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Rule-follower (thelemmy.club)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/humor@lemmy.world
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[–] 160 points 5 months ago (27 children)

To this day I have no idea why the return to the office 100% mandate is an industry standard. We lost a ton of qualified people to companies offering WFH, can’t hire the people we want since those candidates don’t want to relocate, and moral is shot across the company. I’m leaving this company in favor of one that offers partial WFH and more benefits.

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  • [–] 143 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (4 children)
    1. To make sure the commercial real estate industry doesn't fail
    2. Because it would be made obvious how unnecessary most middle managers are

    Edit additional bonus content:

    Many economies have the daily commute factored in. Think about how industries like auto, oil, road construction, fast food, etc... Would be affected if everyone worked from home.

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  • [–] 47 points 5 months ago

    To make sure the commercial real estate industry doesn’t fail

    The companies won't allow having a mostly empty space that they are paying for. you on the other hand can have a mostly empty space (your home) that you are paying for while you work in the office. The companies' expenses are more important than yours.

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  • [–] 28 points 5 months ago
    1. Because the company gets some tax breaks from the county by having asses in seats.
    2. Related to 1, your boss made poor real estate decisions pre-covid and wants to recoup that loss.
    3. Most CEOs are older and don't want to understand the newer WFH dynamic.
    4. Management does not trust the employees they hired.
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  • [–] 22 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    My workplace did the opposite of mandatory RTO and reduced the space they're renting in half (from 2 floors of a business center to 1). It means we have to hotdesk whenever we do need to work in the office, but that's a small price to pay.

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  • [–] 25 points 5 months ago (6 children)

    There is no why; you are trying to explain irrational behavior with reason and logic. And so by leaving you contribute to the downfall of irrationalism in business. Bravo!

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  • [–] 38 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    What blows my mind is the fact that the return to office policy doesn’t help ANYONE. The company continues to pay to run a physical building with limited seating, makes the company pay expensive contractors for repairs/parking/security/etc, and kills productivity across the board. People are worried about leaving on time or else they’ll be stuck in traffic, instead of worrying about finishing an important task.

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  • [–] 23 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    American business leadership tends to think level of income is correlated with effort, and as a consequence assume anyone below them on the corporate ladder is a lazy bum. Lazy bums obviously need to be in the office so they can be supervised. Evidence to the contrary is just exceptions to the rule, and cannot dictate policy.

    See also: Prosperity Gospel, Calvinism.

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  • [–] 19 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    Soft firing without having to pay severance. That makes their quarterly numbers look better, which in turn makes stocks and thus their compensation package go up.

    Of course it will probably kill the company in the long run, but by then the board will have elected a fall guy to blame and they will all jump out with their golden parachutes, leaving the rest of you to burn.

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  • [–] 15 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Yea I’ve seen this but it’s an insane tactic. This targets the people who have options and are talented. They’re also impossible to replace since even a perfect new hire won’t have the 20 years of company experience that the old employee had. I guess most companies today don’t actually care about their own company.

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  • [–] 9 points 5 months ago

    I guess most companies today don’t actually care about their own company.

    Correct.

    In many cases because of "fiduciary responsibility" it is quite literally illegal for a company to prioritize long term sustainability over quick profits. Every single company who has opened an IPO and begun selling stock has committed long form suicide.

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  • [–] 9 points 5 months ago

    No joke honest to god it is actually a conspiracy, the land value in cities started to plummet so the governor started going around making not so veld threats about keeping people in office and the corporations wanted to work in the cities so they complied ... For now money always wins it will just take longer.

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  • [–] 8 points 5 months ago

    It's because leadership is a heady cocktail of stupid and selfish.

    I really want to stress stupid. That means they draw bad conclusions from facts.

    Sometimes selfish is a factor. They have an obscure reason like "my share value goes up because we get a kickback from the city for staffing an office here". They don't care if it's bad for everyone else or the company long term. They'll get their money and then leave.

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  • [–] 7 points 5 months ago

    The people running companies no longer understand what the companies do.

    This is actually an escalation, when I was younger, the people running companies understood what the company did, they didn't understand what anybody working for them actually did, but they did know they were building airplanes or filling tax returns.

    Today, the Epstein class has completely disconnected and random idiots are now in charge. Look at Nadella at Microsoft, that guy has been filtering everything he hears through copilot for two years now, you think he knows fuck about shit?

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    I think it's a variety of factors and a lot of decision makers failing to view the picture holistically (optimistic view) or just being malicious (pessimistic).

    1. A lot of top level decision makes are very aware of the costs of things. Knowing exactly how much money a large office space costs and constantly coming in only to see it very empty makes them want to see it used more.
    2. Face to face communication is better than the alternative. Full stop. That said, you can get like ~75% of that by just turning the camera on. I think a lot of places should just consider encouraging people to use their cameras more.
    3. The executive mindset is probably that people goof off less in the office.
    4. If you want to lay people off, forcing RTO is a good way to get people to leave voluntarily.
    5. There's likely a sense of "the way things have always been done" being inherently better in the minds of some executives pushing RTO.

    I think ultimately it's short sighted. I think companies that actually are facing problems with WFH (and not just being malicious) should try to address them in different ways instead of just killing it off.

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Re 1, my CEO came up with an innovative solution. He decided to significantly downsize our office space when it came time for the lease renewal, and passed the savings on to the shareholders!

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  • [–] -1 points 5 months ago*

    Knowing exactly how much money a large office space costs and constantly coming in only to see it very empty makes them want to see it used more.

    That is an argument to downsize at lower cost, not to return to the office.

    Face to face communication is better than the alternative. Full stop.

    Absolutely not. Teams calls with ability to share screen are superior to face to face meetings. Teams meetings take less time, are more efficient and more convenient. Camera is needed.

    The executive mindset is probably that people goof off less in the office.

    This is about managerial oversight and individual staff.

    If you want to lay people off, forcing RTO is a good way to get people to leave voluntarily.

    It is not. If you want to make people redundant, you need to target crap workers, not good workers. And it is good workers which are more likely to leave if you try to force them back.

    There's likely a sense of "the way things have always been done" being inherently better in the minds of some executives pushing RTO.

    Sadly, but it is irrational.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago

    Working from talking to a customer that works in same industry, but they have to go to an office to just talk on the phone and do exact same job as me. Fucking stupid. Corporations are dumb as hell.

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