's frustrating because plans involving the kids were made and then the job changes the playing field and all kid duties are mine 4 days a week instead of 3. Figure for most people that have to go back it's way worse.
It's funny how not one sentence mentioned corporate real estate, which I think is a far bigger driver of the push to in-person work than "you can't interrupt people on Zoom" or whatever inane reason these corporate types think justifies the huge (and patently unnecessary) expenditure in employee time and energy commuting represents.
> “You can interrupt each other without being rude when you’re in person,”<p>With a large pay increase and a promotion to “guy who remembers stuff so nobody else has to”, I would gladly come into the office and not feel like it was rude to be constantly interrupted.<p>But as it is, my job is “finish the work you asked me to do”, and constant interruption is quite rude, in-person or otherwise.
I might entertain giving up remote if these clowns at the helm decided to get rid of crowded open office plans. I can’t stand open office plans and get anxiety thinking about being forced back into them. It’s one of the reasons I worked on getting a remote position even before the pandemic. I think I’ll leave the tech industry if it comes down to that being the only option.
It's curious how there seems to be few if any hard numbers on the work in the office side of the argument. What I've seen are anecdotes like, "We're more creative in person" or, without evidence: "Being near each other makes the work better." In google's case: ok, take a look at all those KPI's for teams that WFH vs in office: where is that?<p>On the WFH side, it's straightforward to calculate the commute hours saved, carbon footprint lowered, and minutes more spent with friends/family.<p>Now that many workers have enjoyed the WFH status quo, they feel that management is actively removing benefits.
These articles are kinda funny to me since I don’t know anyone in my corner of the industry, in my corner of the world who has been fully wfh since 2021. And like, nobody is all that upset about it? We need to share hardware, we were borrowing lab equipment, passing prototypes and going in to have techs solder stuff, etc, might as well go in a few days a week.<p>I’m not saying I don’t get why people like wfh, it’s just like, a small subset of workers this applies to who have purely computer jobs, and many of the articles about it seem to imply “everyone” is working from home, never mind carpenters or cooks.
Seems like these companies are banking on a recession to impact the job market and reduce labour bargaining power, thereby freeing them to change the WFH situation without significant attrition.<p>It'll be interesting to see who ends up being right.
If there is one thing everyone should know, it is that board members, CxOs and VCs are all just regular humans. They think exactly like you. Which means, they are as dumb as you.<p>"They would much rather focus on their own returns than on the continued well-being of the company."<p>Apply this line to your job, your career, your family. This is life in modern America.
Another article about forced RTO that fails to mention that executives are afraid of losing their tax incentives / welfare payments by not delivering x number of bodies to the location that gave them incentives to be there
> "In a Zoom conversation, you have to let somebody finish their thought.”<p>Tell me your company doesn't use headsets without telling me.<p>Seriously, if their major complaint is half-duplex audio, just make sure everyone is using headsets so everyone can speak and listen at the same time.
At this point this is just propaganda.<p>The desperation phase? Yes, for employers. Watch this whole RTO thing collapse and corpos "changing their mind" once the herd gas been thinned and 2024, an elections year, rolls around. They have limited time to pull this off.
Yes, we need some in-person contact. But we don't need to do that every week, a few times a year of "get together" for a few days is enough.
There are so many downsides to WFH, and even the upsides encourage the opposite behaviors you want in a team, so this is in no way surprising. The larger permanent WFH experiment failed.<p>That said, not <i>every</i> role, in every situation, needs in person interaction. It’s even reasonable to argue not every day needs in person interaction.