"the analysis revealed that RTO mandates are more likely in firms with poor recent stock performance and have had no significant impacts on firm profitability or stock-returns."
this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2024
465 points (98.3% liked)
Technology
59174 readers
2961 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
This is our company. Haven't met our growth goals since covid? Make everyone commute three times a week, that will fix it. We need to bring everyone together to find the missing money that leadership decided we should be making.
And the RTO demands are about intentionally lowering headcount without paying unemployment or severance so they can boost their numbers.
Jesus fuck these corpo propaganda machines are really behind. They are reporting shit everyone who isn't a CEO figured out years ago. Maybe talk to some people who aren't CEO's or any form of upper management and get a fucking clue.
It's Forbes, I don't know what else they can talk about lately.
"How to tell your serfs might want to guillotine you, and what you can do to avoid it"
"It's not a King's job to understand the concern of a Peasant" - CEOs
What! You mean it's not about improving collaboration!
Yeah, I mean it totally would improve my collaboration if I, a software architect, went into a small sales office near me even though no one in my department, not even the same division of my company will be there, so I'll still be using the same communication tools.
Plus the pay cut I'll be taking by having to pay for another car, gas, and downtown parking. None of which the company will cover. And the building is only open from 7:30 to 5 Pacific Time, but all my meetings are Eastern Time, so I'll be missing morning meetings while I commute and wait for the building to open, and I sure as heck won't be bringing my laptop home, so they get that many hours out of me and no weekends.
Yep everyone benefits.
There's a particular joy to going all the way into the office so you can sit in remote meetings all day. Really makes you feel like your time is valued.
"I work in back, I see no smiles" days of career was super good for my mental health too /s
Come into office ok then no more international calls at 6am or 9PM. (Insert Sorry from south park)
Hell, no! Give me time and space to collaborate with colleagues, and I will Get. shit. Done.
Stifle that and drag me into the off, and you get exactly what you pay for - which doesn’t include emote training of any emp etc.
RTO itself is poor management. it's 2024, what the fuck are you doing. office work isn't some peak utopian concept, it's only really been a thing for around a century, and it's grown increasingly miserable as productivity skyrockets while wages don't. any honest person hates it, and it is objectively archaic now that we have the internet
yeah, zoom meetings do suck, talking is more awkward, collaboration is harder, vibes are harder to maintain. but in no universe should that take precedent over the massive quality of life improvements WFH offers for the worker. internal work dynamics mean fuck all versus not having to leave your home/family/pets for 8+ hours every day
Read "Bullshit Jobs" if you haven't. Most "work" is really always been about control and enforcing a religious ideology that being subservient to someone else makes you a better person. Return to work is about the psychological domination of workers. We all know it was never about productivity but about justifying inequity through institutionalized sadism.
in no universe should that take precedent over the massive quality of life improvements WFH offers for the worker
They don’t give 1/10th of a shit about worker comfort or joy. It’s all about shareholder profits and control. And as the article was saying, about trying to dump blame. The great thing is, again, as stated in the article, that these RTO companies are severely limiting their talent pool. It will start to become clearer and clearer that companies that moved totally WFH retain employees and will see more benefits for their bottom line.
I mean, think about it for two seconds, how can renting office space and equipment and all the office supplies in every office location for one company be justified when all it gives you is a smaller talent pool, less happy workers making productivity sink and and turnover skyrocket, and an excuse when you need it?
It’s just craziness. It’s stupid bosses and rich people sacrificing the worker for…I honestly don’t know what is driving them to do this, because I can’t imagine they are getting any benefit at all.
They don't care about profits any more than feudalism did. It's about domination and sadism. Read "Bullshit Jobs" if you want to understand the dynamics here. Profit had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Perhaps they will meet the same fate as most feudal lords
Money. More of it, and as quick as possible.
Its also because they're tied to the real estate they spent so much money on. Maybe its time to pivot from spending so much on commercial real estate to taking care of your employees. My .02
Real estate appreciates in value, human resources appreciate in cost. Clearly that's a bad investment. /s
You’ll never get promoted that way.
Smash the office, build more housing
We know that. But do they know that?
For each recruiter that tells me Hybrid or on site, I tell them why I'm not interested and if things change, then message me.
I always ask for a hefty premium and tell that it's because its on site. Anything more than a week a quarter is on site to me too.
Honestly, it doesn't matter if they offer me double. I still value the time I have with my kid at home.
Makes me glad I work for a company 5 hours away from where I live, my contract doesn't state I have to work in the office, and I was hired on as a remote employee so if they do try RTO at my company which it seems like they won't, it would be a constructive dismissal and I can just collect Employment Insurance.
Forcing employees back into the office is so dumb but I'm glad some companies seem to be holding strong with remote work. Having younger, more reasonable leadership seems to help with this.