I think RTO mandates will be the straw that broke the camel's back, for a lot of Americans. Workers in sectors that previously wouldn't even think about unionizing, are now having serious discussions.
Going back to commutes, wasting time, for no obvious reason - yeah, that did wake up people.
EDIT: I'm talking about rigid 5 days a week RTO policy. As other have pointed out, having a flexible WFH policy is often "good enough" for most people. Not all want 100% WFH, but taking away the flexibility of WFH a couple of days a week, if you want, feels like a shitty deal.
American society doesn't want to accept that a lot of our problems happen because the parents aren't home. Michael Moore had an interesting scene in Bowling for Columbine where he showed a 6 year old shooter's mother had to work hours away daily and wasn't home. Mine and most of my friends parents always had to be outside of the house during our formative years. We had very robust economy in the 90s/2000s that pretty much sacrificed family time to get it done.
This is truly a past way of being. A real past, we cannot go back.
We have a way of solving this for many workers and any company not in tune with this beautiful thing is unacceptable to my heart (and hopefully many others).
Wait - how can you say remote is comparable with in-office, then tell me a work from home mother is going to look after her 6-yr-old while doing her job and not split her attention & efforts?
Oh give it up. Very few jobs require 100% attention. At my job I'm on the phone at least half of every day and on 70% of those calls I only need at most 10% of my attention.
The rest of the time I'm going through emails, filling out endless bureaucratic forms/documents, doing mandatory training, and every now and again I get to actually write some code (more likely: reviewing PRs), LOL! My performance reviews are always spectacular and I'm the only one in our (much) larger team that's actually 100% in compliance/up-to-date with everything and completing all my work on time.
The one thing all those tasks have in common? They can wait five minutes while I take care of something and if I'm on the phone I can do something else entirely while I'm listening. Just the other day I did--the horror!--laundry while I was on a call discussing how we should move forward to solve a problem. And I was the one speaking most of the time while I folded my laundry and put it away!
I could easily watch a 6yo and do my job at the same time. Based on how much real "work" comes out of your average corporate office employee I'm certain they could do the same.
Employers should give zero fucks about what their employees are doing while they're at work as long as they get all their work done on time and don't cause the company any problems (and no conflicts of interest). We hire people to get things done not to dress a certain way or keep a chair warm in a very specific place all day!
Hah, just yesterday I had a conversation where an individual told me that I have no pride in my work if I don't devote 100% attention to it and I guess today's generation has no shame. I politely pointed out that I work based on results requested. If someone wants different results, they should adjust accordingly.
But no.. you want 110% and everyone looking busy, because.. manamagement does not know how to manage..
No offense, but to me it shows severe lack of skill in management class.
I could easily watch a 6yo and do my job at the same time.
I have a pretty chill WFH tech job at the staff level, and a pretty easygoing child, and this sounds like the kind of thing no one who has been a parent would say. My daughter was six during the pandemic when she and her mother and I were all stuck at home, the two of us trying to split our time between watching her and working our jobs, and it was hell.
Remote jobs are essentially saving people about 1 hour of travel time, per day.
Assuming a 5 day week, and an 8 hour day, thats a 10% salary bump. In practice it’s much more, since thats time you get back to spend on a variety of things, that just getting more money wont provide. Being at home, means breaks or down time help you get stuff done, and save even more time.
WFH allows for many virtuous cycles to be set up, IT moves wealth away from down town areas, and into lower cost of living regions, letting people save more money, and invigorating local commerce.
MY guess is that WFH is what society needs as a whole, wherever it can get it. Cities and municipalities should plan and compete to get the largest number of people working from home within their boundaries. Get reliable and safe mass transit up and running, and you can even cut down on short hop fuel consumption.
Money concentration is great when it helps generate more wealth for humanity at large. If it’s only going to a small group, then distributing it amongst the broader populace will (should) drive up demand, resulting in more economic activity, and therefore a stronger economy.
Heck, extend that logic to a global scale, and you’ve basically created a reflection of outsourcing. Do WFH instead.
Even if she put in the exact same effort for the company, if she worked from home she might not have a multi-hour commute every day, which could still translate to more attention being paid to the six-year-old.
Being near the child is important. Our economy was so insane that a new mother/father was not be able to spend the first few years with that child even though we had every means of allowing them to do so (for many workers, not all).
Being there to pickup the kid from school is important.
Getting lunch with your SO is important.
Being in your neighborhood is important.
Those two hours of sleep is important.
What nonsense perks can a company can offer me compared to things like that. I don't even know if you can pay me enough to go without that (If I have the means to get that, that's what I'll do).
Another data point: behind the iron curtain quite often both parents were working. Yet the situation got very different form the States, so I'm not sure that's the big cause of shit.
I agree but would take it further: a very aggressive income tax on any non-primary earner in a household that has a total income above 2 or 3 times the median wage. I know there's a lot of "line must go up" types that salivate at the idea of maximizing worker participation rate and GDP, but I think life is probably better when the thumb is put on the scale such that only one breadwinner is encouraged (no matter their gender).
If it has no meaningful impact on productivity, and workers don't like it (including a lot of managers), why push it?
That's why I believe that companies have some evidence (or belief) that work from home employees are not as productive, enough so to wage this political battle and pay loads in office expenses.
I've found that RTO is mainly useful for new employees. They have lots of novice questions, false assumptions, and sub-optimal workflows that are most easily corrected in person (where the barrier to talking or noticing issues is lower).
For ICs with good experience/independence, I haven't noticed any benefit.
personally I've come to believe that's not about the real estate investments. maybe some. nor just a generic assumption that people working at home are slacking off, maybe some. and not about the desire to express domination in person, maybe some.
I think that WFH substantially shifts the power balance to the worker. if I don't have to worry about my commute, or which city or country I'm actually working in, then the barriers to me changing employer start to really drop to zero. so if I feel bad enough about the situation, I can just spin up a new job without changing .. anything.
I understand if everyone else is WFH and I'm only hiring in office, that puts me at a disadvantage. I'm still willing to consider this thesis.
One aspect I rarely see discussed on these messages boards, but one of critical importance, is the role that in-office has on developing new employees over time.
Imagine you are a new grad who just got hired but all the senior employees all work remote. How do you learn the trade? It’s much harder to become established.
However senior employees who were established already pre covid don’t experience this problem.
If you are the leader of the company, you realize that one day all of these senior ppl will retire one day and the people who are juniors today will be the main work force. Will they be just as good in this remote-first environment?
Maybe yes, maybe no, either way it’s a huge unknown and that means big risk.
My last company was fully remote and went through an expansion of hiring a lot of jrs and co-ops. They had a pretty well developed onboarding & mentoring process but it was still very hard. In the end I saw the same people be successful in a remote-first environment as I suspect would have been successful in-office. I believe it was harder on the seniors and other mentors though.
Soft layoffs to suppress wages, many of the C-Suite have a lot of money in commercial real estate (personal investements) - like a lot, management class are people skilled in face-to-face interactions and Remote work disrupts that. If you read the literature about Remote vs In Office work, it generally leans to Remote seeming a bit more productive. There are arguments both way, and anyone honest with themselves see that it is a complex issue with no clear winner.
In office work is more social and fun, that's for sure. But I've heard many VP+ managers comment, "Yeah, I'm WFH today because I need to focus and gets some things done."
Organizations consist of many individuals with different motivations, so it's hard to ascribe a single reason to an individual or group.
Here are some of the real and assumed reasons that companies are pushing for this:
- They have accepted tax breaks or other financial benefits from cities tied to specific headcounts or jobs created
- They are locked into longer term leases or own the building outright and want to make use of their sunk costs
- They found that (on average?) remote employees are less productive
- They want to encourage employees to find another employer
- It's a control/showing-off thing
There seems to be a financial motivation behind this and apparently employee happiness/productivity doesn't appear to be part of it. I [anecdata warning] don't see employers mentioning any sort of commute benefit/subsidy for returning to the office nor do I see 'remote employment' touted as a benefit so these decisions are being made without any consideration for employees.
I guess pick from one of the above and figure out which way a company stands to benefit - there's your answer.
> They have accepted tax breaks or other financial benefits from cities tied to specific headcounts or jobs created
I don't think that's how tax cuts work. No matter the incentives, it's cheaper to not have office space than to have office space and get some write off. I doubt some city is saying "For every $100 of office expenses, we'll give you $200 of tax credits". If anything, companies track days worked from home so they don't have to pay as much city taxes
> They are locked into longer term leases or own the building outright and want to make use of their sunk costs
You can always sublease and many do. There are also variable expenses (insurance, maintenance, etc)
> They found that (on average?) remote employees are less productive
This is my belief
> They want to encourage employees to find another employer
Maybe, as a filtering mechanism. Kind of like soft layoffs, but its very risky.
> It's a control/showing-off thing
Also very risky because you just piss people off and pay to do it.
Some people become bosses and managers because they like to boss people around. When they’re not physically around other people who are their subordinates, they can’t scratch their itch. More generously, some people have built their whole management style on watching people around the office and get a feel for what’s going on. And if they can’t see someone, they assume that that person is hiding somewhere in order to slack off. Now imagine this person a few years ago in a company which went all work-from-home. This person would want cameras on all employees during work hours, and constant meetings, to to get that same feeling that they can get a sense of what is going on. This same person would naturally advocate to RTO as soon as possible, could not clearly articulate why, but would fall back on their managerial authority to get it done.
Going back to commutes, wasting time, for no obvious reason - yeah, that did wake up people.
EDIT: I'm talking about rigid 5 days a week RTO policy. As other have pointed out, having a flexible WFH policy is often "good enough" for most people. Not all want 100% WFH, but taking away the flexibility of WFH a couple of days a week, if you want, feels like a shitty deal.