I don't want to 'get to know' my coworkers. I'm not there for friendships, or a pseudo family. I'm there to do a job and be paid for it.
But, this might just be my introvert side.
this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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nope! It's not just an introvert thing! I work with extroverts that have actual friends OUTSIDE work they do not miss office work either. I won't lie and say it's all roses, but WFH is way better than the alternative and blaming the extroverts isn't the problem. THere is indeed a third more insane human outside the intro/extrovert spectrum, the officevert. or something.
I don't get corporate blokes.
They spend their whole working hours finding ways to increase profits by reducing costs everywhere, to the detriment of the company even. Then we finally give them an easy way to reduce costs that make the employees happy, by removing the need for real estate. And they do a complete 180° to not do so?
Even if they have a lease of multiple years, not having to heat/cool the building nor pay the electricity is still cheaper.
Is it really about micromanagement?
Right? They are also losing the opportunity to hire top talent from remote locations. I guess we found something that is more important to them than profits: their ego.
an easy way to reduce costs that make the employees happy
That's the problem, right there.
They can't just reduce their costs, because they're locked into contracts and/or the corp real estate market is in the trash can
I'd be willing to bet sunk cost fallacy does play a big part, as a result, but I also think senior leadership there just struggles to manage remotely and thus they assume others do too.
I think the issue is that they fear giving workers too much freedom. With that newfound freedom, they may start realizing that they can demand more
Zoom CEO says that his companies product is trash.
“No, no, you misunderstood! I’m just terrible at my job!"
Why not both?
Wow, just wow. I liked Zoom when it was an upstart company making good tools for remote work When it got big, ugh.
I mean, scientifically speaking, they're not wrong. Physical contact with another person causes trust to grow because it causes oxytocin secretion.
But it's still funny that the owner of a video calling company is telling people to go back to the office.
The number of jobs I've missed out on and lost exclusively because I'm not normative enough to tell milquetoast jokes around a water cooler with a bunch of people I know two facts about but treat like my best friend numbers in the 100s.
Fuck all these people trying to force the old ways forever just so they can exercise their social capital upon the rest of us.
man i just spent 30m this morning telling jokes to my remote coworker over slack, I've seen him only once in my life, according to this CEO I couldn't have possibly gotten to know him.
Funny watching the CEOs trying to do the verbal splits, coming up with excuses where it's just "waah we're paying for an office that nobody uses :("
we have nothing to lose but our commutes
Why tf is his personal fortune still 200b??? Deam what if he's sabotaging his fortune so that he can keep making way to much money in different projects. Without people freaking out cuz he has 500b, the only what to do that would be in fact to tank a couple of companies in a way that seems not accidental.
sabotage your wealth to go generate new wealth
Is this really a thing you think people do?
without people freaking out
Why would he care?
Well I've seen a pretty big, eat the rich support base. And as the wealth gap between classes is increasing to early industrial levels. I'm pretty sure it would be a safe bet it will be bigger ?(not 100%sure tho more like 60%)
Also yes ofc, there all types of illegal moves you can make to manipulate the stock market. He did it before with tweets, until the SEC's warnings.
If he's trying to get a gov contract with space X that suddenly increases his wealth to astronomical levels there would be a blowback. Especially if we get poorer.
Soo yhe, tank one of the companies would be a way to solve it.
I've seen a pretty big each the rich support base
Not big enough to do anything or to be taken seriously. Bud Light was hurt more by white trash than the CEO of fucking Zoom will ever be hurt by "eat the rich"
Also this is not about Elon Musk, at all. Did you post on the wrong article? That would make your above post make more sense.
I'm pretty sure I didn't or that I'm strabic. My bad XD, sorry, it was a valid point just missused
Not sure where you're getting your numbers. He's worth 3.4 billion dollars. Unless you're talking in yen, which would make him worth about 500b yen.
Yo wtf Google him.... I'm not even answering this shitty comment. Or at least elaborate cuz what you said may not be what you think you meant
CEO of Zoom is called Eric S Yuan. He's 53 years old, has 3 kids and net worth of 3.4 billion US dollars in 2023.
Maybe I'm not the guy who needs to try Google lol
Yep yep, my bad, I'm talking about Musk. Well that was dumb
-
Hey, I need to expand my lease.
-
it is X amount of money
-
What if I commit 10 years
-
it is X/2
-
Deal!
-
Oh, he reduced costs and increased footprint. He is a genius!
https://www.wsj.com/articles/zoom-offices-hybrid-remote-work-11661977375
- Well. Out workers are remote. What the hell do we do with the office?
- Eeerrrrr. Ok let people have fun.
- But we are starting to need ways of saving costs. What do we do?
- The plan was always to return to office.
- Let's do that, then.
Older than life. A situation changes and somebody whose personal interests are over the groups interests.
Socialization is always brought up as an excuse not to allow WFH. The thing is though, replacing real socialization with work fucking blows. Talking to a coworker to get the latest TPS report isn't socialization. It's work. The only time you do any real socialization is after work ends. And there's nothing stopping you from going out to dinner with coworkers when you work from home.
I never socialized with work people before COVID.
I don't know, the fact that 4 of the 5 other members on my team live at least 2 time zones away from me keeps me from socializing with them after work ends.
(I do not want to leave this job, fwiw.)
Very fair. That said, going into the office isn't going to help that.
CEO can't even eat its own dog food. How pathetic
Doesn't matter what you think, Big techs ceos are laughing their ass off every time their products gets mentioned and reach the frontpage. Purge their ads and remove their visibility
Maybe people can just use a different video calling program if the CEO of the company doesn't like people using it.
a different video calling program
What happened to Skype? Did it just become the basis of Teams?
Skype and Lync had a baby called Teams.
And that baby should have been aborted
I have no problems with teams. Not sure why everyone hates it. If youre already in an AD/Azure environment and use 365 I dont see why you wouldnt use it.
Your not wrong. But hot take: it's better than slack.
It's a tad more complicated:
- Skype is still Skype
- but Skype Enterprise is just a skin strapped over the og Lync (which sucks an order of magnitude more that a black hole)
- ~~Team is a new product developped from scratch.~~
- Team is an overhaul of sharepoint, I stand corrected.
Every now and then Teams breaks and shows it's just a thin layer over SharePoint
Thanks for jogging my memory, I corrected my comment.
Ya know, I'm not super happy with my salary (they're really bad at keeping up with inflation), but ... the promise of permanent WFH (we are actively getting rid of our last office, and hiring fully remote) with ability to live in ~half of the states without salary adjustment is basically keeping me complacent for now.
At first, I thought this was an Onion story
I've been working remotely for over 10 years. Even without Zoom, it's never been a problem. I've met people and developed many relationships with just Slack. Heck I'm sure I'd manage that even with just email.
When I finally met everyone in person at the company retreat, everyone was super happy to know me in person. I was about exactly as they imagined.
Company culture is how you develop it. At every company I've worked with, I introduced social channels and established a continuous background chatter that's for people to share memes or whatever they want, to help establish a personnality that goes beyond "I just deployed X which puts project Y live on production". I have DMs with all sorts of people from all departments, just idle occasional chatter. It makes connections with other departments when you need their help. It works. I always somehow become the guy to reach out to for anything that doesn't necessarily fit a Jira ticket, or sometimes just need help making sure they file the right kind of ticket.
If it doesn't work, then either you have hermits that wouldn't be much more active in an office anyway, or the company is holding it back by discouraging or forbidding any sort of unprofessional or otherwise non-work related activity and the only way to socialize is in the break room in the office.
IMO idle chats on Slack are way less disruptive than in-person, it doesn't take you off your work stretch, you can send replies during Zoom meetings, you can even have textual side threads during a video meeting to go over details without holding the meeting for everyone. Sometimes I have hours long conversations going about projects on Slack, with everyone essentially just chiming in whenever they have new ideas or feedback. It gives people time to think and refine the specs without any "now or never" pressure.
Remote work works, if it doesn't work, it's a company culture problem not an office problem.
The article is behind a paywall for me. I have to admit that I don't like online meetings and much prefer the direct contact with people. However, I can be totally productive remotely via email and chat. It's just that I don't like online meetings. Remote work is absolutely fine. It's even better for days that I am working alone on my computer and desk. I avoid all the traffic and waste of time to make myself presentable for the outside world. I've just realised that I don't like meetings with too many people in general; neither live nor online. A huge waste of everyone's time.
I was working in big enterprises for many years with lots of online meetings, and I was so tired of them. Every day I had hours of meetings, making me so tired and unmotivated.
Now I'm at a smaller company and we don't have standups, 1 on 1s etc. I have 2 meetings per week only. It's fantastic. Made me really like this job.
I have been blessed to have worked only for small companies of less than 25 people. Now I work for a company that I own (minority shareholder) with three more colleagues. Less than 15 people. We are extremely happy now, although I used to say the same for a couple more companies that I was the employee of up until a few years ago. My wife works for big organisations that last few years. I don't know how she copes with all the meetings.
My girlfriend too, she works for big corp and have tons of meetings. But she is not interested in being a maker (like someone who does the work). She wants to be a manager that tells others what to do. And she is, and she is miserable most of the time.
I think some people just value the status higher than their happiness.
2010 is the year we started going full "remote work" and we sold our office building in 2012. Since then we have somehow managed to thrive and innovate like crazy. I am pretty sure these guys know that what they are saying is bullshit, at least as it relates to tech. Creatives, maybe, but in tech it is far easier to screenshare and discuss than it is to lean over some dude's shoulder to look at their screen...in dark mode...with nano fonts.
Ironic that the CEO of a company producing a product designed for remote online meetings telling their staff that remote online meetings don't work for his company goals.
If my work told me i needed to be on the office even a day a week, i would be searching for another job immediately
They want even your time off