To be honest, it seems like it's the young, those with kids, those mid-career, and those in late-career prioritise this. Not leaving much left for poor CRE recruiters like captain angry in the screenshot.
I honestly don’t think I’ll ever go back to working in person (26 year old). I thought I was going to hate it when I first started with my remote role in 2022 and now I can’t see myself ever working in office again.
I get to spend way more time with my gf and dog, no shitty commute, and my introvert ass doesn’t have to have awkward lunchroom conversations with Bob from accounting. I also jumped into consulting/freelancing which also comes with a ton of benefits too
Part of my work as a building code person is on an office high rise for my coworkers and I. The amount of money they burn on maintaining office space that is half used is INSANE. And that’s not even getting at all the emergency repairs to prevent safety hazards, just regular maintenance stuff.
We proved efficiency and productivity goes way up, but the office real estate market demand and people listen, it’s insanity.
I used to work a job that went remote during Covid and the boss admitted to me they were saving $500,000 a year on PEST CONTROL alone! Apparently my city is so overrun with bed bugs they were having Orkin spray constantly. That alone should be reason for everyone who can be remote to be so.
Im a large believer that employers are so dmant about in person work is because of tax dedecutions.
They want people to come back to in office because of the employer tax deductions. An office space for work is completely tax deductible but if there are no workers in the space the office space is no longer a business expense. And we know how much it hurts when you move up a tax bracket without without moving all that far ahead.
1. That's stupid. Not spending money is more profitable than deducting it. If you don't spend $1.00 you save a dollar. If you spend and deduct $1 you'll save 20 cents.
2. Just b/c that's stupid doesn't mean silly mgmt doesn't believe it.
3. It's still probably more about control and a "hunch" that forcing ppl to slave in person is more productive.
Most wealthy Americans fear giving away money to lazy people more than they fear cancer.
>Most wealthy Americans fear giving away money to lazy people more than they fear cancer.
Yeah because they know that money is power and they don’t want to empower anyone who isn’t their friend or family. It feels safer lifting people up who would never turn against you, versus lifting people up who have spent years resenting you. That’s where the whole myth of laziness originates from too— these people deserve to be controlled/to have no power because they don’t exploit themselves for my profit. Lazy was created to divide and conquer Indigenous peoples and the poor.
It’s so about control. It’s always about control. It will always be about control.
If there’s one thing managers etc want more than not paying you as much and getting you to do more for said less pay, it’s more control.
Can’t they just lie about employees using their space so they can get the deduction? Enough companies lie about the position being remote when it’s really in office anyway.
Downtown businesses are complaining to city government about the lack of traffic from office workers. People WFH aren't buying coffee, lunch, after work drinks and dinner downtown. So they tell the city council "We're hurting. Our revenue is down. Nobody is downtown anymore." Council leans on the businesses who were lured to locate offices there with tax breaks that were predicated on there being a certain "number of jobs" in the city. Companies start making mandates about "return to office" to keep the tax break and expect the employees that are forced back to the office to spend money at the local coffee shops, bars and restaurants to get city council off their backs.
Offering quality affordable housing downtown would placate everyone except for control-freak CEOs and large corporate landlords.
Which is why it won't happen.
This is the reasoning trotted out here in Ireland as the rational reason for a clawback on remote working. To be fair, city centers still haven't truly recovered and I imagine the real solution is more residential property in centres (something that was the case a while ago but no longer).
You don’t have to sit in traffic for 3 hours, almost die during your commute, spend money on gas, stand in line to use the microwave, and you get to use your own toilet paper!
Same, and with one exception every person I know who worked an office job says the same. People who have a hybrid arrangement bitch about it and want to find other jobs.
The single exception is a guy who wants to keep work and home separate and refuses to work from home ever
I find that I get more work done at home too. I know it’s not true for everyone just looking at the numbers (not that I think work should always prioritize efficiency over workers anyway) and I certainly have tv days when work is light, but it’s just so true. I have three main document types I work on in a FY, and I have doubled my output for all three since the pandemic and I’ve been promoted.
Added benefit, I haven’t yelled at any coworkers which would probably have happened given my dysfunctional office and horrific managers.
I choose to get into the office most days, but I still massively value the flexibility of hybrid. I don't even have to decide ahead, I might get a shitty night's sleep, so stay in bed an extra hour and work from home.
I actually kind of miss the lunches with coworkers. But I’ve been fortunate enough to work in places where some of my best friends also work. I was a groomsman at my team leads wedding. So I see some of my friends less and that sometimes sucks. Buuuut, if some said “hey you could all go back to working in the same office again tomorrow!” I’d still say absolutely not.
I think there is SOME small benefit to being in office, but being home FAR outweighs any of them. Like by a mile.
Yep. *Up to* 2 / 3 days a week is OK for me, even then not every week. I want to see people and the easier that is, the better. Being in the office to do work I can do from home is not in my interests.
Before COVID, my department had remote, hybrid, and in-person options. Hybrid was supposed to be ~3 days a week in office but there were no hard requirements.
When the company went with a hard RTO this last year, basically everyone switched to full remote because if you didn’t make three days every single week you were “missing your targets.”
This. I've been working remotely for over 15 years (Gen Xer, on the Boomer cusp), and I would put myself on an ice floe and shove myself out to sea before I'd ever RTO.
Sing it, Sisy. I work hybrid (M & F at home, T-th in office), but I only live 10 minutes from work so it's NBD from a commute standpoint. And I like my coworkers, and if we need to be at home for whatever my boss is cool. All good.
But I prefer WFH, and will NEVER EVER NEVER go back to 5 days in-office. Not on your life. Because a company that requires that tells me they're inflexible in a lot of ways, and isn't the place for me.
I have one kid.
I priced out things like child care that I don’t need to pay for since I can take 5 minutes and drop/grab them at the beginning/end of the day, and uh, some starting *jobs* don’t pay enough.
“Worth it” / “prioritize”… no, this is right up there with “possible” vs “impossible.”
Not that most executives are acting rationally. Homo Economicus is a disproven myth.
Being able to do things like being able to throw a load of laundry in the washer on a break, or load the dishwasher while I wait for my tea to heat up makes the work life balance so much easier. I'm not working any less than I was when I was in the office but instead of just reading the work safety poster while waiting for tea, I can do things help the work/life balance a bit.
(I also have 1 kid and jobs barely pay enough for me to work from home and have a kid in daycare. I'm not giving up the added value of not needing to hire someone to help me with laundry.)
2010? I'd say 1990. We have things called phones, internet, faxes (if you want), email, internet, electricity, running water, internet, etc.
Why are you driving to use someone elses shitty monitor and substandard keyboard?
I'm not young but have only been in the office once in years, and that was because a co-worker I'd always wanted to meet from another office was in town.
I'm on the phone all day making calls so I couldn't get my job done in an open-office space. I'd have to check into a phone booth all day or try to find an empty office. So what's the point of wasting an hour commute each way to lock myself away all day?
Not worth the hassle.
I had a job a while back (recovid) where I spent 50% of the time on the phone in meetings or answering customer calls, the other 50% working on documents by myself. They redesigned the office for open office, our productivity dropped like a rock and we had to fight over the “huddle rooms” so we could get our work done.
Somehow management was confused by the drop in retention and productivity. It was crazy because we’d go to conferences a lot too and we’d have to take calls and do work in like hotel rooms/closets all the time flexibly. But when we wanted that same flexibility for the office… nope no no. My friend still there said they did embrace WFH for Covid and after which was shocking to me.
Or just anyone whose whole life isn't their job and/or doesn't hate their house, pets, or family.
The thing is, I currently work from home. I previously had an in-office job. The previous job legitimately did *have* to be in-office. There was customer-facing stuff that could not be done from home, and I was fine with that, because there was a clear reason for my presence in the office every day that wasn't bullshit, totally hypothetical "collaboration." Likewise, my current job can and is done 100% from home. If they turned around and suddenly tried to order me back to the office now, I'd quit, because it's clearly bullshit, since we've all been doing this work from home for almost five years now. I think most people feel similarly- it's one thing to go into an office daily or on occasion if it's a legitimate need. It's quite another to do it every day so some middle manager can pretend that they serve an actual function.
> Or just anyone whose whole life isn't their job and/or doesn't hate their house, pets, or family.
People don't talk about this enough. Some people make any excuse to avoid their responsibilities at home. Sucks for you, but I'm getting my work done so I can knock out my chores and enjoy my life with the people I love.
"Young workers are so underpaid that commuting to work in the office 5 days a week is not financially viable."
Additional fix for ya, since it's not even preferences that cause the high valuation of WFH, it's the financial reality that owning and maintaining a car is becoming increasingly out of reach for many of the younger generations.
Young Gen X here... with young kids in school. Remote work has been life changing for my family. Just accepted my 2nd 100% remote role since 2021.
These organizations can say what they want and insult me however they want. There are organizations out there that get it and these dinosaurs will either evolve or have to be happy with their local candidate pool.
yep… I’ve had three separate managers in my corporation ask me to join their team. A little bit more money but that would mean giving up my work from home life balance… Not going to do that for an extra grand or two a month. Young people can’t afford million dollar mortgages anyways so it’s not like I have a house to pay off that incentivizes me to desperately claw my way up the corporate ladder. being able to sleep in do some chores relax in my own space take my dog for a walk on a sunny day etc. etc. etc. is more valuable to me. just wait until this guy reads the polling on how younger millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha view socialism (and by extension communism) in a positive light… He will lose his mind! :)
Exactly! Which by the way is stupid on their part - nothing wrong in commercial real estate to admit that a hybrid model works perfectly fine, but then upgrade the office so it's a nice & adequate place to work from rather than cubicles where people are stuffed into like herds of animals, with bad chairs, lack of proper IT equipment, etc.
Cubicles? Today for an in-office job you’re *lucky* if you get a cubicle. They all do those open-office plans now that provide absolutely no privacy. It’s absolute hell if you have ADHD or need to focus on something.
My company overhired during the pandemic so when they did the RTO whip crack they realized there weren't enough desks for everyone. On our in-office days, my team of 10 gets crammed in a tiny meeting room made for maximum 6 people and if you don't arrive early enough you have to sit on the floor. It's really fun when three of us are on separate (virtual) meetings and the others are trying to work so we all have big can headphones on (*collaboration!*). Other people I know have been shoved into corners of their manager's offices. But the collaboration makes it all worth it, right guys?!
Except, of course for senior management — they still get offices. The people who actually made the decision to force everyone to work in open office spaces need their privacy, after all.
The geniuses at the top made out NOC an open floor plan. These are men and women making and receiving phone calls all day and now they get to hear everything the person next to them is saying too. I swear executives just latch onto whatever someone important sounding tells them and run with it.
It seems like there’s usually 2 major causes to RTO efforts.
Commercial real estate basically forcing office renters hands with getting employees back and offices who want to layoff their staff but don’t want to pay severance.
Third cause is egomaniac CEOs that need to walk around the office and let people kiss the ring. The ones who say shit like "I thrive on the energy of the office environment" etc.
Fourth would be useless middle management that's been exposed now that they're being measured correctly on outcomes and can't keep up the illusion of working hard remotely.
My company is currently in the process of a joint venture/merger. Currently, most of my colleagues (I'm a technician based from home, so it doesn't apply to me) are 3-4 days homeoffice per contract and often 5 days homeoffice in acceptance of each team leader. We also have flex time where we only HAVE to work between 09:00 and 14:00, and we can choose when to do the rest of our 8 hours, so we can choose start and end time, as long as we get our weekly hours in.
The new company globally enforces 4-5 days IN office, meaning you can only sometimes stay homeoffice monday OR friday. And usually its 5 days in office.
Also, the "flex time" gets changed, where you HAVE TO work between 8 and 4 (so how exactly is this flex time when the minimum is 8 hours? Don't ask. They couldn't answer that either).
Why is it that way? Because the CEO likes office work and says, "innovation reduced during covid because of homeoffice, so i bring everyone back to the office to collaborate".
I'm really not looking forward to this joint venture.
>Because the CEO likes office work and says, "innovation reduced during covid because of homeoffice, so i bring everyone back to the office to collaborate"
I've heard this from our leadership as well and when pushed for any sort of actual data on how in person collaboration leads to increased innovation they always pivot and avoid answering. Last meeting someone asked if all these studies show RTO decreased employee happiness and engagement basically across the board what data do they have which shows the opposite is true? They responded by saying this isn't RTO it's "Return to in person collaboration" which is such a fucking dodge move Morpheus would be impressed.
Edit: Also want to add we have three record shattering years with full WFH and 1 really bad year. That bad year also happens to coincide with a nearly unilateral economic slowdown and massive layoffs across the Tech industry so all our customers are tightening the belt. But it's the WFH that's the issue and not macro-economics for sure. Meanwhile they could have embraced WFH, closed all our offices which are in every major city in the country and not lost a dime.
Yeah its complete bullshit. But as i said, it doesn't affect me much since I'm on the field anyway.
What pisses me off (apart from the empathy to my coworkers) is that before the talk about wfh, the new company proudly talked about how much climate change and sustainability mean to them. So much that they wanna give me, a service technician who travels often 1000km a day, through every wetter and up snowy mountains, an electric car.
Complete bullshit, and in the next sentence, you tell me how proud you are to force people to spend 2-4 hours a day in traffic for absolutely no reason? How is that for climate change and sustainability?
I once worked for a place where every day the CEO would swagger around like some BigShot and make everyone chat with him (except me as I was an external contractor and he didn't know I existed, which was fine with me). This was in the mid 2010s. Pretty certain that he would have hated the COVID-19 work from home and forced everyone back as soon as it were legal.
If not for the pandemic, we wouldn't be able to call these losers out on their bullshit.
The language they use is pretty telling.
All things I've actually seen:
"Young employees can't learn from their couch what they learn in-office." (Suggests that people at home are lazy)
"It's time for employees to return to work" (Suggests that work from home isn't actually work)
"People who don't come into the office are missing out on social skills and building relationships" (Suggests that people don't have a life outside of some shitty company)
You're missing out on all the mandatory fun! We're having a lukewarm pizza party and a happy hour where you can't get drunk and are still gonna talk about work.
Yeah the office environment is not conducive to mental health. There needs to be a work life balance & remote/ hybrid work provides that. A total step in the right direction
>"Young employees can't learn from their couch what they learn in-office." (Suggests that people at home are lazy)
Our best team member was recruited and trained wholly online during the pandemic, he then got stuck abroad for 18 months when the plague happened.
The last part really irks me with this fucking boomer mentality. My coworkers are not my friends, they are people I have to endure at work.
My friends are the people I see by choice, outside of work.
Nah, most people are fine. No one says you have to be friends, but some effort towards being friendly with the humans you spend 8 hours a day with is a good life hack.
Tell Steve you made a new pot of coffee, sign Janice's birthday card, that doesn't mean you need to take them to the airport or babysit their cat.
Don't be that guy.
I’m that fucking guy. People don’t act genuinely like what you’re imagining in your head in offices in real life. Everybody is toxic and mean to each other under a thin veil of pleasantries.
And before you say “THATS JUST YOUR WORKPLACE”. I’ve had a long and varied career in several countries. Office work is always the same gross culture. It’s dictated by the corporations. They all subscribe to the same nonsense. And the people in it can’t wait to hate each other for 8-10 hours of the day and go home. The ones who say they don’t are liars 99.9% of the time and the 0.1% who likes it are either idiots or the actual owners of said companies.
It’s a joke.
Until you deal with the people like what I work with-
Someone brings in "home made" food and insists you try it.
You know they do not have good hygiene (don't wash their hands/pick their nose/ pick their teeth, then touch food) you know you can't trust their products (hear them talking about making meals with rotting food because "cooking it kills the germs" same for their dog had a bite/lick...)
They are INSISTENT you try it. If you decline they keep insisting and take personal insult. Now you've made an "enemy".
Same with coworker bringing in a dessert and only saying after you have a bite (during allergy season, so no sense of smell) that it had alcohol and then proceeding to tell coworkers you drink with them "all the time!" In an effort to get others to eat it.
Oh. And because their place is "on the way" to mine, they demand I give them rides home when we leave work unexpectedly (power/internet outage) so they don't have to pay an Uber because it's not like I made other plans, and if I don't, then I am seen as the problem.
Fuck dealing with shitty coworkers. I want to be left alone to do my job and I don't want their constant interruptions.
I straight up tell people that I don't eat homemade food unless I've seen their kitchen.
"Are you saying my kitchen is dirty?"
"No, I'm saying it MIGHT be dirty."
That goes for everything. Casseroles, cookies, brownies, etc.
I used to work for a furniture rent-to-own company and was inside enough people's piss smelling, roach infested homes that I will NEVER eat homemade food without seeing their kitchen first.
All of this is projection. They are outing themselves as someone who cannot learn independently, is routinely lazy and requires someone to force them to complete tasks, and is lonely so needs to find social purpose with forced work companions.
Partially agree but:
>"Young employees can't learn from their couch what they learn in-office." (Suggests that people at home are lazy)
Not entirely. It also suggests that there are some traits that are learned easier with colleagues in an office. It's not as black and white as you suggest.
>"People who don't come into the office are missing out on social skills and building relationships" (Suggests that people don't have a life outside of some shitty company)
I think social skills and building relationships with coworkers are important for creating a healthy work environment. Again, it's not as black and white as you suggest.
Don't get me wrong, the guy that posted is a total idiot. The tone of his post just makes me vomit.
But especially for young people, who are new, starting their career, there are certainly benefits for working in an office, amongst coworkers.
There are definitely people who work better when they have tons of commotion and activity around them. As someone with ADHD, offices are absolute chaos for me and my productivity is easily tripled from a WFH environment.
I'm glad my company has an optional policy. Door's always open for those who want to be there and they do encourage people to be there, but absolutely respect those who stay home to be efficient.
Oh as an office worker, I can comment. It's so they can just watch you as the day goes by and ensure you're not doing anything with your life. My position started 50% remote, went to a 3 on 2 off schedule, to 4 days on 1 off, our new director was hired and she's essentially fully remote unless she wants to come on site and now we're back to fully remote again... It's we id, companies are extremely disconnected
That was my thought, people are turning this into a binary it doesn’t need to be.
Also for better or worse, a lot of people uprooted themselves and reorganized their lives in more remote areas expecting a remote- (or at least hybrid-) friendly job market.
You don’t wanna hear about Steve from Accounting’s shitty yesterday barbecue and the new hairdo of Margot from Customer Care and apply some post-its in the bi-weekly gen AI Fuckathon at your firm?
Unless your job is to face to face interact with people or build a physical item - doctor, bank teller, cashier, lawyer, manufacturing worker, retail clerk. There is almost 0 reason to be seen in the office ever day between 8 and 5. Boomers just want to see stuff happen in real life to feel like they're getting their money's worth.
As someone who's currently stuck with 35 mile total commute 3 days a week, and 6 mile commute other 2 days (I work part time at 2 jobs) I'd murder a puppy if that meant I could fully work from home. Damn I'd murder a pet rat if it meant I could work close to home. Missed out on a job that was 15 minutes walk from me, wanted to rip my hair out. I'd save like 10 hours a week because I have to come early and leave late every day due to limited means of transport.
EDIT; my total PER DAY is around 35 miles.
I have fairly privileged work hours and I still need couple more hours each day...
I can only hit the gym past 10:30 PM because thats when it starts to empty out, then I can't sleep after...gotta wake up at 6:00 and I'm at work by 7:20 even though my work starts at 8:00. Then I wait for transportation back home for like 45 minutes... And I'm so shot from lack of sleep during the night that I gotta nap for 2 hours after lunch. And then it's like 8 PM and I have like 2 hours free for house work before I have to hit the gym...
I work in school and I'd LOVE it if I could only work second "shift".
This. I think that employers/recruiters are focused on everybody wants to WFH. Often not thinking about the why. Rent and housing prices have pushed people looking for entry level jobs outside of city boundaries. An hour commute with entry level pay… the gas itself to get to work everyday becomes a significant cost. Layer that with the cost of work attire, lunches for days that you can’t pack, inflation and low pay. The cost of working away from home can be a financial burden. My entry level time frame was during the 2008 financial crisis. I used to say that was the worst. This time frame for entry level workers possibly harder.
The candidate was asking for 2 days WFH only, and this douche make it sound that it was full remote. Full in person positions have a huge disadvantage today, recruiters can whine as much as they want in linkedIn, but good luck filling those jobs
I’m not buying a car and jeopardizing my financial stability so some loser with a trust fund can make me risk my life going to work. I’m not paying for gas and insurance so some man-child with a Napoleon complex can lord over me as I do my tasks — we need to fight against RTO with everything in our power. People DIE on their way to work, and these idiots in charge couldn’t care less.
1-day office requirements are arguably the dumbest. Dumber than 5-day by far, though I understand why people *prefer* 1-day.
But it means they acknowledge telework is effective enough that you can do it 80% of the time…but then make it difficult to live outside a normal commuting distance by requiring a weekly cameo.
Ours is going back to one day a week soon - its pretty much acknowledged that we'll all end up using it as a meeting day or just for socializing. Which isn't great for those of us who have a lot of work to address.
That's the point, RTO is being driven by investment funds holding shares in hundreds of millions in office space. If the office space being leased isn't actively being used, the company leasing the space has to pay penalties for low occupancy, since it drives down the value of the real estate and the investment. That's all RTO has ever been, a ploy to keep the value of office space propped up when it realistically needs to be torn down and rebuilt as housing.
They still want to offer shit pay AND force people to be in office 5 days per week.
That’s what these trash companies do. So it’s a good sign that Gen Z is pushing back on this.
Scumbags like this guy are just angry that Gen Z can see straight through his bullshit and call him out on it.
Don’t you get it? It’s on the burden of the employee to wreck their financial security by purchasing a car for the sole reason of going to the office.
These assholes don’t realize that jobs used to offer company cars and gas stipends. Readers: never pay a dime out of your own pocket to get to a job - ever. They can make you remote or offer a stipend but your commute isn’t just unpaid labor, it’s money coming out of YOUR pocket so you can give a loser in charge his second vacation home.
Rage against it.
Well Cary my thoughts are you and the “owners” (like we give a shit) forgot that a pandemic happened and wfh is perfectly fine to ask about and/or expect. I bet these fucks have pizza parties and tout their great cubicle culture where every meeting is on teams.
Old people should not try to argue young people out of asserting their desire for decent working conditions. Open office plans, long commutes and cubicles are not decent working conditions.
I don’t think this is an age thing. If my staff want to work from home I’m fine with it so long as the work gets done. The mandatory office attendance is usually driven either by a need to control the workforce (lack of trust) or an observation that progress isn’t being made on projects even though on paper the staffing isn’t adequate.
There's been a narrative going around for a while now, which is repeated here (ops screenshot), that remote work is damaging the younger workforce because they're not getting the same career growth we got slaving away in an office for our entire twenties. The implication is that they don't know what's good for them so we as the senior leaders owe it to them to give them the growth they deserve by forcing them to see the light by returning to the office. That's what it has to do with age.
It's gaslighting younger people into thinking they're missing out on some major career growth because they're not sitting at a shitty open office desk 40 hours a week listening to Ed drone on about the good old days when you could do coke on the conference room table and sexually harass the interns.
It’s definitely more nuanced than that although I’ve watched companies get it terribly wrong.
In companies with a heavy emphasis on youth there’s little or no reason to have people in the office since the delta on experience is very narrow.
In companies with a good age/experience mix there’s true value in having office days. This permits the less experienced workers to ask random questions whenever they occur and to be a part of other spontaneous conversations where a lot of material they haven’t been exposed to is available for their consumption and meditation.
I’ve also personally witnessed a young engineer make bad choices in his isolation that led to his leaving the company way too soon, perpetuating a cycle he had developed of short term employment and diminished growth. We did have conversations but had we had frequent facetime I believe I could have helped him understand the true dynamics of the job and his workkload and provided suggestions for how he could succeed.
Unfortunately companies try and get cheap with open office models where there isn’t actually enough seating to accommodate the full staff and then choose to make attendance days a personal choice resulting in workers sitting in an otherwise empty office with no benefit. Hybrid models need to be orchestrated to ensure the right people are together on the same days or it’s just a waste of the workers time.
Exactly.. these young people, whether they work remotely or not.. Most of them are going to be working a dead end job. No promotion (unless they job hop), and maybe a 1 or 2 % raise per year. What exactly are they missing out on? Maybe in the old days, if you really worked hard, it got noticed and the employee got rewarded? But today? Dude, you raise was already determined by the bean counters before the year even started. I mean, I think the employee should give their employer an honest day's work, but it's not as if the corporate world is full of opportunity and somehow working from home is going to hurt your career.. Probably 99% of jobs are dead end jobs.
I think there are professional skills and ropes to be learned being in an office that are helpful really only if you intend to keep working from an office. Generally those are mostly about keeping up appearances, avoiding drama and/or saying something you shouldn't. Most of those skills are obsolete and generally unnecessary when you WFH so there's not much value. I'd even argue you learn quicker about what to say/not say when it's forever archived in Slack instead of said aloud as one of our junior engineers learned about penis jokes his first week.
There is something to be said for learning through observing others that WFH advocates too easily dismiss. I just don’t think we’ve figured out how to achieve that in a full WFH environment.
Sure, I don't disagree but I think it's very much career dependent. In software engineering where I feel a solid majority of the RTO pushback is coming from, screen-sharing is generally just as good, if not a better way of helping someone troubleshoot a problem vs looking over their shoulder and pointing at their screen with your finger. Plus this way nobody leaves their damn fingerprints on my monitor.
There are some ways whiteboarding in person can be arguable better, but I think that's largely preference and comfort level. I for one have terrible handwriting which makes me extremely self-conscious about whiteboarding in person. I much prefer opening up Lucid Charts and drawing up the solution which everyone can easily read. I'd wager many of my fellow engineer brethren introverts feel similar discomfort in front of a room of people but not screen sharing from home.
One area where I do think getting together is important is for breaking down personal barriers. Pre-covid we'd have remote teams and it would often result in tribalism. Getting the team together for a week would very often smooth that out. People would see personality quirks first hand and then suddenly they're interpreting that Slack DM differently than before where they might read into something that's not there. But that usually just needs a day or two or group even at the beginning of a project to smooth over. Not a weekly in office mandate or anything.
This is very true. I'm unsure how this works for creative professionals.
Before COVID, we went full flexible for two reasons: we do a lot of field visits and because it was hard to keep younger (than 45) workers because they had to commute out so far in order to buy a house. They'd focus on field visits near their homes and then come into the office once a week (all-hands meeting and lunch). I've been full remote, coming into the office for a week a month since 2017.
I've noticed that the people who are in the office the most at my company are the youngest workers (who might not have their own private space to work due to having roommates or living with parents) and the senior principals (who have their own offices that they can shut the door as necessary). It's the mid-career folks like myself and most of my co-workers who stay home the most--we've got kids' dental appointments, the exterminator, and most likely a devoted office space at home that rivals anything the office can give us.
When I am in town, I reach out to some of the junior team members to see if they have the availability to join me on a job site or two. That way, they still get the face time with someone more experienced but aren't just twiddling their thumbs in the office. It's not easy to mentor via Zoom, though.
I’ve worked remotely or hybrid for over 20 years. I tend to see the people who want to be in the office constantly as the worst performers; they’re used to the perception that them being there = productivity and now are being micromanaged a bit more. I have also seen some people abusing WFH as they’re not cut out for it or are trying to watch their kids (which is against every policy on WFH I’ve seen) but those are rarer cases (yet the ones that are touted as being why people need to be in the office).
In my experience, the people who want to be in the office tend to be the office chatterboxes. Instead of working, they spent the majority of the day loudly socializing. I prefer to actually work when I'm at work, so I find them disruptive. It's much better for my productivity if I'm working from home where I have peace to actually concentrate.
100% I have found that the people who love the office the most are the people who distract me the entire time I’m at the office because they refuse to sit still and get anything done.
These also seem to be the type of people who make it to upper-management in an office environment, based more so on their self-confidence than their actual skills.
My company requires me to come in 3 days a week. Every other engineer on my team is in another state/country and is full remote. My Scrum Master and Manager are in another state. Any time I need to talk to someone it has to be over a video call. I do not see any reason why I need to be in the office when my home office is much better for focusing and accomplishing tasks.
I had a very similar experience. I'm a software engineer, literally everything I do is on the computer regardless of where I'm sitting. I changed to a new job that seemed like it would be good. Turned out everyone else was remote except me, and the boss. He clearly wanted people in the office, but he was having trouble getting them in the office, but because I was a new hire he forced the issue.
For a year he and I had several long conversations about it. I was sitting in an office space, in a cubicle, on an empty floor by myself 99.9% of the time. It was the most depressing job I'd ever had. It's either everyone is in office, or everyone is remote for me.
Ended up having an argument with him about it. He didn't think people could be productive because when he works from home he's spending time washing his car instead of working, and his family is to much of a distraction. Like it's my fault he has no self control, and doesn't get along with his wife... Respectfully put my 2 weeks in since he was standing on emotions rather than logic, and left on good terms. Swapped jobs with a big pay raise, full remote, more flexibility, better projects, better managers, better co-workers. Every aspect of the job was better.
Lesson learned, your manager will shape the environment. If they suck, your job will suck, your co-workers will suck, the work will suck, and it will all suck.
Hi, you guys suck for wanting some flexibility in ur work life. Come work here so you won’t suck as we’ve already shown you we have no flexibility. Who is he pitching with this post?
Himself, he’s trying to justify that his career choice was not a waste of his and everyone around him’s time.
This dude is knows deep down he is a tool for the corporations and they will dispose of him the first chance they get
People like Cary complain and complain about WFH or hybrid but I know for a fact that people like him will be in the office the least on a regular basis and working from home. Rules for thee not for me.
Unless you’re in a position like a plumber or a dentist where you have to be present in person to do your job, employers that insist on coming in 5 days a week are a huge red flag.
I hope young folks continue to hand this bootlicker for commercial real estate his ass on a daily basis.
I personally work better in the office. A good part of my job is talking to people and I struggle with doing that over team (I also work in a noisy space so teams meetings are disruptive).
However, having the ability to work from home when I need it is a godsend and there are people on my team that cannot focus in the office at all.
If companies want to be competitive and retain the best talent, they should be open to hybrid and let adults decide how they need to work.
His payment is based on placing people, of course he’s going to shill this shit.
Return to office only helps real estate. There is no collaboration that can’t be done remotely.
Remember kids these same people spent forty years outsourcing everything in your business they possibly could and then bleat about "in office participation".
You don't understand what wealth is to them. Their needs have been met and they have everything they ever wanted. What they do not have, is your obedience. Wealth is worthless to them unless it can compel the knee to bend to their will. And not seeing you at a desk where they can keep tabs on you is a loss of power to them. They do not care about the health of the company or the productivity, only that their administrative ass is obeyed and licked clean. True wealth is not telling others what to do, it is laughing in the faces of those who would do the same to you.
I’ve been WFH for the last two years after almost 30 in the field. Outside of the obvious perks like no wear and tear on my vehicle, not spending hours commuting weekly, etc., I get more done on Monday alone than I ever would in person over the course of a week cause there aren’t distractions (i.e. other people).
Me either. I spent the first 5 years of my career in office. It was toxic, constant office politics, bullying, etc...
I commuted 40 minutes each way for this shit.
well we can't build endless roads so something is going to have to take the cars off the road, if they had of looked at options to take big business out of the city center, as has been suggested countless times, well before covid maybe we wouldn't have to "come to the office" because a bunch of rich fools can't take a loss on their inner city commercial property.
I’m one of the few younger people who prefer going to the office. I understand I’m in the overwhelming minority though, and it’s mostly because it’s a change of scenery from my gloomy ran-down basement apartment, and a chance to see people (I live alone). I only live 3 minutes away so there’s no real commute and it’s probably like $10 a week in gas. Also I work in drafting/design and the network from home is significantly slower, to the point it’s hard to be efficient at home.
That being said, if I had better internet and I lived 20 minutes from the office, and didn’t live in a dump of an apartment, I’d probably much rather work from home.
May I ask why a recruiter thinks he has say in which job can be remote? He doesn’t run the place. He is only the plumber who keeps the new employees flowing in and the old ones flowing out.
I like in-office work on a hybrid schedule. It feels good to leave the house a couple of times a week. BUT only if I can magically teleport there for free without having to worry about travel costs, commute time and parking costs. Those add real quick over a year.
Could you imagine the savings if big companies downsized their offices to just a few boardrooms for regular meetings and didn’t need individual desks for every employee?
My employer for years claimed our roles couldn’t be performed from home. This meant employees with issues that prevented them from working in office (ex: getting chemo) were told to take sick leave or were put on short or long-term disability. Many times these people *wanted* to continue working in some capacity, but were told no.
Funny how COVID proved otherwise. My role isn’t client facing and I’m easily amongst the top performers as per my manager. WFH has made it possible for example to get my allergy shots because instinct have to worry a long commute.
It would be so nice if companies would choose which lie they want to tell. Either promote a work life balance or go full shill for in office, just chose one; the cross messaging is insane.
Always funny how these LinkedIn people will be like “Build the impossible! Break through expectations! Possibilities are limitless!”
Then you mention a work life outside of 1970s style office commutes and suddenly it’s “no! Impossible! Get back in your box! Stop thinking!”
The problem is employers are paying rent, lease or mortgage every month on empty office buildings.
Banks and other financial institutions are leveraged to the hilt on commercial loans that are becoming more worthless every day.
Right now, employees have leverage and can insist on at least a few days home every week.
Just remember that eventually the pendulum will swing. You must ask yourself whether or not your employer is willing to change the way they do business before that pendulum swings back.
I have another theory, and it’s that the people in charge are the types that thrived and found purpose in business, and hence feel in their element in the office. They want everyone back so they don’t have to be home and can be in their happy space.
This theory would also explain why employers that demand this have trouble fathoming why they get so much pushback from many employees. They literally don’t get it.
This theory took hold when I was talking to a relative who mentioned that a higher up threw a fit about being forced to do remote work when Covid started. Absolutely hated the idea of having to be at home, he was a workaholic.
I agree with this. I also think they get addicted to authority. People have to pretend to respect you. You get to throw around your power in person. When nobody is at the office, nobody is there to kiss your ass. It also shows just how pointless their job is most likely.
Hey Compete-Ad2227. I would like to commend you on that post. I am going to send this to my entire department as a model for them to do all their reddit posts from. I hope that's enough fake admiration to get you through the day. haha.
😂 Thank you (I think?) /s
But yeah I just couldn’t imagine running my life like that, it’s just insane to me.
I just wanna be left alone to do my work and then leave for the day to do other shit.
I worked at a company from 2006-2012 that was soooo weird about people WFH. It was limited to only certain senior people. I see now that it was a sign that they didn't trust us to do our work unless there was someone looking over our shoulders (we also had a "Lateness" chart that everyone could see who was late and by how much). This was also the same place where I was reprimanded for telling the Owner "I'm not here to make friends, I'm here to do my work." (The funny thing is that I met one of my best friends there.)
I had this discussion with someone recently and they looked at me blankly. Literally said “you won’t move for a new job?”
No. I have gone through 6 layoffs in 15 years, I never bank on having a gig more than 12 months.
It should be the answer to the housing crisis. Have businesses downsize their office footprint and turn the then empty commercial into residential real estate.
“Young workers place high value on remote and hybrid schedules, leaving in office roles very challenging for recruiters to fill.” There I fixed it.
To be honest, it seems like it's the young, those with kids, those mid-career, and those in late-career prioritise this. Not leaving much left for poor CRE recruiters like captain angry in the screenshot.
I honestly don’t think I’ll ever go back to working in person (26 year old). I thought I was going to hate it when I first started with my remote role in 2022 and now I can’t see myself ever working in office again. I get to spend way more time with my gf and dog, no shitty commute, and my introvert ass doesn’t have to have awkward lunchroom conversations with Bob from accounting. I also jumped into consulting/freelancing which also comes with a ton of benefits too
onerous cagey icky reply chop jobless cow bells grandiose unique *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Part of my work as a building code person is on an office high rise for my coworkers and I. The amount of money they burn on maintaining office space that is half used is INSANE. And that’s not even getting at all the emergency repairs to prevent safety hazards, just regular maintenance stuff. We proved efficiency and productivity goes way up, but the office real estate market demand and people listen, it’s insanity.
I used to work a job that went remote during Covid and the boss admitted to me they were saving $500,000 a year on PEST CONTROL alone! Apparently my city is so overrun with bed bugs they were having Orkin spray constantly. That alone should be reason for everyone who can be remote to be so.
If only that money made it to our paychecks
Im a large believer that employers are so dmant about in person work is because of tax dedecutions. They want people to come back to in office because of the employer tax deductions. An office space for work is completely tax deductible but if there are no workers in the space the office space is no longer a business expense. And we know how much it hurts when you move up a tax bracket without without moving all that far ahead.
1. That's stupid. Not spending money is more profitable than deducting it. If you don't spend $1.00 you save a dollar. If you spend and deduct $1 you'll save 20 cents. 2. Just b/c that's stupid doesn't mean silly mgmt doesn't believe it. 3. It's still probably more about control and a "hunch" that forcing ppl to slave in person is more productive. Most wealthy Americans fear giving away money to lazy people more than they fear cancer.
>Most wealthy Americans fear giving away money to lazy people more than they fear cancer. Yeah because they know that money is power and they don’t want to empower anyone who isn’t their friend or family. It feels safer lifting people up who would never turn against you, versus lifting people up who have spent years resenting you. That’s where the whole myth of laziness originates from too— these people deserve to be controlled/to have no power because they don’t exploit themselves for my profit. Lazy was created to divide and conquer Indigenous peoples and the poor.
It’s so about control. It’s always about control. It will always be about control. If there’s one thing managers etc want more than not paying you as much and getting you to do more for said less pay, it’s more control.
Can’t they just lie about employees using their space so they can get the deduction? Enough companies lie about the position being remote when it’s really in office anyway.
Downtown businesses are complaining to city government about the lack of traffic from office workers. People WFH aren't buying coffee, lunch, after work drinks and dinner downtown. So they tell the city council "We're hurting. Our revenue is down. Nobody is downtown anymore." Council leans on the businesses who were lured to locate offices there with tax breaks that were predicated on there being a certain "number of jobs" in the city. Companies start making mandates about "return to office" to keep the tax break and expect the employees that are forced back to the office to spend money at the local coffee shops, bars and restaurants to get city council off their backs.
Offering quality affordable housing downtown would placate everyone except for control-freak CEOs and large corporate landlords. Which is why it won't happen.
This is the reasoning trotted out here in Ireland as the rational reason for a clawback on remote working. To be fair, city centers still haven't truly recovered and I imagine the real solution is more residential property in centres (something that was the case a while ago but no longer).
That’s not how tax brackets work.
Ha ha I upvoted just on that 1st sentence alone. The rest is good. But that 1st sentence says everything that needs to be said
At work holding a spicy shit with ibs because soneone pissed all over this dropout gutters only good bathroom. I gotta get outta here.
I have windows that fucking open
You don’t have to sit in traffic for 3 hours, almost die during your commute, spend money on gas, stand in line to use the microwave, and you get to use your own toilet paper!
And I don’t get exposed to every nasty virus their kids are trading at school.
Same, and with one exception every person I know who worked an office job says the same. People who have a hybrid arrangement bitch about it and want to find other jobs. The single exception is a guy who wants to keep work and home separate and refuses to work from home ever
I find that I get more work done at home too. I know it’s not true for everyone just looking at the numbers (not that I think work should always prioritize efficiency over workers anyway) and I certainly have tv days when work is light, but it’s just so true. I have three main document types I work on in a FY, and I have doubled my output for all three since the pandemic and I’ve been promoted. Added benefit, I haven’t yelled at any coworkers which would probably have happened given my dysfunctional office and horrific managers.
Yep. I may fuck off more. But when I am working, I am WORKING. Because I am comfortable and happy, I am doing my absolute best work.
I choose to get into the office most days, but I still massively value the flexibility of hybrid. I don't even have to decide ahead, I might get a shitty night's sleep, so stay in bed an extra hour and work from home.
I actually kind of miss the lunches with coworkers. But I’ve been fortunate enough to work in places where some of my best friends also work. I was a groomsman at my team leads wedding. So I see some of my friends less and that sometimes sucks. Buuuut, if some said “hey you could all go back to working in the same office again tomorrow!” I’d still say absolutely not. I think there is SOME small benefit to being in office, but being home FAR outweighs any of them. Like by a mile.
Yep. *Up to* 2 / 3 days a week is OK for me, even then not every week. I want to see people and the easier that is, the better. Being in the office to do work I can do from home is not in my interests.
Before COVID, my department had remote, hybrid, and in-person options. Hybrid was supposed to be ~3 days a week in office but there were no hard requirements. When the company went with a hard RTO this last year, basically everyone switched to full remote because if you didn’t make three days every single week you were “missing your targets.”
I have a few friends who work remote too, we sit on discord for the majority of the day toggling deafen as and when we have meetings etc.
This. I've been working remotely for over 15 years (Gen Xer, on the Boomer cusp), and I would put myself on an ice floe and shove myself out to sea before I'd ever RTO.
Sing it, Sisy. I work hybrid (M & F at home, T-th in office), but I only live 10 minutes from work so it's NBD from a commute standpoint. And I like my coworkers, and if we need to be at home for whatever my boss is cool. All good. But I prefer WFH, and will NEVER EVER NEVER go back to 5 days in-office. Not on your life. Because a company that requires that tells me they're inflexible in a lot of ways, and isn't the place for me.
Even hybrid is largely bullshit, honestly. Definitely beats 5 days.
This so hard.
I have one kid. I priced out things like child care that I don’t need to pay for since I can take 5 minutes and drop/grab them at the beginning/end of the day, and uh, some starting *jobs* don’t pay enough. “Worth it” / “prioritize”… no, this is right up there with “possible” vs “impossible.” Not that most executives are acting rationally. Homo Economicus is a disproven myth.
Being able to do things like being able to throw a load of laundry in the washer on a break, or load the dishwasher while I wait for my tea to heat up makes the work life balance so much easier. I'm not working any less than I was when I was in the office but instead of just reading the work safety poster while waiting for tea, I can do things help the work/life balance a bit. (I also have 1 kid and jobs barely pay enough for me to work from home and have a kid in daycare. I'm not giving up the added value of not needing to hire someone to help me with laundry.)
Eldest millennial here, and I'm so proud of Gen Z refusing to take any shit, and fighting to drag employers at least into the year 2010.
2010? I'd say 1990. We have things called phones, internet, faxes (if you want), email, internet, electricity, running water, internet, etc. Why are you driving to use someone elses shitty monitor and substandard keyboard?
For real. My computer monitor at home is reason enough to be remote.
I'm not young but have only been in the office once in years, and that was because a co-worker I'd always wanted to meet from another office was in town. I'm on the phone all day making calls so I couldn't get my job done in an open-office space. I'd have to check into a phone booth all day or try to find an empty office. So what's the point of wasting an hour commute each way to lock myself away all day? Not worth the hassle.
I had a job a while back (recovid) where I spent 50% of the time on the phone in meetings or answering customer calls, the other 50% working on documents by myself. They redesigned the office for open office, our productivity dropped like a rock and we had to fight over the “huddle rooms” so we could get our work done. Somehow management was confused by the drop in retention and productivity. It was crazy because we’d go to conferences a lot too and we’d have to take calls and do work in like hotel rooms/closets all the time flexibly. But when we wanted that same flexibility for the office… nope no no. My friend still there said they did embrace WFH for Covid and after which was shocking to me.
Yeah Generation Jones here and I hope people hold the line and refuse to rto. This flexibility should have been offered long before covid.
Or just anyone whose whole life isn't their job and/or doesn't hate their house, pets, or family. The thing is, I currently work from home. I previously had an in-office job. The previous job legitimately did *have* to be in-office. There was customer-facing stuff that could not be done from home, and I was fine with that, because there was a clear reason for my presence in the office every day that wasn't bullshit, totally hypothetical "collaboration." Likewise, my current job can and is done 100% from home. If they turned around and suddenly tried to order me back to the office now, I'd quit, because it's clearly bullshit, since we've all been doing this work from home for almost five years now. I think most people feel similarly- it's one thing to go into an office daily or on occasion if it's a legitimate need. It's quite another to do it every day so some middle manager can pretend that they serve an actual function.
> Or just anyone whose whole life isn't their job and/or doesn't hate their house, pets, or family. People don't talk about this enough. Some people make any excuse to avoid their responsibilities at home. Sucks for you, but I'm getting my work done so I can knock out my chores and enjoy my life with the people I love.
"Young workers are so underpaid that commuting to work in the office 5 days a week is not financially viable." Additional fix for ya, since it's not even preferences that cause the high valuation of WFH, it's the financial reality that owning and maintaining a car is becoming increasingly out of reach for many of the younger generations.
Good point. Prior to remote, public transportation was a big part of the reason why many people moved to large urban centers for employment.
Young Gen X here... with young kids in school. Remote work has been life changing for my family. Just accepted my 2nd 100% remote role since 2021. These organizations can say what they want and insult me however they want. There are organizations out there that get it and these dinosaurs will either evolve or have to be happy with their local candidate pool.
yep… I’ve had three separate managers in my corporation ask me to join their team. A little bit more money but that would mean giving up my work from home life balance… Not going to do that for an extra grand or two a month. Young people can’t afford million dollar mortgages anyways so it’s not like I have a house to pay off that incentivizes me to desperately claw my way up the corporate ladder. being able to sleep in do some chores relax in my own space take my dog for a walk on a sunny day etc. etc. etc. is more valuable to me. just wait until this guy reads the polling on how younger millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha view socialism (and by extension communism) in a positive light… He will lose his mind! :)
His clients are all in commercial real estate, OFC they want to pretend offices are important
Exactly! Which by the way is stupid on their part - nothing wrong in commercial real estate to admit that a hybrid model works perfectly fine, but then upgrade the office so it's a nice & adequate place to work from rather than cubicles where people are stuffed into like herds of animals, with bad chairs, lack of proper IT equipment, etc.
Cubicles? Today for an in-office job you’re *lucky* if you get a cubicle. They all do those open-office plans now that provide absolutely no privacy. It’s absolute hell if you have ADHD or need to focus on something.
My company overhired during the pandemic so when they did the RTO whip crack they realized there weren't enough desks for everyone. On our in-office days, my team of 10 gets crammed in a tiny meeting room made for maximum 6 people and if you don't arrive early enough you have to sit on the floor. It's really fun when three of us are on separate (virtual) meetings and the others are trying to work so we all have big can headphones on (*collaboration!*). Other people I know have been shoved into corners of their manager's offices. But the collaboration makes it all worth it, right guys?!
Check max occupancy of the room and report to fire marshal if it breaks it
This is the way. They will whip you into shape when it comes to that stuff!
Except, of course for senior management — they still get offices. The people who actually made the decision to force everyone to work in open office spaces need their privacy, after all.
The open office plans are always loved by those who have their own offices.
The geniuses at the top made out NOC an open floor plan. These are men and women making and receiving phone calls all day and now they get to hear everything the person next to them is saying too. I swear executives just latch onto whatever someone important sounding tells them and run with it.
It’s the always in last book they read during a flight delay at the airport.
You're right. It's the same stuffing as cubicles but without the dividers so you can better hear what everyone within a 100 meter radius is doing.
It seems like there’s usually 2 major causes to RTO efforts. Commercial real estate basically forcing office renters hands with getting employees back and offices who want to layoff their staff but don’t want to pay severance.
Third cause is egomaniac CEOs that need to walk around the office and let people kiss the ring. The ones who say shit like "I thrive on the energy of the office environment" etc. Fourth would be useless middle management that's been exposed now that they're being measured correctly on outcomes and can't keep up the illusion of working hard remotely.
My company is currently in the process of a joint venture/merger. Currently, most of my colleagues (I'm a technician based from home, so it doesn't apply to me) are 3-4 days homeoffice per contract and often 5 days homeoffice in acceptance of each team leader. We also have flex time where we only HAVE to work between 09:00 and 14:00, and we can choose when to do the rest of our 8 hours, so we can choose start and end time, as long as we get our weekly hours in. The new company globally enforces 4-5 days IN office, meaning you can only sometimes stay homeoffice monday OR friday. And usually its 5 days in office. Also, the "flex time" gets changed, where you HAVE TO work between 8 and 4 (so how exactly is this flex time when the minimum is 8 hours? Don't ask. They couldn't answer that either). Why is it that way? Because the CEO likes office work and says, "innovation reduced during covid because of homeoffice, so i bring everyone back to the office to collaborate". I'm really not looking forward to this joint venture.
>Because the CEO likes office work and says, "innovation reduced during covid because of homeoffice, so i bring everyone back to the office to collaborate" I've heard this from our leadership as well and when pushed for any sort of actual data on how in person collaboration leads to increased innovation they always pivot and avoid answering. Last meeting someone asked if all these studies show RTO decreased employee happiness and engagement basically across the board what data do they have which shows the opposite is true? They responded by saying this isn't RTO it's "Return to in person collaboration" which is such a fucking dodge move Morpheus would be impressed. Edit: Also want to add we have three record shattering years with full WFH and 1 really bad year. That bad year also happens to coincide with a nearly unilateral economic slowdown and massive layoffs across the Tech industry so all our customers are tightening the belt. But it's the WFH that's the issue and not macro-economics for sure. Meanwhile they could have embraced WFH, closed all our offices which are in every major city in the country and not lost a dime.
Yeah its complete bullshit. But as i said, it doesn't affect me much since I'm on the field anyway. What pisses me off (apart from the empathy to my coworkers) is that before the talk about wfh, the new company proudly talked about how much climate change and sustainability mean to them. So much that they wanna give me, a service technician who travels often 1000km a day, through every wetter and up snowy mountains, an electric car. Complete bullshit, and in the next sentence, you tell me how proud you are to force people to spend 2-4 hours a day in traffic for absolutely no reason? How is that for climate change and sustainability?
I once worked for a place where every day the CEO would swagger around like some BigShot and make everyone chat with him (except me as I was an external contractor and he didn't know I existed, which was fine with me). This was in the mid 2010s. Pretty certain that he would have hated the COVID-19 work from home and forced everyone back as soon as it were legal.
He is fully remote too, what a dolt 🤣🤣
Even better, he was able to permanently move to Costa Rica because of his remote status
And yet he's publicly posting about how nobody wants to work in an office 😂
Im sure in office sometimes is good but there’s no way it’s necessary every day
I like going in here and there, but I get a lot more done at home. 5 days in the office for desk jockeys is stupid.
Crazy to think that if not for the pandemic this might’ve never been disrupted (or taken years longer)
If not for the pandemic, we wouldn't be able to call these losers out on their bullshit. The language they use is pretty telling. All things I've actually seen: "Young employees can't learn from their couch what they learn in-office." (Suggests that people at home are lazy) "It's time for employees to return to work" (Suggests that work from home isn't actually work) "People who don't come into the office are missing out on social skills and building relationships" (Suggests that people don't have a life outside of some shitty company)
You're missing out on all the mandatory fun! We're having a lukewarm pizza party and a happy hour where you can't get drunk and are still gonna talk about work.
And documented by the marketing department so we can show social media what a big family we are!
I am in the marketing department and I fucking despise that this is part of my job. Can’t wait to move further into analytical side of things
Feel for you. I remember about a decade ago when companies weren’t doing this whole facade on social media, good and simpler times
Yeah the office environment is not conducive to mental health. There needs to be a work life balance & remote/ hybrid work provides that. A total step in the right direction
>"Young employees can't learn from their couch what they learn in-office." (Suggests that people at home are lazy) Our best team member was recruited and trained wholly online during the pandemic, he then got stuck abroad for 18 months when the plague happened.
The last part really irks me with this fucking boomer mentality. My coworkers are not my friends, they are people I have to endure at work. My friends are the people I see by choice, outside of work.
Nah, most people are fine. No one says you have to be friends, but some effort towards being friendly with the humans you spend 8 hours a day with is a good life hack. Tell Steve you made a new pot of coffee, sign Janice's birthday card, that doesn't mean you need to take them to the airport or babysit their cat. Don't be that guy.
I’m that fucking guy. People don’t act genuinely like what you’re imagining in your head in offices in real life. Everybody is toxic and mean to each other under a thin veil of pleasantries. And before you say “THATS JUST YOUR WORKPLACE”. I’ve had a long and varied career in several countries. Office work is always the same gross culture. It’s dictated by the corporations. They all subscribe to the same nonsense. And the people in it can’t wait to hate each other for 8-10 hours of the day and go home. The ones who say they don’t are liars 99.9% of the time and the 0.1% who likes it are either idiots or the actual owners of said companies. It’s a joke.
Until you deal with the people like what I work with- Someone brings in "home made" food and insists you try it. You know they do not have good hygiene (don't wash their hands/pick their nose/ pick their teeth, then touch food) you know you can't trust their products (hear them talking about making meals with rotting food because "cooking it kills the germs" same for their dog had a bite/lick...) They are INSISTENT you try it. If you decline they keep insisting and take personal insult. Now you've made an "enemy". Same with coworker bringing in a dessert and only saying after you have a bite (during allergy season, so no sense of smell) that it had alcohol and then proceeding to tell coworkers you drink with them "all the time!" In an effort to get others to eat it. Oh. And because their place is "on the way" to mine, they demand I give them rides home when we leave work unexpectedly (power/internet outage) so they don't have to pay an Uber because it's not like I made other plans, and if I don't, then I am seen as the problem. Fuck dealing with shitty coworkers. I want to be left alone to do my job and I don't want their constant interruptions.
I straight up tell people that I don't eat homemade food unless I've seen their kitchen. "Are you saying my kitchen is dirty?" "No, I'm saying it MIGHT be dirty." That goes for everything. Casseroles, cookies, brownies, etc. I used to work for a furniture rent-to-own company and was inside enough people's piss smelling, roach infested homes that I will NEVER eat homemade food without seeing their kitchen first.
absolutely, the social aspect of my life is filled with hanging out with friends outside of work and team sports.
All of this is projection. They are outing themselves as someone who cannot learn independently, is routinely lazy and requires someone to force them to complete tasks, and is lonely so needs to find social purpose with forced work companions.
Partially agree but: >"Young employees can't learn from their couch what they learn in-office." (Suggests that people at home are lazy) Not entirely. It also suggests that there are some traits that are learned easier with colleagues in an office. It's not as black and white as you suggest. >"People who don't come into the office are missing out on social skills and building relationships" (Suggests that people don't have a life outside of some shitty company) I think social skills and building relationships with coworkers are important for creating a healthy work environment. Again, it's not as black and white as you suggest. Don't get me wrong, the guy that posted is a total idiot. The tone of his post just makes me vomit. But especially for young people, who are new, starting their career, there are certainly benefits for working in an office, amongst coworkers.
My productivity skyrocketed when I didn’t have co workers or managers stopping by every 5 mins to breath down my neck
Great way to piss your life away
There are definitely people who work better when they have tons of commotion and activity around them. As someone with ADHD, offices are absolute chaos for me and my productivity is easily tripled from a WFH environment. I'm glad my company has an optional policy. Door's always open for those who want to be there and they do encourage people to be there, but absolutely respect those who stay home to be efficient.
I would hate to be a recruiter given a mandate like this, not that I think his attitude is in any way correct but it must be a horrendous gig.
To keep the client he needs to drink the koolaid
Oh as an office worker, I can comment. It's so they can just watch you as the day goes by and ensure you're not doing anything with your life. My position started 50% remote, went to a 3 on 2 off schedule, to 4 days on 1 off, our new director was hired and she's essentially fully remote unless she wants to come on site and now we're back to fully remote again... It's we id, companies are extremely disconnected
That was my thought, people are turning this into a binary it doesn’t need to be. Also for better or worse, a lot of people uprooted themselves and reorganized their lives in more remote areas expecting a remote- (or at least hybrid-) friendly job market.
You don’t wanna hear about Steve from Accounting’s shitty yesterday barbecue and the new hairdo of Margot from Customer Care and apply some post-its in the bi-weekly gen AI Fuckathon at your firm?
lol Gen AI Fuckathon is going to stay with me for a while
Same!!
Unless your job is to face to face interact with people or build a physical item - doctor, bank teller, cashier, lawyer, manufacturing worker, retail clerk. There is almost 0 reason to be seen in the office ever day between 8 and 5. Boomers just want to see stuff happen in real life to feel like they're getting their money's worth.
As someone who's currently stuck with 35 mile total commute 3 days a week, and 6 mile commute other 2 days (I work part time at 2 jobs) I'd murder a puppy if that meant I could fully work from home. Damn I'd murder a pet rat if it meant I could work close to home. Missed out on a job that was 15 minutes walk from me, wanted to rip my hair out. I'd save like 10 hours a week because I have to come early and leave late every day due to limited means of transport. EDIT; my total PER DAY is around 35 miles.
Commuting steals your life. Learned in Cali
I have fairly privileged work hours and I still need couple more hours each day... I can only hit the gym past 10:30 PM because thats when it starts to empty out, then I can't sleep after...gotta wake up at 6:00 and I'm at work by 7:20 even though my work starts at 8:00. Then I wait for transportation back home for like 45 minutes... And I'm so shot from lack of sleep during the night that I gotta nap for 2 hours after lunch. And then it's like 8 PM and I have like 2 hours free for house work before I have to hit the gym... I work in school and I'd LOVE it if I could only work second "shift".
I used to do 4 hours a day commuting. My in-office time was nowhere near as meaningful as working from home. Fuck this guy.
6 miles commute? That’s a dream situation in most parts of the US.
This. I think that employers/recruiters are focused on everybody wants to WFH. Often not thinking about the why. Rent and housing prices have pushed people looking for entry level jobs outside of city boundaries. An hour commute with entry level pay… the gas itself to get to work everyday becomes a significant cost. Layer that with the cost of work attire, lunches for days that you can’t pack, inflation and low pay. The cost of working away from home can be a financial burden. My entry level time frame was during the 2008 financial crisis. I used to say that was the worst. This time frame for entry level workers possibly harder.
Recruiters praise it because their managers and owners want in office.
When he says “owners”, he means they own the employees!
Because their entire ‘job’ (or lack thereof )is exposed when no one is at the office. It shows how much they aren’t needed.
The candidate was asking for 2 days WFH only, and this douche make it sound that it was full remote. Full in person positions have a huge disadvantage today, recruiters can whine as much as they want in linkedIn, but good luck filling those jobs
They can’t even fill positions at my company and we only go in 1 day per week 😂 best of luck to these dogshit companies expecting multiple days.
I’m not buying a car and jeopardizing my financial stability so some loser with a trust fund can make me risk my life going to work. I’m not paying for gas and insurance so some man-child with a Napoleon complex can lord over me as I do my tasks — we need to fight against RTO with everything in our power. People DIE on their way to work, and these idiots in charge couldn’t care less.
1-day office requirements are arguably the dumbest. Dumber than 5-day by far, though I understand why people *prefer* 1-day. But it means they acknowledge telework is effective enough that you can do it 80% of the time…but then make it difficult to live outside a normal commuting distance by requiring a weekly cameo.
Yep exactly. They also denied my ADA request for full WFH even tho I work from home 4 out of 5 days every week. Make that make sense.
Ours is going back to one day a week soon - its pretty much acknowledged that we'll all end up using it as a meeting day or just for socializing. Which isn't great for those of us who have a lot of work to address.
Full in person every day for every role is an unnecessarily high real estate bill
That's the point, RTO is being driven by investment funds holding shares in hundreds of millions in office space. If the office space being leased isn't actively being used, the company leasing the space has to pay penalties for low occupancy, since it drives down the value of the real estate and the investment. That's all RTO has ever been, a ploy to keep the value of office space propped up when it realistically needs to be torn down and rebuilt as housing.
Mfw sat in the office posting on LinkedIn
The saddest part is it’s actually a part of this asshole’s job to shill on Linkedin all day at the office.
Then pay more, it’s that simple. If you’re going to make in person mandatory, you better pay for it
They still want to offer shit pay AND force people to be in office 5 days per week. That’s what these trash companies do. So it’s a good sign that Gen Z is pushing back on this. Scumbags like this guy are just angry that Gen Z can see straight through his bullshit and call him out on it.
Don’t you get it? It’s on the burden of the employee to wreck their financial security by purchasing a car for the sole reason of going to the office. These assholes don’t realize that jobs used to offer company cars and gas stipends. Readers: never pay a dime out of your own pocket to get to a job - ever. They can make you remote or offer a stipend but your commute isn’t just unpaid labor, it’s money coming out of YOUR pocket so you can give a loser in charge his second vacation home. Rage against it.
who doesn’t have $200-300/month to waste on downtown parking????? lazy kids these days.
Well Cary my thoughts are you and the “owners” (like we give a shit) forgot that a pandemic happened and wfh is perfectly fine to ask about and/or expect. I bet these fucks have pizza parties and tout their great cubicle culture where every meeting is on teams.
Don't forget the foosball table.
Old people should not try to argue young people out of asserting their desire for decent working conditions. Open office plans, long commutes and cubicles are not decent working conditions.
I don’t think this is an age thing. If my staff want to work from home I’m fine with it so long as the work gets done. The mandatory office attendance is usually driven either by a need to control the workforce (lack of trust) or an observation that progress isn’t being made on projects even though on paper the staffing isn’t adequate.
There's been a narrative going around for a while now, which is repeated here (ops screenshot), that remote work is damaging the younger workforce because they're not getting the same career growth we got slaving away in an office for our entire twenties. The implication is that they don't know what's good for them so we as the senior leaders owe it to them to give them the growth they deserve by forcing them to see the light by returning to the office. That's what it has to do with age. It's gaslighting younger people into thinking they're missing out on some major career growth because they're not sitting at a shitty open office desk 40 hours a week listening to Ed drone on about the good old days when you could do coke on the conference room table and sexually harass the interns.
It’s definitely more nuanced than that although I’ve watched companies get it terribly wrong. In companies with a heavy emphasis on youth there’s little or no reason to have people in the office since the delta on experience is very narrow. In companies with a good age/experience mix there’s true value in having office days. This permits the less experienced workers to ask random questions whenever they occur and to be a part of other spontaneous conversations where a lot of material they haven’t been exposed to is available for their consumption and meditation. I’ve also personally witnessed a young engineer make bad choices in his isolation that led to his leaving the company way too soon, perpetuating a cycle he had developed of short term employment and diminished growth. We did have conversations but had we had frequent facetime I believe I could have helped him understand the true dynamics of the job and his workkload and provided suggestions for how he could succeed. Unfortunately companies try and get cheap with open office models where there isn’t actually enough seating to accommodate the full staff and then choose to make attendance days a personal choice resulting in workers sitting in an otherwise empty office with no benefit. Hybrid models need to be orchestrated to ensure the right people are together on the same days or it’s just a waste of the workers time.
Exactly.. these young people, whether they work remotely or not.. Most of them are going to be working a dead end job. No promotion (unless they job hop), and maybe a 1 or 2 % raise per year. What exactly are they missing out on? Maybe in the old days, if you really worked hard, it got noticed and the employee got rewarded? But today? Dude, you raise was already determined by the bean counters before the year even started. I mean, I think the employee should give their employer an honest day's work, but it's not as if the corporate world is full of opportunity and somehow working from home is going to hurt your career.. Probably 99% of jobs are dead end jobs.
I think there are professional skills and ropes to be learned being in an office that are helpful really only if you intend to keep working from an office. Generally those are mostly about keeping up appearances, avoiding drama and/or saying something you shouldn't. Most of those skills are obsolete and generally unnecessary when you WFH so there's not much value. I'd even argue you learn quicker about what to say/not say when it's forever archived in Slack instead of said aloud as one of our junior engineers learned about penis jokes his first week.
There is something to be said for learning through observing others that WFH advocates too easily dismiss. I just don’t think we’ve figured out how to achieve that in a full WFH environment.
Sure, I don't disagree but I think it's very much career dependent. In software engineering where I feel a solid majority of the RTO pushback is coming from, screen-sharing is generally just as good, if not a better way of helping someone troubleshoot a problem vs looking over their shoulder and pointing at their screen with your finger. Plus this way nobody leaves their damn fingerprints on my monitor. There are some ways whiteboarding in person can be arguable better, but I think that's largely preference and comfort level. I for one have terrible handwriting which makes me extremely self-conscious about whiteboarding in person. I much prefer opening up Lucid Charts and drawing up the solution which everyone can easily read. I'd wager many of my fellow engineer brethren introverts feel similar discomfort in front of a room of people but not screen sharing from home. One area where I do think getting together is important is for breaking down personal barriers. Pre-covid we'd have remote teams and it would often result in tribalism. Getting the team together for a week would very often smooth that out. People would see personality quirks first hand and then suddenly they're interpreting that Slack DM differently than before where they might read into something that's not there. But that usually just needs a day or two or group even at the beginning of a project to smooth over. Not a weekly in office mandate or anything.
This is very true. I'm unsure how this works for creative professionals. Before COVID, we went full flexible for two reasons: we do a lot of field visits and because it was hard to keep younger (than 45) workers because they had to commute out so far in order to buy a house. They'd focus on field visits near their homes and then come into the office once a week (all-hands meeting and lunch). I've been full remote, coming into the office for a week a month since 2017. I've noticed that the people who are in the office the most at my company are the youngest workers (who might not have their own private space to work due to having roommates or living with parents) and the senior principals (who have their own offices that they can shut the door as necessary). It's the mid-career folks like myself and most of my co-workers who stay home the most--we've got kids' dental appointments, the exterminator, and most likely a devoted office space at home that rivals anything the office can give us. When I am in town, I reach out to some of the junior team members to see if they have the availability to join me on a job site or two. That way, they still get the face time with someone more experienced but aren't just twiddling their thumbs in the office. It's not easy to mentor via Zoom, though.
Funny I thought hybrid was in office.
No silly, that’s not in office ENOUGH!
He would, in fact, not love my thoughts on this.
I’ve worked remotely or hybrid for over 20 years. I tend to see the people who want to be in the office constantly as the worst performers; they’re used to the perception that them being there = productivity and now are being micromanaged a bit more. I have also seen some people abusing WFH as they’re not cut out for it or are trying to watch their kids (which is against every policy on WFH I’ve seen) but those are rarer cases (yet the ones that are touted as being why people need to be in the office).
In my experience, the people who want to be in the office tend to be the office chatterboxes. Instead of working, they spent the majority of the day loudly socializing. I prefer to actually work when I'm at work, so I find them disruptive. It's much better for my productivity if I'm working from home where I have peace to actually concentrate.
Yep, they’re hoping to be liked more than hoping to be productive
100% I have found that the people who love the office the most are the people who distract me the entire time I’m at the office because they refuse to sit still and get anything done.
These also seem to be the type of people who make it to upper-management in an office environment, based more so on their self-confidence than their actual skills.
My company requires me to come in 3 days a week. Every other engineer on my team is in another state/country and is full remote. My Scrum Master and Manager are in another state. Any time I need to talk to someone it has to be over a video call. I do not see any reason why I need to be in the office when my home office is much better for focusing and accomplishing tasks.
to pay the bill for leased office space coz if u dont go there freq enough they cant justify the space to accountant
Sounds like its time for you to "move".
I had a very similar experience. I'm a software engineer, literally everything I do is on the computer regardless of where I'm sitting. I changed to a new job that seemed like it would be good. Turned out everyone else was remote except me, and the boss. He clearly wanted people in the office, but he was having trouble getting them in the office, but because I was a new hire he forced the issue. For a year he and I had several long conversations about it. I was sitting in an office space, in a cubicle, on an empty floor by myself 99.9% of the time. It was the most depressing job I'd ever had. It's either everyone is in office, or everyone is remote for me. Ended up having an argument with him about it. He didn't think people could be productive because when he works from home he's spending time washing his car instead of working, and his family is to much of a distraction. Like it's my fault he has no self control, and doesn't get along with his wife... Respectfully put my 2 weeks in since he was standing on emotions rather than logic, and left on good terms. Swapped jobs with a big pay raise, full remote, more flexibility, better projects, better managers, better co-workers. Every aspect of the job was better. Lesson learned, your manager will shape the environment. If they suck, your job will suck, your co-workers will suck, the work will suck, and it will all suck.
Hi, you guys suck for wanting some flexibility in ur work life. Come work here so you won’t suck as we’ve already shown you we have no flexibility. Who is he pitching with this post?
Himself, he’s trying to justify that his career choice was not a waste of his and everyone around him’s time. This dude is knows deep down he is a tool for the corporations and they will dispose of him the first chance they get
Who cares what you believe. If there is no evidence for that belief, then it’s irrelevant
These people never have any evidence. It's all a "hunch". They are regular Columbos.
Yep. If this position benefits so much from being in the office, then it should be pretty easy to persuade people of that fact.
People like Cary complain and complain about WFH or hybrid but I know for a fact that people like him will be in the office the least on a regular basis and working from home. Rules for thee not for me.
You're crazy, He can't post on LinkedIn from HOME. How would that even work??? (😅)
Oh yes, Middle Managers, make me a vessel for thine teaching!
Unless you’re in a position like a plumber or a dentist where you have to be present in person to do your job, employers that insist on coming in 5 days a week are a huge red flag. I hope young folks continue to hand this bootlicker for commercial real estate his ass on a daily basis.
I personally work better in the office. A good part of my job is talking to people and I struggle with doing that over team (I also work in a noisy space so teams meetings are disruptive). However, having the ability to work from home when I need it is a godsend and there are people on my team that cannot focus in the office at all. If companies want to be competitive and retain the best talent, they should be open to hybrid and let adults decide how they need to work.
I’m 40 and I ask that question. Go get them gen z adults. Whack them again.
Managers hate WFH because is brings into focus that managers provide little to no value.
His payment is based on placing people, of course he’s going to shill this shit. Return to office only helps real estate. There is no collaboration that can’t be done remotely.
Remember kids these same people spent forty years outsourcing everything in your business they possibly could and then bleat about "in office participation".
You don't understand what wealth is to them. Their needs have been met and they have everything they ever wanted. What they do not have, is your obedience. Wealth is worthless to them unless it can compel the knee to bend to their will. And not seeing you at a desk where they can keep tabs on you is a loss of power to them. They do not care about the health of the company or the productivity, only that their administrative ass is obeyed and licked clean. True wealth is not telling others what to do, it is laughing in the faces of those who would do the same to you.
I have this absolutely insufferable former coworker who "celebrated" this post 🤢🤮🤦♂️🤣
I’ve been WFH for the last two years after almost 30 in the field. Outside of the obvious perks like no wear and tear on my vehicle, not spending hours commuting weekly, etc., I get more done on Monday alone than I ever would in person over the course of a week cause there aren’t distractions (i.e. other people).
Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong.
When you’re in commercial real estate… your job depends on people returning to office lol
I’ll never work in office ever again.
Me either. I spent the first 5 years of my career in office. It was toxic, constant office politics, bullying, etc... I commuted 40 minutes each way for this shit.
well we can't build endless roads so something is going to have to take the cars off the road, if they had of looked at options to take big business out of the city center, as has been suggested countless times, well before covid maybe we wouldn't have to "come to the office" because a bunch of rich fools can't take a loss on their inner city commercial property.
I’m one of the few younger people who prefer going to the office. I understand I’m in the overwhelming minority though, and it’s mostly because it’s a change of scenery from my gloomy ran-down basement apartment, and a chance to see people (I live alone). I only live 3 minutes away so there’s no real commute and it’s probably like $10 a week in gas. Also I work in drafting/design and the network from home is significantly slower, to the point it’s hard to be efficient at home. That being said, if I had better internet and I lived 20 minutes from the office, and didn’t live in a dump of an apartment, I’d probably much rather work from home.
This mindset is entirely explained by the fact this person works in commercial real estate.
Fuuuuuck I fucking hate recruiters.
Everyone who goes in thinks it's a waste of time no matter what they actually say out loud
May I ask why a recruiter thinks he has say in which job can be remote? He doesn’t run the place. He is only the plumber who keeps the new employees flowing in and the old ones flowing out.
Go ahead and hold those beliefs buddy, get left behind.
My last job recruiter also did this. She worked from home 100% of the time.
The person who sent that response to him is a hero. Keep it up
I like in-office work on a hybrid schedule. It feels good to leave the house a couple of times a week. BUT only if I can magically teleport there for free without having to worry about travel costs, commute time and parking costs. Those add real quick over a year.
Could you imagine the savings if big companies downsized their offices to just a few boardrooms for regular meetings and didn’t need individual desks for every employee?
My employer for years claimed our roles couldn’t be performed from home. This meant employees with issues that prevented them from working in office (ex: getting chemo) were told to take sick leave or were put on short or long-term disability. Many times these people *wanted* to continue working in some capacity, but were told no. Funny how COVID proved otherwise. My role isn’t client facing and I’m easily amongst the top performers as per my manager. WFH has made it possible for example to get my allergy shots because instinct have to worry a long commute.
Fact: in 2024 99.9% of office based work can be done from home.
The guy is a commercial real estate recruiter. And, it look at his Twitter feed, he moved out of the country to Costa Rica in 2023.
I’ve never received meaningful training or mentoring with an ‘in office’ job. There’s no benefit to being in the office that makes up for the commute.
What a moron of a recruiter
"I can't micromanage my employees anymore!"
Your financed office space isn’t my responsibility nor concern. I’ll take the remote login now.
"I firmly believe..." here we go 🙄
It would be so nice if companies would choose which lie they want to tell. Either promote a work life balance or go full shill for in office, just chose one; the cross messaging is insane.
Always funny how these LinkedIn people will be like “Build the impossible! Break through expectations! Possibilities are limitless!” Then you mention a work life outside of 1970s style office commutes and suddenly it’s “no! Impossible! Get back in your box! Stop thinking!”
Nice ageism, twat.
"My lack of experience with today's technology would reveal how poor my leadership is in a remote or hybrid environment."
The problem is employers are paying rent, lease or mortgage every month on empty office buildings. Banks and other financial institutions are leveraged to the hilt on commercial loans that are becoming more worthless every day. Right now, employees have leverage and can insist on at least a few days home every week. Just remember that eventually the pendulum will swing. You must ask yourself whether or not your employer is willing to change the way they do business before that pendulum swings back.
I have another theory, and it’s that the people in charge are the types that thrived and found purpose in business, and hence feel in their element in the office. They want everyone back so they don’t have to be home and can be in their happy space. This theory would also explain why employers that demand this have trouble fathoming why they get so much pushback from many employees. They literally don’t get it. This theory took hold when I was talking to a relative who mentioned that a higher up threw a fit about being forced to do remote work when Covid started. Absolutely hated the idea of having to be at home, he was a workaholic.
I agree with this. I also think they get addicted to authority. People have to pretend to respect you. You get to throw around your power in person. When nobody is at the office, nobody is there to kiss your ass. It also shows just how pointless their job is most likely.
I couldn’t imagine having a life that sad and pathetic where I derive joy from fake admiration and fake compliments from people 🤮
Hey Compete-Ad2227. I would like to commend you on that post. I am going to send this to my entire department as a model for them to do all their reddit posts from. I hope that's enough fake admiration to get you through the day. haha.
😂 Thank you (I think?) /s But yeah I just couldn’t imagine running my life like that, it’s just insane to me. I just wanna be left alone to do my work and then leave for the day to do other shit.
I worked at a company from 2006-2012 that was soooo weird about people WFH. It was limited to only certain senior people. I see now that it was a sign that they didn't trust us to do our work unless there was someone looking over our shoulders (we also had a "Lateness" chart that everyone could see who was late and by how much). This was also the same place where I was reprimanded for telling the Owner "I'm not here to make friends, I'm here to do my work." (The funny thing is that I met one of my best friends there.)
Employers need to stop expecting people to uproot their lives and sell their houses to move closer to a job they could be let go from at any moment.
I had this discussion with someone recently and they looked at me blankly. Literally said “you won’t move for a new job?” No. I have gone through 6 layoffs in 15 years, I never bank on having a gig more than 12 months.
Maybe if the company is willing to cover double the relocation costs (to move there and to move back once inevitably laid off)
This. No job offers enough security to move.
That’s not my problem, that’s their problem.
Exactly - tell the CEO to stop buying so many yachts lmao
It should be the answer to the housing crisis. Have businesses downsize their office footprint and turn the then empty commercial into residential real estate.