Companies are on the war path against remote work

[Anonymous]

Someone should study the number of pre-pandemic sexual harassment and EEOC payouts vs after remote work. Bet liability has gone down dramatically with WFH

[Anonymous]

who knows. layoffs are just ramping up PP. let's see who's on the lists.

or maybe AI generates the lists so no discrimination, purely work product and throughput based!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dear Lord are there people who actually believe that someone shopping at Target at 2 pm is not capable of being supremely productive for their company? How antiquated.

2pm is still in prime work hours, for all of the US. NO you cannot be supremely productive from Target mid-day.

There I said it.

No I'm not a dinosaur, grandma, or meemaw. I'm still in my 30s.

What makes it prime work hours? Sure, if you have a 2pm meeting you should support that. But what if you have a 5pm meeting, so you do a target run from 2 - 3, and continue working from 5 - 7? Or what I do - from 3 - 4 every day I'm picking up my kids, but also working consistently from 7-8pm every day?
So no, you can not be supremely productive **from** Target mid-day. But you can be supremely productive and also happen to be at Target mid-day.
Not super hard to do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dear Lord are there people who actually believe that someone shopping at Target at 2 pm is not capable of being supremely productive for their company? How antiquated.

2pm is still in prime work hours, for all of the US. NO you cannot be supremely productive from Target mid-day.

There I said it.

No I'm not a dinosaur, grandma, or meemaw. I'm still in my 30s.

You don’t know there are 3 different time zones? What if I primarily work with staff in London. Since it’s 8 PM there am I allowed to do my Target run at 2 PM so I can hold 7 AM calls with the London team?

You don’t seem to understand that technology improves efficiencies.

When did London relocate to the US?

The point is that NO 2 PM is NOT prime working hours for everyone in the US. It’s like SAHMs have no understanding of the workplace.

But it is to MOST. I'm working with people who exclusively work with people on the east coast and they are doing all sorts of personal things during the day and emailing me back at 11:00 pm or even 2:00 am. How is that ok? It most certainly isn't productive since I have to wait 24 hours on their answer to get the rest of my job done.

If you need a quick answer you shouldn't be sending email. You should be using one of the other zillions of ways to contact your coworkers. 24 hour email response is perfectly acceptable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dear Lord are there people who actually believe that someone shopping at Target at 2 pm is not capable of being supremely productive for their company? How antiquated.

2pm is still in prime work hours, for all of the US. NO you cannot be supremely productive from Target mid-day.

There I said it.

No I'm not a dinosaur, grandma, or meemaw. I'm still in my 30s.

You don’t know there are 3 different time zones? What if I primarily work with staff in London. Since it’s 8 PM there am I allowed to do my Target run at 2 PM so I can hold 7 AM calls with the London team?

You don’t seem to understand that technology improves efficiencies.

I do 7am meetings London, 11-4 NY and towards end of Day San Fran. Sunday nights Asia and India.

My U.K. people usually available to 5pm DC time. My San Fran People till 2 am DC time. We all our online 16 hours a day. I don’t sleep much I am online 18 hours a day 7 days a week.

I only work 8-9 hours a day but I am available. And if I did go to target I have laptop in car so can use hotspot.

That is how real remote works as companies are open 24/7 and staff is all over the globe.

If fed workers did real remote they beg to go back in person with no remote access[i][u]

You know... I can usually just ignore the gratuitous digs at government employees, but it's been a really long two weeks at work. I've been working an enormous amount of time and responding to issues 24/7 - doing things that you as a citizen absolutely want me doing. Because the federal government actually works with people all over the globe (and in space even!) just as much as your precious corporate office does.
So shove it.
- A fed who very much values my telework capability right now and who will be less effective at her job if it changes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dear Lord are there people who actually believe that someone shopping at Target at 2 pm is not capable of being supremely productive for their company? How antiquated.

2pm is still in prime work hours, for all of the US. NO you cannot be supremely productive from Target mid-day.

There I said it.

No I'm not a dinosaur, grandma, or meemaw. I'm still in my 30s.

You don’t know there are 3 different time zones? What if I primarily work with staff in London. Since it’s 8 PM there am I allowed to do my Target run at 2 PM so I can hold 7 AM calls with the London team?

You don’t seem to understand that technology improves efficiencies.

When did London relocate to the US?

The point is that NO 2 PM is NOT prime working hours for everyone in the US. It’s like SAHMs have no understanding of the workplace.

But it is to MOST. I'm working with people who exclusively work with people on the east coast and they are doing all sorts of personal things during the day and emailing me back at 11:00 pm or even 2:00 am. How is that ok? It most certainly isn't productive since I have to wait 24 hours on their answer to get the rest of my job done.

If you need a quick answer you shouldn't be sending email. You should be using one of the other zillions of ways to contact your coworkers. 24 hour email response is perfectly acceptable.

They are not working!!!! They don't answer when I call on teams or when I call their cell, either. And depending on what the email message contains, it could be extremely inappropriate to wait 24 hours to answer it. See it's people like you that are causing people to have to go back to the office. If you'd just actually work when you're at home, maybe they'd let us do it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dear Lord are there people who actually believe that someone shopping at Target at 2 pm is not capable of being supremely productive for their company? How antiquated.

It’s a SAHM saying that. Their job is not to think

While it is unquestionably true that *some* employees who are shopping at Target at 2 pm are high performers who are supremely productive for their company, my strong suspicion is that *most* of the employees who are shopping at Target at 2 pm on a WFH day are slacking off. IME extremely high performance employees get a lot of slack as a practical matter, whatever the formal policies, but it is simply true that there are a lot of people abusing work from home while claiming to be highly productive—and that category is ruining it for everybody.

And you’re convinced that if these same people were physically in the office at 2 PM, they would be productively working? Because I doubt anything would change besides their location.

I’m convinced that many of them would be doing more. My sense of human nature is that there are many people who can be productive if closely supervised, and will slack off if not. “When the cat’s away, the mice will play” is a proverb for a reason. You may not agree, and you may even be right, but do you really think that’s an *unreasonable* point of view?

DP but I'm in my late 40s. I've been doing this a long time. There have been absolutely been times I've been in the office 5x a week and not productive. Chatting, running errands, or just going online. I always get my work done, am a high performer, and want to deliver good work. But we aren't robots. It is human nature to work to meet deadlines, slack during down times, etc.

Pre pandemic I worked at a global firm that encouraged hoteling and remote work. I WFH most of the time and went into the office usually 2x a week. I was much more productive at home most days.

Now I'm remote full time, going in maybe once every 6 weeks or attending big meetings/company retreats etc. I love it, it's conducive to my kind of work, and I'll never report to an office full time again.

NP. What you are doing, as an employee in your late 40s who is not coming in to the office, is you are not giving any training or mentoring, formal or informal, to the young workers who are just starting out. You were helped throughout your career, especially in beginning, by working with or for more senior people, who would give you advice, show you how to do it, help you. Now you are declining to do the same for the younger workers.

Whether you care about the stores who were supported by you before, whether you should care about them or not, you clearly don't care about your company, the younger workers, or anyone besides yourself.

Why do you think this? I am a DP but I supervise younger employees and interns, and working remotely has made me more conscious about it because I'm not expecting "mentoring" or "training" to happen by osmosis. I try to set it up much more formally and check in more often. I have noticed some more things we take for granted not being passed on that way (e.g. expectations for strict hours vs overtime), so I'm adding those to my "use your words" list, but also glad to be back to the office once or twice a week to see if it helps with that. That said, I don't think 5 days a week is necessary, and I think reliance on in person work for training and mentoring is a sign that it's not particularly thought out and the more senior people are relying on proximity rather than actual effort.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dear Lord are there people who actually believe that someone shopping at Target at 2 pm is not capable of being supremely productive for their company? How antiquated.

It’s a SAHM saying that. Their job is not to think

While it is unquestionably true that *some* employees who are shopping at Target at 2 pm are high performers who are supremely productive for their company, my strong suspicion is that *most* of the employees who are shopping at Target at 2 pm on a WFH day are slacking off. IME extremely high performance employees get a lot of slack as a practical matter, whatever the formal policies, but it is simply true that there are a lot of people abusing work from home while claiming to be highly productive—and that category is ruining it for everybody.

And you’re convinced that if these same people were physically in the office at 2 PM, they would be productively working? Because I doubt anything would change besides their location.

I’m convinced that many of them would be doing more. My sense of human nature is that there are many people who can be productive if closely supervised, and will slack off if not. “When the cat’s away, the mice will play” is a proverb for a reason. You may not agree, and you may even be right, but do you really think that’s an *unreasonable* point of view?

DP but I'm in my late 40s. I've been doing this a long time. There have been absolutely been times I've been in the office 5x a week and not productive. Chatting, running errands, or just going online. I always get my work done, am a high performer, and want to deliver good work. But we aren't robots. It is human nature to work to meet deadlines, slack during down times, etc.

Pre pandemic I worked at a global firm that encouraged hoteling and remote work. I WFH most of the time and went into the office usually 2x a week. I was much more productive at home most days.

Now I'm remote full time, going in maybe once every 6 weeks or attending big meetings/company retreats etc. I love it, it's conducive to my kind of work, and I'll never report to an office full time again.

NP. What you are doing, as an employee in your late 40s who is not coming in to the office, is you are not giving any training or mentoring, formal or informal, to the young workers who are just starting out. You were helped throughout your career, especially in beginning, by working with or for more senior people, who would give you advice, show you how to do it, help you. Now you are declining to do the same for the younger workers.

Whether you care about the stores who were supported by you before, whether you should care about them or not, you clearly don't care about your company, the younger workers, or anyone besides yourself.

Why do you think this? I am a DP but I supervise younger employees and interns, and working remotely has made me more conscious about it because I'm not expecting "mentoring" or "training" to happen by osmosis. I try to set it up much more formally and check in more often. I have noticed some more things we take for granted not being passed on that way (e.g. expectations for strict hours vs overtime), so I'm adding those to my "use your words" list, but also glad to be back to the office once or twice a week to see if it helps with that. That said, I don't think 5 days a week is necessary, and I think reliance on in person work for training and mentoring is a sign that it's not particularly thought out and the more senior people are relying on proximity rather than actual effort.

This. Yes there are ways to mentor people remotely. And yes, there is value in actual in person interaction. A hybrid approach strikes the best balance, in almost all respects.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Commute and traffic were awful this week on the beltway.

Public transit is a thing.

A dying thing.

An untimely, super long, unsafe, thing!

so ignorant. It's much, much, much safer than driving. It's also not any longer.

For most people driving is 1/2 the time. For my office, I can drive to the office in the time it would take to simply walk to the station from my office.

Agreed, your risk of dying is higher in a car, but risk of crime is much higher in metro these days.

Who the hell cares? On AVERAGE taking public transport in this area is faster and safer unless you leave your house at 4:00 am and return home at 8:00 pm I'm not talking about people who live in DC proper. And no, metro is not riskier than driving. Also, it's much better for the environment not to drive.

You assume that someone is close to the metro and the metro goes to their workplace. Lets see, for us, we'd have to drive to the metro, park, wait for the train, go into DC, transfer trains, wait for another train, and take the train, then a bus and then walk to the office. Does that make sense?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m for the corporates here. Workers have become entitled. Look at the pay, benefits, and severance packages of employees recently dumped by FANG companies. These workers were waayyy overpaid and sometimes doing nothing, and then they complained about being let go. What gives! Corporations are not welfare. What I hear from the non-RTO crowd is an acknowledgment that their situation is too good to be true but they want to milk it for as long as they can. So, they protest wildly, oftentimes wrapping themselves in the flag of community, home, and the environment. Underneath though, they know that their argument, and even their self, is a sham.

Forcing return to work, or subsidizing companies who force return to, to support commercial real estate is welfare. Commercial real estate owners

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dear Lord are there people who actually believe that someone shopping at Target at 2 pm is not capable of being supremely productive for their company? How antiquated.

It’s a SAHM saying that. Their job is not to think

While it is unquestionably true that *some* employees who are shopping at Target at 2 pm are high performers who are supremely productive for their company, my strong suspicion is that *most* of the employees who are shopping at Target at 2 pm on a WFH day are slacking off. IME extremely high performance employees get a lot of slack as a practical matter, whatever the formal policies, but it is simply true that there are a lot of people abusing work from home while claiming to be highly productive—and that category is ruining it for everybody.

And you’re convinced that if these same people were physically in the office at 2 PM, they would be productively working? Because I doubt anything would change besides their location.

I’m convinced that many of them would be doing more. My sense of human nature is that there are many people who can be productive if closely supervised, and will slack off if not. “When the cat’s away, the mice will play” is a proverb for a reason. You may not agree, and you may even be right, but do you really think that’s an *unreasonable* point of view?

DP but I'm in my late 40s. I've been doing this a long time. There have been absolutely been times I've been in the office 5x a week and not productive. Chatting, running errands, or just going online. I always get my work done, am a high performer, and want to deliver good work. But we aren't robots. It is human nature to work to meet deadlines, slack during down times, etc.

Pre pandemic I worked at a global firm that encouraged hoteling and remote work. I WFH most of the time and went into the office usually 2x a week. I was much more productive at home most days.

Now I'm remote full time, going in maybe once every 6 weeks or attending big meetings/company retreats etc. I love it, it's conducive to my kind of work, and I'll never report to an office full time again.

NP. What you are doing, as an employee in your late 40s who is not coming in to the office, is you are not giving any training or mentoring, formal or informal, to the young workers who are just starting out. You were helped throughout your career, especially in beginning, by working with or for more senior people, who would give you advice, show you how to do it, help you. Now you are declining to do the same for the younger workers.

Whether you care about the stores who were supported by you before, whether you should care about them or not, you clearly don't care about your company, the younger workers, or anyone besides yourself.

I mentor plenty. What you don't seem to get is my company is remote. Some of my team live hours away from me, so no, my company isn't paying for daily flights LOL.

My team gets together regularly in person, just not every day or every week. We do retreats 3x a year, and a few of the folks who live nearby commute to our office a few times a year in between retreats to hang out and work together.

We have a great model. It's a successful tech company, our mentoring program gets great satisfaction rates, and our employee retention is sky high. Yes even for younger employers.

I'm sorry you can't fathom this, there are ways to communicate and mentor when you are not in person. It's not 1996 anymore.

[Anonymous]

I bet Salesforce is perpetually deluged with applicants

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I bet Salesforce is perpetually deluged with applicants

*Meant Shopify

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dear Lord are there people who actually believe that someone shopping at Target at 2 pm is not capable of being supremely productive for their company? How antiquated.

2pm is still in prime work hours, for all of the US. NO you cannot be supremely productive from Target mid-day.

There I said it.

No I'm not a dinosaur, grandma, or meemaw. I'm still in my 30s.

You don’t know there are 3 different time zones? What if I primarily work with staff in London. Since it’s 8 PM there am I allowed to do my Target run at 2 PM so I can hold 7 AM calls with the London team?

You don’t seem to understand that technology improves efficiencies.

When did London relocate to the US?

The point is that NO 2 PM is NOT prime working hours for everyone in the US. It’s like SAHMs have no understanding of the workplace.

But it is to MOST. I'm working with people who exclusively work with people on the east coast and they are doing all sorts of personal things during the day and emailing me back at 11:00 pm or even 2:00 am. How is that ok? It most certainly isn't productive since I have to wait 24 hours on their answer to get the rest of my job done.

This is extremely rare these days. Yours must be a very small, parochial company.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dear Lord are there people who actually believe that someone shopping at Target at 2 pm is not capable of being supremely productive for their company? How antiquated.

2pm is still in prime work hours, for all of the US. NO you cannot be supremely productive from Target mid-day.

There I said it.

No I'm not a dinosaur, grandma, or meemaw. I'm still in my 30s.

You don’t know there are 3 different time zones? What if I primarily work with staff in London. Since it’s 8 PM there am I allowed to do my Target run at 2 PM so I can hold 7 AM calls with the London team?

You don’t seem to understand that technology improves efficiencies.

When did London relocate to the US?

The point is that NO 2 PM is NOT prime working hours for everyone in the US. It’s like SAHMs have no understanding of the workplace.

But it is to MOST. I'm working with people who exclusively work with people on the east coast and they are doing all sorts of personal things during the day and emailing me back at 11:00 pm or even 2:00 am. How is that ok? It most certainly isn't productive since I have to wait 24 hours on their answer to get the rest of my job done.

If you need a quick answer you shouldn't be sending email. You should be using one of the other zillions of ways to contact your coworkers. 24 hour email response is perfectly acceptable.

They are not working!!!! They don't answer when I call on teams or when I call their cell, either. And depending on what the email message contains, it could be extremely inappropriate to wait 24 hours to answer it. See it's people like you that are causing people to have to go back to the office. If you'd just actually work when you're at home, maybe they'd let us do it.

NP I agree with you! I was at a work training and our fed HR was complaining about the expectation that they respond to emails in 24hours. I found it so inappropriate. I'm customer facing too and think 24 hours is reasonable. If I can't figure out an answer, I still email back and let people know I'm digging into this.