Remember how clean the air was when most people were working from home?
But shareholder value is more important.
Good luck to this woman finding good employees. Good employees have a choice.
“Why don’t people want to hang out with me?”
“My only friends are people on my payroll.”
“People don’t want to hang out with me unless I pay them”
Unfortunately, there is no shortage of sadistic people like this who bond together just fine.
Does she think sleepless nights are going to improve mental health?
I am in general a big proponent for going to go to the office, I am an IT guy, and I find I have more focus when in the office, I also don’t want to associate my home with work, I need the physical separation and I find it to be easier to coordinate with others in the office.
That being said, this CEO is stupid, loneliness is not cured by being forced to interact with people that I need to be paid to interact with.
I also realize that just because I find the office beneficial, does not mean I get to dictate how other people should feel about it.
I completely respect your position. Some people genuinely like the office life and it’s totally fine!
Personally, I have never had any boundary issue with home being used for work. I have my own office room that is also my hobby room that I made as I like, so it’s a very nice and quiet space, and I love working there.
Besides the obvious aspects of this post which are quite dumb, what that person misses is that by working from home I finish to work at 17 and at 17.01 I am free to go meet people. Cutting commuting time frees quite some time for personal life and not to mention working from home is associated with more flexible work too, like doing some chores during a break etc., which frees up even more time.
Same here. If I could I’d only WFH, but we only get a few days a week. I don’t have an issue disconnecting mentally from work. However, I think a big contributor is I don’t exactly hate my current job. I sometimes surprise myself how easily and quickly I switch off.
My TL on the other hand prefers the office, probably because they have two young kids, who can be quite loud and require lots of attention.
A completely sane viewpoint that respects the different needs and preferences of others? Weird.
I was a manager at an aerospace company for a bunch of years, just recently retired. One of my takeaways was that, like so many facets of managing people, there’s no single right way to do WFH. I had employees who could WFH 100% of the time, with increased productivity and increased morale. I had employees that fit OP’s description and were super lonely during the pandemic because their whole social life revolved around work. I had employees who preferred WFH, but were much more productive when they could collaborate in person.
I was frustrated that my company insisted on implementing one-size-fits-all solutions, which eventually became 100% RTO. I thought it would have been most effective to let managers decide what worked best for individuals and teams. For many of my employees, I would have asked for a hybrid arrangement, where they came into the office two days a week, with one of those days being common to the team and one being flexible, and the ability for anyone to come in more than that if desired. But I also had employees who either didn’t have a collaborative job, or they collaborated with people at different sites (so had to do virtual meetings anyway), and those people I would have said could 100% WFH.
I couldn’t work from home but I really like coworking spaces.
Rather than having to commute all the way to the main office I have an office located 5 min away from home.
This way I do have an office, coworkers but without the long commute.
“Hard truth I learned as a CEO: Sometimes you have to lie to get what you want, regardless of reality and facts”
Anyone who thinks more work gets done in the office is an idiot, or lying.
Eh, it depends. I find that there is a benefit in highly collaborative projects or in an environment where training is a component.
For instance, a lot of data showed that junior staff productivity tanked as they didn’t have the mentoring opportunities that they would have had in a full remote environment.
right now I am hiding in a call booth in my office on our one in person day a week because the rest of the office is singing along to achy breaky heart while two junior employees throw lifesaver mints at each other.
Where the fuck is the boss?
one CXO is playing the music, the COO hides in the corner by the swag storage, the CEO has a private office not connected to the main bullpen, the two VPs don’t care or are joining in
At that point, it sounds like the group’s culture that you’re in isn’t a good fit for you, and I can understand your frustration that you have to go into work to suffer this.
eh it’s one day a week and I’m respected and appreciated in other contexts it’s just the one day because the boss is convinced it enables the team.
I am the team lead and architect for my group. We have green engineers and interns. The other day my team was publically acknowledged as being one of the most productive and well oiled teams because of the detail I put in. On a weekly basis I am doing mentoring activities and 1 on 1s with everyone. And I still find time to be writing specs, design documents, code, and hour of meetings.
It requires very little effort. What I have found is that the vast number of leads and managers just aren’t good at teaching or helping others. It’s not a face to face issue. It’s soft skills, logistics, and actually wanting a good team issue. All I am doing is the opposite of what all my bad managers did.
Maybe, but I find that my staff benefits from several daily discussions and that interaction generally doesn’t happen over the Internet. My staff are more proactive at asking me questions if I’m physically there than over Teams.
We solved that with a party line. Most days we have an open meeting we all sit in that makes natural talking easier. We chit chat and bring up work issues as is we were sitting next to one another. It is totally voluntary, some days its just me alone in the call. Other days none of us are even muted.
Do many people get mentored in the office? I have worked for decades and have never been mentored.
Edit: I assume random, one off comments don’t count as mentoring. “Don’t put your feed up on the desk” isn’t mentoring right?
In my industry, it is very common. It is generally accepted that a large part of senior staff’s time is reviewing the work of junior staff to make the work better. A lot of that requires teaching junior staff how to perform the work correctly.
Depends on the career. As an engineer I really wish we’d quit our decentralized bullshit and just form a guild or union so that after university you join an official apprenticeship rather than find a job looking for people without experience willing to train. The whole x years of experience is often really asking how much mentorship do you need and are you able to lead projects.
Between interns and junior engineers, I’d say I am doing about 0.5 to 1 day a week of 1 on 1 work with all of them. Sometimes it’s direct problem solving and other times it’s going over topics they are interested in. The last few weeks have been on development processes and workflows, time management and getting things done, presentations and soft skills. I even helped one work on interviewing.
If I can train them to be amazing at their next job chances are they stick around longer and do great things here.
I could spend 3 hours a day on a train and do teams meetings in the office, or i could not do 3 hours a day on trains and do teams meetings at home.
I was paying £550 a month in train tickets before covid freed me
It amazes me that leaders don’t get this. My office is filled with separate one-sided calls and it’s unbearable. Furthermore I’ve not been in a meeting without Silicon Valley listening in in at least 5 years.
They do get it but they don’t care. They want you to be uncomfortable and miserable because it keeps up the value of their commercial real estate portfolio .
Also tax breaks. Many large corpos negotiated city tax breaks for bringing a certain number of employees into downtowns. If those numbers don’t meet minimums, the tax breaks go away.
Any we all know how much time, effort and expense a business person will go through to avoid paying $1 in taxes.It makes sense, but what would be even more valuable for real estate is if we gave up on crampt open plan offices and give people some space 😅
Time to go back to the office and have still all meeting online with extra background noise. Looking for a quiet corner to be able to hear others properly is great for my mental health.
Also the office life improves my soft skills, like:
- walking with my laptop open im my hand with a headset on to find an empty meeting room
- sharing desks with annoying co-workers from other departments
- enjoying other peoples conversations about their lunch plans from the other side of the open plan office
- fighting for the thermostat setting and opening/closing the windows
- embracing the daily multi-hour commute in rush hours
It really builds character.
Your office windows can be opened ? Luxury!
After writing that I feel I may need to clarify that I mean actual physical windows in an office building, not some self opening Microsoft product.
Your office has 11 windows?
It used to have 95 windows, but times have changed
I had 10 Windows, but those were the last I ever need. Now have penguins.
This made me chuckle :)
My first job shoved me into a tiny room that’s maybe 10 C hotter than the rest of the office. Anyone who wandered in would go “Wow it’s really hot in here! You guys should talk to building management!”. I swear the damn office nearly gave me heat stroke.
“Hard truth” she just made up to fit her own narrative without recourse to facts.
I suspect this is mainly because almost all of the CEOs I’ve met are workaholics, and being “at work” is the only way they can self-validate.
And remember, most of them are dark-personality traits, which explains why they cannot understand why you don’t want to go in
This person probably goes to the office and sits in her own private room by herself, because she can’t focus with the loud plebs on the big open office floor
This person arrives at 10, has a 1.5hour lunch, talks loudly around other people, leaves at 2 because needs to pick up the dog from the dog sitter, complains people are never in the office, only shows up 2 days a week if you’re unlucky, 0 days if you’re lucky.
Don’t forget all those “networking” trips out of town.
Or go to a bar and say hi to people who are hanging around. Compliment someone’s jacket. Tell someone that their whole aesthetic is cool as fuck. Comment on the weather. Become a part of your local environment and interact with your fellow humans. Join a hiking or hobby group.
Work is actually one of the worst places to get your social enrichment. You’re significantly more likely to change jobs than cities and your innie is less likely to feel like your true self. Furthermore there’s a baseline mental taxation of being at work that doesn’t come with being in a social environment. And nobody’s going to come up to you at a social event and tell you to get back to work.
Or go to a bar and say hi to people who are hanging around. Compliment someone’s jacket. Tell someone that their whole aesthetic is cool as fuck. Comment on the weather. Become a part of your local environment and interact with your fellow humans. Join a hiking or hobby group.
Nah, I’m good thanks
Fair enough, it will help with loneliness though. And I’ll acknowledge it’s hard and awkward at first, but it’s a skill and it’s one I think many people would appreciate developing. It’s like getting in shape but for the social part of the self.
Even if I felt lonely, none of those things are how I would start talking to anyone.
When I’m in public I wish to be left alone. It would be a violation of the Golden Rule for me to start talking to randos about their outfits or the weather.
lmao. ikr. Extroverts just don’t get it. 😔
Ah yes. The lament of the middle managers with nothing to do. They feel threatened because it turns out they weren’t needed after all.
I work from home, and my manager works from home also. He’s not even in the same country as me.
Not all middle management has a thing for insisting people work from the office.
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Managers of technical people are required, but in an efficient organisation there is no need to have layer to manage those managers.
Every single one of my jobs in the last 5 years or so has stated that remote work has undeniably increased productivity and output, as well as general morale.
Many of them have sold all their offices so they couldn’t even RTO if they wanted to.
For some reason one of them still keeps the 7 floor office building and even a receptionist and security guard…despite about 5 people working from there on any given day. But hey, whatever.
Lots of leases are for 7-10 years, sometimes more. They’re likely contractually obligated to keep it for now. The sunk cost on that is at least part of the reason why RTO was being pushed so hard.
Tons of office leases have expired since lockdown times and weren’t renewed. Not a lot of them left, and that’s why RTO mandates have waned. Still get a few “the cruelty is the point” people like what’s in OP.
Ah I should have clarified, they own the building. But otherwise yes, you’re right.
That might be why, then. Nobody wants to buy office buildings right now.
Yes yes… RTO is all about restoring the productivity and mental health of the worker. Ignore the declining property value of commercial buildings. Tell me again who stands to gain the most by increasing commercial property value? Ah yeah that’s right; Billionaires. Interesting, at the bottom of every social problem we seen to find a billionaire.
Where is this energy during lay off season? No issues witb potentially 90k hours of social bonding gone to provide better executive bonuses.
Yeah, when I’m looking for sound mental health advice, I ask a CEO. Doesn’t everyone?
What if it’s the CEO of mental health
CEOs almost never have the skills and experience in actually doing the work of their company. I and other techs have had to do IT work for the CEOs of our IT support company. Plus one of them accidentally opened a phishing email.
Even worse. A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.
