My friend is CTO of a smaller company say ~250 people, and RTO constantly comes up in the C-suite.
He is only able to fend it off by pointing out that they do not pay as well as their larger competitors, so the remote flexibility is a recruiting advantage.
He describes the push for RTO from the rest of the C-suite as basically a combination of unspecific vibes that it must be bad if employees like it, and of course.. because they can. Just like many rules at companies.
Likewise many companies in my slice of the industry point to one of the big leaders RTO policies as the reason to do the same, as a sort of cargo cult. However, what the big leader actually does that differentiates is paying 30% premium to have their pick of talent at every level of the org.
> Likewise many companies in my slice of the industry point to one of the big leaders RTO policies as the reason to do the same
This also explains other things, not only RTO. Like when the mass layoffs started about three years ago. Overstaffed big-tech fired a few thousand allegedly idle employees and (not surprisingly) saw no impacts on output. That was enough for many smaller companies, some of them understaffed, to go on and do the same, surely encouraged by their investors. I have friends in a half dozen companies complaining about permanent overtime and severe project delays after the layoffs. Yet, referred companies are either not hiring, or doing it in a very leisurely pace.
> Overstaffed big-tech fired a few thousand allegedly idle employees and (not surprisingly) saw no impacts on output.
The part that's always glossed over in this narrative is that the remaining workers were forced to pick up the slack to keep up the output ("do more with less") which resulted in toxic work cultures. Ask any employees across BigTech companies and they'll tell you of this happening everywhere all at once -- formerly collaborative environments suddenly becoming cut-throat and competitive; high pressure and unreasonable goals for delivery; hiring being scaled back (except in offshore teams!) and new candidates being severely downleveled compared to their experience.
This was not a coincidence; Sure, there were slackers scattered everywhere, but the waves of layoffs were completely disproportional to that. The real intention was to bring the labor market, overheated during Covid and ZIRP, back under control (a power play, as other comments indicate.) And who better than Elon to signal that change with his shenanigans at Twitter.
If it seems surprising that output was not impacted (although I would argue a close look at Twitter shows the opposite) one just needs to look at the record levels of burnout being reported:
Speaking as an immigrant who is now a US citizen, I don't think this is particularly relevant. As far as immigration support from companies goes, Big Tech already offers it, so the real beef is with the federal government - and a trade or company union is hardly the best venue to have that fight. I would first and foremost want a union that protects my interests as a worker against my employer's encroachment, and it was no different when I wasn't a citizen yet.
Congrats. But the top priority for a non-citizen immigrant would be protection, above employer encroachment. Notice how this played out when twitter fired 85%, and who stayed back.
Unions being political players will have to take a side - and in the current climate this makes unions a non starter, since majority can never align.
> unspecific vibes that it must be bad if employees like it
I read it as the feeling that they know somehow that the employees are not putting in 100% of their attention at home on the work assigned.
And i do believe it to be true - lots of people claim that WFH means they can "do the laundry" and/or go to the post office.
The fact is that there's very few self-starters and intrinsically motivated employees. Most are just there for the pay cheque, and will do the minimum work that is required of them - esp. if not under strict supervision.
Not to mention the fact that it is indeed much harder to have collaborative discussions that are spontaneous and unplanned in a WFH setting, compared to the office.
Those lazy employees need that strict supervision!
Maybe these c suites and other employee hating assholes are projecting their own lazyness. Or maybe they think they are so superior compared to ”common” people that the ”common” people must be lazy trash.
I don’t know, but it is weird to assume most people won’t do their job without ”strict supervision”. Like super weird.
(Btw, anecdotally, most people I know work more efficiently from home with fewer breaks)
> Those lazy employees need that strict supervision!
This comment is a bit reactionary. It would be more balanced to say that lower motivation employees will benefit from a more structured working environment.
> will do the minimum work that is required of them
So... doing their job?
When I read people wanting to have 100% uptime on their human resources I feel like I'm reading "The goal" again and how machines have to be 100% used in the mind of some managers.
And even when doing chore (or posting on HN), people tend to think about other things. Like their current task. Why do you think people find solutions to problems in the shower or just before sleeping? Because you can think about work (and so for most office jobs, working) even when not on your computer.
> lots of people claim that WFH means they can "do the laundry" and/or go to the post office
I mostly work from the office. Since the end of COVID-19, my teams are always mixed where some people WFH. One issue that I frequently encounter: People do their chores at random times in the middle of day, so frequently you cannot corral a group of people to quickly discuss something. In the office, this is trivial: Turn around in your chair. Over time, I find that I reach out to WFH staff less and less and work more closely with in-office teammates. I'm not rewarded for overcoming this friction with WFH teammates, so why would I try?
> People do their chores at random times in the middle of day...
When I was in-office, people I needed to speak to would be away from their desk (god only knows where) several times a day. Perhaps they were off taking a shit, or getting food, or having a long think in a quiet corner, or crying in the nap closet, or who knows what, but they weren't at their desk and I had no idea how to contact them.
If your coworkers are regularly inaccessible for extended periods, then you're gonna have to do what has been done since way before widespread WFH: talk to your manager to establish core working hours during which everyone is expected to be easily accessible to other folks in the company.
If your manager doesn't see the need to establish and enforce core working hours and neither does their manager, then either stop thinking of it as a problem, or go work for a place that is a better fit for your theory of work.
If you've already established core working hours and these remote employees are ignoring them, then complain to your manager. If their behavior is seriously getting in the way of you getting your work done, it's your manager's job to fix that.
Daily reminder that if a manager can't tell if their employees are effective working from home, that manager is incompetent. There are a million ways to check if someone is actually working, and butt-in-seat isn't one of them.
Also given many orgs are distributed across buildings, cities, and countries.. a manager admitting they need to physically see butts in seats is telling on themselves re: ability to do their job.
> Not to mention the fact that it is indeed much harder to have collaborative discussions that are spontaneous and unplanned in a WFH setting, compared to the office.
This is a culture thing that is easily fixed by mandating cameras on, buying everyone good microphones, and a consensus that you can ping someone with a question, go back and forth, and know that you aren't imposing by throwing a /zoom into the Slack DM and saying "let's just meet about this".
My team is small, sure, but we are cameras on 100%, we know to pause a sec after someone stops talking for latency, and have a spoken agreement "fuck slack just open a room i'll hop in". We have met in person numerous times and each time it feels identical to work in person as we do remote.
When I meet with other teams, people are in their fucking cars driving, cameras off the whole time (but chewing into the mic), can't figure out how to share their screen (still!), like, no shit that isn't productive, you're putting no effort into it!
I don’t think mandating cameras on and insisting on 100% is the right move, but I definitely think you want to aim for a team culture where camera-on is a default and most people have them on 80-90% of the time.
Otherwise, yea participation and engagement seems to take a major hit.
I think some people are misinterpreting 100% as "even when you aren't on a call/Zoom/huddle" which is batshit.
Some people are just unhappy they're being called out for taking meetings while they take a dump.
The latter is precisely why attempting for 100% cameras on during meetings is a good idea. If you're uncomfortable being on camera in a meeting doing it, its a good sign you shouldn't be doing it.
Screw presentability, having a camera pointed at you and on all the time is creepy and awful. It’s not the same as being in a room with actual people, it’s way worse.
Just meetings with 100% camera-on, even, are awkward and draining in ways that meeting in person or just having a call are not. Having a camera on you is like having a person making hard eye contact without blinking or looking somewhere else, ever. It’s bizarre and it sucks.
I can't edit this more but to temper this: I don't mind camera-on for 1-on-1 conversations, I don't mind camera-on while actively participating in larger meetings, that kind of thing, that's fine.
Camera on all the time so someone could just pop in and start watching at any moment, even not during a call? Terrible, absolutely terrible. Camera on for larger meetings the entire time, even when I'm not participating? Tolerable for very short meetings, but brutal and distracting for even a half-hour meeting.
Again, it's like being stared at. If the context of how I'm participating wouldn't naturally have people looking at me more or less uninterrupted if this were an in-person conversation, having the camera on is really unpleasant. So, when I'm talking, fine, being directly addressed by someone, sure, camera on is OK, but in a group setting when I'm not the (or a) current center of attention? Bad.
FWIW I did some work with McKinsey way into the Zoom era, though long enough ago that I can't vouch for their still doing this, but: they culturally favored just using group phone calls, complete with the phone number option being a common way to connect (Teams and such have this, too, but it's more of a back-up that IME doesn't get used unless absolutely necessary—they'd actually dial-a-phone-number call in as a routine way of operating). Even when everyone involved could have used video, they usually just did the call-in audio only thing. I was like "that's weird and old-fashioned" at first, but what I found it to actually be once I got used to it was flexible, robust, and entirely sufficient most of the time. I think people really overrate the importance of (everyone having) a camera for most calls.
>Camera on all the time so someone could just pop in and start watching at any moment, even not during a call?
That's not at all what I meant. I don't think it was how I typed it, I grant it could be, but you might want to read my original comment again. I am not advocating for just sitting there in your Zoom Personal Room, camera on, all day every day. That would be insane. But for synchronous work with others, a camera on that lets me know you're there, listening, providing feedback with body language? Thats why shit just gets done faster in person. Remote teleconferencing is low bitrate on the human communication spectrum. At least, lower bitrate than being in the same room. Cameras increase that bitrate.
In my meetings in Zoom, (scheduled, 1 hour, normal), everyone on my team has cameras on almost all of the time. I don't even turn mine off if I step away to grab the coffee pot from the kitchen, it lets people know immediately I'm not able to speak but can hear them fine.
Since they’re not collaborating with you, and are presumably a well paid professional, maybe their collaborators are perfectly happy with how they work?
Because I need to see if how I'm explaining something is hitting. I need to see if you are listening. I need to know you're actually there and not distracted.
I have found the same with remote. Cameras ON is a huge improvement in how much people are in on the game. Constant communication, frequent ad hoc meetings, screen sharing. Its totally doable, but most people don't do it. There is no feeling worse than presenting an idea to a meeting room of 10 people with all cameras off, and when you ask a question you get crickets. Too many people are phoning it in.
I saw a few clickbait articles highlighting that JPMorgan's new world headquarters in Manhattan (270 Park Ave) has a gym but will charge employees to use it. Why is this so interesting? I have worked in many different tall office buildings in my career. I saw a variety of setups: (1) company gym, (2) third party gym, (3) no gym. You always had to pay a fee to use the gym. Why does requiring employees to pay trigger such a hostile reaction from people? Also, the people working in this specific building are very well paid. They can easily afford the fees. Some other points that people don't mention: If it was free, it might be overloaded. That building is expected to have 14,000 employees! Also, no gym can possibly provide everything that everyone wants. In Manhattan, you are spoiled for choice with gyms.
I am sure that a few people will reply to say: If the gym were free, then more people would use it, and the company would benefit from lower healthcare costs. (Specific to the US: Most large corporations are self-insured for healthcare, but use third party providers to administer the programme.) Maybe so, but difficult to prove. If that is true, the company should also provide healthy lunches, etc. The list goes on and on. And Internet randos will have a never ending list of things that a "good company" must do for their employees.
If you're going above&beyond the industry average and demanding full 5-day-RTO, and pointing at how you just built a brand new HQ with great amenities so suck it up, then don't charge for those amenities?
Anyway, I've recruited with JPM a few times in my career, my spouse worked there at one point, and I know friends who have been through. So I like to pick on them as a good example of a company using their brand as an excuse to have bad pay/benefits relative to rest of industry. Good for investors I suppose, but don't work there.
> if employees like it, it must be a perk/benefit.
Or, for those who have bought into the utterly toxic mindset that employees are always trying to get as much out of the company as possible for as little work as possible, "if employees like it, it must be a scam on us."
He is only able to fend it off by pointing out that they do not pay as well as their larger competitors, so the remote flexibility is a recruiting advantage.
He describes the push for RTO from the rest of the C-suite as basically a combination of unspecific vibes that it must be bad if employees like it, and of course.. because they can. Just like many rules at companies.
Likewise many companies in my slice of the industry point to one of the big leaders RTO policies as the reason to do the same, as a sort of cargo cult. However, what the big leader actually does that differentiates is paying 30% premium to have their pick of talent at every level of the org.