I get that in some settings, RTO is a benefit. The company I work for has asked us to come into the office 3 days a week, which helps with collaboration as a large number of my team works out of...
I get that in some settings, RTO is a benefit. The company I work for has asked us to come into the office 3 days a week, which helps with collaboration as a large number of my team works out of the same office.
My husband, on the other hand, has the complete opposite situation. His company is forcing RTO and there is no benefit. Not one of his teammates work in the same office, let alone the same city or state. His one-up works 5 states away; his two-up works 7 states away; and his teammates are peppered from East Coast to West Coast USA. If he goes into the office, he is logging on to teams/zoom/Skype to meet and collaborate, which is the same that he would do at home. Why does he have to drive an hour plus in traffic to do the same thing he could do in the office at our house?
I've never once found it easier to collaborate in person than over Teams. Also, since some people will inevitably be remote while I'm in the office, the meetings all take place over Teams anyway....
I've never once found it easier to collaborate in person than over Teams. Also, since some people will inevitably be remote while I'm in the office, the meetings all take place over Teams anyway. There's zero benefit in my view, in coming into the office.
Can you explain what you mean by this? When have you been helped by "body language"? Working with people that communicate things that would affect my work through "body language" sounds like my...
Can you explain what you mean by this? When have you been helped by "body language"?
Working with people that communicate things that would affect my work through "body language" sounds like my own personal idea of hell.
But is it your responsibility to make sure the other person is not distracted, confused or hesitant? I never experienced problems with that and I have worked only a handful of days in the physical...
But is it your responsibility to make sure the other person is not distracted, confused or hesitant?
I never experienced problems with that and I have worked only a handful of days in the physical presence of my peers since the start of the pandemic. And I even started a new job at that time, the forced isolation rules hit right between the interviews and my first day.
The reason this worked is because I have been in teams where everybody is simply a responsible adult professional. If someone is confused, they just ask for clarification.
Yet in my world, the non-verbal body language communications help magnitudes in making sure that people get the message. In office, we can go from discussing the problem on the computer, pointing...
Yet in my world, the non-verbal body language communications help magnitudes in making sure that people get the message. In office, we can go from discussing the problem on the computer, pointing out physically what items are important and then being able to transition to a whiteboard or paper seamlessly to draw out items for a better shared understanding of the problem.
Sure, you can kind of do these things over teams/zoom, but as the teacher you loose important body cues when people aren't getting it. You also loose the ability for someone to just come to you with a question right away when you are available.
Having that available once or twice a week has drastically helped my team's performance improve coming out of the pandemic. I cant imagine going fully remote... nor can I imagine being in every day of the week. That in-person collab is invaluable and I have "body language" to thank for that.
By the by, it is body language -cues- not queue. A queue is a line of people like at a checkout line. No fuss <3 I'm with the guy above though that while it can be sometimes useful having to give...
By the by, it is body language -cues- not queue. A queue is a line of people like at a checkout line.
No fuss <3
I'm with the guy above though that while it can be sometimes useful having to give them or read them is not something I can actively or easily do and definitely a variant of hell for me.
Or those extremely frustrated times that you can HEAR someone typing away on Teams/Slack/Whatever and not actually paying attention. The sheer ability to be constantly available has made it a...
but as the teacher you loose important body cues when people aren't getting it.
Or those extremely frustrated times that you can HEAR someone typing away on Teams/Slack/Whatever and not actually paying attention.
The sheer ability to be constantly available has made it a frustrating nightmare for anyone in Leadership to get attention of staff.
Does it mean everyone back to the office? No.
It means making the office a place for collab and nothing more. But that affects 'Real Estate'
Are you autistic? That's not an attack. Nonverbal communication is extremely important (often considered the most important part of interpersonal communication) and the people who tend to respond...
Are you autistic? That's not an attack. Nonverbal communication is extremely important (often considered the most important part of interpersonal communication) and the people who tend to respond the way you did tend to fall to one side of the spectrum.
I cannot think of a single time that body language helped me during an in person meeting or that I wished I could read someone's body language during a Teams meeting, no. If it's useful for you...
I cannot think of a single time that body language helped me during an in person meeting or that I wished I could read someone's body language during a Teams meeting, no.
If it's useful for you that's fine but I will fight against any amount of mandated time in office because I don't find it valuable to be there, I have my least productive days when I am there (the constant distraction of people coming to talk to you or talking loudly to others around you, frequent requests to go for coffee breaks, the difficulty of finding a meeting room when you do need to book one, etc.) all lead to me getting less done then when I'm working at home. I've never once had a fully in person meeting even when I do go to the office because someone is always remote because for some reason they couldn't make it in they day so we're talking over Teams regardless.
The time I save not commuting that I instead get to spend with my kids is a hell of a lot more valuable to me than any perceived value from being in person for collaboration, personally.
I do not miss trying to find a meeting room.. Having people run late, steal it. Having to dial in and use projectors... Someone nuking a sea bass in the break room microwave, wearing too much...
I do not miss trying to find a meeting room.. Having people run late, steal it. Having to dial in and use projectors...
Someone nuking a sea bass in the break room microwave, wearing too much perfume, screaming on speaker phone with the office door open
Traffic, gas, packing lunch aside
Then the benefit of running some laundry here or there
I have to disagree with you there. My boss and I were tasked with learning and using a new program at work for data reporting and doing that over Teams has been near impossible. Sincd I am more...
I have to disagree with you there. My boss and I were tasked with learning and using a new program at work for data reporting and doing that over Teams has been near impossible. Sincd I am more versed in the technical aspects of the data and he's better at presenting it, it's a lot easier to work on the same station than swapping screen sharing via Teams.
I also agree with @updawg and others that body language is definitely easier to read in person and can help me in my presentation of the data a lot. I understand SQL and joining data in a way that my boss doesn't and I can tell by non-verbal cues when he's just not getting what I saying because I'm being too technical.
yeah sure buddy. go for it, shoot yourself in the proverbial dick. RTO has so obviously failed and hybrid/remote companies are eating your lunch, enjoy accelerating the process
yeah sure buddy. go for it, shoot yourself in the proverbial dick. RTO has so obviously failed and hybrid/remote companies are eating your lunch, enjoy accelerating the process
Is that actually the case? The companies that are notably all remote I can name off the top of my head are like AirBnB, Dropbox, and Gitlab. They’re doing fine, I suppose, but is there any...
Is that actually the case? The companies that are notably all remote I can name off the top of my head are like AirBnB, Dropbox, and Gitlab. They’re doing fine, I suppose, but is there any examples of an all remote company eating the lunch of a competitor that did RTO?
It's pretty common among smaller tech companies to be partially or fully remote, much more common than among larger companies bc they benefit more from access to more talent that way (as opposed...
It's pretty common among smaller tech companies to be partially or fully remote, much more common than among larger companies bc they benefit more from access to more talent that way (as opposed to larger companies that can rely more on their name recognition). I'm not sure if there's any quantitative evidence that this is systematically causing them to benefit over competitors who aren't doing RTO, but I'm not aware of any evidence to the contrary either. I don't think it's possible to dispute that it does greatly increase your company's talent pool, though.
At my last job, I was always begging for WFH but they never allowed it. Mostly because I lived an hour from the office and that daily commute drained all of my creative energy before I'd get to...
At my last job, I was always begging for WFH but they never allowed it. Mostly because I lived an hour from the office and that daily commute drained all of my creative energy before I'd get to work to act on it. And then when COVID dropped they dragged their feet for as long as they could before letting me work from home.
But they finally did. And my productivity increased significantly. I got more sleep, as soon as I woke up I could go turn on my computer and take advantage of those creative juices.
But as soon as they could, they demanded I return to the office. My late father had stage 4 cancer, my son was born with a heart defect. I refused to risk my immunocompromised loved ones and my wife (who was, and still is, free to WFH anyway) was making more than me, so I quit. Full time dad now.
It didn't help my opinion of them that the company laid off 60% of it's workforce the week before the pandemic hit, cutting off those human beings from their health benefits. And the next day there was a meeting where the higher-ups literally bragged about "how much cash" the company had. Disgusting.
I don't like my boss constantly looking over my shoulder to make sure I'm not slacking. And in the end that's all the bosses want to be able to do. To me, it illustrates a lack of trust.
This is all going to fade away in a few years when more office leases have come up for renewal and the higher ups start eyeballing the money they could save by downsizing the office space they...
This is all going to fade away in a few years when more office leases have come up for renewal and the higher ups start eyeballing the money they could save by downsizing the office space they were struggling to fill anyway.
I love "get a new job" like it's some kind of threat. If my company forced RTO I'd be out the door so fast and a pretty large contingent would be right there alongside me.
I love "get a new job" like it's some kind of threat. If my company forced RTO I'd be out the door so fast and a pretty large contingent would be right there alongside me.
Well getting that remote job is much harder than most people realize. Especially coming from the more traditional non tech roles. I'm in finance and at the senior manager level.. need to do...
Well getting that remote job is much harder than most people realize. Especially coming from the more traditional non tech roles. I'm in finance and at the senior manager level.. need to do something to my resume I'm not getting any calls to even chat.
If this were 2 years ago, then I'd agree. But the job market isn't anything like what it was even just a year ago, especially for office workers. The recruiters that reach out all the time have...
If this were 2 years ago, then I'd agree. But the job market isn't anything like what it was even just a year ago, especially for office workers. The recruiters that reach out all the time have shifted from asking if I want to take another job to seeing if I have a job available for their client.
If "theage.au" (whatever that is) says it's happening, and the 3 FAANG corporations cited in the article are doing it, it must be real! /s I'm a manager at an international marketing agency with...
If "theage.au" (whatever that is) says it's happening, and the 3 FAANG corporations cited in the article are doing it, it must be real! /s
I'm a manager at an international marketing agency with >1k employees and we have no plans to force RTO. We've already downsized our offices and screensharing has enabled us to collaborate across geographical expanses far better than we did pre-pandemic. Gone are the days of the first 10 minutes of every meeting being wasted setting up conference lines and playing the "can everyone hear me?" game.
And even if our board did decide to force RTO against the best interest of their own company and profits... y'know what? I'd rather find a new job than go back to smelling microwaved fish every other day.
The Age is part of a stable of newspapers here in Australia, which also includes the Sydney Morning Herald. It's the only major newspaper chain in this country that isn't owned by NewsCorp. Until...
If "theage.au" (whatever that is)
The Age is part of a stable of newspapers here in Australia, which also includes the Sydney Morning Herald. It's the only major newspaper chain in this country that isn't owned by NewsCorp.
Until its absorption into the Nine empire (Nine being Channel 9, a group of commercial television stations across the country) a few years ago, this newspaper group was highly respected. It's still respected, but seems to be changing direction somewhat under the new ownership.
These Nine newspapers have a content-sharing agreement with some international newspapers. If you read all the way at the bottom of this article, you'll notice a "The Washington Post" byline.
Agreed, this certainly isn't everywhere. I work for a Fortune 100 tech company that continually reiterates that fully hybrid work with no mandates is our present and future. Our CEO, CFO and CIO...
Agreed, this certainly isn't everywhere. I work for a Fortune 100 tech company that continually reiterates that fully hybrid work with no mandates is our present and future. Our CEO, CFO and CIO are all fully remote. They won't even allow managers to have mandates for their own teams. And we're doing just fine. Yeah, you occasionally have someone who abused it and does no work, but everyone knows who those people are and they get gone with layoffs.
We just hired a manager from Amazon who quit due to their RTO mandate, so this policy that other companies are rolling out will work in our favor.
I recently switched to a new job, where working remotely is pretty difficult due to the nature of the work. Haven't felt this great in a while. Clocking my hours and seeing them helps build my...
I recently switched to a new job, where working remotely is pretty difficult due to the nature of the work. Haven't felt this great in a while.
Clocking my hours and seeing them helps build my routine. I commute about 45 min with subway+tram, but I just listen to a podcast or do my language learning, so it's some good "me time". Also getting those walking steps makes me feel so much better. At the end of the day, I also never have to stress "should I do more" when I see those hours done in. It's clear cut. There are even designated times for coffee breaks, where I get to chat to people and we even do the quizzes on the days paper together!
My old job most people were remote, boss included, and the dev team never really got together to discuss issues. It was a hot mess for two years. I was just lonely and miserable. I get remote works for some, but you can't deny the ease of communication in person, especially when starting a new job.
America’s top 10 metropolitan areas averaged 47 per cent of pre-pandemic levels last week, according to data from Kastle Systems. This time last year, the average was about 44 per cent
About 52 per cent of remote-capable US workers are operating under hybrid arrangements, according to data from Gallup, while 29 per cent are exclusively remote. But although executives like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg have argued that the rise of flexible work has had a deleterious effect on productivity, data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that labor productivity rose 3.7 per cent in the second quarter of 2023 and is up 1.3 per cent compared to this time last year.
Wait, if productivity is up and in-office work is up, isn't that an argument that teleworking is less productive on average? I think that both (all) options can be best given personalities and the...
Wait, if productivity is up and in-office work is up, isn't that an argument that teleworking is less productive on average? I think that both (all) options can be best given personalities and the type of work, but I don't understand the argument that's trying to make.
To be blunt, I feel the article doesn't really make an argument except "clickbait headline; here are some random facts and people's opinions on RTO". The statistics seem to be about the same this...
To be blunt, I feel the article doesn't really make an argument except "clickbait headline; here are some random facts and people's opinions on RTO".
The statistics seem to be about the same this year as they were last year (47%-44%). I don't know if productivity rising 1.3% is significant but it seems to me like it's about the same as well: too similar to make judgements.
Plus, as you mention, it's specific to the field, company, and individual whether they are most productive in-office, hybrid, or remote.
Maybe productivity is up because in 2022, most companies had 2 years of experience remote-working, whereas in 2023, most companies have 3 years of experience remote-working - a 50% increase in...
Maybe productivity is up because in 2022, most companies had 2 years of experience remote-working, whereas in 2023, most companies have 3 years of experience remote-working - a 50% increase in experience!
Maybe, but the argument I'm responding to does not make that argument. The argument as presented is "office work is up slightly and Mark Zuckerberg thinks that will improve productivity, yet...
Maybe, but the argument I'm responding to does not make that argument. The argument as presented is "office work is up slightly and Mark Zuckerberg thinks that will improve productivity, yet productivity is up. Explain that, Mark."
Adorable. Make the offices a place where psychological safety and collaboration are paramount, and we're there. Banks of desks? Go fuck yourself. I'm in data, we're mostly remote. But we will head...
Adorable.
Make the offices a place where psychological safety and collaboration are paramount, and we're there. Banks of desks? Go fuck yourself.
I'm in data, we're mostly remote. But we will head to the office to discuss and problem solve like old happily. But the office is a social environment, not a place to code, script or stick your face into a monitor.
Unless these morons get it (and they are morons) workers will continue to laugh at them.
Exactly this. In the beginning I was all for 100% remote, but since I don’t have a dedicated office space in my house anymore, I found that I am getting tired if being at home, working. My routine...
Exactly this. In the beginning I was all for 100% remote, but since I don’t have a dedicated office space in my house anymore, I found that I am getting tired if being at home, working.
My routine would consist of getting up early, get kids ready for school, work, prepare lunch when kids get back from school, household chores, dinner, to bed and realizing I hadn’t set foot outside the door in all day. So I started to resent WFH.
Nowadays my team is 90% remote and ten percent in the office. We make team days where all the sprint preparation and retro meetings are being held, so there is no expectation of writing a line of code when I’m in the office. I am happy with this setup and find it the perfect mix. At the same time, I am aware that it is not for everyone and some prefer to work every day in the office and some prefer to stay exclusively remote. It is a spectrum and I guess a company does well when it aims to accommodate as many setups as possible.
Exactly what we do. I'm the Head of and the first thing I said at my current (and my new when I get there) is that I don't care for business policy around WFH. Be there if you need to be there for...
Nowadays my team is 90% remote and ten percent in the office. We make team days where all the sprint preparation and retro meetings are being held, so there is no expectation of writing a line of code when I’m in the office.
Exactly what we do. I'm the Head of and the first thing I said at my current (and my new when I get there) is that I don't care for business policy around WFH. Be there if you need to be there for social and thinking sessions, not to code.
Many of us have spent upwards of £1000+ on home setups that keep us cool/warm, comfy and active (when we want) and walking that back now would be abjectly ridiculous.
This entire "Oh, the osmosis learning" nonsense is fucking stupid too. Just get lunch&learns and good documentation, if people need help? MAKE THE TIME. It requires such little effort and just a bit of dedicated time and it's golden. My current Grads are moving on but they've had a great start to a career, even with Covid. Dedicated learning hours, team leaders who give a damn about development (and they must as it's in objectives...) you name it.
These big industry CEO's are absolutely nutts if they don't think smaller firms won't just gobble up the staff that end up leaving.
I can't think of a single time I've ever experienced "osmosis learning in an office environment" as I spent most of my time in offices with either IEMs, or later earbuds with ANC in drowning out...
I can't think of a single time I've ever experienced "osmosis learning in an office environment" as I spent most of my time in offices with either IEMs, or later earbuds with ANC in drowning out the sounds of everyone around me so I could even remotely have a chance of concentrating.
Aye. It's nonsense designed to make you feel bad for the people under you. My entire junior career was as a bit of a lone data guy, so I taught myself everything on my own and it worked. Do I want...
Aye. It's nonsense designed to make you feel bad for the people under you.
My entire junior career was as a bit of a lone data guy, so I taught myself everything on my own and it worked. Do I want that for my people? No. So you dedicate learning time in the week to ensure folks do just that.
I get that in some settings, RTO is a benefit. The company I work for has asked us to come into the office 3 days a week, which helps with collaboration as a large number of my team works out of the same office.
My husband, on the other hand, has the complete opposite situation. His company is forcing RTO and there is no benefit. Not one of his teammates work in the same office, let alone the same city or state. His one-up works 5 states away; his two-up works 7 states away; and his teammates are peppered from East Coast to West Coast USA. If he goes into the office, he is logging on to teams/zoom/Skype to meet and collaborate, which is the same that he would do at home. Why does he have to drive an hour plus in traffic to do the same thing he could do in the office at our house?
I've never once found it easier to collaborate in person than over Teams. Also, since some people will inevitably be remote while I'm in the office, the meetings all take place over Teams anyway. There's zero benefit in my view, in coming into the office.
Never once? Seriously? Body language has never helped you at all?
Can you explain what you mean by this? When have you been helped by "body language"?
Working with people that communicate things that would affect my work through "body language" sounds like my own personal idea of hell.
But is it your responsibility to make sure the other person is not distracted, confused or hesitant?
I never experienced problems with that and I have worked only a handful of days in the physical presence of my peers since the start of the pandemic. And I even started a new job at that time, the forced isolation rules hit right between the interviews and my first day.
The reason this worked is because I have been in teams where everybody is simply a
responsible adultprofessional. If someone is confused, they just ask for clarification.Yet in my world, the non-verbal body language communications help magnitudes in making sure that people get the message. In office, we can go from discussing the problem on the computer, pointing out physically what items are important and then being able to transition to a whiteboard or paper seamlessly to draw out items for a better shared understanding of the problem.
Sure, you can kind of do these things over teams/zoom, but as the teacher you loose important body cues when people aren't getting it. You also loose the ability for someone to just come to you with a question right away when you are available.
Having that available once or twice a week has drastically helped my team's performance improve coming out of the pandemic. I cant imagine going fully remote... nor can I imagine being in every day of the week. That in-person collab is invaluable and I have "body language" to thank for that.
By the by, it is body language -cues- not queue. A queue is a line of people like at a checkout line.
No fuss <3
I'm with the guy above though that while it can be sometimes useful having to give them or read them is not something I can actively or easily do and definitely a variant of hell for me.
Problems with me writing long items on a phone. I just make mistakes.
We can always revert to the reddit default of everything being a "que" regardless of meaning or language.
Or those extremely frustrated times that you can HEAR someone typing away on Teams/Slack/Whatever and not actually paying attention.
The sheer ability to be constantly available has made it a frustrating nightmare for anyone in Leadership to get attention of staff.
Does it mean everyone back to the office? No.
It means making the office a place for collab and nothing more. But that affects 'Real Estate'
Are you autistic? That's not an attack. Nonverbal communication is extremely important (often considered the most important part of interpersonal communication) and the people who tend to respond the way you did tend to fall to one side of the spectrum.
I believe that updawg means that in a neutral, non-derogatory way.
Having difficulty with body language is a telltale sign of neurodivergence.
I cannot think of a single time that body language helped me during an in person meeting or that I wished I could read someone's body language during a Teams meeting, no.
If it's useful for you that's fine but I will fight against any amount of mandated time in office because I don't find it valuable to be there, I have my least productive days when I am there (the constant distraction of people coming to talk to you or talking loudly to others around you, frequent requests to go for coffee breaks, the difficulty of finding a meeting room when you do need to book one, etc.) all lead to me getting less done then when I'm working at home. I've never once had a fully in person meeting even when I do go to the office because someone is always remote because for some reason they couldn't make it in they day so we're talking over Teams regardless.
The time I save not commuting that I instead get to spend with my kids is a hell of a lot more valuable to me than any perceived value from being in person for collaboration, personally.
I do not miss trying to find a meeting room.. Having people run late, steal it. Having to dial in and use projectors...
Someone nuking a sea bass in the break room microwave, wearing too much perfume, screaming on speaker phone with the office door open
Traffic, gas, packing lunch aside
Then the benefit of running some laundry here or there
The few times I have to go into the office each year are my most unproductive days of the year. I hear ya :(
I have to disagree with you there. My boss and I were tasked with learning and using a new program at work for data reporting and doing that over Teams has been near impossible. Sincd I am more versed in the technical aspects of the data and he's better at presenting it, it's a lot easier to work on the same station than swapping screen sharing via Teams.
I also agree with @updawg and others that body language is definitely easier to read in person and can help me in my presentation of the data a lot. I understand SQL and joining data in a way that my boss doesn't and I can tell by non-verbal cues when he's just not getting what I saying because I'm being too technical.
yeah sure buddy. go for it, shoot yourself in the proverbial dick. RTO has so obviously failed and hybrid/remote companies are eating your lunch, enjoy accelerating the process
Is that actually the case? The companies that are notably all remote I can name off the top of my head are like AirBnB, Dropbox, and Gitlab. They’re doing fine, I suppose, but is there any examples of an all remote company eating the lunch of a competitor that did RTO?
It's pretty common among smaller tech companies to be partially or fully remote, much more common than among larger companies bc they benefit more from access to more talent that way (as opposed to larger companies that can rely more on their name recognition). I'm not sure if there's any quantitative evidence that this is systematically causing them to benefit over competitors who aren't doing RTO, but I'm not aware of any evidence to the contrary either. I don't think it's possible to dispute that it does greatly increase your company's talent pool, though.
At my last job, I was always begging for WFH but they never allowed it. Mostly because I lived an hour from the office and that daily commute drained all of my creative energy before I'd get to work to act on it. And then when COVID dropped they dragged their feet for as long as they could before letting me work from home.
But they finally did. And my productivity increased significantly. I got more sleep, as soon as I woke up I could go turn on my computer and take advantage of those creative juices.
But as soon as they could, they demanded I return to the office. My late father had stage 4 cancer, my son was born with a heart defect. I refused to risk my immunocompromised loved ones and my wife (who was, and still is, free to WFH anyway) was making more than me, so I quit. Full time dad now.
It didn't help my opinion of them that the company laid off 60% of it's workforce the week before the pandemic hit, cutting off those human beings from their health benefits. And the next day there was a meeting where the higher-ups literally bragged about "how much cash" the company had. Disgusting.
I don't like my boss constantly looking over my shoulder to make sure I'm not slacking. And in the end that's all the bosses want to be able to do. To me, it illustrates a lack of trust.
Don't work for somebody if they don't trust you.
This is all going to fade away in a few years when more office leases have come up for renewal and the higher ups start eyeballing the money they could save by downsizing the office space they were struggling to fill anyway.
I love "get a new job" like it's some kind of threat. If my company forced RTO I'd be out the door so fast and a pretty large contingent would be right there alongside me.
Well getting that remote job is much harder than most people realize. Especially coming from the more traditional non tech roles. I'm in finance and at the senior manager level.. need to do something to my resume I'm not getting any calls to even chat.
If this were 2 years ago, then I'd agree. But the job market isn't anything like what it was even just a year ago, especially for office workers. The recruiters that reach out all the time have shifted from asking if I want to take another job to seeing if I have a job available for their client.
If "theage.au" (whatever that is) says it's happening, and the 3 FAANG corporations cited in the article are doing it, it must be real! /s
I'm a manager at an international marketing agency with >1k employees and we have no plans to force RTO. We've already downsized our offices and screensharing has enabled us to collaborate across geographical expanses far better than we did pre-pandemic. Gone are the days of the first 10 minutes of every meeting being wasted setting up conference lines and playing the "can everyone hear me?" game.
And even if our board did decide to force RTO against the best interest of their own company and profits... y'know what? I'd rather find a new job than go back to smelling microwaved fish every other day.
The Age is part of a stable of newspapers here in Australia, which also includes the Sydney Morning Herald. It's the only major newspaper chain in this country that isn't owned by NewsCorp.
Until its absorption into the Nine empire (Nine being Channel 9, a group of commercial television stations across the country) a few years ago, this newspaper group was highly respected. It's still respected, but seems to be changing direction somewhat under the new ownership.
These Nine newspapers have a content-sharing agreement with some international newspapers. If you read all the way at the bottom of this article, you'll notice a "The Washington Post" byline.
Agreed, this certainly isn't everywhere. I work for a Fortune 100 tech company that continually reiterates that fully hybrid work with no mandates is our present and future. Our CEO, CFO and CIO are all fully remote. They won't even allow managers to have mandates for their own teams. And we're doing just fine. Yeah, you occasionally have someone who abused it and does no work, but everyone knows who those people are and they get gone with layoffs.
We just hired a manager from Amazon who quit due to their RTO mandate, so this policy that other companies are rolling out will work in our favor.
I recently switched to a new job, where working remotely is pretty difficult due to the nature of the work. Haven't felt this great in a while.
Clocking my hours and seeing them helps build my routine. I commute about 45 min with subway+tram, but I just listen to a podcast or do my language learning, so it's some good "me time". Also getting those walking steps makes me feel so much better. At the end of the day, I also never have to stress "should I do more" when I see those hours done in. It's clear cut. There are even designated times for coffee breaks, where I get to chat to people and we even do the quizzes on the days paper together!
My old job most people were remote, boss included, and the dev team never really got together to discuss issues. It was a hot mess for two years. I was just lonely and miserable. I get remote works for some, but you can't deny the ease of communication in person, especially when starting a new job.
The only important info in that article.
Wait, if productivity is up and in-office work is up, isn't that an argument that teleworking is less productive on average? I think that both (all) options can be best given personalities and the type of work, but I don't understand the argument that's trying to make.
To be blunt, I feel the article doesn't really make an argument except "clickbait headline; here are some random facts and people's opinions on RTO".
The statistics seem to be about the same this year as they were last year (47%-44%). I don't know if productivity rising 1.3% is significant but it seems to me like it's about the same as well: too similar to make judgements.
Plus, as you mention, it's specific to the field, company, and individual whether they are most productive in-office, hybrid, or remote.
Maybe productivity is up because in 2022, most companies had 2 years of experience remote-working, whereas in 2023, most companies have 3 years of experience remote-working - a 50% increase in experience!
Maybe, but the argument I'm responding to does not make that argument. The argument as presented is "office work is up slightly and Mark Zuckerberg thinks that will improve productivity, yet productivity is up. Explain that, Mark."
Adorable.
Make the offices a place where psychological safety and collaboration are paramount, and we're there. Banks of desks? Go fuck yourself.
I'm in data, we're mostly remote. But we will head to the office to discuss and problem solve like old happily. But the office is a social environment, not a place to code, script or stick your face into a monitor.
Unless these morons get it (and they are morons) workers will continue to laugh at them.
Exactly this. In the beginning I was all for 100% remote, but since I don’t have a dedicated office space in my house anymore, I found that I am getting tired if being at home, working.
My routine would consist of getting up early, get kids ready for school, work, prepare lunch when kids get back from school, household chores, dinner, to bed and realizing I hadn’t set foot outside the door in all day. So I started to resent WFH.
Nowadays my team is 90% remote and ten percent in the office. We make team days where all the sprint preparation and retro meetings are being held, so there is no expectation of writing a line of code when I’m in the office. I am happy with this setup and find it the perfect mix. At the same time, I am aware that it is not for everyone and some prefer to work every day in the office and some prefer to stay exclusively remote. It is a spectrum and I guess a company does well when it aims to accommodate as many setups as possible.
Exactly what we do. I'm the Head of and the first thing I said at my current (and my new when I get there) is that I don't care for business policy around WFH. Be there if you need to be there for social and thinking sessions, not to code.
Many of us have spent upwards of £1000+ on home setups that keep us cool/warm, comfy and active (when we want) and walking that back now would be abjectly ridiculous.
This entire "Oh, the osmosis learning" nonsense is fucking stupid too. Just get lunch&learns and good documentation, if people need help? MAKE THE TIME. It requires such little effort and just a bit of dedicated time and it's golden. My current Grads are moving on but they've had a great start to a career, even with Covid. Dedicated learning hours, team leaders who give a damn about development (and they must as it's in objectives...) you name it.
These big industry CEO's are absolutely nutts if they don't think smaller firms won't just gobble up the staff that end up leaving.
I can't think of a single time I've ever experienced "osmosis learning in an office environment" as I spent most of my time in offices with either IEMs, or later earbuds with ANC in drowning out the sounds of everyone around me so I could even remotely have a chance of concentrating.
Aye. It's nonsense designed to make you feel bad for the people under you.
My entire junior career was as a bit of a lone data guy, so I taught myself everything on my own and it worked. Do I want that for my people? No. So you dedicate learning time in the week to ensure folks do just that.