It's just an echo chamber here on HackerNews that we begrudgingly don't want to believe it.

If it isn't productivity (or morale) driving their decision on "putting their foot down and demanding no work from home", what is it? I don't believe it's some simple reductionist "they're evil and want employee control" narrative.

Unfortunately, my background is in data science. I would say the field of psychology is better suited to answering that question.

Remove the "they're evil" part and I don't see what's reductionist about it being about "having more control over employees"?

That to me sounds like a very likely explanation.

1) Working in an office full of people is what they personally prefer, and

2) They have large investments in physical infrastructure that they need to use.

Why does it matter what leadership prefers/why do they prefer it if 80% of their employees are saying "I'd rather work from home / going into the office in inconvenient for me / I'm just as productive at home"?

Why, exactly?

(my own team is operations/application maintenance, and we are WAY more effective and efficient now that everybody is remote and on the same level. I understand that may not be the case in all fields/areas/teams).

Maybe? But it's human nature to feel a little better about shelling out cash on something if it actually gets used.

To make an analogy, let's say your kid insisted you buy them a car. Not some lame Toyota, it has to be a Ferrari (read: lavish office in expensive downtown location). They use it, they're happy. Then some event happens that makes them not want to use the car anymore, but for contractual reasons you still have to keep it around for several more years (read: pay insurance and maintenance). It doesn't ever get used, but you're still paying for it (read: paying for maintenance and utilities for a mostly empty office). You'd feel at least a LITTLE better if your kid at least attempted to drive the car a few times per week, but they just want to stay home and call you an asshole.

I strongly prefer WFH, but I get the thinking. Also keep in mind that city governments are probably breathing down the necks of these companies telling them to get workers back into the office ASAP because the local economy is going to shit without thousands of office workers buying Starbucks, going to lunch, etc. every single day.

You might be onto something with the cities asking for this, but I have not seen any data or anecdotes pointing to that.

Yes and all people should be decent and look out for each other as well.

Amazon spent $2.5 BILLION on HQ2. It's not just a some normal office complex, but rather a massive custom complex with domes full of trees and all sorts of weird stuff.

It's the same thing with Facebook's MPK 2x, Apple's Apple Park, and Google's "circus tents". These buildings aren't just for housing people, they're statements to the companies' -- and through extension their executives' -- greatness.

They're modern day temples... and they're empty.

Selling or renting out these buildings is literally unthinkable for the executives, but also impractical. It's humiliating to have have to part with your custom shrine to yourself. You can't sell item because the only companies that have the money buy it, and the people to fill it, are your competitors, and they have their own shrines to fill. You can't subdivide it and rent it out, because the buildings are giant aircraft hangers that no one wants, and they're not easily subdivided due to the location of cafeterias and bathrooms.

So what do you do?

Exercise your capricious and unaccountable power to force the serfs back into the temple. You like seeing the building filled because it makes you feel important. They'll even admit this to an extent when they talk about the joys of seeing people in the office, being able to ask people what they're doing. If we want to be charitable, we can call it the primacy of management by random encounter.

But they know, we know it's all bullshit, because everyone has witnessed the growth and effectiveness of when the company was (almost) fully remote.

I hope us the serfs can ‘win’ this.

I think it comes down to not liking the idea of paying $$$ on lavish offices that are ghost towns. And I also wouldn’t doubt cities are “encouraging” companies to force BTO because local economies have been hit hard by the lack of office workers.

DaTa DRiVeN cOMpaNY

How quickly our entitlement grows.

My own mentor, when I pushed in a friendly manner, related an anecdote how last time he was in the office, he met this new person from another team and they had a nice chat.

Which is a LOVELY anecdote, and COMPLETELY irrelevant to forcing 300 people on our project back to office. If meeting people from other teams is a priority, there are a myriad ways of doing do (I avail of many of them myself). Neither the business nor personal benefit of this chance random encounter was quantified nor discussed, nor compared to alternatives. But I keep hearing these benefits of "water cooler conversations" and "elevator chats" etc. Is it a generational thing? I'm a 45 year old grouchy geezer, but between slack and sms and teams and webex and email and everything else, I've developed strong and productive relationships with co-workers I've never met and feel I have many methods of engaging depending on my timing and priority needs.

When working at the office, it felt meh. We mostly talked on slack, worked async, and ignored each other. But the weekly outings for lunch were nice.

When working from home, it’s b been great. We talk a lot on many channels, work together, and feel a great sense of camaraderie. But we mostly haven’t met in person.

Team morale has more to do with it than physical presence.

BUT whenever we do meet in person, you always find out the inside scoop about all sorts of goings on. You hear murmurings of big decisions months before they’re made.

I think the grape vine is a crucial information channel for people in leadership and it’s almost impossible to reproduce virtually. But it’s much less, if at all, valuable to us peons.

No offence, and from a place of love.... I think you're being slightly biased, and prejudicial. Clearly you're on the side of working remotely, and I'm sure you have a solid set of reasons you tell yourself why that is supper great for you. By all means continue to believe those reasons, as they are clearly important to you, and part of who you are as a person. I too share much of those sentiments.. but ultimately disagree.

What is more important is if those reasons and ideas represent the proverbial "hill you're willing to die on", where you will have your last stand defending the ideas you stand for? Also, you might want to try reasoning about the idea that there are good reasons for going back into the office, even if the employer doesn't recognise a need to explain those reasons to you, and comprehensively persuade you. Many would consider these reasons to be self evident, but even if they were not, it probably doesn't matter.

A positive in-person interaction is worth 10 positive remote interactions, and so much more. Any time two co-workers form a friendship, to the point it goes to the level of taking lunch together, or even socialising outside of work... is priceless. That's free team building. But beyond that, rigorous statistics show that in-person teams are more productive in the long run, even taking into account and correcting for, all the various reasons remote work could be characterised as highly productive in a narrow focused vacuum.

I've been working remotely for a long time, and I both love and hate it. My little anecdote is this: I found out that my team in Boston was going out after work to eat pizza, or would have the occasional team lunch at a restaurant. My manager was paying for that, and my team was bonding together, but not me... At first I was angry that I've never been afforded a budget for weekly pizza delivery, and then I realised it wasn't about me, or what I initially saw as inequitable, like a benefit I was unfairly not being given... I then realised it was all about fostering a human connection, and team building. Then suddenly I got even more angry by that realisation. I felt dehumanised, marginalised, and overall demoralised.... I wasn't ever going to really be part of that team, and would exist as a useful "Resource" on the other side of a network connection. Nobody was personally invested in knowing me, and if I left the company or whatever there was no strings attached for any of them.

You're mentor was trying to tell you how they were attaching strings, and even randomly so... you 100% failed to see that, and you seemingly focus only on your selfish reasons why working remotely is good for you. And, that's not wrong, we all have to protect our self-interests. If not forming relationships with other people is a major aspect of your self interest... then go with that! I've known plenty of people over the years that were nice folks, good workers, but only ever went into the office on-time, left exactly on-time, never socialised with anybody outside of work... and they were great workers, and by all accounts probably great people as people go... But even having those reclusive quiet-quitters around is a net positive for them, and everyone else.

Link please, you astroturfing HR shill. Your stupid anecdote doesn't speak for all people.

I would almost feel sorry for you needing work to have fwiends and warm little feelings of belonging if you weren't so biased in your own stance.

In my opinion this is a flexing of power by the executive class, and I think it will backfire heavily. They think people can't find new jobs, and sure its a tough job market. But employees are creative, and can cause all sorts of damage if they'd like via slowdowns, "accidents", leaking information, etc.

I keep warning my firm, but they aren't listening. If just 5% of our employees decide to be a pain in the ass, it'll be a god damn disaster.