Asshole asking everybody but himself to do a hard thing, because he feels like it.
This tone-deaf entitled management bullshit is so, so exhausting. There's no way to answer his empty argument - "I just know its right". Well, good for him.
The real reason I believe? He's worried his bonus will be impacted, so he makes the easy call - casually screw everybody so he can sleep easier about his $1M christmas check.
Management makes decisions without data all the time. I understand people are personally invested, but sometimes it feels like people can't think about it, and it's all just motivated / wishful thinking.
It's a bet in a way, if they're wrong, they will be "punished" by market forces.
Reminds me about how India 2016 demonetization https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonet... where the argument was this will curtail black money with no data to support over a decision that affect billions of people. There were deaths related to this “I think so” moments
This is exactly what it is in some cases. Bonus. I know about a company where execs bonuses are now based also around how many people they can get back to the office. Of course they are pushing for it.
OK I'm being naive here so educate me - surely the company wants people to produce more, so they need to create those conditions. If they bring people in, some will leave and impact productivity. So management should be careful about pissing off workers - especially with language like this exec has used - they should be doing what works and letting people have flexibility and choices.
As I said I'm being naive, so I am missing something from their way of thinking.
Some execs feel their employees are less productive when remote. There isn't a non-gameable way to measure productivity. I can tell you with certainty who on my team is getting the most stuff done any given week or across a year, but I can't provide data as to why.
If you can't actually show it from concrete evidence, then your certainty may actually be an illusion. I have worked with busy-beaver devs who created as many issues as they fixed, in effect making no impact to the quality of the product, and with three-toed sloth types as well, who took a while to get the work done but after it was done, it stayed done.
there's a simple solution to this: pay more for in-office. If it is really more productive, you'll get your money's worth.
I DO NOT CARE if I am theoretically more productive in the office. My price is my WFH price, and you're paying for the amount of productivity you get when I work from home.
If you need more productivity at my depressed WFH wages and nobody will come into the office, enjoy the discount on labor and hire more bodies to make up the difference.
I am mortal and my company is not, therefore, -I- get to decide how productive I am, and the market can set an appropriate price. If you don't like the price, don't hire me! I won't be losing sleep.
For me it's very easy to measure. When working remotely, I do all my tasks, and if I finish before the en of sprint, I sometimes add something from the backlog I planned to do anyway. When working from the office, I do zero tasks, because the moment someone mentions RTO I change jobs.
It’s hard to measure productivity in a non-gameable way at scale no matter where people are. Manipulative social climbers excel at faking productivity in person.
IMO with layoffs and RTO these companies have shown us their priority is to manage towards mediocrity and predictable business model over excellence/innovation. Those who can will leave. But that won’t hurt the company IMO, who will get plenty of “good enough” folks to join the ranks to keep the lights on.
I suspect eventually this will bite them. It already bit Google with ChatGPT who decided their priority was executing on a search business over other ways of accessing information.
But these are juggernauts companies that can f around a long time before they find out.
> IMO with layoffs and RTO these companies have shown us their priority is to manage towards mediocrity and predictable business model over excellence/innovation.
To be clear: that's always been the case.
Large enterprises prioritize predictability over excellence. That's the entire point of bureaucracy: you add a floor a the expense of also having a ceiling.
For sure. Though pre-covid, I wouldn't say many of these companies (at least perception wise) thought of themselves in those terms. They were perceived as the cool-hip tech companies that constantly disrupt industries... Now that veil has lifted.
Google fell behind ChatGPT well before they laid anyone off, forced RTO, or anything like that. They fell behind Zoom before the pandemic even happened. Having an "engineer-driven" company doesn't mean it executes well on products.
There's so many issues with large companies demanding people to return to the office, so it's at least somewhat refreshing to hear "do it because I said so", but this just isn't going to work in the long run. The toothpaste can't be put back into the tube. And this is because anyone who worked in-person at the office of a large tech company knows it's markedly worse.
For meetings, the process typically was:
1. Try to book a meeting room for a group large enough, succeed about 80% of the time and scramble at the last minute other times.
2. Wait for someone to finish up their call. If someone super senior was in the room, my meeting was guaranteed to start whenever they felt like ending their meeting, which would be 5-10 minutes late.
3. Inevitably dial into a video conference because at least one member of the team is working in a different office, so not even everyone was in person anyway
4. Run out of time at the end and having to dash to my next meeting room late.
And this doesn't even account for the fact that getting quality heads-down time in an open office floor plan was nearly impossible.
Just take the good with the bad. Make in-person meetings mandatory for important events that require in-person collaboration like design sprints, brainstorming, launches, etc.
The phrase "Disagree and commit" only makes sense when two peers (or groups thereof) agree in discussing a decision in equal terms, and committing to whatever the decision is.
Of course, the way it's used here is a perversion of an otherwise useful principle.
"Disagree and commit" is also the core of Lenin's "democratic centralism" (there with a claim of adhering to the idea of discussing it on equal terms first). As you say, it can make sense in small groups, but in larger groups it quickly becomes a means to demand compliance by controlling when the debate is shut down (conveniently when you have the upper hand)
>>> The phrase "Disagree and commit" only makes sense when two peers (or groups thereof) agree in discussing a decision in equal terms, and committing to whatever the decision is.
Where does the "disagree" part come in to it then?
You disagree while discussing, but (ideally) you agree in advance that there will be a) a mechanism for making a decision (e.g. voting, coin flipping) and b) there will be a commitment to work on the decided approach as if it were one's own.
The opposite tends to result in endless discussions: people don't get to work in their full capacity - they still seek rebuttal, sneaking in their preferred approach, etc.
Two peers is maybe too small a group. Take 5, 4 of which think one way and 1 another. A decision must be made by end of day. By the end of the day, the outlier may not be convinced, but they should "disagree and commit" to working toward whatever the decision is.
Every message of this sort gives me the distinct impression that I'm being lied to. I can't shake the feeling that they have a reason, but they're not willing to tell it to us because we would dislike that reason even more than no reason at all.
If there's an unsavory reason, I think it's one or both of:
1. Employees slack more on average working from home. Employers want people stuck in a work-only place where they're monitored. Same as how open offices replaced cubicles "for cost reasons." I've seen evidence of this at my job.
2. They're heavily invested in physical offices in particular cities already, so much that they alone can sway the same real estate market they're invested in, and it's not a sunken cost yet.
Talking to many CEO's of mid size companies, it seems to be an extension of point 2. They have received many tax incentives from the cities in which they are located, based on the employees they have there. With WFH, the cities are threatening those tax incentives.
Typically the tax incentives are deductible property tax, except sales tax, or some type of city provided R&D subsidy to help with state level taxes.
We received these back in 2010 with a 175 person game studio and we had 3 different cities pitching for us to move there. I have received outreach on even just a 5 person company. I can only imagine what cities will do with large employers.
If 1 were true and remote employees were slacking there would be data to show that. If important work isn't being done there's going to be clear evidence of that happening. I suspect it's the second reason, plus power tripping.
IMO the answer is so boring that it defies belief.
People who like being in charge pursue jobs where they're in charge. When you're a manager and you can't look around and see your minions hard at work, you don't feel like you're in charge.
I feel the same. I mean, if I heard "I want you back so that we can control you better" or "We're afraid you are doing side jobs", I would be probably as mad at them as now, but at least I would feel some respect for them being honest.
I mean, really, why should I feel any loyalty if I know (and they know, too!) I'm lied to?
People ascribe all kinds of bad motivations (ego, stupidity, etc) to execs who want a return to office but there's a much more obvious and reasonable explanation - if your job consists of sitting in meetings all day, work is much, much more enjoyable if you're in office.
No amount of money (that anyone would be willing to pay me) could get me to sit on Zoom all day.
Except that in any size of company, your meetings are going to be conference/video calls (at least for some of the participants) anyway. Fortunately, I'm mostly not but a lot of the people I work with are on video calls most of the day.
I'd rather solve this problem by organizing the work day so that it's not meetings all day long, rather than requiring people to go to the office to waste time in presence.
I believe we are seeing the last few "twitches" of "Office work". Work from home (for office type work) is here to stay and will never leave.
I feel loneliest, when I'm at the office. Even if just one person for a meeting is at home, EVERYONE just logs in for the online meeting. It's handier, better organized, make meeting notes together, etc, etc.
So beeing in the office for such meetings means I need to find a quiet spot, or alienate everyone in the call with a noisy mic.
And when I'm actually trying to get work done, I remember why open floor office's are hell.
No sorry, WFH is here to stay. In fact, I do believe we have crossed a threshold where it just cannot be stopped anymore.
Readit News
This tone-deaf entitled management bullshit is so, so exhausting. There's no way to answer his empty argument - "I just know its right". Well, good for him.
The real reason I believe? He's worried his bonus will be impacted, so he makes the easy call - casually screw everybody so he can sleep easier about his $1M christmas check.
It's a bet in a way, if they're wrong, they will be "punished" by market forces.
we live in age of monopoly, market forces no longer punish. in 1990's there were twice as many companies registered on the stock exchange as today
== Everybody who does not want to go to the office, the shareholders and others involved but NOT the one making the decision based on nothing.
There is no punishment for the individuals making bad bets.
As I said I'm being naive, so I am missing something from their way of thinking.
I DO NOT CARE if I am theoretically more productive in the office. My price is my WFH price, and you're paying for the amount of productivity you get when I work from home.
If you need more productivity at my depressed WFH wages and nobody will come into the office, enjoy the discount on labor and hire more bodies to make up the difference.
I am mortal and my company is not, therefore, -I- get to decide how productive I am, and the market can set an appropriate price. If you don't like the price, don't hire me! I won't be losing sleep.
They have an employee who has been with them for years, currently kidnapped by Hamas to Gaza[1]. They won't even acknowledge it.
It's a crazy thing not to acknowledge, not even in internal forums.
1: https://www-geektime-co-il.translate.goog/amazon-aws-employe...
I suspect eventually this will bite them. It already bit Google with ChatGPT who decided their priority was executing on a search business over other ways of accessing information.
But these are juggernauts companies that can f around a long time before they find out.
To be clear: that's always been the case.
Large enterprises prioritize predictability over excellence. That's the entire point of bureaucracy: you add a floor a the expense of also having a ceiling.
For meetings, the process typically was: 1. Try to book a meeting room for a group large enough, succeed about 80% of the time and scramble at the last minute other times. 2. Wait for someone to finish up their call. If someone super senior was in the room, my meeting was guaranteed to start whenever they felt like ending their meeting, which would be 5-10 minutes late. 3. Inevitably dial into a video conference because at least one member of the team is working in a different office, so not even everyone was in person anyway 4. Run out of time at the end and having to dash to my next meeting room late.
And this doesn't even account for the fact that getting quality heads-down time in an open office floor plan was nearly impossible.
Just take the good with the bad. Make in-person meetings mandatory for important events that require in-person collaboration like design sprints, brainstorming, launches, etc.
Of course, the way it's used here is a perversion of an otherwise useful principle.
Where does the "disagree" part come in to it then?
The opposite tends to result in endless discussions: people don't get to work in their full capacity - they still seek rebuttal, sneaking in their preferred approach, etc.
1. Employees slack more on average working from home. Employers want people stuck in a work-only place where they're monitored. Same as how open offices replaced cubicles "for cost reasons." I've seen evidence of this at my job.
2. They're heavily invested in physical offices in particular cities already, so much that they alone can sway the same real estate market they're invested in, and it's not a sunken cost yet.
Typically the tax incentives are deductible property tax, except sales tax, or some type of city provided R&D subsidy to help with state level taxes.
We received these back in 2010 with a 175 person game studio and we had 3 different cities pitching for us to move there. I have received outreach on even just a 5 person company. I can only imagine what cities will do with large employers.
People who like being in charge pursue jobs where they're in charge. When you're a manager and you can't look around and see your minions hard at work, you don't feel like you're in charge.
It's really that simple.
I mean, really, why should I feel any loyalty if I know (and they know, too!) I'm lied to?
No amount of money (that anyone would be willing to pay me) could get me to sit on Zoom all day.
But is that someone else's problem?
I feel loneliest, when I'm at the office. Even if just one person for a meeting is at home, EVERYONE just logs in for the online meeting. It's handier, better organized, make meeting notes together, etc, etc.
So beeing in the office for such meetings means I need to find a quiet spot, or alienate everyone in the call with a noisy mic.
And when I'm actually trying to get work done, I remember why open floor office's are hell.
No sorry, WFH is here to stay. In fact, I do believe we have crossed a threshold where it just cannot be stopped anymore.