i was working in employment law when companies started requiring return to office, and my impression is that it was largely the result of groupthink among CEOs. a few of them decided it was the move, others followed suit, and that was that. there was no data or analysis, they just wanted to do it.
Reposted from
The Washington Post
Return-to-office mandates at some of the most powerful tech companies — Apple, Microsoft and SpaceX — were followed by a spike in departures among the most senior, tough-to-replace talent, according to a case study published last week.
Comments
https://fortune.com/2023/09/14/mike-bloomberg-golf-remote-work/
Anyway the point is that remote work lets you hire people from anywhere. Very few companies can do that (either by having offices everywhere, or by paying enough to attract people to move). End remote work, and you lose a ton of people.
'[American Equity] has about 1,000 employees, and he said the move should help “re-energize” downtown small businesses, an effort that local restaurateurs told the Des Moines Register they hope to see more of.'
It doesn't matter to them that it's a sunk cost; they want it to not be a sunk cost, and for businesses who actually *own* their office space it's a nightmare because the value of the property is plummeting.
But there are a lot of reasons why that's unlikely to happen.
are they good at what they do? no. not at all. but doing things isn't what's important to the inbred investor class
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/26/1172290009/spacex-is-grounded-after-rocket-explosion-caused-extensive-environmental-damage
A) didn't look at the data
B) ignored the results of analyzing the data
C) don't actually have data or other ways to judge if anybody is doing good or bad
Even when it was outsourcing that was the trend, a lot of companies just went for it, even if the resulting lack of oversight and QC bit their company in the ass. Now it’s “back to office” and AI for everything.
Taylor Telford, WaPo article author: "got my money quote!"
Management by spreadsheet doesn’t permit one to change their mind or learn something new unless it’s absolutely dire. The budget is written so it must be made to be true.
With people moving away, the easy money's drying up.
It is funny that 'office' culture was entirely formed by the absolute need to do business face-to-face for trust reasons, which is no longer needed.
It's totally normal to SPEND money remotely, but to EARN your money, you need to send emails from a cubicle.
Sorry, I do not in fact *want* to drive to work in order to do a worse job.
The only reason to require a data worker to be in the office more than a couple of times a year is for the emotional vampires in the chain of command to feed on them.
CEO bonus is now £5 million & counting +year-on-year payrise
“Pret CEO handed-£4m bonus in year staff pay was cut.
CEO also given 27% salary rise in 2021 as chain took more than £50m in government support”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/14/pret-a-manger-ceo-handed-near-4m-bonus-in-year-staff-pay-was-cut-pano-christou<
And that environment is sometimes useful and not currently well replaced with remote work. It's all a work in progress, which necessarily terrifies managers.
Belittling that is the province of youth.
There are teams, like this one (Automattic), who have never had an office. They have flipped the sync norm of 49 weeks in-person and 3 apart to 3 together and 49 apart and it has worked out just fine for them.
It’s a completely different operating system
Plus the moronic VPs/SVPs and higher who think that because their day is better with in person people that’s true for all. 🙄🙄
There's no ill competitive effect to a dysfunctional organizational culture when it's shared by all the large firms in an oligopoly industry.
Much of the cultural push is coming from middle managers who don't do work and just monitor others - those are the ones most vulnerable to WFH changes