this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2023
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Upper mgmt "We need our employees back in the office." Lowrt mgmt "Did you see the numbers? Since our employees started working from home, we've been smashing targets." Upper mgmt "Yeah that's why we need them back. Just imagine how much better the numbers could have been if we were making sure they weren't slacking off."
I wonder if it's also that now their investors are going to expect growth on top of whatever accelerated growth they have experienced in this WFH era. meta wants a nice, predictable cruise uphill, not a sprint that they'll now need to continue, progress be damned.
Side note: that's a theory I've had regarding technological advancements in devices like phones. Apple, Samsung etc. want small incremental advancements they can drip-feed to consumers for stable growth, so they probably try to keep the big leaps infrequent. Yeah I know Moore's Law can't go on forever, and it might be getting to that point soon... alright I'll take off the tinfoil hat.
Leave the tinfoil hat on. There is a precedent for exactly what you are describing. When radios went from valve to transistor, radio manufacturers kept the number of transistors low and only slowly increased radio quality over the years. They were able to make higher quality radios from day 1 but didn't so they could sell more radios.
Every time redditors defend work from home: "we'd be sooo productive"
Every time redditors talk about work from home in the context of job search: "it's soo relaxed, no ones constantly looking over your shoulder to check whether you are working. You can easily take gaming breaks"
Y'all are a walking meme
OK Boomer.
who's the redditors? wrong site champ, you lost or something?
It allows control-obsessed managers to micromanage their employees from up close.
They are the ones who become more productive, since when employees work from home, those manager loses like 90% of their value.
Because the largest portion of employees are stuck in job, which they don't love and for which they won't give more than the minimum required effort. The minimum required effort becomes less, when there is less supervision.
Productiveness also obviously decreases, when you have to communicate with your colleges via zoom, instead of just speaking to them over the table. Seems like none of you had to work yet, but there are few jobs in which you need almost no communication and cooperation with coworkers.
Also most jobs require walking through the building (even if you sit behind a computer most of the day), because pretty much every company has a portion of its business that can't be digitized. Can't go down into the storage hall of a carrier firm to fix workers messing up the labeling, when you are working from home.
Back when I was in the office, we all just messaged each other while sitting next to each other mainly because we are programmers and our productivity suffers the moment someone interrupts out concentration with a question and we can respond to IMs whenever we are at a stopping point. Honestly working from home is exactly the same for me now than what it was when I was in the office, except...
Yeah, working in an office sucks (at least for me)
Yeah programmers is the obvious one profession, that might largely be an exception. I don't really know how progress in that profession is tracked or how you integrate newcomers into the team, but I suppose there may not be a huge disadvantage.
Also, your points are all personal ones, which I obviously grant. However, seeing this from an employers side of view, it's a much harder sale.
The "we'd be more productive"-trope is not only not clearly true, but clearly wrong for most professions. Point and case: https://programming.dev/pictrs/image/be147193-0d32-41f5-9112-400f6e374f07.jpeg
You know both can true right?
There's a reason productive tech companies had perks like nap rooms and tons of recreational options before WFH was even an option.