This is pretty much exactly how I would run anti remote work PR campaign.
Lets go through some basics. Click through articles on the blog. Is there a single one you couldn't write? No, really. This is the kind of stuff you give to/get from a copywriter. Everything is formulaic, you could write the same kind of posts about literally anything. It's a craft.
Now go through related social media. New accounts posting and moding. All relatively fresh.
Obviously, I have no proof. SM part is also how you would work if you wanted to remain anonymous, sure, but how do you explain this blog? Start of the whole thing being few months after CEOs started whining about how much superior in office experience is could have common causes. And obviously every story is possible - there probably are people doing it. Did they really start that recently?
Admittedly, asking for few dollars from people to get into better parts of discord while claiming to make 6 figures doesn't match exactly. There are reasons to do that (hiding lack of content), but that generally points to creative writing and general grift at least as much.
I guess what I'm saying is wait for major newspapers to pick it up and for people who want everyone in office to use all that as talking points.
That’s the strategy described in the book “Trust Me I’m Lying”.
I had the same feeling as you when reading the article (and a linked one). Feels very shallow. Also the part where they mention doing HTML and CSS. There are probably quite a few gigs like this but it’s strange hearing from a front-end dev without hearing about JS…
Without going into conspiracy territory there’s at least something off here IMO.
There's another site on this topic, Overemployed.com, which looks much more legit. They have an active Discord server.
In fact, I just took a peek inside that Discord server and I see several people bragging about fraudulently working two jobs while using their real names and/or pictures, or otherwise giving enough identifiable information that their employers might recognise them. What a bunch of morons.
Ok, that looks much more like simply another informational product sales funnel. I wouldn't expect a PR firm to setup (or lie about) affiliation with external company (https://we-connect.io/) and running generic ads from CafeMedia.
Bless 'Isaac' grift I guess. What's going on in the original page is unclear to me.
I agree. Overemployment has been fairly big in the news recently, but I suspect it has more to do with real estate valuations: get people back in the office and get those property values up!
There are always lots of emotional moral/ethical responses to these articles, which is exactly what I'd want if I was trying to enforce RTO policies.
[Personally, I am open-minded. I do struggle to see the immediate pay-off for the author of this blog, while I do see a pay-off in the context of an astroturfing campaign.]
I'm struggling to see an immediate payoff to anyone running an astroturfing campaign. Company directors that think remote work doesn't work for their company have more relevant anecdotes than random blogs (especially random blogs appearing months after mainstream media reported examples of the same phenomenon). And there are considerably less indirect ways for workplace-area caterers and commuter rail to try to hold on to what they have.
The payoffs in satisfaction to people that (i) like bragging/confessing about what they actually do or (ii) like cosplaying the antiwork rebel seems more obvious
One of other comments pointed out that there's another site, which to me seems to point towards a more straight forward explanation, but I'd like do address your doubts here anyway.
There are various interest group associations, which can work towards a surprisingly generic goals. One interesting example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8416853 (with all the caveats mentioned in comments).
I am fully aware this is what my claim comes down to. Even basic future predictions like more general media interest or talking points leaking into everyday discourse could look the same if thing was legit (or a generic grift).
It's really not hard to hide your tracks from general public - literally just setting up new accounts does the trick. The hard part is having the thing reach the surface, but 1) a lot of things here are also really easy to hide (reddit upvotes and posts from accounts with history are cheap) and 2) if you're doing your job right you don't need a lot of it.
Near impossibility of avoiding both false positives and negatives is a pretty fundamental issue/feature of that kind of activity. I really don't know how I could do more meaningful digging.
I'm wondering if the desired outcome (return to the office) would be enough to justify the effort.
But I think that pretty soon, with help of various tools, injecting fake info on the net will be so easy and cheap that the only way to know truth from fake will be with the help of AI agents. If it's not already...
It would be worth the effort for even the smallest commercial real estate management company. There are huge, massive, titanic sums of money at stake here.
Not taking a position on this particular site, but there's plenty of financial benefits here.
> I'm wondering if the desired outcome (return to the office) would be enough to justify the effort
I wonder if you are overestimating the effort. Hire a contractor to throw together a few blog posts and then spend single-digit thousands to promote/boost it in various spots.
Lets go through some basics. Click through articles on the blog. Is there a single one you couldn't write? No, really. This is the kind of stuff you give to/get from a copywriter. Everything is formulaic, you could write the same kind of posts about literally anything. It's a craft.
Now go through related social media. New accounts posting and moding. All relatively fresh.
Obviously, I have no proof. SM part is also how you would work if you wanted to remain anonymous, sure, but how do you explain this blog? Start of the whole thing being few months after CEOs started whining about how much superior in office experience is could have common causes. And obviously every story is possible - there probably are people doing it. Did they really start that recently?
Admittedly, asking for few dollars from people to get into better parts of discord while claiming to make 6 figures doesn't match exactly. There are reasons to do that (hiding lack of content), but that generally points to creative writing and general grift at least as much.
I guess what I'm saying is wait for major newspapers to pick it up and for people who want everyone in office to use all that as talking points.
EDIT: see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33741200