Of course it’s not about collaboration. But companies are worse than pre covid with the on office stuff. I know someone at another company that said a senior manager sits by the door to see who is leaving “early”. Like 5 minutes early. Seriously what is going on? All the big companies are doing it. Spending money monitoring stuff that you thought went away in the early 2000s.
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The best is when your department is required to be in office, but new hires are remote out of state.
I remember when we had desktop computers because laptop computers were too expensive and reserved for executives and travelers. Then starting around the bird flu scare in 2009 it seemed there was a reversal and laptops were handed out to everyone. We were encouraged to wfh to ensure we had could work remotely. We also had flexibility during the day. Snow days meant we could gone in late or leave early. No issues. Now it has all reversed again.However we lost our flexibility. This is all companies.
Gave me another chance to get more videos around the office. The ones I have and looked at before covid were getting kind of tiring too look at. Probably hundreds worth actually.
@k9 executives and elites are angry that we successfully proved the corporate monuments to them (offices) have no place in a modern world. Their metal and glass phallic symbols are a relic of a bygone era.
It's almost as is someone has some kind of anger about things about something.
Shutting down buildings and being hellbent on location strategy. Very strict with remote etc.
My goodness I see they still haven't let off the pedal neither with that.
Its too it seems that this whole rto thing is some kind of 'punishment' for something too.
Generally agree about the rest, but WF clearly doesn't care about CRE. We have been breaking leases and dumping properties at a loss on a large scale for years now as part of the downsizing strategy sometimes euphemistically called the Location Strategy. For every Hudson Yards or exec self serving pet project or tax shelter office there's dozens and dozens of buildings getting dumped no matter what the loss.
@by Exactly. Which is why I'm still holding out hope that all the ridiculous scrutiny will end after enough people are gone and WF can start operating like a normal professional workplace with salaried workers again instead of whatever the eff this is.
RTO is we-ponized to increase attrition and reduce PTO payouts. It is demoralizing and counterproductive.
@ax Maybe this is why the elite are so cool with inflation at the moment. They need to force people to want money.
they want people to quit or to give managers easy reasons to fire them. that's the sole reason for all the RTO rules and monitoring.
@a5 maybe after Covid people realized work was way less important than they thought it was. Not gona get fixed by rto.
This is why I hate it when people say “well we were 5 days in office before COVID”. Yes, but back then we also had a lot more flexibility instead of all of the strict monitoring that we have now, so even if we had to show up to the office more often we could just go and do what needed to be done in our personal lives without having to worry about how many hours in a given day we show up on a report.
There was also more of a sense of purpose to being in the office then, unlike now when all meetings are on teams anyway. Somehow I have more coworkers in other locations now than pre-Covid, despite the strict location strategy.
And by the way, it was a lot easier to afford gas, childcare, and other RTO essentials back then. Costs have gone up exponentially while most get 1-2% increase if lucky enough to keep job.
These companies are trying to turn back the hands of time. Technology has long solved many issues related to remote work. In the long run this RTO will not work and the C-suite knows it.
The SMARTEST executives (and they are less than 1%) will see this disruption and acquire the best talent and let them work remote if possible. It will entice the best from competitors who are miserable with RTO.
Obviously, Wells is nowhere NEAR bright enough to figure this out but some sharp minds will. It's the commercial real estate they're holding. That's the issue. Hasn't a damn thing to do with collaboration.
Because productivity is slumping, and these firms need increased productivity per worker to maintain profit growth. So they're trying to force people to be more productive by gluing them to seats and screens.
It's not going to work, but that won't stop them from trying to force it to.