I'm sorry, but you are the one making the "standard mistake," logically. It's the incel argument. You're trying to say this is a two-way street, that the dynamics are the same in both directions. That's obviously false. It is a one-way street here. The people who are wanting to RTO are trying to exert active control over the lives of others. "You must change your habits of life to accommodate my desires." This is not what the WFH position is doing. The WFH position isn't trying to force the RTO people to do anything.

You complaining "your unwillingness to come to the office is forcing me to remain lonely in the office" is exactly the same kind of argument, structurally, as the incel argument "your unwillingness to have sex with me is forcing me to remain a virgin." Yes, there are some things that you cannot do alone, but that does not entitle you to force me to accommodate you.

>The WFH position isn't trying to force the RTO people to do anything.

Yes, they are. They are trying to get people to work with them who don't want to work with them. This is exactly the same thing as RTO does to WFH people.

And it's fine! It's just a preference and it's fine for a company to make a decision that makes some people upset.

Those people can deal with it or they can get a new job.

This is an extreme view in my opinion, as also the previous poster showed. You can have 10 people with 5 wanting to work from the office, 5 who don't want. Or 10 that all want a hybrid model. Etc. It's not all black or white.

Pushing for only one way of working or the other is telling people how to live. It has been like this for many years because there was little or no alternative. Now "thanks to" the covid an alternative came. But hey, now let's all go back to the traditional way things have always been done.

If a company is fully remote (no offices at all) before you apply you know what you're getting into. Same for a company only working from the office full time.

The issue is the companies slowly going back in a forceful manner, taking away the alternative, and all the people feeling "lonely" or having their "way things should be" being fine with that and actually enforcing this.

All surveys show people want flexibility, yet we're doing a lot to go to the pre 2019 model.

I don't get why everyone is so defensive over this?

When a company says, "This is how we work," that is them telling you to conform your life to how they work if you want to work there. That's for any value of "this" from remote, in-office, hybrid, whatever.

There's nothing wrong with that.

It just happens that the people who are strongly in favor of remote work don't seem to acknowledge the fact that committing to remote work alienates some workers the same way that in-office work alienates some workers.

"Oh but they can go into the empty office" doesn't solve the problem the way so many pro-WFH people seem to think it does.

You can dislike tradition the same as someone dislikes the nontraditional. They're just preferences not unequivocally right or wrong choices.

Everybody just wants their employer to commit to the preference that they prefer.

"Going to an empty office": why in the first place?

If there are so many people missing the office life, why don't they go to the office? Why do they need to be forced?

I really believe given the conversations I had with some colleagues (and others in general) that people who miss the office want an office full or at least 70-80% full because of the way it has always been before covid - it doesn't matter if there is 20% of people, it's just not enough.

This is what I personally don't understand, and this is why I say people are now forcing everyone else to go back to the office. Which is not as those who WFH.

Full remote (no offices etc) is a different beast - I am not talking about that.

> "Going to an empty office": why in the first place?

I don't understand what you're asking here.

My point is that a remote worker saying, "You work in the office while I work at home" is dissatisfying to many people who like the idea of working with people in person and who dislike collaborating with others who are working remote.

> If there are so many people missing the office life, why don't they go to the office? Why do they need to be forced?

Some people don't miss the office and need to be forced to go to the office – if the company decides they want employees in the office.

I don't get what you don't understand?

If a company wants all its employees in the office then allowing some to WFH isn't going to happen. If a company wants all its employees to WFH then working in office isn't going to happen. If a company wants a hybrid solution where some employees WFH and some work in office then it's going to be dissatisfying to those who want all employees in office.

Many companies I know don't reason so black or white. You can always find compromises, by making it attractive for employees to gather once or twice a week (e.g., free breakfast on wed), for example. That's good enough for many.

> If a company wants a hybrid solution where some employees WFH and some work in office then it's going to be dissatisfying to those who want all employees in office.

Right, but why should we care?

Extremes are specific situations that must be addressed differently: I want full remote, does my company allow it or not? If yes, ok, if not, either I leave, or I find another way.

Same applies for people wanting everyone at the office: things have changed over the years, why do we want or need that? It's a decision that forces 80% or more of the workforce to behave in a certain way, just because some people have a very specific need.

If someone wants everybody at the office, it's his/her own problem to deal with, as the person who wants full remote, yet forced to meet with colleagues from time to time. Extremes have huge impact over each other.

You can't make everyone happy, but it also means you should not take away a huge benefit for many. This is why I like how some companies are doing, and yet it surprises me to read that some companies are just back to precovid like WFH never existed. It doesn't make any sense.

> Right, but why should we care?

Exactly! You only care about your own preferences. Nothing wrong with that.

So you should not be surprised when people who want to work in an office with other employees in an office don’t care about the people who want to work remotely.

> You can't make everyone happy, but it also means you should not take away a huge benefit for many

It doesn’t mean that at all.

It means that removing what some see as a huge benefit may have negative business consequences — or it might not.

> They are trying to get people to work with them who don't want to work with them. This is exactly the same thing as RTO does to WFH people.

This is not at all the same. There is a clear difference, again, between the RTO position which requires positive action from other people (travel in to work, come into a physical location) and the WFH position, which does not require anything of their RTO colleagues beyond what the job requires anyways. How can you not see the difference here?

"They are trying to get people to work with them who don't want to work with them." What is this supposed to mean, concretely? Are you saying that because Bob is not in the office you don't want to work with Bob, but Bob is forcing you to work with him? This is not the argument WFH people are making. It is management that has a vested interest in requiring people to work together. I've never heard a serious proponent of WFH arguing that you have to work with them.

Are you saying that having remote team members requires you to use tools and practices that you don't have to in an in-person setting? I would counter that Jira, Zoom, Slack/Teams, Email, etc., all of these "remote/async" tools are not unique to remote workers. And they pre-date the normalization of remote working. Even in a fully on-prem model the vast majority of companies are still using these tools because of the convenience and control they give management, because they have offices distributed geographically, and because they want to be able to communicate beyond the in-office hours of operation. Again, this is not something that the WFH people are pushing onto the RTO people, it is something management at large has decided for the company.

Really, it's hard to take you seriously and I'm sorry for my attitude, but I can't help but see this as an extremely entitled position that is requiring other people to go out of their way to accommodate your desires. If I'm misunderstanding, please correct me and name a single positive action that a WFH proponent is requiring an in-office proponent take that would not be part of their regular job responsibilities in an in-office setting. Not a "they are depriving me of my preference because they just won't do what I want," but something they are actually requiring you to do.

> How can you not see the difference here?

Each of the 2 groups wants to inconvenience the other group. You’re free to argue “positive action” (whatever that means) or make one group out as worse than the other though. I just happen to think that both are equally right/wrong (which is to say not at all).

> I can't help but see this as an extremely entitled position that is requiring other people to go out of their way to accommodate your desires

Oh, so like when a WFH person says, “I don’t want to ever come into the office”? They’re making anyone whose desires include not working with remote workers accommodate their desires.

Again, I can’t state this plainly enough: Nobody is right and nobody is wrong here.

We’re talking about groups of people with different preferences and unfortunately these preferences are at odds. Two of these groups include:

• People who would like to work in an office only with people who are also in that office – no remote work.

• People who strongly prefer remote work.

It is a question of which group does the company choose to upset. Of course there are other groups involved as well, but you get the idea. Somebody is going to be upset to some degree.

If they choose to upset the pro-office people, they are not wrong! If they choose to upset the WFH people, they are also not wrong! If they choose to upset everyone they are not wrong!

What I mean by positive action is, you are requiring me to actively do something. I agree that we all have preferences, and often we cannot satisfy everyone's preferences, particularly when they are at odds as you have pointed out. Fair.

However, I see a very big difference between a preference that requires other people to take specific action to satisfy, and one that does not, and that's exactly the dynamic I see here. It is that expectation that other people will do things that they prefer not to do in order to satisfy your preference that I see as entitled.

As an aside, I'm not arguing right or wrong. I actually see many benefits to a good office environment (see my sibling comment in this discussion for the problem I have, basically that the majority of office environments are not good). I'm arguing coercion vs. freedom. My argument is that the RTO position is coercive in a way that the WFH position is not, that it's not the same.

I will take several simple example to try and explain how I see this difference.

Consider a Christmas party. I want to wear red and green. I don't care what other people wear. I'm not putting any restriction or obligation on other people. I can satisfy my preference through my own actions alone.

Now consider that I wan everyone to wear red and green. I am not going to be happy unless everyone is wearing red and green. In this example I cannot satisfy my preference without convincing or coercing other people to respect my preference. I am expecting my preference to win out over everyone else. I can frame the argument as "why should their (individual) preference to wear white supercede my (collective) preference that we wear green and red?" It is not the same because my preference in this scenario requires other people to actively change what they are doing.

Now, as you have said, this is not necessarily right or wrong (maybe we're taking theme photos, who knows), and I'm not making the argument that WFH is morally superior or necessarily more productive/better in any way. All I am doing is pointing out that your position is coercive in a way that the opposite is not.

> All I am doing is pointing out that your position is coercive in a way that the opposite is not.

Mission accomplished I guess?

My point is that it doesn’t matter which is more coercive because each party doesn’t care about inconveniencing and upsetting the other as long as they get what they want.

It matters because I think that this coercive aspect does has moral implications. It is a core moral position for me to be as minimally coercive as possible in all actions. Or put differently, I believe all people are equal in value and should have equal access to self-determination and freedom of choice. At some level cooperation at the level of civilization and society requires that we surrender our individual freedom to some degree, but I believe one of the strongest lessons of history is that, as a general rule, nobody is a better judge of what is "right" for a person then that person themselves.

With that as a principle, coercive choices require, morally, a higher bar of justification.

If we truly throw concern for others our the window, I believe we ultimately lose the foundation for cooperation and polite society and eventually degenerate into some form of "might makes right," and I would argue we're already there to some degree.

As you can probably guess, I am doubtful that the value of RTO justifies the coercion required, at least as currently envisioned and with offices as they are currently designed. And the proof of this, to me, is the exodus of workers from companies making this mandate.

I recognize that company ownership has the ability to require this, but they have to recognize that this kind of coercive action is counter to a spirit of cooperation and "ownership."

From the employee POV, even if I was a RTO supporter, I would not be in favor of mandatory RTO because of this coercive aspect. I prefer not to force my preferences on others in any aspect of my life.

I recognize that this may be a point where we disagree, but that is why I was so passionate to point out that the two positions are not the same. They differ on a point that is critical from my point of view.

Everyone in this conversation perpetuates a more fundamental mistake by sticking to tribalism.

You didnt get paid for commute time earlier.

COVID recovered it for you.

one hour of your time in this century, is FAR more valuable than time in any other century - simply because you can spend that time on a multitude of pursuits to enrich your life than ever before.

Anyone ambitious, self driven will fight for those 2 hours + a day lost in commutes, because they can use it for themselves.

At the margin, people who needed a few hours more to accelerate their lives will have fled bad firms.

I am fine with RTO if you start paying me for those hours.