this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
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The fact that they have to resort to checking logs to determine who is coming into the office should be enough proof of how pointless working from the office is.
If you literally can’t tell without a literal in/out log, you can’t claim performance or communication as reasons for requiring it. You’re literally saying “we can only tell if we check the logs.”
It's not about performance, it's about control.
It's not about control, it's about billions of dollars having been invested in commercial real estate.
People keep claiming this this, and yet it does little to explain hmthr large number of smaller companies that have no real estate holdings.
Also, it totally overlooks what the actual purpose of money is to the wealthy, namely control. It's not money for money's sake, nor is it control for money's sake, but rather money for control's sake.
Meanwhile, WFH is a big shift in worker autonomy. Many employers have treated employees working from home with extreme suspicion, going so far as to accuse us of theft just because they can't directly watch us sit at a desk. They installed computer input trackers on remote hardware, they got belligerent over the idea that people maybe - just maybe - they were doing laundry or soemthing on company time, and they're nettled over the idea that people were sitting on their couches.
This isn't the behaviour of people concerned about their stock portfolios, or of landlords upset that their renters may not renew their lease in 5 years. These are not rational actors making rational decisions about long term consequences. These are people who have lost their fucking minds over having given up just the slightest, insignificant amount of control over their employees lives and, importantly, having handed it over to those employees.
They'll happily take a productivity hit, a revenue decline, or even a massive loss in institutional knowledge if it means clawing back these miniscule gains in worker power.
And if we're lucky, it'll cost them significantly more control over workers in the long run.
I'm with you on this one, 100%.
Why else would some low level manager be so stupidly paranoid about whatever you do, if you get your work done?
Control and fear of losing it.
Software engineering manager here. My team went full remote and it is amazing. We get more done than we did in office.
I love cycling laundry or running the dishwasher in the middle of the day. It doesn't affect the amount of work I or my team gets done.
I really only have two rules. 1) Attend and participate in your meetings. 2) We deliver what we committed to at the beginning of sprint.
Otherwise I don't care when the work gets done. I am pretty sure one of my devs writes his code between 9 PM and midnight.
So ... are you hiring 😁
Jk, I have a nice job where people actually (like you) trust people. I mean I'd put in an extra mile just because of that.
And mixing work with home chores, naps, whatever is so good, both for me and for my productivity.
Man, i never thought i would be a multi-tasker. Yes being remotely deployed is beneficial. Less petrol costs, less wear and tear, i can do laundry and cook and feed my cats (yes have 3) and play games while working and still i dont have to rush through traffic jams.
One good thing is i noticed money is kinda saved and yes I'll definitely buy something from that.
For some. For others, it's the other.
For some, both.
But, they would save billions of dollars by selling it back. This is textbook sunken cost fallacy.
I've been saying CEOs should be making real estate donations to the cities theyve pillaged, for the expressed purpose of affordable housing/low income housing. Huge tax write-off. Turn this negative into a positive real easy.
It's almost like these are the kind of decisions CEOs get paid 1000x more than I do to make.
Except nobody wants to buy it.... that's the problem. Many of them have long term leases that they can't break without significant penalties.
Turn them into houses and fix the housing market problem along with it.
I'm with you, but it's harder for more modern buildings.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/11/upshot/office-conversions.html
The link is behind a paywall, but its a good piece.
Sunk cost fallacy.
Depends who "they" are. Middle managers can tell who comes in and who is performing, but most of them don't care or want to work remotely too. Executives who can approve a program like this are the ones pushing return to office.