"Few, it seems, are keen on going back five days a week. On Memegen, an internal company site where Google employees share memes, one of the most popular posts was a picture of a company cafeteria with a caption: 'RTO is just bumping into each other and saying "we must grab lunch soon" until one of you quits Google.'... The main draw for heading to the office, according to the surveys, is that employees want to see colleagues in person. After a number of postponements, Google kicked off its hybrid work schedule on April 4, requiring most employees to show up at U.S. offices a few days a week. Apple started easing staff back to the office on Monday, with workers expected to check in at the office once a week at first.... When Microsoft employees returned to their offices in February as part of a hybrid work schedule, they were greeted with 'appreciation events' and lawn games such as cornhole and life-size chess. There were classes for spring basket making and canvas painting. The campus pub transformed into a beer, wine and 'mocktail' garden."
RTO = "return to office."
Posts
30 comments:
Older woman - a widow - is a clerk at local convenience store. She's showed up 5-6x/wk the past two years.
Contrast that with these whiny tech workers.
If you return to office 'at least one day a week', you're going to need a:
cubical, computer, phone, chair, desk, file cabinet... Just like before; aren't you?
You'd have to keep the building warm and lit, just like always.
Where's the cost savings for the company then? Might as well make people work all week
As an employee returning to an office environment,I accept that is part of the deal I made for the compensation. However, I’m tired of “isn’t it fun to be back in the office”. The willingness to lie and expectation that we agree is galling.
I opined back in April 2021, that the work from home option, while doable, came with liabilities for those that chose to avoid the office.
"Networking" was all the buzz, 20 years ago. Now its not important?
I think it will be self regulating. Those wanting more money, the lead on the next project, the promotion, desire to suck up to the boss. All of that is more doable, the more visible you are.
The leaders will come from those in the office.
The 3 minute elevator speech is a real talent. But can't be duplicated in a webex call.
My wife's office returned 2 days a week 3 weeks ago. During that time, she's gone in once. The place was nearly empty. Nothing worked because it hadn't been used in 2 years and IT wasn't around to fix anything. It was a big waste of time and she's not going back until she has a clear schedule where she doesn't need to do much so she's not falling behind while trying to get her computer on the system.
My office was supposed to go back in March, delayed to May, delayed again until...who knows? (We're in wave 6 right now, where everybody's sick, but nobody's really sick, and so they can't figure out how much to freak out.) Unlike my wife, I actually want to go back. I like having a sharp division between home and work. Never the two should meet. Ideally.
Bad managers, insecure managers need to see butts in the seats to feel that employees are loyal and "not goofing off." Never mind that the in-person office always facilitated water cooler talk about sports and TV shows. Never mind that people in the office had cell phones and could text or surf the web without others knowing. Never mind that many people spent 2-4 hours commuting every day ($$$ for cars, gas, clothes) for no economic value and an unpleasant lifestyle.
There are many, many, many bad managers in this world. They gained power through connections or luck and fear anything that could undermine their (thin) credibility. Those bad managers must now compete with effective remote managers and aggressive employees who will indeed change jobs to continue their remote lifestyles.
The next round of job cuts may be bad onsite-only managers. Did they fail over the last two years? If so, then they cannot learn and should find other work. Did they succeed managing remotely over the last two years? Then there's no need for staff to return to the office.
Whinging pussies. Christ, grow a pair.
It's ridiculous to force employees into cutesy "fun" non-work activities during business hours. I'm at the office to work. I'll decide on my own hobbies and leisure when I'm not at work. Just one more attempt to erase the boundary between work and leisure, public and private time, to get people to work 24/7 at the expense of everything else.
Whatever happened to "Shut up and get back to work"?
Here in DC, we're also among the last to be returning to work. I think Iowan2 is right that virtual work will not suit those with ambition, but I also think most people are not terribly ambitious. The law firms here are making noises about bringing the associates back full-time, but most of the associates understand that they have no prospect of partnership; they're there to play a role for a few years, make the big money, and move on. If the firms push too hard, people will just leave.
Likewise, government agencies are typically very flat for career employees. Most of us are not climbing a ladder. We sit in front of computers doing relatively solitary work and communicating by phone and email, and we can do this from anywhere, without having to commute in. My director doesn't want to come back to the office any more than the rest of us, so we're going to be allowed to work from home pretty freely. Presumably there may be long-term consequences for the government's real estate portfolio, but GSA has never included us in its capricious office decision-making before, so there's no point in our worrying about that now.
I have a friend who works for Google. They just went back to office after- what?- two years away? On the first day back someone there tested positive for covid. On day three another couple tested positive for covid. Now they are being told to stagger days in the office and no more than 3 days/week.
In the meantime...the rest of the world is still trying to work full on and get moving again. But there is a generation that seems to think that going to work should be painless, with no possibility of catching a disease, and no stress.
I do get that it's going to be tough going back to the office routine, having people there, checking on your productivity and having to converse face to face with actual human beings. Yikes. People can be so messy.
If you believe that the best part of working at an office is the personal contact you have with colleagues, then I can see why you probably don't think you need that five days/week.If your company realizes you are only coming in two or three days each week, though, you can say goodbye to your private office, or maybe even your private cubicle. Fancy consulting companies often have shared offices, because people are on the road so much. What do you think will happen post COVID?
A "benefit" for me of RTO v. WFM is that I will run into people at work, we will have a quick collaboration, and suddenly progress is made/clarification happens on some project. I write "benefit" because this usually means more work for me. But more work >> no work.
But this morning I work from home because I don't feel like walking in to work in the rain.
My experience back in the office is much like Tim’s description of his wife’s. It took three months until the IT equipment in the office was functional. Still, dropped calls and time wasted to slow bandwidth is more likely in the office than at home. A year’s evidence for my business showed that productivity increased while working from home, which is no surprise. People gained hours lost to commutes and were happier working from home that they often worked longer. Going into the office has mostly resulted in wasted time.
Still, there were some whining pussies that complained that working from home caused an imbalance in separating work from family. Because they can’t seem to have a bit of self discipline, they demand the rest of us deal with their weakness.
I would fire 90% of the commenters to that article. Whinging about commuting, weeping about close quarters, sobbing about everything concerning work. Most commenters at the NYT are horrible people.
The city government of Austin, Texas, perfected WFH during COVID. They announced that email was the preferred method of communication with, for example, the Building Permit personnel. And that emails would be answered within a business week of receipt. Calling required a message be left, and would be noticed by the recipient within a day or so, and then responded to within, again, a business week. Or so.
To get work done that requires City input, from obtaining building permits to electric/water/gas service, the timeline went from days/weeks to months and months.
The Austin city government has a bureaucratic genius running these operations, and not for the benefit of the citizens of the city.
Work from home has been a disaster for the processing of permit applications with local government offices. I find it very hard to believe that the same inefficiency does not exist across most other areas of life. On the other hand, I run a large number of vacation rentals and it has been a GOLD MINE catering to well off WFH guests. They all claim to be working via Zoom meetings, but my Internet traffic has hardly increased. I was all set to upgrade my bandwidth, it just hasn't proven necessary.
Working in the office is tremendously more effective and efficient.
Temujin said...
I do get that it's going to be tough going back to the office routine, having people there, checking on your productivity and having to converse face to face with actual human beings. Yikes. People can be so messy.
Having everyone in one place at the same time is turning out to be more important than people thought it was. I'm hearing rumblings that at a lot of companies the the Boomers and Gen Xer's who think work should occur from 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM (even if it's from home) are ready to go to war with the Millennials and Gen Zer's who want to drag their 8 hours of work out over the course of about 18 hours real time.
Google employees are not working in squalor.
I'm guessing the average employee makes $200k+ not including stock options.
Zero fucks given.
'appreciation events' and lawn games such as cornhole
"Cornhole?" Isn't that Disney?
I enjoyed being in an office. Everyone was funny and smart. Things got figured out faster. The coffee was hot, the lunch trucks were outside and I could wear jeans. Hey young'uns, gotta leave the dorm room eventually, yo.
I'm never going back, that's for sure. They'll have to pry my cold, dead butt out of this chair.
Some, select corona viruses. Preferably the novel, and not, classes that have low intrinsic morbidity, but high social contagion value.
'appreciation events' and lawn games such as cornhole
"Cornhole?" Isn't that Disney?
Yes, the Lewd Whole of Disney. The dysfunction! The liberal dysfunction. It's a progressive condition. Walt is turning over in his grave.
Cornhole? That sounds slightly deprecating of People of Yellow, Orange, and other People of Maize... Maize-Americans, domestically.
I wonder what working from home would be like. As I've been telling my team for the last two years, you cannot turn a wrench remotely.
"I wonder what working from home would be like. As I've been telling my team for the last two years, you cannot turn a wrench remotely."
When you program supercomputers for a living, you generally use a desktop or laptop to log in to the supercomputer. So even if you go into an office, you are working remotely.
i STILL don't understand How WFH could POSSIBLY work.
ALL the truly Important things you NEED TO KNOW, aren't in handbooks or manuals.
An Important Thing to KNOW; is that EVERY time ANYONE in the office gets paired up with Kevin;
they spend MOST of their free time muttering and cursing
DO NOT WORK WITH KEVIN
An Important Thing to KNOW; is that IF you get Danni's work request completed correctly and on time;
She'll happily tell her lunch table mates (whom include both your manager AND your VP's secretary)
MAKE SURE YOU DO A GREAT JOB ON DANNI'S REQUESTS
An Important Thing to KNOW; is that they are upgrading the phone lines in the Birmingham Branch
WAIT A FEW DAYS BEFORE DOING THEIR FILE CONVERSIONS
Like i said, i Don't see HOW WFH could work. It certainly can't be fun
Judy from 4th floor broke up with Randy, and is Desperate for rebound sex
The Important things; you overhear over the cubical walls, or at the drinking fountains
Those of us who were not in a position to work from home due to the type of work done have essentially been given a pay cut over the last two years, as noted above:"Never mind that many people spent 2-4 hours commuting every day ($$$ for cars, gas, clothes) for no economic value and an unpleasant lifestyle."
This has made it harder to fill and keep filled those type of jobs in the private sector and has resulted in modestly improved benefits in some rare cases, while those type of jobs in the government have not seen any change.
So I'm still eating those fuel and car maintenance costs and lost commute time and have been since almost the beginning. Anyone complaining about having to go back to the office can just go jump off a bridge, head first, over a dry gulch into a bon fire while doing a tide pod challenge with their mouth duct-taped shut. As we used to say back in the days when I raced sailboats: HTFU!
I have a friend who works for the Gov't Printing Office in DC.
When covid came to town, her managers decided it was too risky to have everyone in the office simultaneously. So they decided that half her group would come in one week, and the other half would come in the following week.
There was little of her job that she could do from home. And on the alternate weeks she was paid double time for working in a hazardous environment. That's how gov't solves problems...her workload was cut by half and her salary increased 50 per cent.
Needless to say, noone there wants to RTO full time.
Post a Comment