RTO in many cases is the height of hubris.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:GM CEO just told people get back to work.

Bottom line way back in 2007 my company started remote. Any employee with children was required to show proof of child care or a nanny, my facilities dept. would visit home to set up office and ensure they had an appropriate place to work at home and had to be online business hours and available.

Most women were looking for free child care or run errands or go bus stop.

My co worker did get approval. He had a home office identical to work, one kid in after school program and they rocked it 830 - 530 pm every day.

Most washed out .

Because the GM CEO is going to need to lay off a lot of the white collar workforce in order to pay the UAW's new compensation package. Stellantis just offered buyouts to 50% of its white collar workforce to pay for the new union contract. In GM's case, RTO is a good way to weed out the people who will be the first to get laid off. That's all it is. Plus, GM owns all its real estate and can't monetize the empty square footage. And it sure as hell doesn't want to dump CRE in Detroit, which already faces a lot of downward pressures. No-win situation for GM white collar employees right now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:GM CEO just told people get back to work.

Bottom line way back in 2007 my company started remote. Any employee with children was required to show proof of child care or a nanny, my facilities dept. would visit home to set up office and ensure they had an appropriate place to work at home and had to be online business hours and available.

Most women were looking for free child care or run errands or go bus stop.

My co worker did get approval. He had a home office identical to work, one kid in after school program and they rocked it 830 - 530 pm every day.

Most washed out .

There's a major difference between wanting to meet your kid at the bus stop and providing full time childcare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:GM CEO just told people get back to work.

Bottom line way back in 2007 my company started remote. Any employee with children was required to show proof of child care or a nanny, my facilities dept. would visit home to set up office and ensure they had an appropriate place to work at home and had to be online business hours and available.

Most women were looking for free child care or run errands or go bus stop.

My co worker did get approval. He had a home office identical to work, one kid in after school program and they rocked it 830 - 530 pm every day.

Most washed out .

Because the GM CEO is going to need to lay off a lot of the white collar workforce in order to pay the UAW's new compensation package. Stellantis just offered buyouts to 50% of its white collar workforce to pay for the new union contract. In GM's case, RTO is a good way to weed out the people who will be the first to get laid off. That's all it is. Plus, GM owns all its real estate and can't monetize the empty square footage. And it sure as hell doesn't want to dump CRE in Detroit, which already faces a lot of downward pressures. No-win situation for GM white collar employees right now.

I think it's also much harder for manufacturing companies to have lots of WFH employees. I mean, you have shift workers at your plants that are required to be there at all times, and then you have the procurement team sitting at home in their pajamas. How does that look to those running the plant?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What I think is absolute hubris is thinking that working from home has no impact on team engagement, cohesion, creative problem solving, company culture, and general communication. I am in No Way championing RTO to prepandemic norms, but I think there is significant value for being in person once a week. With natural fluctuations for people / kids being sick, holidays, school breaks, dentist appointments, etc. I feel like this averages out to employees coming in 3 days a month. If you truly think you are an independent contributor and that you gain nothing from going to the office in person occasionally, I would argue you don’t understand your role in your organization or you are shortchanging your org in the value you could contribute and short changing yourself in terms of career development and refining your soft skills.

Two stories to make my case:

I manage several teams in the procurement department of a large IT company. We worked remotely pre-pandemic, but came together once a month for required training. That day counted towards the recommended 1 day per week. As a team lead I was very lenient with that “day” and my team probably averaged 2.5 days per month with some people coming in at 10am or leaving at 3pm for traffic or kid related pick up / drop off. When the pandemic started we didn’t do any extra video calls or engagement activities. We thought “we know how to be remote!” Around 6 months I noticed we were just less connected as a team - despite taking every day. Around a year, little cracks started to show because people didn’t know about special projects or certain initiatives that they would have wanted to participate in. Even though these things are announced in meetings, I think people were missing out on the coffee maker / lunch time chats to say “let’s work on that together”. In Year 2 people started leaving. I had to start arrranging coverage when previously team members naturally stepped up to cover each other, knowing it would be reciprocated. Without a personal connection, it was just a job no different than the same function at another company. It has been a long hard fight to build a team back to a fraction of the connection and camaraderie we had pre-pandemic.

Second example - I once worked in Chicago and had a client in Vancouver BC back when FaceTime/video calls didn’t exist yet. We worked on the project for months before meeting in person. We were a consulting company delivering services to an internal department and the travel expense was considered extraneous and unnecessary. At a mid-point we went out to the client for 3 days. Just 3 days over 6 months. Somehow taking in person and also sharing meals with the team and getting to know them was SO impactful. It felt like when we got back to Chicago that all of our meetings went so much more smoothly, we communicated more efficiently and solved problems more collaboratively.

TL;DR - A small amount of face time is priceless. It doesn’t take much to establish and maintain that connection, but it’s short sighted to think in person time is useless.

Absolutely agree.

But Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, etc are demanding a lot more than 1 day per week. And its silly, since those employees are hosting Zoom meetings with staff all over the world. So they are trudging into an SV campus 3 days+ per week to just sit in front of a computer screen. It's dumb and not worth the hassle.

Again, management of these companies are in cost cutting mode and are using RTO metrics to figure out which folks to lay off first. So really the exercise is just one big facade. And these companies need to justify spending billions on amenity-rich campuses that no one wants to inhabit. Shareholders demand accountability.

If I was a major shareholder, I'd be demanding that management look at ways to reduce RE footprint and find cost savings. For example, converting a sizable portion of campus RE into housing for younger employees.

WFH is here and it works with guardrails and a certain degree of in-person time to build relationships. Real estate is expensive and lays under-utilized for 50% of every day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:GM CEO just told people get back to work.

Bottom line way back in 2007 my company started remote. Any employee with children was required to show proof of child care or a nanny, my facilities dept. would visit home to set up office and ensure they had an appropriate place to work at home and had to be online business hours and available.

Most women were looking for free child care or run errands or go bus stop.

My co worker did get approval. He had a home office identical to work, one kid in after school program and they rocked it 830 - 530 pm every day.

Most washed out .

Because the GM CEO is going to need to lay off a lot of the white collar workforce in order to pay the UAW's new compensation package. Stellantis just offered buyouts to 50% of its white collar workforce to pay for the new union contract. In GM's case, RTO is a good way to weed out the people who will be the first to get laid off. That's all it is. Plus, GM owns all its real estate and can't monetize the empty square footage. And it sure as hell doesn't want to dump CRE in Detroit, which already faces a lot of downward pressures. No-win situation for GM white collar employees right now.

I think it's also much harder for manufacturing companies to have lots of WFH employees. I mean, you have shift workers at your plants that are required to be there at all times, and then you have the procurement team sitting at home in their pajamas. How does that look to those running the plant?

UAW shift workers just got the best pay package in decades. Who gives a sh#t what procurement does? Everyone do their job and do it well. If I'm a shift worker, I want to see GM be more profitable because that trickles down. Shift workers own GM stock too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sorry you received notice that you have to return to work.

It’s not return to work. It’s a notice that instead of using your laptop and holding Teams meetings in office A, you must spend hours a week driving/taking a train so that you can use your laptop and home Teams meetings in office B.

THIS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:GM CEO just told people get back to work.

Bottom line way back in 2007 my company started remote. Any employee with children was required to show proof of child care or a nanny, my facilities dept. would visit home to set up office and ensure they had an appropriate place to work at home and had to be online business hours and available.

Most women were looking for free child care or run errands or go bus stop.

My co worker did get approval. He had a home office identical to work, one kid in after school program and they rocked it 830 - 530 pm every day.

Most washed out .

this post is unintelligible. what?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:GM CEO just told people get back to work.

Bottom line way back in 2007 my company started remote. Any employee with children was required to show proof of child care or a nanny, my facilities dept. would visit home to set up office and ensure they had an appropriate place to work at home and had to be online business hours and available.

Most women were looking for free child care or run errands or go bus stop.

My co worker did get approval. He had a home office identical to work, one kid in after school program and they rocked it 830 - 530 pm every day.

Most washed out .

this post is unintelligible. what?

It's the Two Jobs Guy. Apparently he worked for Stratton Oakmont in a past fantasy life.

Which is ironic because he was juggling three remote jobs at one point per his posts on DCUM. It seems that he now has an in-person executive job and one of his responsibilities is to crack the whip on remote employees.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lesson from history: the dinosaurs never evolved.

You are wrong. “Birds are feathered theropod dinosaurs and constitute the only known living dinosaurs.”

[Anonymous]

Well, a recent report suggests that most employers will RTO in 2024 and a decent share will require 5 DOW in-office. Further, 85% are/will track badge swipes and other monitoring stats. The WFH shirk is on the shrink.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree with your general point that for many jobs there's no reason to go in, but 10-20 hours/week is a crazy overestimate of most people's commutes. 20 hours is 2 hours each way/5 days per week. Very few people are doing that.

My commute was 45-75 min each way five days a week. I do not want to go back to that.

The metro cost $1200 / year, IIRC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:GM CEO just told people get back to work.

Bottom line way back in 2007 my company started remote. Any employee with children was required to show proof of child care or a nanny, my facilities dept. would visit home to set up office and ensure they had an appropriate place to work at home and had to be online business hours and available.

Most women were looking for free child care or run errands or go bus stop.

My co worker did get approval. He had a home office identical to work, one kid in after school program and they rocked it 830 - 530 pm every day.

Most washed out .

I recognize your writing from other posts. Very special viewpoint.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well, a recent report suggests that most employers will RTO in 2024 and a decent share will require 5 DOW in-office. Further, 85% are/will track badge swipes and other monitoring stats. The WFH shirk is on the shrink.

As a manager can we get any of these monitoring stats?!? I get lie after lie about why deliverables are all behind schedule and there’s very little I can do about it.

[Anonymous]

I have a sincere question about posts like these every time I see them.

The people making RTO decisions are also humans. They have families and commutes and also enjoyed the benefits of remote work. The vast majority of them are not uber-wealthy Bezos/Musks. Many of them are even staff level HR/budget/external affairs professionals. We see these people every day in the workplace and know them.

They are making these calls for a reason. They may be wrong, but they are not EVIL.

All of us would have better outcomes if we remembered that, and were willing to hear people out in good faith and maybe influence each other. Calling names on other sides is both wrong and also unhelpful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just cannot imagine another situation where I would ask people to spend 10-20h per week, and hundreds of dollars, so they can physically sit in a different location for absolutely no reason other than that I can force them to be in the same location as myself because 'they have a choice to work here or not'. I would be so embarrassed and ashamed to enact that policy if it was not 100% necessary. RTO is the Bill Lumbergh from Office Space of policies.
It would be one thing if someone is in the medical profession or needs to physically interact with someone else. But to take 10-20h away from other human beings, away from their family and their health and their rest, given we have one life to live, when we KNOW it's not necessary, is to me downright cruel and just the height of hubris and arrogance. I cannot imagine wanting my employees lives to be worse, instead of better, if better was an option.
We're all going to die. Sure we have to work, but do you really need me to sit on a train for hours each week so I can do zoom calls from a specific room you designate, when we've proven that we are now a digital society and do not need to do this?
It's just so amazingly tone deaf and selfish.

Widespread WFH was a concession to a pandemic. It was, always, a temporary concession under dangerous circumstances of an illness spread by breathing. It was never — never — said or meant to be permanent.

If you want to work at home, go find yourself one of the millions of existing WFH jobs.