> The point is micromanagement and needing to justify the large office spaces they invested into.
Justifying office space is not a useful business strategy. I think it’s best to treat people you disagree with as reasonable and consider what their motivations could be. In this case I think it’s clear there is one big one—-productivity. It’s clear that some people (not everyone!) use remote work as a way to do minimal work (see r/overemployed). Moreover there are some benefits to in person collab in terms of being able to discuss things quickly and rely on people to be there.
And I say this as a remote worker who loves it and never wants to RTO. But I don’t assume the other side is acting in bad faith, I think there’s pros/cons to both. Mostly remote work is great, but not always. Sometimes my teammates randomly don’t respond to me on an urgent issue and I have no recourse. Sometimes they aren’t making progress on work I am counting on and I can’t tell if they are even working.
Being able to jump into a zoom call with everyone immediately outweighs trying to book a room or walking over to someone's desk. I can easily waste more time and look like I am working in the office where at home it's hard to coverup nothing has been done.
There has been some bad faith over hiring and then forcing rto to avoid termination payouts. We see Musk plans to do the same even moving government offices to states like Wyoming.
Most companies are not bad faith actors just copying others.
Funny, I find the expectation of having to immediately join ad-hoc zoom calls, interrupting me while I'm busy working, to be a pretty huge negative.
I miss being able to look over and check to see if someone was busy before interrupting them. I also miss being able to read body language during meetings and not having to stare at the camera the entire time or having people talk over each other repeatedly due to network delays.
Justifying office space is not a useful business strategy. I think it’s best to treat people you disagree with as reasonable and consider what their motivations could be. In this case I think it’s clear there is one big one—-productivity. It’s clear that some people (not everyone!) use remote work as a way to do minimal work (see r/overemployed). Moreover there are some benefits to in person collab in terms of being able to discuss things quickly and rely on people to be there.
And I say this as a remote worker who loves it and never wants to RTO. But I don’t assume the other side is acting in bad faith, I think there’s pros/cons to both. Mostly remote work is great, but not always. Sometimes my teammates randomly don’t respond to me on an urgent issue and I have no recourse. Sometimes they aren’t making progress on work I am counting on and I can’t tell if they are even working.