Why are corps so insistent on workers back in the office. I could see them wanting certain employees back in the office, but why all the blanket policies?
Agreed, but what is the mechanism? The CEOs are getting leaned on by somebody. Does Dell own lots of real-estate that they need filled? Seems WFH would save them money. No office to rent, worker pays internet, power, RE, A/C. Those costs add up.
Work doesn’t even provide cube walls anymore to save money. Why not save more? Heck, rent a 20x20 office and let the managers hang out in an all-day meeting with themselves if they miss meetings so much.
Does Dell own lots of real-estate that they need filled? I mean, I don’t have the inside scoop with Dell or anyone else, but probably. If workers stay home then surrounding businesses like restaurants et al suffer which brings down the surrounding area value. Real estate values on major properties are a drop in the bucket compared to utility costs.
Then there’s the worker > middle management > upper management hierarchy that others have mentioned in the thread and summarized better than I can that gets messed up.
If any of this sounds corpo apologetic it’s not meant to. Unions and WFH FTW
Fkd up real estate investments, or long term rentals, and to make useless managers feel that they are local kings, and make them look like if they are needed (but not at all, these arr the bullshit jobs).
My productivity is definitely lower if im working from office, also i feel much worse, by the look and feel of the office, and the things around it, but especially the +3 hours of commute (preparations, actual commute) on each office day.
At my company 2 wfo days are mandatory now (1 year ago it was 1, and until 2023 spring i worked full remotely since i joined to company in fall of 2021), now i avoid some wfo days telling real, or not so real sicknesses, but if they raise the wfo days count, i’ll definitely update my linkedin profile advertising, that im looking for new “adventures”, pointing out that i dont want to work from office (and for morgen slanty to GTFO, dont even call me 🤣)
Why not? Remote schooling was generally viewed as a poor substitute for in-person schooling, so it doesn’t seem unreasonable to me that there could be benefits to doing things in real life.
Because schooling and work are very different things. Constantly, studies have shown that WFH increases happiness and productivity, which is the opposite of what schooling fom home has shown.
all the studies what I can find that show lower productivity working from home are all based around Indian IT call centers.
I just read three studies claiming WFH reduces productivity to reply to this comment and all of them are based around Indian IT call centers.
Which is weird to me because prior to their sudden switch to IITCCs they talk about how workers perceive saving an average of 65-140 minutes on grooming and commuting for in person work in America as a productivity bonus, but upper manager perceives it as nil (because if you’re commuting and you don’t have to- yes its amazing, but if you’re purely measuring “how much work got done between 9am and 5pm and to hell with whether you do that in office or not” then WFH is irrelevant.)
So, if it’s only benefit is it makes employees happier, and on average the “productivity” gains are in morale, focus, application, and appropriate location - and at worst (in America) there’s no difference (except happier employees) you really do have to be an almost literal Eberneezer Scrooge to deny them that happiness.
Right so basically the places where the boss has to ‘crack the whip’ will see an improvement in productivity. Creative types like software engineering work better or the same alone with some collaboration.
Indeed I was! I’m not sure the studies you linked would either confirm nor refute that point. I agree with your supposition that studies on Indian call centers probably don’t generalize particularly well.
Targeted at children, who are famously awful at conceptualising consequences, so given a chance to slack off they most likely will.
Mandatory, so there is no risk of losing your ability to get an education.
Not directly related to earning and quality of life in the immediate future.
Schooling and work are not congruous at all. The people participating are too different, they’re there for different reasons, and they get a different payoff with a different timing on its turnaround.
Remote work translates to being able to take your coffee break at home and possibly do a load of laundry while you’re waiting for a reply on an email, and being able to do a grocery run instead of commuting at the end of the day. Otherwise for most jobs it’s fundamentally identical or straight up better.
For them happiness equals unexploited potential. Only when workers are depressed and hate their job do execs know for certain there is not much more extract. In other words they‘d rather actively decrease productivity and revenue than let people be happy while not knowing for certain if they‘re fully exploited already. Because if they are, then why would they be so damn happy?
Because they get huge tax breaks from the government for keeping a minimum occupancy in their buildings. The government wants all that sales tax from lunches, toll fees, parking fees, speeding tickets, and all of the other income that it receives at your expense. They are colluding with the government to profit from you.
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