The Viral Economy

[LawBeefaroni]

Amazon has become the latest major company to mandate a full return to in-person work, post-pandemic.

Starting Jan. 2, corporate staffers will be expected to be in the office five days a week, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wrote in a memo to employees on Monday....

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/18/amazon- ... -week.html



A line in the sand momemt. If a few more big companies are able to pull this off, the rest will fall like dominoes.

[ImLawBoy]

I'm mentally preparing to go back to the office full time at some point next year.

[LawBeefaroni]

I'm still 3 days ITO for the foreseeable future but office space consolation may see my main office move to the suburbs. Which means a hellish 45-90 minute commute each way vs. the current leisurely 20 minute drive/bike ride.

[Smoove_B]

Employers that force people back are dinosaurs:

Employers who force staff to return to the office five days a week have been called the “dinosaurs of our age” by one of the world’s leading experts who coined the term “presenteeism”.

Sir Cary Cooper, a professor of organisational psychology and health at the University of Manchester’s Alliance Manchester Business School, said employers imposing strict requirements on staff to be in the office risked driving away talented workers, damaging the wellbeing of employees and undermining their financial performance.

It comes after Amazon said on Monday that all its corporate staff would be expected to work from the office five days a week from 2 January, as the latest big global employer to demand a strict return to pre-pandemic practices.

“Unfortunately some organisations and companies are thinking of trying to force people back into the work environment five days a week. I think they’re the dinosaurs of our age. The old command and control type management style,” Cooper told the Guardian.

More:

Some business leaders have expressed concerns about the scale of the changes, saying they could damage job creation and the economy. However, the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, told the Times on Monday that he wanted to end a “culture of presenteeism” that was holding back the economy.

“It does contribute to productivity, it does contribute to [staff] resilience, their ability to stay working for an employer,” he said.

Cooper said the “overwhelming evidence” was that flexible working created higher job satisfaction levels, better retention of staff, and could help drive up workplace productivity.

“Reynolds is absolutely right,” he said. “Working longer doesn’t lead to productivity, but more ill health.”

Clearly not an American viewpoint, but still important.

[Isgrimnur]

It's a way to get people to quit so you don't have to fire them and pay severance or risk running afoul of the WARN Act.

[LawBeefaroni]

It's also a way to keep the commercial real estate bubble from bursting.

[Kurth]

It’s also a way to build a cohesive team. I don’t love in-office mandates. I hate them, actually. But I do understand the conflict: We should have a flexible work situation where people come in to the office enough to (1) do their jobs; and (2) be a part of a team with shared goals, pulling in the same direction.

For many jobs, remote work does nothing to impact (1). For many jobs, remote work is highly detrimental to (2).

I’ve now been at a job where the company was mandating return to the office and one where it’s not. I get how companies are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Once employees get to do their jobs from their sofas in their pajamas, taking their dogs for walks on breaks and dropping off/picking up their kids from school, they are NOT going back to the office unless ordered to do so. I used to be in the “if you build it, they will come” camp, thinking that if companies could just make the workplace environment compelling enough, employees would want to come back. But I think I am more or less disabused of that notion. Free lunch and parties and whatever bread-and-circus approach companies take is not going to trump how great it is for employees to work from home. It’s just not.

But I also think it’s wrong to think that companies trying to get employers back into the office are just stupid dinosaurs or looking to prop up the real estate bubble. Remote work is not without significant costs. From my perspective, the problem is that (1) is not enough. Doing your job is not enough. You need employees who care about each other and care about the enterprise. You need people who are willing to buy into an enterprise view and work in service of the enterprise, not just their little role or fiefdom within the enterprise. Remote work is isolating. It is disconnecting. It stands in the way of making personal connections with your colleagues. It can also be a huge obstacle to career advancement: If you love your role and never want to do anything other than what you’re doing, doing it from your sofa in your living room is probably not a huge problem for you. But if you want to advance in a company and network and possibly take on another role in the future, it’s helpful to make personal connections with people at work. Your manager. Their manager. Your peers.

It may well be that there’s no putting the toothpaste back in the tube, which is what these return to work mandates kind of feel like. But that doesn’t mean that the reason behind them isn’t legit in some ways. Remote work - as is - is not going to cut it.

I’m not sure what the right path forward is, but I think the future is not going to be the 5 days in the office bullshit that Amazon is demanding right now or the work-from-anywhere remote ideal that lots of people are trying to hold on to. There’s going to have to be another option.

[gbasden]

I think my company is doing it the right way. We have a choice as to working in office, at home or hybrid. My team is scattered across the western seaboard. But the company also invests in bringing the team together in person at least quarterly if not more and giving us meaningful work to collaborate on together even if we are remote. We have what I think is a very tight knit team even though we are working from home most of the time.

[waitingtoconnect]

I think it's got to be based on business requirements. Blanket rules don't work.

And for companies with teams distributed about the world or country already having them in an office will not magically make things better. Where I work many teams will have only one person in a particular region and often if they work from home they will adjust their working hours to suit the team overall. In the office they can't do that.

[LawBeefaroni]

I’m not sure what the right path forward is, but I think the future is not going to be the 5 days in the office bullshit that Amazon is demanding right now or the work-from-anywhere remote ideal that lots of people are trying to hold on to. There’s going to have to be another option.

The 2-3 day ITO hybrid seems to be the most common answer.

[stessier]

I think it's got to be based on business requirements. Blanket rules don't work.

And for companies with teams distributed about the world or country already having them in an office will not magically make things better. Where I work many teams will have only one person in a particular region and often if they work from home they will adjust their working hours to suit the team overall. In the office they can't do that.

This. We have multinational teams - where they sit has no effect on the team given that no two people on the team are in the same place. Conversely, our manufacturing plants have to be in the office for most job functions.

[The Meal]

I’ve worked in industries with employment at radically different ends of the age/experience spectrum. Current I’m in a young (inexperienced) industry, and WFH is not what’s best for developing these engineers’ careers (but probably best for their physical health, and debatably worse for their mental health). In previous worlds, with an aged workforce with work habits already well formed, WFH was a godsend.

There are no blanket answers.

[LordMortis]

There are no blanket answers.

This is what it looks like from the bleachers.

[Smoove_B]

There are no blanket answers.

There is no one right way to work.


....though there are plenty of wrong ways

[YellowKing]

I'm fortunate in that my company was doing remote work long before Covid. So for a good chunk of our employees, there is no office to actually go back to, even if they wanted to shift direction.

[LordMortis]

My old company was doing WFH for the commercial team so they could get more work done and still be at the plants and at the customers and exploring the market. Then it they found out how great it was to allow sick people to continue working while sick or on vacation, so everyone got a MFA remote access that wanted one but they weren't supposed to be on any WFH routine. Then COVID hit so we went to a stress test to see how well a system explicitly not designed for all WFH would handle 100% WFH. We never came back. The state went to essential onsite only the next week. When I retired, enough sanitation was put in place to allow voluntary onsite work. My old boss said everyone must be in the office with their department one day a week, with 5 departments occupying five different days, nowadays. Aside from that in the office is at the department head's discretion. Some people's lack of high availability while WFH is putting their jobs in jeopardy but to my knowledge no one has lost their jobs... yet... Also, the company head has long said that while he would do butts in seats, because he sees the value in the work from ITO, he will follow the industry, which suggests Auto OEMs aren't pushing for in ITO yet.

[GreenGoo]

But I also think it’s wrong to think that companies trying to get employers back into the office are just stupid dinosaurs or looking to prop up the real estate bubble. Remote work is not without significant costs. From my perspective, the problem is that (1) is not enough. Doing your job is not enough. You need employees who care about each other and care about the enterprise.

To play devil's advocate here, Why not? Why is doing your job not enough? It's the very definition of what you were hired to do, and you're doing it.

And to be fair, it's 2024, many corporations hire and fire on a whim, and the workforce is equally ready to job hop from 1 to another. And that's corporate America's fault, not the workforce. Employers stopping caring long before the workforce did.

[LordMortis]

Devil's advocate on the other side (which I don't actually agree with): Companies were built on your desire to work and grow with a company that must grow or die. Being at work is how you will be more invested in the growing with the company, contributing more, and being part of something.

All the things a company sells you, right up until it's time for cut back suddenly behind the scenes where growing together and being a "family" are a bit less important unless you are the sort of family cuts your children or grandparents loose to make sure distant rich relatives who helped out other distant relatives get on their feet have enough wealth to be happy about.

I do think most people grow and learn and contribute more to an office in the butts in seats environment but as Meal said there are no blanket answers.

[GreenGoo]

Devil's advocate on the other side (which I don't actually agree with):

We all witnessed many of your workplace and career experiences. At no point did we hear that your employer valued you. At all. If anything you were expoited mercilessly, and your fear of being unemployed (we all have this) and of change (most of us have this too) kept you in place. So yeah, I bet you don't agree with the other side of things.

[YellowKing]

It's definitely another case of "one size doesn't fit all" when it comes to employee loyalty. I've worked for companies that I truly feel did care about me. And I've worked for companies who didn't give a shit if I dropped dead, as long as there was someone to pick up the slack and not affect their bottom line.

I have a hard time aligning with Kurth's view in general because I feel like in this country, more corporations are more interested in making sure their CEOs can make their yacht payments than they are in making sure their employees have a good work-life balance.

[Kurth]

It's definitely another case of "one size doesn't fit all" when it comes to employee loyalty. I've worked for companies that I truly feel did care about me. And I've worked for companies who didn't give a shit if I dropped dead, as long as there was someone to pick up the slack and not affect their bottom line.

I have a hard time aligning with Kurth's view in general because I feel like in this country, more corporations are more interested in making sure their CEOs can make their yacht payments than they are in making sure their employees have a good work-life balance.

I hear this. I’ve seen this. My former employer went from being a company that people loved to work for because they were part of an enterprise-wide effort and felt valued to a company dominated by a disassociated board and a terrible, disconnected CEO who wormed his way in from outside the company, never really understood what the company was about, and jetted around on our company private jets and then laid people off by the thousands to increase profitability. He was hated. And (as of today), he is out!

But that’s not really relevant to this discussion about WFH, in my opinion. That guy was bad for the company and bad for its employees, but the fact he was a bad CEO doesn’t really change what it means to be a good employee. Sure, someone’s desire to be a good employee is significantly undermined when they have no confidence in leadership. That’s a justification for not caring enough to be a good employee. It’s not all that relevant to whether you can really be a good employee in your role at your company in a WFH situation. Those things are disconnected.

[Kurth]

But I also think it’s wrong to think that companies trying to get employers back into the office are just stupid dinosaurs or looking to prop up the real estate bubble. Remote work is not without significant costs. From my perspective, the problem is that (1) is not enough. Doing your job is not enough. You need employees who care about each other and care about the enterprise.

To play devil's advocate here, Why not? Why is doing your job not enough? It's the very definition of what you were hired to do, and you're doing it.

And to be fair, it's 2024, many corporations hire and fire on a whim, and the workforce is equally ready to job hop from 1 to another. And that's corporate America's fault, not the workforce. Employers stopping caring long before the workforce did.

Acknowledging the validity of the “one size does not fit all” cautions already posted, generally, speaking, no. It’s not enough.

Doing your job and nothing more is a recipe for a siloed environment where no one cares about the overall enterprise. That’s not conducive to success, at least, not once a company grows to a certain size. We’ve all probably worked with people who clock out at 5:00 PM on the dot and won’t do a thing once they’re off the clock. People who refuse to pitch in and help out when other people need help because it’s not their job. People who won’t do a thing that’s not explicitly required of them in their job description. Those people are generally toxic to a positive work environment. They are the antithesis of a team player. I would never, ever want a person like that on my team.

It’s also fundamentally bad for workers. People who treat their jobs that way close themselves off from opportunities at every turn. I think they are also, more often than not, consigning themselves to a life where they are disassociated from their teammates and disconnected from the greater context of the work they are doing.

[waitingtoconnect]

Anyone remember the Jetsons It envisioned a very relaxed future...

George Jetson's work week consisted of an hour a day, two days a week. Despite this, everyone complains of exhausting hard labor and difficulties living with the remaining inconveniences.

[stessier]

Anyone remember the Jetsons It envisioned a very relaxed future...

George Jetson's work week consisted of an hour a day, two days a week. Despite this, everyone complains of exhausting hard labor and difficulties living with the remaining inconveniences.

I'm assuming you got that from Wikipedia - the source was an episode from 1985. The 1960s version had him working 3 hours a day, 3 days a week (I just started rewatching ). His job was to push a single button. And he'd come home exhausted.

[Brian]

I work support for a large energy company, about 50-60% of which includes remote offices and field workers all along the pipeline.

About 80% of my job is done via remote desktop/Teams/Phone. The other 20% is for folk in the headquarters, where I am located, or processing laptop deployments/returns which necessitates being in the office.

There are three of us plus a temp contractor. I am 100% in the office except for a couple of short WFH stints while I was recovering from surgery (two weeks in January and two weeks in June) or during a Covid quarantine for a week.
My primary co-worker has been WFH for the last four months due to medical issues and is looking at another four months before returning to the office.
The third employee is strictly in the office to handle laptop imaging and hardware requests and does little to no troubleshooting or remote support. The temp contractor is strictly there to image machines for our asset refresh cycle.

If/when my primary coworker returns to the office, we could easily go to one week office/one week WFH schedule like the service desk folk do but I don't think it's ever going to happen.
So, it's good to know we CAN do it when needed.

All in all, I'd much rather WFH because I'm more productive, I don't get interrupted by walk-ups and drive-by's, and all the nice ladies in the office who insist on giving me candy when I visit is starting to have an impact on my waistline.

[YellowKing]

The Jetsons thing reminds me of a time when I had to pull a night shift at the help desk where I worked. We were remediating a computer issue that was going to take all night. The night shift guy Bobby is sitting there watching TV and surfing the internet the whole time. No phone calls, no visitors, nothing. Dead quiet.

The phone rings around 10pm, Bobby answers it, helps a customer. We work for several more hours, it's dead quiet. Bobby has watched two Netflix movies and read every website in existence. It's now like 3 in the morning. The phone rings again. Bobby stands up, completely irritated, and says, "Goddamn phone's been blowing up all night!!!"

[GreenGoo]

I'm assuming you got that from Wikipedia - the source was an episode from 1985. The 1960s version had him working 3 hours a day, 3 days a week (I just started rewatching ). His job was to push a single button. And he'd come home exhausted.

And a sense of entitlement and resentment when no one at home appreciated his sacrifice.

[GreenGoo]

Acknowledging the validity of the “one size does not fit all” cautions already posted, generally, speaking, no. It’s not enough.

Doing your job and nothing more is a recipe for a siloed environment where no one cares about the overall enterprise. That’s not conducive to success, at least, not once a company grows to a certain size.

I'm not a lawyer, so maybe things are different in a law office with a partner track, for example.

People are getting paid for their competency and output, not for caring. IT especially is just skillsets being bought and dumped as needed, they just happen to have people attached. I'm sure R&D needs coordinated and leadership driven work, and I'm sure there are others, so I concede there are times when a cohesive team is beneficial. However, for most of the day to day grind that keeps a company moving forward, caring about anything but the quality of your work is not necessary and potentially detrimental.

Not to mention the personality conflicts that arise when groups of people get together. All this talk about how great it is to get everyone together seems to overlook the exhausting time wasting that happens when a manager has to manage personalities at odds with each other.

And speaking of silos, I happen to work for a department that is ridiculously silo'd. I can't recall what the original plan was, but the end result are silos. Does it matter that a silo is made up of a 3 member team rather than individuals? Not really, at least in my case.

I happen to care about the quality of my work. I have no say and have found it better not to worry about the overall success of the organizations I work for. It keeps frustration at poor decision making to a minimum.

[Isgrimnur]

We’ve all probably worked with people who clock out at 5:00 PM on the dot and won’t do a thing once they’re off the clock.

If they're clocking out, they're hourly. And if they're hourly, working off the clock is a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act and gets corporations sued.

[TheMix]

I learned a long time ago that companies don't care about their employees. Not really. Maybe in some vague sense, but there is no loyalty.

So I'll do my job to the best of my ability. I do want the company to succeed. Because I like getting paid. But I'm under no illusions. I won't kill myself for the company. At the moment I like the leadership of my company. They seem nice. They seem to "care". But I also know that no one is irreplaceable. And they will do what they think needs to be done for the company, regardless of whether it hurts employees.

Anyone is welcome to call me jaded. But I will consider myself a realist.

[gbasden]

I learned a long time ago that companies don't care about their employees. Not really. Maybe in some vague sense, but there is no loyalty.

So I'll do my job to the best of my ability. I do want the company to succeed. Because I like getting paid. But I'm under no illusions. I won't kill myself for the company. At the moment I like the leadership of my company. They seem nice. They seem to "care". But I also know that no one is irreplaceable. And they will do what they think needs to be done for the company, regardless of whether it hurts employees.

Anyone is welcome to call me jaded. But I will consider myself a realist.

Yes. I like my company, my direct leadership and the executive leadership, but I'm under no illusions that they care about me in any meaningful way. I'm another disposable cog in the greater gear.

[Carpet_pissr]

I learned a long time ago that companies don't care about their employees. Not really. Maybe in some vague sense, but there is no loyalty.

So I'll do my job to the best of my ability. I do want the company to succeed. Because I like getting paid. But I'm under no illusions. I won't kill myself for the company. At the moment I like the leadership of my company. They seem nice. They seem to "care". But I also know that no one is irreplaceable. And they will do what they think needs to be done for the company, regardless of whether it hurts employees.

Anyone is welcome to call me jaded. But I will consider myself a realist.

All companies? Wow, that is a bit...broad. In my experience, the ones that REALLY care are the small companies. Once they get to a certain size, it's just rhetoric and corporate culture bs when they talk about caring about employees (again, IMO). Also, actions speak louder than words. Do they pay above average salaries? Full IRA match? Full healthcare? More than average days off or holidays? Gym memberships? Some of that could just be to prevent turnover, but again IMO, the ones where it's not JUST corporate bs propaganda treat you right.

[Alefroth]

Is that really caring, or have they just realized they get more out of employees when they treat them well? In other words, a business decision.

[ImLawBoy]

Can it be both?

[Alefroth]

Can it be both?

Sure, but it would be really hard to confirm either way.

[ImLawBoy]

I think that companies in general value their employees at a macro level, but less so on a micro level. They realize the importance of having a happy, satisfied workforce. They are also ruthless when it comes to things like layoffs that harm the individual.

[edit]I should qualify that this is how I think large companies work. I think mom and pop operations likely value individuals more.[/edit]

[GreenGoo]

I think that companies in general value their employees at a macro level, but less so on a micro level.

That just sounds like a generalized, maintenance level of "caring". Which is perfectly fine. It's better than some alternatives. Not being facetious.

However, this could also be said: I want the factory floor working smoothly, but if one machine gets pregnant, replace it for "reorganizational" reasons.

Of course not all companies are the same, but the major employers tend in this direction.

And as Mix said, I care if my employer does well, insomuch as I like to get paid, and if they don't do well, that's likely to be impacted.

I wrote more but realized I was rambling so dumped it in the bin.

[Zarathud]

Depends on the mom and pop. I have seen some family businesses where the employees are playthings for the owners. Others treat their employees like (or better than) family.

I’m torn on work from home. Some of the personal inefficiencies in my day come from getting interrupted with questions/calls, but in the firm’s view the value added in getting those lines of communication and networks set up is critical to the business. Mentoring and education doesn’t happen well remotely, but the personal happiness and life balance from time shifting is real. In the end, the law firm depends on collection of billable hours. But at the same time that cash comes from networks and opportunities that often develop in person.

Personally, I think 4 days should be enough to get the in-office stuff done.

[Carpet_pissr]

Is that really caring, or have they just realized they get more out of employees when they treat them well? In other words, a business decision.

That's true. Those things could be implemented just to prevent turnover, and possibly have nothing to do with how The Company(TM) feels about their employees.

Better example: how the company treats its employees when it sells is probably the best way to actually know. I've been through both extremes on this (and in the middle) and the differences were glaring. Again, in my personal cases, the larger the company, the less fucks they actually gave about the individual employees.

And to the point about how small companies can be horrible too, yes, I had a co-worker that came from a local Mom and Pop before working with us. One day at lunch, she just started talking about the things she did at her previous job, and how they treated her, and seemed to be processing things out loud, ultimately saying "but they were good people (the owners)".

I flat out said "Based on what you just told me, they were objectively not good people. It sounds a lot like they took advantage of you, and your personality (this was a very sweet, nice, but not so bright girl), and treated you like dirt."

I saw something register on her face, then we left it alone. A few days later, she came to my office and said "I've been thinking about what you said the other day about the owners from my last company, and realized that they were assholes. I guess I was trying to put it (for myself) in the best light, but really looking back on it, they treated us like they owned us, and it was a pretty horrible experience and place to work. Thanks for being so direct with me about that!"

[waitingtoconnect]

Anyone remember the Jetsons It envisioned a very relaxed future...

George Jetson's work week consisted of an hour a day, two days a week. Despite this, everyone complains of exhausting hard labor and difficulties living with the remaining inconveniences.

I'm assuming you got that from Wikipedia - the source was an episode from 1985. The 1960s version had him working 3 hours a day, 3 days a week (I just started rewatching ). His job was to push a single button. And he'd come home exhausted.

In an 80s kid - I watched the 80s episodes when they were new. I remembered it was one hour a day from then but did confirm with Wikipedia.