Do you think that Apple, Google, Microsoft recalling their workers back to the office because they were influenced by manager propaganda? Or do you think that they have data showing better efficiency with in office work?
I consider those 3 companies, which are #1, #2, #3 in market cap, to be highly competent and the management team is probably very data driven. If they truly saw that remote work was more efficient, do you think they would still try so hard to recall workers back into the office?
No, I think they are the instigators of manager propaganda. I don't distinguish the corporation from the management.
>If they truly saw that remote work was more efficient, do you think they would still try so hard to recall workers back into the office?
Yes. It's about control. Preventing WFH culture means employers don't have to compete for talent globally or even nationally as much (because if WFH is discouraged, employees will have to factor in a move everytime they want to switch). And of course someone with expensive rent or a mortgage is more easily controllable. And employees made to be always present to their overlords in a cubicle or similar confined space, like caged animals, are not exactly full of leverage either...
Besides, companies are run by management, and management enjoys their little office rituals and politics - they'd have them over profit (it's not like management is not compensated even while they're burning a company to the ground anyway. Google, for example, has been a series of clusterfuck projects and failed "moonshots" and "company bets", only still supported by search ad revenue).
You're too deep into conspiracy theories. Come back to real life.
The simple reason companies are recalling workers back into the office is because it's more efficient when people are in the office together.
Yes, and that would be a bad thing to prioritize to begin with (over ethics, quality products, society, safety, environment and many other things, as if more often than not happens).
But, that's not the whole story either.
A "corporation" is an abstract notion. Corporations don't exist as people, except in the eyes of the law. Management exists. And management has BS views, is influenced by BS ideologies, wants power and micro-games and so on, on top of "making money".
Which is how e.g. corporations wouldn't hire women, blacks, or gay people for many (or all) positions at different times, even though they missed on a huge pool for employees, which would include people even better and more skilled than the < 50% of the population they considered for hiring and promoting to those positions. Does that sound like a money-inspired decision?
Ideology, societal norms, racism, sexism, power plays, prejudice, etc. plays into what "corporations" (i.e. the people running them do) as much or even more than money does.
>You're too deep into conspiracy theories. Come back to real life.
People want to fuck other people over for power and profit. That's no conspiracy, it's out in the open, celebrated even.
So, get out of fairy-tale land of naivety. Except of course if you're on the other side (or those making those decisions), in which case "it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it", as the quote goes.
>The simple reason companies are recalling workers back into the office is because it's more efficient when people are in the office together.
Citation needed.
For example, I am looking for dev jobs in NYC and LA. It's bad for me that employers could just hire someone equally-qualified in Kansas for less.
Am I misinterpreting your comment?
For jobs that had more demand than supply, like development, though, where most of the best employers where geographically confined, it worked the opposite way: it opened up the pool of available jobs to employees, whether inside the US or Europe, or from the developing world to the west, etc. Suddenly you didn't need to move to a handful of big cities to get a top tier job. And even if you already where in San Francisco, you perhaps move to a place with lower rent, work from home, and keep more of your money, while still visiting the office once in a blue moon (which could be months on end during covid).
Manager propaganda?
>Workplaces, after all, are where you make friends and sometimes meet life partners, as well as learn all that tacit knowledge so crucial to doing your job well and so build your career. We humans are social animals and creating working lives permanently apart from others was always going against the grain.
Yeah, because commuting for 1 or more hours each day, being packed in a cubicle or thrown in an open space, sitting down for 8+ hours, is so natural. As is looking into your office for friends and partners...