It's just people, relationships, employers and employees, and money.
The same CEO, when asked about why he preferred working in the office, mentioned something about being more energized by the view from his office, and something about liking the fried chicken restaurant next to the building.
It was a particularly egregious example, but I’m fairly certain this is almost entirely a matter of upper management simply personally preferring the in office lifestyle, in no small part due to the perks of upper management. But it’s hard to justify the glitzy downtown office building or corporate mega campus when they have a average occupancy rate if 20%, which seems to be the case when employees have a choice, and so they are trying to force their preference upon everyone else with made-up assurances about how much more productive everyone is in office.
I’m in a situation like that now where even though that person is six levels above me and will never know my name or speak with me directly, they are constantly trolling everyone to make sure people have cameras turned on, reminding everyone that remote work is a privilege (no it is keeping us alive, disease monkey), and they are plotting regional and global meetups for teams, or buying everyone VR headsets, etc.
But to what ends? Why would I want to get into a COVID tube and fly to Germany to eat a throw-away processed turkey sandwich and bag of chips with co-workers and then fly back in another COVID tube a day later? What would be accomplished by that? Considering the airfare and hotel costs those have to be the most expensive bag lunches ever made.
And companies that consider good communications with their employees to be "an unproductive activity" are shit companies. There's a reason that Amazon has such a bad reputation amongst all the FAANG. Whether you work in one of the fulfillment warehouses, or are a coder hoping to avoid the mandatory PIPs, it's the worst.
However, what’s right for me isn’t right for you and enforcing a rule one way or another does not work so I agree with your point.
Megacorps need to understand that we humans have a range of preferences and, if we’re to assume some prefer remote and some prefer office, then making a big decision as Amazon has will alienate a decent amount of workers. Cue calamity.
If you believe that only physical environments can be properly collaborative then you invalidate the remainder of your post.
Literally the next sentence after the one you quote is “what’s right for isn't right for you”.
I’m not saying that only physical environments have those qualities - I’m saying through my experience I work better, feel better, and contribute better when I can communicate in a physical space and not a virtual one.
Again, as I say, whatever is right for the individual. If virtual works for you, that’s great, but I’m consciously stepping out of remote work as I really struggle with it.
It's impossible to collaborate in an open office. It's hard to talk to my team if that requires yelling louder than the other 200 people in the floor.
The offices are big enough to not be _too_ expensive, and small enough to enhance collaboration and concentration.
This is a great philosophy to have when your skills are in high demand. What do you say to the people who might have trouble finding a full-remote job that pays enough?
I don't think anyone is born and dreams about working remote doing engineering work in front of a computer for 8 hours a day. You end up doing a venn diagram of what you like with what the world offers and you decide what your values are.
If my life philosophy would include sipping margaritas at the beach or spending my days with my friends outside building an off-grid community I'd be out of luck because I'm not rich and my friends are not rich either.
Find a job that you like because you'll get good at it and your skills will be in high demand as well. Work hard and save enough every month to be able to walk away and into the company next door if your boss turns to shit.
My grandpa passed this philosophy to me and he was a plumber from a remote village in Portugal. He'd tell me how he kept to his values and didn't work for anyone that didn't respect him. He didn't die rich but he was proud in his work. Find what that is for you.
If people focused more on this instead of needing to place themselves on either side "get max salary" or "unionize the world" things would be way better.
But I still believe in individual agency. There are things individuals can still do to make things better. I feel for the edge cases of people who don't have choice. But in general, people have more choice than they think.
Either way you're missing the complete point of the post to harp on a meaningless detail. I was no way implying that remote work is a "right." I was simply pointing out how in many ways worker's rights have been diminished. One only has to look at the recent rail strike to see that, or the countless examples of wage theft, or the switching of hourly to salary to avoid paying overtime.
But despite all this we still have some agency and we should exercise it, even if things are "wrong" or "unfair." That's the point.
The evolution of worker rights has always followed this path. Introduced as perks, then standardized and encoded legally as rights. While there are outliers that get dunked on a lot ( eg on-site laundry at Meta) for the most part the perks have been entirely reasonable (flexible hours and schedules).
Why? Because the calculation is biased by how atoms move, not information.
Fully remote works great - there are plenty of awesome collaboration tools (Miro for example) where you can collaborate. Fully in-person obviously works as well.
But with hybrid, someone always loses - either the folks in the room or the folks on the screen.
you will be fired without being fired
If this is not true, other companies will include WFH in their offers and will kill two rabbits with one shot: win best talents and will make them more productive.
> Management – 10% of you are fired.
> Employees – but we were hired as fully remote. Most of us don't even live near an office.
I don’t think there is any solid evidence demonstrating on-site makes workers more or less productive than remote. But companies have demonstrated over the last 6 months that they overhired to an absurd degree.
This is just a way of further reducing headcount without having to actually do layoffs.
Unfortunately when you're high up the management ladder, every problem looks like a people problem.
Employees – yikes, sounds like we should do something about that. Can you tell us how you are measuring productivity? Is shipping velocity slower? Is our revenue lower than projected? Maybe we need to adjust priorities or roadmaps? Let's come up with a plan to make sensible product and process changes that will help us better hit our targets.
Management – ...
Employees – can we even say for sure that productivity is down?
Management – we can, trust us.
Employees – ok, what can we do about it?
Management – 10% of you are fired.
Employees – that will just make the remaining people less productive.
Management – and everyone has to come in to the office 3 days a week.
Employees – but we were hired as fully remote. Most of us don't even live near an office. What will this accomplish?
Management – this will fix all our problems, trust us.
Employees – but what problems are we trying to fix?
The worst part of this is that a year later these companies will magically declare that all employees are 2.37x more productive now, and WFH was always a mistake. The corporate world/media will eat it up, and so office culture will get even more entrenched.