Edit: Changed to a non-plagerizing link
A hard truth is that if you see an executive pushing return to office, you know one of two things about them. One of the following is true.
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They are terrible at finance and don’t understand the sunk-cost fallacy. They have to keep using that building they bought; they’ve spent so much on it and simply can’t bring themselves to sell it.
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They’re a sexual molester. They’re someone that uses the power of their position to coerce sex out of their employees. Fucking their employees is their primary motivation for not retiring early right now. You can’t coerce your secretary to give you a blowjob over Zoom.
That’s really it. They’re either bad at business or they’re a sexual predator. If you see an executive pushing return to office, be sure to ask them which one of these they are. Because they’re definitely one or the other.
- Tradition.
- Belief that work-from-home is less efficient.
Those are both covered under ‘bad at business’.
As well as being a sexual monster. A lot of tradition is built around reinforcement of sexist gender roles.
So
- They’re morons and terrible at business.
- Remote didn’t work as well for the company.
- Remote didn’t work as well for any number of people at that company.
Found the executive.
We have work from home, i have gone to the office twice this year. But it is true it didn’t work for everyone. Some left because of isolation factor, some fired because without anyone watching they just could not self motivate. In some case in-office meetings are way more productive, and you get those moments when a coworker overhears your convo and chimes in with something relevent that you would never have connection on in WFH
“Isolation factor” = you talk to people all day and don’t actually do anything productive
I was being sensitive, we had some employees struggle mentally with being alone and without interaction. Some people did not have partners at home, so work was their contact with the world. With that gone, issues arose.
But I get your point, I prefer work from home because I get twice as much done without the daily interruptions of "Hello, how are you, wanna see pictures of my jetski, did you watch the game? (Me: game?, I don’t even know what game they mean)
While there are a few that work better in an office, the overwhelming majority work better at home. Why should we force everyone to suffer for the handful of folks who can’t self-motivate at home? We don’t bend over backwards to cater to people who say, have auditory issues that make working in a crowded open-plan office debilitating. We tell those folks to go die in a fire if they can’t handle an office environment. Plenty of people can’t work in an office, but that was never been seen as an argument to get rid of offices.
Honestly I think your first point is just a subset of something larger and even more basic - “we’ve always done it this way. Change is scawwy. Different bad. Are you implying I was wrong before?” Etc.
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how will landlords who own all the buildings in business districts get paid, then? do you want their properties to stay empty? do you just want them to starve?
Just an FYI, most commercial real estate is owned by massive corporations because they’re the only ones with enough money to build and own skyscrapers. Most mom and pop landlords are residential and they own 4 units or less. It’s very rare for an average, even a wealthy average person to own more than a couple of commercial properties that they rent out. Corporate landlords are very much a big reason why WFH isn’t the standard.
Work, and society in general, isn’t meant to make us happier.
Right, remember that whole line of the American dream? Life, liberty, and the pursuit of quarterly profits.
Fuck you.
Fuck me? I didn’t invent this…
I’ve observed that work seems to be a system to transfer money from millionaires to billionaires through the working stiff’s paycheck.
Oh my god! None of us had any idea that’s how it worked! That’s such a revolutionary observation! We should all just internalize it as an unchangeable thing and accept life ever steeper decline towards a feudalist hellscape!
You’ve offered nothing, but you managed to offer nothing from a pedestal. Maybe just don’t say anything, rather than assume everyone but you can grasp the basic and obvious realities of the situation. Or are you implying we all just roll over and take it?
Have you considered therapy? You sound mentally ill.
Got any other cliche’s, or do you have anything real to add to the conversation?
why so hostile?
Why so subservient?
It fuckin should be. We are all here for a blink of an eye on a spinning rock next to uncontrollable chaos. Let us enjoy the ride and quit squabbling over which idol is right or who has the most manufactured wealth.
Correct. I am merely relaying my observations.
Working from home has been the default for the last few millenia. Who would have thought that it could make people happier?
Little do they know that worker happiness is considered the enemy of productivity.* Plus, it’s harder to micromanage them when they’re at home.
*By employers, not the workers, obviously.
I don’t get this.
When I was unhappy at my last job I was way less productive.
Now I’m enjoying my new job and spend my time solving real technical problems and building real projects.
I was considering taking a pay cut just to leave my last job it had gotten so toxic. You can pay employees less if they’re otherwise satisfied.
It doesn’t make sense, but here we are. We are all individuals with our own strengths and weaknesses, yet workers are considered fungible. If you are dissatisfied and quit, you’ll just be replaced by someone else.
Well, it makes most of us happier. There was a minority of people who were very unhappy about remote working and who were eager for everyone to be forced back into the office. Not me, but there were some people.
I must say I am happiest with hybrid. As someone living alone I start to chew the furniture with my work happening in the same space as my leisure. I do love the flexibility, the fact that I can literally just make lunch and eat it rather than dealing with a wet lunchbox sandwich. But I do like to see other people, and an entirely remote lifestyle makes me go a little crazy
Respectable, I’m the opposite, whenever in at the office I feel like I’m clawing at the walls to get out as quickly as possible, the sweat, the noise, the people, it’s just not my thing, at home I live alone in a decently sized apartment in a non-major city and it feels so cash compared to rammed trains and buses commuting for hours and hours like the last chopper out of Saigon.
It was managers, especially middle-managers. And if they are not happy, no one can be happy. Too bad middle-managers are always unhappy.
Just gaining back all the commute time everyday is such a huge bonus for me. Nothing at an office can compare to that alone. And I get to add in a ton of other nice bonuses from being at home.
It may seem silly, but aside from commuting time the biggest advantage for me was being able to use my own bathroom. No bidets in the office washroom!
I thought we were social beings… With that said, ofc I would be happier with remote work only.
Spending hours to commute to be around people you don’t choose isn’t necessarily a particularly social experience
We are social, and being close to other people you know while being told to shut up and work is a bit grating. Bonus points if they also say it’s because we’re family and building community.
Oh and also btw you’re disowned from the family the moment we deem there’s a slight financial upside
For 4 years we studied water and came to the conclusion that water is made of water. And it is liquid. And wet. But we aren’t sure about wetness because of some intricate terminology nuances.
I both agree and disagree with the conclusions in the title…
I agree that for many people, they’re happier, and likely more productive, working from home.
I would also agree that for many different people, working from an office makes them happier/more productive.
It entirely depends on the job, who you are, and the work culture. Some places are toxic and working from home to get away from it is helpful for job satisfaction. I’ve known people who simply focus better when they’re at the office since they have a lot of distractions at home. I know for me, the opposite is true. at home, I’m in control and can limit exposure to distractions, and I can be more productive, more comfortable and overall less unhappy with my job.
IMO, this discussion is less about what companies want, whether work from home or hybrid, or in office … The main conclusion that we should be driving home is that different people need different environments to do their best work, and be happiest with their particular job. To put it simply: workers need to be able to choose.
Until we’re at the stage where employers care less about how, and where you do the work, and they care more about the work getting done… We’re going to keep going back and forth on this.
I like to work from home. That’s me.
I know people who prefer to work from an office. There’s plenty of people who feel they work best from the office.
There’s plenty of people that need to mix between home and office work.
Bluntly: as long as you can do the work from where you’re working, and how you’re working, the rest should be flexible. We’re (presumably) adults and professionals. If we’re given work and we’re being paid to do the work, then we will do the work. We don’t need to be constantly supervised by middle management like toddlers.
Add to this that your preference may change as your life does. Lifestage makes a big difference.
I like to work from home. That’s me.
And there is, as it turns out, a lot of people like that. Doesn’t actually mean everyone is like that. But it does mean that being given this option, we, as humanity and as workers, are happier.
Your reply reminds me that “I’m not pro-life or pro-choice, I just want people to be able to chose do they want to have an abortion or not”.That quote is funny because the statement is clearly indicating that they are pro-choice.
In business though, workers are not often given a choice. You either work from the office, work x days in office and y days from home (hybrid), or only work from home.
90% of the employers that I am aware of, give one of these, maybe two (usually in office and hybrid) as options; usually only one option (in office). A few wfh companies I’ve worked for do all wfh, which is great for me, but anyone who wants to work from an office, can’t.
By giving workers a real choice, you open the company up to a much larger pool of people who are willing/able to do the job. If they’re local to an office and want to be in office, cool, set it up. If they’re not but they prefer wfh, cool, set it up.
In my experience nearly zero employers provide flexible work options. It’s usually one of the three, and if you’re lucky, two of the three. It is exceedingly rare to be given all three choices.
Tl:dr “Nah-uh, not me.”
I am more productive and less depressed working from site and if i work too much from home I get depressed and adhd kicks in and paralizes me.
I don’t see how it benefits everyone not to allow people to work from home at the same time.
This is me too. I love my home. I’ve lived here a long time and have made this my ideal little place on the planet.
I can be ridiculously hyperfocused and productive on my personal hobby projects at home. However, I cannot get jack shit done for work. I still like to work from home fairly often, but I go into the office on a regular basis. Fortunately, I live close to the office.
Not that shocking. Hell, there are millions of Americans who would kill just to work indoors. Office work is the envy of every farm and trade worker with aching feet and knees and various injuries they have to nurse while they labor. Working at home??? It’s absolute luxury.
Office work is the envy of every farm and trade worker
This isn’t exactly true. There are, believe it or not, people who prefer to work outdoors and do heavy labor. Especially farm work. Some people aren’t really suited for office work. (pun intended)
A bit disingenuous to skip the part where their bodies are falling apart and they’re in constant pain.
This makes the false assumption that office workers don’t incur work related repetitive task injuries. Every lower class job, whether in an office or a field, comes with its own bodily injury index.
Yeah you cut off half of what I said and then argued with a different statement
No shit.
Too bad that happiness is banned in the USA…
What a silly thing to say. It’s merely prohibitively expensive. I mean, reasonably priced and readily available for those that deserve it.
D E S E R V E
All in a monthly subscription service.
I thought it was a pay-per-smile subscription…
Oooh we didn’t think of that. We just changed it to a subscription that you then also pay an a la carte fee for. This is somehow better for the consumer because of reasons.
Yea sucks, they banned compassion and kindness too
Happiness breeds self esteem, self esteem breeds confidence, confidence breeds learning. Education, confidence, self esteem, and happiness are all antithetical to fear and obedience. We’re much easier to rule if we’re stressed out. Plus, the real reason for return to office is real estate value. It has nothing to do with worker morale or productivity.
To be fair the pursuit of happiness in and of itself is an uncatchable carrot used to push the capitalist agenda. Happy moments are like sprinkles on a doughnut, few and far between. Contentment is what we should really be shooting for.
Even better is if we all got a monthly allowance and not have to work full time. 😆
Naive to think that those who set the prices won’t just adjust the baseline to absorb the entirety of your monthly allowance.
Better to just establish a system of community property that equitably shares and distributes necessities and the means of producing goods or providing services without the need to satisfy an arbitrary profit incentive of some private individual who will put their greed over your needs out of a sense of entitlement gained from their private ownership over such means.
yah, because I’m not working lol
I work longer hours at home pretty often. At 5 I leave office to make sure my 1.25-1.5 hour drive gets me home at a decent time, and to make sure I miss the worst traffic which I feel happens between 5:30 and 6.
At home I can just keep working, load up a game on my other monitor but keep working open too,and switch between doing some minor game stuff and back to work. I have a game up now at 7 and wrapped up my notes quite comfortably.
I’m also more alert at home because I sleep in more, getting about an hour more sleep.
