2023 in #software was a year defined by anxiety - seeing our employers copy one another's "strategies" of #layoffs and forced #RTO without a clear logic or goal in sight beyond hope that it would make the numbers go up and to the right.
Meanwhile, we also saw our favorite tools and apps take off the "user centered" mask to launch headfirst into squeezing more money out of the user base, and jamming in ill-defined #AI features driven by investor expectations rather than real use cases.
It’s wild to me there was a time, just a scant few years ago, where on a week like this, if you weren’t on PTO, you’d be sitting in a near empty office building waiting until some random time of day where you’d feel it was “safe” or “okay” to head home.
With all the battles over return-to-office going on, I’m thankful that, at the very least, the widespread acceptance of tools that allowed more WFH flexibility.
Just your regular reminder that the real money behind #RTO is commercial real estate. Downtown areas — especially those like #SanFrancisco that steadfastly refused to build high-density housing and mixed-use areas for decades — are now suffering because the commuters they depend on for income are no longer showing up.
What a shame that $800B of “value” will be lost, but hey, that’s business, right? Surely we’re not going to nationalize the losses by forcing people to commute against their will, right? What’s that? Oh, we are?
“Remote work could cut the value of office buildings by $800 billion by 2030 — with San Francisco facing a 'dire outlook,' McKinsey predicts”
“An Amazon exec says it’s time for workers to ‘disagree and commit’ to an office return: ‘I don’t have data to back it up, but I know it’s better’”
Yeah. You don't have data to back it up. Because data doesn't back it up.
People are welcome to prefer working in an office. People are welcome to do it. But people who believe it is generally better and that everyone should have to are—every last one of them—dickheads.
This whole article is a brilliant, indirect indictment of CEOs. It might as well say they are all pathological narcissists who enjoy dominating and hurting others.
But ma ego...
"One of the most pressing issues is disability discrimination. With many employees having worked remotely for over two years without a dip in productivity or performance, employers face a challenging legal landscape when justifying the need for in-person work."
Welcome to #RTO, where nobody actually comes to the office but the guy across from me who shouts in Zoom meetings all day, and the girl on the other side of me who has been sniffling and coughing all morning.
Returning to the office isn't about productivity or building a culture. It's about employer power and maintaining the previous status quo - to the detriment of their own businesses.
Here are some thoughts about what they should be doing instead:
“Going to the office is no longer a necessity. It's a choice. And we wanted to know what, if anything, would cause people to voluntarily choose to go back to the office when the entire rest of the world (including the comfort of their bed) beckoned. And we're happy to report that the results are in:
Mostly no.
Recall that we went absolutely all out – we did everything possible to make the office as attractive as we possibly could. Drinks delivered straight to your desk. Gigabit wifi. Call rooms. We took this concept further than any company reasonably could at scale, to leave no stone unturned.
…
You heard it here folks:
it just keeps happening. Just read an article about some tech company demanding people return to the office "or else," and without fail it turns out they just signed a large lease for property.
Earlier this year it was (ironically) Zoom, now Roblox today (both public companies).
🫠 Roblox tells employees they have to come to office three days a week or take severance package
➥ CNBC
「 David Baszucki, Roblox's founder and CEO, told employees in a memo on Tuesday that remote workers have until mid-January to decide whether they want to starting coming into the office from Tuesday through Thursday, adding that relocation expenses will be provided if needed 」
It’s literally as if someone took the remnant sweat from every Wall Street hedge fund manager personal gym and crystalized it into a human.
Yes because it’s medium-wage family breadwinners wanting to spend more time with their kids who give off strong “decaying aristocracy” vibes and not the guy serially impregnating his own employees from atop a pile of cash.
“Every company that issued forced relocation ultimatums to their pre-pandemic remote workers will not only lose most (if not all) their top talent in the next year, but they will struggle to hire for at least the coming decade.
The bridge has been burnt, and the well has been poisoned.”
[Trust arrives on foot, but leaves on horseback.] —Dutch Proverb
@Brad So I'm curious, at what point does federal and state funding drop off if kids are absent? The first excuse listed is, "Families are more likely to keep sick kids home." How is that a bad thing? Ultimately not spreading [anything] will result in more kids in school. Is this no different than return-to-office propaganda that impacts someone's bottom line? #rto#covid
I became an #engineer because I DONT want to hang out with other people
I like being alone. I like sitting on my computer.
Stop crying and begging people to come back “for the culture”? We do not want to party with MBA manager douchebags and VCs. I don’t want to commute 2 hours. I don’t want shitty free food. I’m not staying at a campus hotel the fuck? Give us money or shut the fuck up.
Yep. #ReturnToOffice was never about productivity. #RemoteWork#FlexibleWork has obvious benefits that don’t affect work productivity; there never was a cogent argument about which arrangement is better for workers’ well-being while preserving or even increasing work output.
#RTO is about #CommercialRealEstate and the preservation of capital, and it is about satisfying the bosses’ lust for CONTROL. Not just control over workers’ productivity our output, but control over where they are, how they behave, where they can live, and what opportunities they can seek outside of their office. https://tech.lgbt/@deilann/110884985364053944
And now off to my studio mandated 40% return to office time, where I will sit on Teams and have the exact same meeting I would have had at home but on worse equipment, hardware, internet connection, etc, etc, etc...
As I transition from a fully-remote company to a remote position at company that still has offices, I begin to understand the less cynical motives behind the RTO movement.
If you treat remote work as an afterthought, of course you're going to have problems with engagement, mental health, and productivity. Remote work culture must be intentional. I think this is scary for some C-suites, but the benefits are worth it.
Embrace remote culture and you'll reap those benefits.