“Could be?”
We know it is. I don’t wish for Covid again, but remember when all the waterways started clearing up (didn’t dolphins show up in Venice at some point?) and the smog cleared in places that haven’t seen a blue sky in decades?
"Just speculations, nobody really knows and there's no way to find out!"
You joke, but a coworker literally said "well there's no way to really know for sure it was because people were staying inside, it was probably just more forest food than usual that spring" when I pointed out a positive if covid being nature bouncing back just a tiny bit.
Also can someone tell me what "forest food" is? Sure I know what he meant but that's no fun
Bird Flu this time.
We had a perfect enforced experiment to show that remote work for many positions was just as effective, that people were happier, the environment improved, and that big societal changes were totally possible. Then rich people decided the ideal goal for society was just doing all the same bad shit we'd been doing for decades.
Who cares about the environment when we could be hoarding more money. Can anybody please think about those poor CEOs? :(
CEOs can make more money by offloading office costs to the employee - if your work force is remote, you don't need to pay for an office space.
This increases your profit, because your expenses are lower.
But you can't invest all that stolen money in inflated office building real estate prices either.
This exactly. My boss said the quiet part out loud the other day.
The CEO owns the building. He pays for the electrical, water, etc. All of that is wasted when only a handful of people come into the office.
So...he required all of us to be in the office so that his investment works out.
Or he could sell the asset, recoup what value he can from it, and save the utility/service/material expense associated with running a physical office.
It will eventually even out. It takes time for new business to displace old models, but it will eventually work itself out. In business, ‘no cost’ vs ‘some cost’ will always move toward ‘no cost’. In the short term, businesses that hold physical property (at least the ones that don’t need physical office space) are trying to do what they can to minimize the loss of value from falling commercial real estate values. Inflate the value, sell the asset, then let someone else take the loss.
And it also helps the employees cause they can claim part of their living expenses for business use
Our CEO is making more money by getting rid of our large, empty office space, giving us yet another advantage over our competitors.
Never, never, never, will I spend 1h the morning and 1h the evening in traffic jam to do 15 miles, never again.
EDIT: in winter snow storm it was 2-3h !!!
Amen.
I was one day a week in the office during the pandemic. We had assets which required a physical presence, but with a rotating shift of 1-2 people in the office each day, we could keep the required coverage. Then my workplace started bringing us back to the office in 2022. It started with 3 days a week and we started hearing rumors of a full return to office. It was well know that upper management was hostile to remote work. So, I flipped my LinkedIn profile to "looking" (or whatever the setting was called, it's been a while). And I started both actively applying and responding to recruiters. I eventually got a message from a reciter who led with "REMOTE WORK OPPORTUNITY", yes the message started in ALL CAPS, though the rest was normal and hit all the points I was interested in. I figured, what the hell, can't hurt to talk. That was just shy of two years ago, I have been into an office since late 2022. It's going to have to be a hell of a bad situation for me to deal with commuting again.
Same for me. Last day i worked in an office was March 2020. Haven't done a single day since and don't intend to ever again
Same, March 2020, in 2020-2022 I never went to office not even one day. 2023 got another contract for a year, went there 3 or 4 times in the year to take/bring back some hardware I needed for development. 2024 new remote job 500kms away, go there 2 days every 10 weeks, stay at hotel, they pay.
I'm curious, do you have to go to the office any days?
2 or 4 days every 10 weeks, it's 500kms away (300 miles) I stay at hotel
I've been forced back to the office. I hate it. I hate the commute. I hate the cubicle. I hate the forced small talk interaction with coworkers.
I'm more productive when I worked remote. Less hassled. Less tired from not having to commute.
It makes me not want to work here any longer.
time to get into microwaved fish, loud techno music, and exotic colognes
Sooooo... quit?
When my org announced RTO, I started looking for another job. A month later I had a new gig and a nice pay bump. Nobody's gonna look out for you but you, my friend.
Unnecessary RTO needs to be banned
Yes, but who determines necessity
Maurice?
Is that the dude sometimes known as The Space Cowboy?
You mean The Gangster of Love?
The supply and demand of labor. Labor is a market and the market has decided that office work that can be done remotely but is being required to be done in person in an expensive city costs significantly more, either due to housing costs in the city or the cost of longer commutes. Don't like it? Move your office to a cheaper, less populated location.
I’m someone who vastly prefers to work in an office. It’s kind of a pain in the ass dealing with remote workers, meetings having gone to teams instead of in person, it just feels impersonal and as a former manager it is harder to maintain and keep your staff engaged.
But this is the modern workforce, and we have plenty of evidence that productivity is still there with a hybrid or remote office. When I was a manager I had to change my strategies, I had to adapt and learn, just like everything else I do in my professional life. Now that I am part of leadership but without direct reports, it’s just more adapting and learning that I am doing to stay relevant.
poor management is why all these companies are trying to force people back, it’s just people who cannot adapt.
You had me in the first half, not gonna lie.
lol, was kinda going for that :)
RTO, much like everything else is about rich people. The Canadian Federal government just announced that all public servants must be in office 60% of the time by September (up from 40%). And the only reason is due to lobbying by real estate holders and businesses downtown.
I'm so fucking tired of rich people not only having the advantage of being rich but also getting every other advantage handed to them by the government.
Could be? It absolutely is! That would be an extra 50 miles I would have to drive every weekday. They have entire global organizations meeting together to figure out where to set goals for cutting emissions, but these easily-avoidable emissions are fine apparently. The so-called "leaders" aren't taking the problem seriously.
But my company says it cares for the environment and does environmental things like improving algorithms for patches to reduce computing power needed and therefore save the energy worldwide (an actual example of a recent win by our environment consciousness team right after forcing thousands of people to RTO)
You mean the same companies responsible for our current climate may not care about what RTO does to their workers or the world?
: shocked Pikachu:
It's terrible for everyone except billionaire property investors.
The cats out of the bag, and businesses know it.
This is why they never want us succeeding in improving our lives. It reveals how they've been lying to us and we were just stupid enough to go along with it.
Already is.
My commute is already about 10% longer thanks to the extra traffic. People fled the city and moved to the burbs after covid, then RTO hit and now a bunch of them are on the roads. Easily added a measurable amount of time to my drive, and I’ve been doing the same commute for a decade.
“Could be?” Like the way falling on your head from 5 stories up “could be” unhealthy?
Some Executives have no understanding of the need for Deep Work and can't imagine how the office isn't good for it.
The problem is executives have no need of deep work, that's what they hire others for. Bad executives don't understand this and assume you need what they need.
Yeah but it’ll make a bunch of fuckbrains feel good, tho.
Could be? Seriously?
"Sounds good to us!" -- CEOs of the world.
The people who care about this stuff never bothered to gain any wealth or power so it doesn't really matter
But "we're better together!"*
*terms and conditions may apply. Past results do not guarantee future gains.
Less so if we build better cities thst dont require everyone to drive cars everywhere to do anything
And really some jobs can be totally done at home. Like planning an other administrative stuff. Everything else where you need to be there at the job site should be the only thing coming back. Like builders, engineering, hair styling, receptionist, etc, those jobs need to be done at the job site, we all get it. But everything else, we just need a good org chart and teams....or something better....plz could some software company create a teams software where you can share a power point in full screen? It's hilarious when you try Sharing a PowerPoint on teams and you get like a whole 1/4 of the screen to show the PPT. Then you gotta go a little known menu here to remove the people, so the PPT gets a little bigger, then another setting to go "full screen" and you get another 3 extra pixels, then go to view some such to get another 5 pixels. It's ridiculous! But it's what limits the people who can work at home. Just need better collaboration software. Anything is better than Microsoft.
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