Bosses mean it this time: Return to the office or get a new job! — As office occupancy rates stagnate, employers are giving up on perks and turning to threats::undefined
worker: Gets new job
Employer: Shockedpikachu.jpg
Yeah, companies that are sticking to optional office attendance are going to snap up the best employees. Look for innovation coming from them.
This exactly.
A year or two back there was an article about companies trying to return to office- the CEO of some upstart engineering company had a quote like ‘every time one of our competitors announces return to office we kick our recruitment into overdrive. We get all the best people that way’.The companies that push return to office aren’t going to keep their most productive and intelligent workers. They’re going to keep the ones who can’t find anything better.
It’s really kind of funny… this is a combination of short-sighted management who think that being able to physically see their employees working somehow makes them more productive, and real estate- lot of dollars invested in commercial real estate and CEOs don’t want to admit their flashy new HQ in Silicon Valley was wasted money.
This is why big business and the government want a “mild” recession so badly…unemployment is below 4% right now so employees have the upper hand in a lot of things (wages, union negotiations, working from home). Push the unemployment back to 8% or so and big business is hoping the workers lose most of their leverage on these issues.
I wish I could say you’re wrong and that’s tinfoil hat paranoid… but sadly maybe not.
Right now there’s a resurgence of the workers rights and unionization movement, and low unemployment helps push that. Businesses need their employees more than the employees need their employers and the smart employers are skimming the cream of the crop.
I don’t think federal government gives a crap but local governments in business districts are pushing return to office as hard as everyone. They see their (way overvalued) commercial office districts sitting empty, and every worker that doesn’t commute is a worker not riding the metro / buying Starbucks / buying a paper / otherwise stimulating the downtown economy.
Smarter cities are starting to realize that their downtown property values are a fucking bubble that is not sustainable, and they’re exploring turning office space into desperately needed apartments. But that takes time and isn’t easy and it involves hosing a lot of commercial real estate developers and their investors who invested on absurd property values.
Fact is though- real estate (especially in downtown districts) is a bubble that’s long due to be popped. There’s no valid reasons humans have to cluster together like that, the country’s more than big enough to spread people out and not have people paying through the nose for shitty apartments.
Regarding the unionizing, for me, a big push towards it was seeing what’s happening in many companies without one. A good union can help in so many ways. I’ve seen the writing on the wall with some situations that have happened over the last 5 to 10 years. Bad companies are trying to remove a lot of worker protections, and it feels like we really need to remind them that they aren’t invulnerable.
My union for example, has some of the best employment lawyers in the country, and we don’t have to pay on the spot if we need one. Previously, fighting a wrongful dismissal over unsafe working conditions would have taken time and money that many of us don’t have. Now, we know we won’t be screwed.
I would argue that a good company should want a union. They protect and guide both “sides”, and if they’re doing everything right, a union really shouldn’t be a hassle for a company to deal with.
I heard a great quote once- this came from a guy running a maintenance operation for JetBlue back before they had labor issues. He proudly talked about how they paid their people well and treated them well and thus were one of the last non-union aircraft maintenance shops in the area, and in his words, ‘Every shop around here that’s gone union has deserved it’.
The problem is now the same thing it was in the early to mid 1900s when the labor movement first took off- companies view employees as disposable cogs in the machine, so the more work they can get out of each worker for the less pay, the less overhead they have to spend on adequate relief staffing and healthcare and PTO and whatnot, the better. Thus the best situation is high unemployment with desperate workers, where everybody NEEDS the job so they can balance the pay rate with hiring so people get fed up and quit at the same rate as they hire new people. And that way if someone gets sick they can just lay them off and not pay extra healthcare or whatever.
Of course that situation is great for the company, but shitty for the country. It requires a nation of wage-slaves. And that’s a bad way to run a ‘prosperous’ nation.
Of course Biden wants a recession now, that looks sooo good on the campaign trail.
/s
Give me a good reason and I’ll come back to the office. None of this “it’s more productive” bullshit. We know that one is a lie. I’m also not wasting my time commuting to an office just to support the local McDonald’s, gas stations, etc.
Your company CEOs golf buddies from the real estate business are complaining that they are losing money because rental office space value is dropping. It’s the only reason.
At some point they’ll cook up some funded research to show that remote working is detrimental in various ways and soon the 1% will demand the end of remote working, due to looming economic Armageddon. However bs science takes time.
Your company CEOs golf buddies from the real estate business are complaining that they are losing money because rental office space value is dropping. It’s the only reason.
That’s a cynical view thinking that’s the only reason. /s
Another reason may be that the company received generous tax breaks from the municipality or state to have workers working in a specific place, and now all those workers are spread out to different cities, counties, or even states, the tax man is getting angry and threatening to take the company pay up. So bosses are forcing workers back into office even though it is more costly to workers and makes them less productive.
Yeah I heard a city mayor on NPR the other day talking about ways to get people back downtown to support businesses. They need to just stop already. That’s not leadership. If people don’t want to be downtown give them a good reason. Build housing and grocery stores or something. Don’t Force people to commute.
Forcing a huge portion of the population to move to a particular area every day and then vacate it is becoming outdated, and it caused a shitload of problems anyways. Time to move on to more decentralized urban planning.
Still, they’re not passing on their savings / profits / ill gotten gains to the workers they’re trying to force to commute.
And they’ve shown they’d totally fuck the workers over if cheap (defective) robots were available tomorrow, as per their gladness to replace workers with generative AI while the tech is still sloppy.
So, they’ve established the worker‐capitalist relationship as antagonistic and strictly transactional.
They have a very good reason: control.
They have another good reason: AI monitoring such as WADU
Sure they can turn your remote camera on and snap pictures if you’re remote but what if it’s covered? Even if the cam is working fine they don’t get cameras catching you in and out of bathrooms, break rooms, etc. THAT is why they need us in office
Gasp!
Now what will head management do when they want to give random people tours of their company! Think of all the empty desk spaces potential investors might see! (That’s one thing I’ll be happy to see hopefully end eventually. The people giving the tours where I work barely know anything about any of the processes or procedures. )
On a serious note, even from the capitalism mindset, this doesn’t make a lot of sense. Even if they already paid out a lease for their building, they would still be saving on regular maintenance costs, and they would have a good reason to downsize their physical location when possible. (Saving money, long term). Fewer employees being at work may also mean fewer workplace injuries. (Saving money, long term).
It’s not a capitalist mindset, it’s a feudalistic mindset.
Same difference, tbh.
I work from home and don’t want to go back into the office. But there are a few people on my team who are MAJOR sandbaggers who are going to ruin it for the rest of us. Pisses me off.
Because we know that when you’re working from home you’re just playing TikTok and eating cheese puffs for half the day. When you’re in the office the manager can help you stay focused and get more work done. Plus, you don’t have the same kind of camaraderie and team spirit over a zoom call. I used to go into the office at my business several times a month just to tell my employees how much I appreciate them with a hearty pat on the back. Now that they aren’t there, how can I even do that? Send a back-patting emoji to them on zoom?
You can tell your employees you appreciate them with words, and show them with actions. You don’t need to touch someone to communicate you appreciate them, and frankly it’s best not to go around touching people in the workplace.
That’s too impersonal. Nothing can truly replace a good slap on the back to let my employees know that I appreciate them.
Nothing can truly replace a good slap on the back to let my employees know that I appreciate them.
How about a raise?
How about you get back to work
L for you, I’m already at work.
My partner’s employer recently tried this. He works for a mental health agency. That mental health agency has issues with compensation, recruiting, and retention. Yet the CEO insisted that everyone come back, despite the fact that productivity has improved with remote work. In fact, a lot of their patients prefer telehealth.
“Take a title demotion, come back into the office, or quit. Pick one.”
The mass exodus has been astounding. There’s no chance they’ll be able to fill in the gaps left by senior clinicians. Demand for psychologists is sky high right now, and just about every other employer pays more and allows telework.
The patients will be the real victims of this attempt at a “power play.”
“Take a title demotion, come back into the office, or quit. Pick one.”
“No, I think I’ll keep working from home until you fire me despite you dramatically altering my working requirements.”
They just disabled my VPN access and demanded I come back to the office. I had to quit at that point. I suppose they could’ve fired me for job abandonment eventually, though.
I had to quit at that point. I suppose they could’ve fired me for job abandonment eventually, though.
No, you were constructively dismissed at that point. Their choice, not yours. File for unemployment.
That was a year ago, and I got a full time wfh job with better pay in the same industry. Much happier. Should’ve left years before.
The best you can fight for is severance. It’s really bad.
Please keep us updated on this situation
It’s funny how at least American employers act like we’re not at full employment. While the market isn’t as good for employees as it was about a year ago, the employees still have more leverage than the employers.
It’s not quite that simple. The job market is pretty wonky right now. Around 180,000 tech workers got laid off at the beginning of the year (including myself) and even in high-level somewhat niche roles, I see job postings that have 300-1200 applicants.
We posted for a support team member. Got over 200 applications. Many were programmers. Some quite senior. This is in Australia.
From certain perspectives it’s very hard to feel like it’s a job-seeker’s market. Programmers clamoring for a support role is a sign of people desperate to get a paycheck.
Indeed. The position went to the most appropriately qualified for the job (great people skills, self managed, loves writing, good phone manner, etc). The overqualified / differently qualified (programmers for example) didn’t get a look in.
As it should be. But I feel bad for people who are forced to jeopardize their career to keep food on the table. The tech industry has some serious problems right now with the massive stock buybacks and executive salaries at the same time as layoff after layoff is happening. It’s all optimized for short-term stockholder value but not establishing a stable and cohesive workforce.
I’d be curious to see how many of those programmers are overemployed (working multiple jobs secretly) and just blast their resume out to every IT job.
I know that’s a thing that happens but man, I like my free time too much to imagine ever doing it.
That’s crazy. We can almost never fill our support positions. Granted, the pay is nowhere near development salaries, so why would decent devs lower themselves to support roles?
Source: been in support for almost a decade, not good enough to be an actual dev
With all those laid off people searching at the same time it’s also very hard for anyone with pretty much zero work experience on their resume trying to break into the workforce.
100%. A ton of people are being forced to downvalue their experience just to start getting a paycheck again. It’s gotta be brutal for the entry-level set.
Just wait, in about 10 to 20 years, people will be complaining that not enough young people are doing those jobs anymore. (Some people already are to an extent, lol. They probably have no idea about this though.)
What a horrible situation. I hope that everyone is able to find sustainable work. I can’t imagine suddenly losing most of my salary while being left with the same bills.
Sorry kids, not enough bootstraps to go around.*
* this will not excuse you from being held accountable for your station
I’ll go ahead and tell you. It’s absolutely terrifying. Especially when you have a mortgage. I was laid off on July 5th and took an entry level tech job just to pay the bills. I try not to think about the 49% pay cut and I’m just glad my wife and I don’t have kids.
At this point businesses have two options:
- Bite the bullet, terminate lease agreements and pay the fines associated, then advertise yourself as a full remote company and attract global talent.
- Be penny wise and pound foolish, stomp your feet, slowly hemmorage the best employees until you’re left with people whose only talent is playing office politics.
We’ll see how this plays out in the long run, it wouldn’t be out of character for the owner class to start needling their pet politicians to devalue currency even more to put those pesky workers in their place.
There is another option:
- Downsize the office to better fit with the number of people who do actually want to be in the office, either full or part time, and don’t cause a huge ruckus about people who prefer to work remotely.
At my job, most people are in the office 2-3 days a week, but there are a few who are there nearly every day. We also have some people who are remote/WFH, including a few who are remote even though they live very near by.
owner class to start needling their pet politicians to devalue currency
Literally no capital investment firm would ever do that. This severely weakens their positions for growth via M&A and limits their ability to globalize trade.
Says a person that doesn’t know the difference between “you’re” and “your”. Not very persuasive.
I see no counter-arguments in your reply.
Says a person that doesn’t know the difference between “you’re” and “your”. Not very persuasive.
My brother in Christ, there is a way to correct someone’s syntax. This is not the way.
ever heard of…typos ?
Np.
Yes.
cool
Not very persuasive.
Your sentence fragment invalidates your entire argument.
The first sentence is also a sentence fragment and the period should be placed before the ending quotation marks.
Does the period in quotation mark rule applies to quotes? I don’t think it does, but this stuff always confuses me.
It actually might be correct they way they did it since they were quoting a word rather than a complete sentence. It is indeed confusing. I figured if I were wrong, someone might correct me and I’d learn something.
“not very persuasive” is not a sentence fragment. Sentences need a subject, verb, and a complete thought.
“Don’t do that” has an implied subject of (you). “Not very persuasive” shares the same type implied subject and is a complete sentence.
Bonus fun fact, the shortest complete sentence in the English language is “I am” but not “I’m” because contractions are inherently dependent.
“Don’t do that” is a correct imperative sentence, which as your link says does not have a subject. “Not very persuasive” is not imperative and is indeed a sentence fragment.
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I highly doubt the push is due to anything but the profitability of commercial real-estate, hospitality, probably councils etc, and a range of other businesses that benefit from millions of daily customers coming to their locales — all the businesses built around a high level of centralization, and refuse to adapt to the changing world.
Micromanagement and extroverts who love the social routine are the minority being used to distract us from the scared capital.
Same. The only reason I took the role I’m in is for fully remote. If that’s gone I’m out. That being said I still go in once in a while just to get out of the house. I’ll try and go in more in the summer to save on turning on the aircon at home. If companies are reasonable so will employees.
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Well yeah, but also I think it’s just that the same people who own these businesses that people work for, and the friends and family of those people, also own lots of property much of which is office space which they don’t want to lose money. That and all of the businesses (e.g. Starbucks) and the property they’re in that partially make money from people on their way to work. And if you want to go even deeper, if people are WFM then they may not have to eat out as often, might not need to pay for a lot of things as often if they have more time.
So much money can be lost and rich people all know each other and have class consciousness, I think that’s why we’re seeing so much anti-WFM propaganda
This is the key, and it cuts in different ways and needs planning strategy.
If we don’t go into town, then the businesses associated with going to work in town are in trouble, so coffee, lunch, snack, may as well get a book, after work drinks and then late food. All have less customers. Some of whom are themselves!
So a spiral of decline, less retail jobs in town, less secondary and tertiary employment “in town”.
Theoretically we can now spend some of that money locally IF the local has the supply and this is where political strategy is needed to replan where we sleep as always where we spend our casual cash. And in many cases these dormitories are not well planned for that.
So unfortunately we need to wait out this next phase of resistance in order to build political consensus for zoning and planning for more sustainable local hubs.
What’s WFM? I usually see WFH.
Huh, yeah I meant WFH lmao. No idea why my brain decided the acronym should be WFM instead haha.
Work from homme
Work From Mansion
return to office or get a new job
I’ve chosen the latter twice and have been thrilled with the results every time
You mean you switched to a job you thought would remain remote and they too were like, “Okay, play times over. Back to the office.”?
Yep. Also turned out they owned the parking garage next to the office and were counting on us as a revenue stream
Things like this should be outright illegal.
That’s what unions are for, so that when the bosses figure out a way to turn you into a revenue stream you can say “Get fucked, suit, we’ve got a contract!”
I’d choose “fire me and I’ll collect unemployment instead of giving you a free out for finding my replacement without paying for my exit”.
This is the answer- especially if the job description explicitly states remote work. It’s a significant shift in job requirements. That can count as constructive dismissal.
Headline seems weasel-wordy.
Numerically vague expressions (for example, “some people”, “experts”, “many”, “evidence suggests”)
I.e., are most bosses doing this? 50%? 20%?
Feck off. Ill give the bastards 2 days in office, no more. I’ll sacrifice salary for personal time. As it stands, I’m considering applying for a 2nd full time remote job. And I’ll code away 90% of that work.
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Same. I don’t understand how I once tolerated 5 days a week at the office doing nothing.
Just to go sit in a warm, stuffy office to stare at tiny screens while sitting in an uncomfortable chair that doesn’t fit your stature, while people keep chit chatting around you while you try to work.
I wish I had the skillset to do a work from home job, instead with me having to do repair work I have to go in. But if I could do everything on the computer at my house I’d do everything I could to never be in the office.
Do that and I’ll find another one just to spite you.
Executives: But we have a 20 year lease on this enormous office building! You guys have to come back! Besides, we can’t breathe down your necks or waste 6 hours of your day (plus commute) if you’re at home actually being productive! Wait, why am I telling the truth? I never tell the truth. Not too my wife, my mistress, my kids, my parents, or the IRS, much less you parasites! Don’t you know how much more money I could have if I didn’t have to pay you ungrateful peasants?
Should’ve known my company would never let work from home be permanent. They own the building and the land.
Bold strategy cotton let’s see how it plays out for them.
I can tell you the headline the bossman will have in the coming months.
No one wants to work anymore
But, lets me honest, that’s basically the free square in bingo now.
No one wants to work anymore
We just don’t wanna work for people who don’t get it when so many other people do.
Natural Selection.
