"In one
experiment, we got leaders to reflect on the role that a bold, assertive ego played in the success of Steve Jobs as Apple’s chief executive and Larry Ellison as Oracle’s. After participating in that exercise, leaders were more likely to oppose remote work.... [I]ndividual leaders who reject remote work are necessarily egomaniacs.... But our data does show that overall, self-centered leaders tend to struggle with the idea of employees making independent choices about where to work.... Remote work also prevents leaders from basking in the glow of employee reverence.... Instead of rapt attention, they’re met online with boredom, fatigue and interruptions from partners, children and pets.... Sycophantic reassurances from employees just don’t have the same effect if they’re on Slack...."
From
"The Secret Reason Bosses Want Everyone Back in the Office, Every Day of the Week" (NYT).
Doesn't seem like much of a "secret"!
I see some potential for turning all these criticisms around into attacks on the employees. They are worse when they are working at home. They are beset with boredom, fatigue and interruptions. It's not that the boss wants them in the office to fawn over him but that he wants them on task and working hard. It's not narcissistic of him to want what they're paid to do.
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Most bosses want control. Things run better from the bosses POV if they can see everyone at work, talk to them anytime they wish face to face, and be re-assured they aren't goofing off.
The more dedicated the boss to succeed or do a good job, the more likely he will be to dislike telework.
It doesn't matter that almost all people do just as well working at home, its about the Bosses feelings - not reality.
They are worse when they are working at home. They are beset with boredom, fatigue and interruptions. It's not that the boss wants them in the office to fawn over him but that he wants them on task and working hard. It's not narcissistic of him to want what they're paid to do.
Sure glad I didn't work for you. "Lazy employees, they won't do their jobs unless I am breathing down their necks."
Imagine that, successful people prefer hard work. Also discovered was a strong relationship between narcissism and a preference for indoor plumbing.
More whining from the lazy... whiney - gimme gimmee gimmeeeee entitled left.
"Sure glad I didn't work for you. "Lazy employees, they won't do their jobs unless I am breathing down their necks.""
You're presuming I was someone's boss, but I actively avoided being the boss. I hate to be in the position of supervising that work is getting done properly. But, yeah, I do think that people will tend to reclaim their time for themselves and that they aren't working for the sheer intrinsic value of work. I respect that. I can't imagine "breathing down" anyone's neck in a supervisory role. It's inhumane. Who wants to live like that?
As a law prof, you just give an exam at the end of the semester. The students make their own decisions how much to study and how seriously to take the work. It's entirely on them. I was required to grade on a curve. Anyone clamoring for a C- could grab it.
If ypu are unwilling to admit that not having everyone in the office really does negatively impact work, you are lying, either to yourself or to us. The casual collaborations that take place when everyone is together cannot be made up by scheduled Zoom calls, and the sense of belonging to the organization and resulting desire to see it do well is lost.
There are arguments that the benefits of remote work outweigh these harms, but there really is no argument that there are harms from allowing remote work.
It all depends on the type or nature of the work being done. And the employee’s productivity/work history.
If asked to come back to the office and you are unwilling to do so, FIND ANOTHER JOB.
"I'd like you to reflect on this essay about Steve Jobs, and the role his assertive ego played in the success of Apple." "Ok." "Now go back to your job and we're going to watch you."
(Boss brings remote workers back into the office, following reports that many large organizations are doing so.)
Psychologists: "A-HA! It must be because we made him reflect on Jobs's ego! What a narcissist!" It doesn't even *follow,* much less show causation.
Here's what does follow: narcissists think that everyone thinks like them. Academics believe they're smarter than anyone in the private sector, and many demand constant ego strokes from their research assistants and students. Magically, they get a result from this experiment that supports their belief that private-sector bosses are dumb and narcissistic. Who's narcissistic?
Sheesh. And while I've known longtime remote workers who really are pretty productive, I've also known a whole lot of people who were turned into remote workers during COVID, loved the sweet freedom, and wasted a lot of time playing when they were supposed to be working, rationalizing it as, "I can do this because I'm not spending all that time talking to people."
But the talking to people can yield unexpected benefits. Of course that doesn't occur to the psychologists here.
I've made it clear to my subordinates that all I care about is performance. Get the work done, how you do it is up to you. You gotta be available from x to y and show up for meetings, but I'm not looking over your shoulder to make sure you're working.
Back when i first started a lot of the older bosses thought no one would work unless they were watched. Maybe they were projecting. Or maybe its something they learned in the army or whatever. thankfully that changed over the years, and even better telework come along in the 90s.
The personality traits that correlate with a preference for employees at work is having your own money at stake and high personal standards for yourself.
Just because someone is physically in the office, doesn't mean they're productive. A lesson I learned many a time.
In my lat year at work, i was encouraged to work at home, thus freeing up office space. I refused, telling my boss that I could not be productive at home; there were too many personal distractions.
[I]ndividual leaders who reject remote work are necessarily egomaniacs... The connection between narcissistic personality traits and wanting people in the office full time is not coincidental — it’s causal...
So, coming into the office on Friday is not longer "Casual Friday," it's "Causal Friday"?
I had an interesting experience in one of my last major development projects, working as a contractor for one of the biggest pharma companies. I kept showing up for work in the primary regional office, and I was usually the only employee there. Eventually, my boss asked me: “What in the hell are you doing here?” He quite emphatically ordered me to work from home. Why? This was in the late 90s, early 2000s, when a lot of employees were fishing for the great lotto win of a grievance lawsuit. My boss wanted me out of the office so that nobody could claim “abuse” or “harassment.”
Remote work isn't a problem if you are strict about results and quick to deter poor effort. It's being soft on the slackers that makes it unfair and eventually leaves the organization ineffective.
Serious Question
how many hours a week, does the average white collar person "work"?
wouldn't The Sensible Thing be to just FIRE half of the staff?
and start with HR
I don't prefer one or the other, but both.
If there are "interruptions from partners, children and pets" when they're in a virtual meeting, you know there are even more when they are working unobserved.
Whether it matters really depends on the job. There are times when I miss working from home, but as annoying as going into work every single weekday is, I think it's better for my mental health to be around other people.
"almost all people do just as well working at home"
I would love to see some studies backing up this claim.
At the barest minimum, new employees benefit from being present with more seasoned employees. They don't know what they don't know, no matter how high their GPA was or where they interned.
The vast majority want to work from home. But your milage may vary. I had one old employee - in his 70s - who insisted on showing up in the office every day. I think he was just lonely. His house was worth zillions and he could've retired. Why he just didn't go travel round the world is beyond me. He was just one of those people who dont have a life of the mind.
As he said to me "What am i supposed to do, sit around and wait to die?". LOL.
Hard to build a cohesive team out of faces on a screen.
"Just because someone is physically in the office, doesn't mean they're productive. A lesson I learned many a time."
Undoubtedly true. What is not automatically clear is whether there are employees who will be more productive in one setting or another. COVID gave employers an opportunity to run that experiment. They had a baseline from before COVID; they had data from their newly remote workforce - same people, same productivity metrics, just the one variable. Could they not draw some conclusions?
Two good friends of mine have worked remotely for almost their entire careers. I have stayed in their house for weeks at a time, and so have been able to observe them at work (or, more correctly, when they took breaks from work). They both exhibited strong self-discipline, even though they had houseguests (us) who would have loved for them to slack off.
So it is definitely possible. But is it beneficial, to the organization or the employee, across the board? Again, it seems to me that the psychologists here went hunting for confirmation of their biases: bosses in the private sector are too dumb to read the results of the natural COVID remote-work experiment, so the only reason they must have for wanting employees back at work must be that they're narcissistic.
Nobody seems to want to mention what comradery can do for a group of people that have a shared goal. The military depends upon a sense of comradery to complete their missions. I used to work with small teams on projects that had enormous spends and schedule deadlines. We worked as a team in one office a lot of the time, supporting the project, handling various service providers, etc. You get to know the actual people contributing. If things are going well, there's a sense of excitement that makes it go even better. If things are going poorly, there's a sense of pulling together to fix it. For the many people supporting the effort, the sense of energy is catching. If everybody is working remotely, you don't have any comradery. Also, if everybody is working remotely, when a problem arises with team performance, there's really very few ways to efficiently diagnose where the problem is. It's a nightmare for people that want to manage a team, because you can't watch anyone work. That's fundamental.
I get how COVID was great for people discovering the joys of 'work from home'. We tried having these days, once a week, in the bigger organization. It came to be known as 'work from the beach', because that's what it often looked like, to those of us in the office. There is a small percentage of motivated people that do well with a light touch. There are a whole lot more that need pressure applied, because they would rather not be there.
btw- Not everyone who works from home is a slacker.
but a big clue on slacker potential is whining.
… one day a good hard recession will solve this problem once and for all…
Prior to Covid -- older managers feel resentful of younger employees being able to work flexibly when they themselves spent decades slumped over company desks. They expect the same of others.
Yes. Please come into work every day so you can have video conferences with your clients wherever they are instead of doing the same from your home. This makes a lot of sense when you think about it. No, really!
Those who insisted returning to the office were insecure micromanagers, who had struggled to manage people adequately even before Covid. They were creating all these unnecessary complex ways of monitoring people's performance, attendance, etc. They now keep parroting something about collaboration, which doesn't exist, especially in their departments.
Every conversation I had about remote work almost always boils down to the incompetence of managers. Also, not wanting to be at home, especially if kids are there, was also pretty high on the list.
I think I'd use remote work as a litmus test for hiring managers--if the person has a very strong opinion about people being in the office, rather than a more nuanced approach, then it's a good indicator they won't manage well.
a month or so ago I mentioned Fidelity ordered everyone back to the office five days a week. Management made little secret or the fact part of the reason was too many young hires were dreadfully unproductive and as such would also be the first ones to quit. Win-win for Fidelity. I’m good at playing odds and I say odds are sometime next year Fidelity reintroduces some level of work from home…
Working at home should pay less. It takes substantially less effort and sacrifice from the employee, and that's why you get paid - for sacrificing something.
Lots of nuances and variations between organizations and personality types.
- Smoke and Mirrors Firms: With Enron, the managers paid the employees to act busy as a show for visitors. The sales/broker team would call each other and chat -- showing how much "business" the company had. Investment firms like Janus (which advertised its on-the-ground research) read this as proof of the business model. Start-up firms routinely "fake it until they make it."
- Shallow Control Freak Managers: Some demand butts in the seats and proof of 'being there' -- despite routine in-office practices of chatting and avoiding work. As above, there are many narcissists and bullies in power.
- COVID Validation: The mainstreaming of remote work proved that many people/jobs can be easily performed at 100% or 110% of the in-office standard. This follows from workaholics checking their email earlier, later, and during bad weather. The average employees remain average. The slackers can be known by slow email responses, inactivity with status apps, and more. Bad managers can't figure out the basics, or don't understand the roles.
- Problem Employees: Those who discuss "work life balance" (often women with caregiving roles) can have jobs ill-suited for remote work and sometimes seek to please two masters. Their attention is fractured, they have hard stops for children, etc. Before COVID, Yahoo ended remote work for such reasons (i.e., those who sought it the most could handle it the least).
- Expanded Workforce and Lower Costs: With capable management, a firm can hire people from low cost locations, people with medical conditions, people on the edge of retirement, and save $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ versus demanding everyone commute in a high-cost urban center. This requires capable management and does not apply to all industries.
A great deal of human life is just putting on a show for the chief monkey to feel superior to the rest of the monkeys
Some senior managers, particularly the insecure ones who add very little value, just need audience of junior staff in the office: they need to project power and they do that by being loud on team calls, laughing out loud, walking around, looking at people's computers, etc. These people are power-less when everyone works from home, because what's the point of being loud in an empty office?
One of my best friends (we used to sit on the same trading floor a few years back) is a market-maker at a major bank, he still gets to work from home in Paris a couple of days a week: being a market-maker is about the most intense job in banking. The guy strongly prefers sipping his coffee at his home desk and being laser-focused on fulfilling client flow, rather than sitting on a busy trading floor having to listen to the buzz. All comms with sales and clients -- whether in the office or at home -- are via Bloomberg chat or via phone.
It's all just pathetic pretense and an act of exaggerating self-importance of the senior "leaders" who actually don't do any real work.
I’ve been retired for more than a decade now, but back in the day I was fond of “management by walking around.” This is not to goose people along — I was the tech leader for large software development projects and productivity is better measured by how much working, debugged code they produce and not by how busy they appear to be. I viewed my most important function as figuring out what’s going wrong, where are the risks, and how to mitigate the risks and problems. And people will often be forthcoming one on one, when they’d hesitate to be as candid in a meeting.
One of our talented sons-in-law works for Schwab's media section. He's very good, but laments Schwab's gradual reversal of its Covid-inspired work at home policy. I believe it's now gotten through to him that if he really wants promotion and more responsibility and ultimately higher compensation, then he'd best get his ass back to the office where Schwab can eyeball his leadership skills. No management in its right mind will pay for what it cannot see.
“ "The connection between narcissistic personality traits and wanting people in the office full time is not coincidental — it’s causal."
"In one experiment, we got leaders to reflect on the role that a bold, assertive ego played in the success of Steve Jobs as Apple’s chief executive and Larry Ellison as Oracle’s.”
Well, those examples make narcissism look pretty good.
“ Working at home should pay less. It takes substantially less effort and sacrifice from the employee, and that's why you get paid - for sacrificing something.”
No, you get paid for what you produce. If you can produce more from home than from an office, that’s where you should be.
"Why he just didn't go travel round the world is beyond me. He was just one of those people who dont have a life of the mind."
I retired when I was 67. A few years later, I got a call from my old boss, asking if I might be interested in coming back to do some work on an upcoming project. When it was finished, they found another one to work on. And then another.
I didn't keep doing them because I don't have a "life of the mind" but rather, because I like doing the work. It's not full time - I can work when I want and I don't have to go into the office when I don't want to. One of the guys I work with is the same age as me, I've asked him why he doesn't retire and he basically said "What am I supposed to do, sit around and wait to die?"
Different people make different choices.
And to relate this to the thread topic, I might see my boss two or three times a month, mostly it's just "Good morning!" in the hallway. None of that "looking over my shoulder" stuff going on here.
They are worse when they are working at home. They are beset with boredom, fatigue and interruptions.
This is true. I worked from home in my own business while my new office was being remodeled. (Financial advisor/planner/investments). It was very distracting. There was always something to do at home that would catch my attention and side track my thoughts and tempt me to take care of. Regular household duties. Hmmm...maybe I should thaw out those steaks...get up and get distracted in the kitchen. God, those shelves need to be dusted! The cat deciding that my computer keyboard was the best place to lay on. etc etc.
Incoming phone calls from the business line and incoming calls from our personal line. Noises from outside the home. People coming by the home. Chores that my office assistant would normally handle (like scheduling appointments, returning calls if I was talking to other clients...etc.)
My productivity was off. My concentration was off. And this was MY business.....not someone else's where it wasn't top priority.
Plus...in an office environment, being with other people not only keeps you focused on the JOB...it allows you to network with the other employees, come up with new or better ideas and also have some camaraderie with other people....instead of being alone at home.
I know it's just my personal experience, but my work group was substantially less productive when we were sent home during the pandemic. We simply didn't have access to the computer infrastructure, and other tools, that we needed to do our jobs. (Most people don't have powerful computers and screaming fast internet at home) It was very frustrating not to be able access all the data and programs that we had on the computers in our offices. And yes, it was obvious during our online staff meetings, that a lot of people had tumblers of beer or wine with them. Personally, I couldn't wait to get back to my office at the theme park.
I think that this issue hit peak silliness when Governor Newsom ordered the California State employees back to work this year (5 years after the pandemic ended) and they refused to come back claiming that the state was legally required to do an environmental impact study of the effects of everyone returning back to their offices.
RCOCEAN II said...
"but I'm not looking over your shoulder to make sure you're working."
Ironically, modern software makes it totally possible to monitor everything an employee does while working at home. They can monitor your keystrokes, see exactly how much you move your mouse and they can even use your web cam to monitor your eyes to make sure that your mind isn't wandering away from work. (And they can verify how much time you took for lunches and breaks)
So the argument that your boss only wants you at the office so that they can monitor you better is moot because of this new monitoring technology. (Especially, now that an AI can actually watch you 100% of the time.) If your boss is that big a control freak, your being at home can't stop them from watching everything that you do all the time.
A boss who needs to hover over employees to make sure the work gets done needs to be fired. That boss has failed at hiring good employees.
The generation that is perfecting 'quiet quitting' is insulted that their bosses might think they're not getting their work done? Huh. Who would have seen that coming?
Organizations work better when you have all parts working together, seeing, hearing, exchanging ideas together- in person. It's also much healthier to be around others than it is to live in your own world. Take it from someone who worked remotely for decades, long before covid made it a trend.
When you are together, you create bonds, relationships, and push each other with a blend of ideas and approaches to a project or a problem.
We learn from each other in action, in real time. Not from a text. Being there in person is very different from an occasional zoom meeting, which is about as personal as a telegram. (look it up).
Most supervisors, directors, Veeps, CEOs, etc, do not want you around so that you can marvel at their greatness. That's nuts. People are tasked with getting a company to produce, move forward. The best can motivate entire companies of people to do great things, and in turn, get more skilled at their jobs and gain value for themselves in the marketplace. It's hard to move a group forward when they are scattered to the wind with their attention focused on things outside their window.
I have written it many times- any office job you can do from home can be done from Mumbai.....or from a data center in Virginia.
So much depends on the work culture. When an emergency (not COVID) deprived us of our offices, it took my group just a couple days to regain function. We it put it together on the fly across homes and a vacant conference space. Other groups in the company, particularly predominantly female ones (sorry, but it’s true) simply ceased to function.until dragged back to it. Leadership counts. Just don’t confuse management with leadership.
I know two very conscientious people who work from home for Washington state. The abuses, laziness, and absurd fragility they recount in stories about their co-workers is absolutely amazing. Neither led nor managed.
Now that the young Brooklyn slackers are winning elections (even outside the borough), there's nothing the Times won't do to pander to them ...
"No, you get paid for what you produce. "
In practice, that's just not true. Most workplaces don't accurately measure output, or even try. Visible effort, time spent working, work habits, These are what employers pay individuals for, because, except in the most mundane tasks, you just can't measure output of individuals accurately. What you appear to be accomplishing is the proxy for output. In fact most employees hate being measured on pure output, and such jobs have high turnover.
A.I. works from home, and doesn't have distractions.
As one YouTube comedian said “we can’t oversee you unless we can see you”
I have never been sympathetic to wage earners/salaried employees. I have almost always worked on some sort of commission basis where my earnings reflected what I produced for the company. Those jobs were always primarily face-to-face with no working from home.
What an incredibly easy life it would have been if I didn’t have to commute by car and plane, and if my income was not tied to performance. It would not have made me a better person.
Nice to have a job that's directly tied to performance. But we all cant be salemen. Somebody actually has to provide valuable goods and services.
You could put all the salesmen and lawyers in a boat and sink it. And we wouldn't be any poorer.
“I have written it many times- any office job you can do from home can be done from Mumbai.....or from a data center in Virginia.
Doesn’t even matter anymore. Any office job you can do AI can do better.
After years of working from home due to to Covid, they ordered us back into the office four days a week. My entire team works from other locations. I work with people in California, Texas, South Carolina, Jordan, Armenia...there's not a single person I need to interact with that works in my office. I come in, I sit around doing my Teams meetings, I do my work, I go home. Sure, I walk around and look at people, but I don't know any of them. I can't just start up conversations with strangers who do completely separate work, there is no team-building for me, no company spirit, we have nothing in common except that we work for the same corporation. Turnover has been pretty high so the people I knew from before Covid are mostly gone, and the rest have transferred out or work from somewhere else. My boss is 2700 miles away, I don't interact with people higher up, I don't get invited into in-person meetings because my team is self-contained and works in a very specialized area that doesn't require all-hands or town halls or conferences in order to remain productive.
I spend hours each day on the bus and I pay several hundred dollars a month for the ride. I used to wake up and be ready to work in fifteen minutes, now I get up two hours earlier. My chair and monitor and keyboard and mouse in my house are better than the ones in the office, the lighting is perfect and doesn't make me twitch from the unfriendly fluorescents, the temperature is just the way I like it, my fridge and oven are steps away not 21 floors down, and when I go to relieve myself I don't have to smell another person's shit and hear them fart and I don't need to touch every door handle with a paper napkin. I used to take breaks and walk around the neighborhood and look at the trees and breathe the fresh air, now I need to exit the giant glass skyscraper to smell the rank odor of pot that's common on the streets these days and have to worry about a mentally deranged person stabbing me in the neck. So I just stay in the office, at least the people are clean and nice inside and the air doesn't smell too much like corporate carpet and plastic.
I'm less productive at work now and more stressed and anxious because of it. I have less money and time. I can't find a remote job that pays anywhere close to what I'm making and have a mortgage and other bills, and I'm too old to start over. The best five years of my working life have been turned off like a switch and I just need to gird down and wait for retirement which is only three years away. Only.
During Covid we had a pep-talk via video and our CEO came on and he was inside his boat. It was a decadent vessel, full of fine leather and expensive art. He told us we were going to get through this tough time together. I walk around the office now and rarely see the executive suite occupied. Before Covid that guy and his friends were in the office round the clock. Now...not so much. Sometimes I sit on the bus and imagine a North Korean submarine pulling into the Montauk Yacht Club and turning all that fine leather and art into flotsam. My grandfather told me once I was a disappointment to him because I was too much a dreamer.
Black Bellamy said...
[...]
Some unsolicited advice: if your circumstances are really that terrible, try being active about changing it. Talk to your boss and lay out a case for an exception to policy; consider changing jobs; consider moving. You only get one life to live, don't let yourself be a victim.
I'm just a worker bee but I would have far preferred to return to the office after COVID. The company I work for decided to convert everyone in our small office to WFH. My wife was also WFH but we had not anticipated that situation when we bought it in 2014 and had no suitable space for a second office. I retired as soon as I could after that.
Results are all that matter. Steve Jobs is dead because he was into new age medicine.
This work remote or not debate is a white-collar luxury.
Anyone who wants to accomplish anything is mentally ill.
The kind of work which can be done remotely is information work. Measuring by "seat time" has some correlation to output but there are more accurate ways of measuring the quality and quantity of work being done.
Lazy managers, like seeing people present who appear to be working, because that's easy. Managers who are insecure, just like to be surrounded by subordinates, because it makes them feel important. Managers who retained none of what they learned in Econ 101, feel like it's wasteful to have a big beautiful building sitting nearly empty. It's not wasteful, it's a sunk cost.
My mom used to say "The world doesn't owe you a living."
And your company doesn't owe you a job. If the place you're working for isn't being run the way you think it should be, go find a job someplace that is.
"except in the most mundane tasks, you just can't measure output of individuals accurately. What you appear to be accomplishing is the proxy for output."
This is true, I think - you can't measure output of *individuals* accurately. This is why the COVID experiment is important: it wasn't about individual productivity or output, it was about entire organizations. In order to assess whether any particular employee will be more or less productive in or out of the office, you have to set standards and measure them. And yes, many people hate being measured like that, and that will affect retention and, presumably, quantity of work.
At my husband's last job, at a pretty good-sized place-based private foundation, the head of the grants team was blithely certain that there was absolutely no way to set efficacy targets for the grants they made - they had loose 10-year plans, and they never even checked up on those. It took my husband three years to convince the organization otherwise. And once he did, it quickly became clear that one of the grant categories was accomplishing exactly nothing with the money they gave out.
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