this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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Nice try, but maybe practice in the garage next time before stepping up for a debate.
Now that might be fine when it comes to some things, live and let live, etc. The difference here is that he and other upper management get to just force the rest of the workers to conform to their viewpoint without any evidence. It's a structural problem.
I never claimed that WFH is universally better than in-office work, so strike two on that one. I'm merely critiquing his approach of forcing workers to conform to a policy that he believes in, based on no supporting evidence, just vibes. I was making a structural critique.
If you want my actual viewpoint, I think that WFH should be up to the employee. Some people work better in person, some people work better from home, and some (like me) enjoy hybrid because of the flexibility it offers. Also, some people are brutally punished by mandated in-office work. A person who has a 90 minute commute both ways (who typically isn't compensated for commute time,) is a perfect candidate for WFH. But because this guy "feels like" WFH is bad, he gets to just dictate that from on high instead of workers being able to figure out what works best for them and their teams.
In other words, nuance is important, unless you are a fundie who builds their beliefs off vibes and anecdotes and then imposes them on other people regardless of their views, desires, situations, or objective data.
You've already moved the goalposts from:
To
The change in your language already admits one of my points landed, so thanks for the indirect admission.
That being said, I don't have the data to prove that when I walk down the sidewalk I'm not going to fall through the ground...although I have reason to believe that this won't happen. Does this make me a religious fundamentalist? Of course not. We don't need data for everything in order to come to reasonable conclusions based on past experience. Even if those conclusions are wrong and one day I do fall through the ground, that doesn't make me unreasonable or equivalent to a religious fanatic.
Sorry, but this is painfully naive. I absolutely agree that this is what is best for the worker, but it's not necessarily what's best for the business for a few reasons. One, mainly because of what the guy said in the article that there are many reasons why being in the office is better: collaboration being the big one. Additionally if workers always were making that decision based on how they work best then that would be one thing, but we know that is not how people work and they are going to be making decisions on what's best for them. I mean, just go and look at the over employed subreddits. It's filled with people figuring out ways to make it look like you're working without actually working.
I think flexibility is important, but my experience is that our team works better when people are in the office. Im sure WFH is better for a tiny subset of workers (from a productivity standpoint) but in all the places I've worked it seems almost like wilful ignorance to ignore the benefits of people working in the same space.
You left out the second part of my initial comment, not surprising since it expresses what I said in my expanded response. "...but just believe it anyways." and then you left out that same sentiment in my second response.
You didn't address my point about my comment being a structual critique probably because you were more concerned with comparing the differences in my wording vs extracting the meaning and arguments from those words.
Actually, there is data to support your trust in walking down the sidewalk safely. Sidewalks are built by crews of concrete workers, and that process at every level is overseen by trained individuals who conform to clear standards for concrete strength, safe construction practices, etc. So no, your act of walking on a sidewalk doesn't require blind faith.
Plus, it doesn't matter, you're trying to make a point about epistemic warrant and I'm trying to make a point about structual inequality in corporate America. Plus, even if you didn't have any good reasons to think sidewalks were safe to walk on, that's still not equivalent to my argument because in that example, you aren't trying to impose your personal view on others. Religious fundies are almost never content just believing their doctrine in a vaccum, they attempt to impose it onto other people who don't share their views.
Your whole last point misses what I said. I never claimed that WFH is universally better for employees, I said that it should be up to the employees and their teams to decide what works best for them. There are reasons other than general productivity why WFH is better for some workers, like the example I gave of folks who have extremely long commutes.
But because of the structural inequality within the corporate world, those considerations are thrown into the trash by executives that get to impose their will on those workers just because vibes. (I actually think in many cases it's far more nafarious than that, but I'm being charitable in my assumptions here.)
And finally, I never claimed there are no benefits to working in the office, I literally said that I was a person who enjoys a hybrid situation. I'm arguing for more workplace democracy, instead of an authoritarian environment where the high-ups get to impose their will on everybody else based on nothing more than their feelings.