If you manage professionals and can't tell how well your team is doing unless you see them in person daily, you're a terrible manager.
this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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Alternatively, If I have to bring the people who report to me into the office for them to get their shit together, they're a lost cause anyway.
Got a better one:
If you're a professional and need to be managed, you're not actually a pro.
A good manager is like the coxswain of a row boat. Their job isn't to provide more power, or tell the rowers how to row. Their job is to keep all the rowers synchronized, and pulling in the same direction.
A good manager does a similar thing. They keep the team both aligned with each other, and pointed in the required business direction. There are a LOT of bad managers out there, however.
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(3 replies)
It's a game that has nothing to do with workers, but real estate instead. If workers don't go to the office, there will be no need for the company to rent an office the size it does, making it "lose" money. If they cut on their offices, real estate starts losing value (as we can see in some articles that start popping up), and that's something that bothers a lot of big players.
I think the real estate thing is big, but also they'll be god-damned if we get a benefit for free.
Once it's a benefit they have control over, they can use it as leverage for those that want it back. They can cut our pay, increase our hours, both.
But then people will start clamoring about retrofitting the empty skyscrapers into housing and then all the NIMBYs houses lose value, and that'd make tax revenue decrease.
THAT is why.
retrofitting the empty skyscrapers into housing
"Too expensive. Too difficult" they say... it's fucking bullshit. Those are stalling words. They're waiting on a plan to maximize the investment. My guess, money and/or tax credit from the government.
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It’s a game that has nothing to do with workers, but real estate instead.
Don't forget tax incentives offered by cities and states to locate lots of office workers in those taxable areas. No workers there, no payroll/sales taxes collected. No revenue derived from workers forced to go there where they will eat, shop, and consume services. Those cities and states what their money.
This reason doesn't really make sense to me. The company pays the same for the office whether there are people in it or not. Forcing people into the office isn't saving them any money, in fact they probably pay more when you factor in utilities.
They do pay more. The issue comes in because many executives are really doing two jobs. Job one is the company exec. They want to save money and downsizing office space is kosher with that job. But their second job is being landlords for commercial office space. Their portfolios will be negatively affected by companies (including their own) getting rid of office space.
They are choosing to prioritize their personal wealth (commercial real estate investments) over the health of their company.
Modern business is full of this type of stuff. The priority is always personal benefits over the health of the company. Run it into the ground while extracting as much as you possibly can and walking away from any consequences.
The great Neo-liberal grift.
42 years and the only thing to trickle down were two skyscrapers and half the smaller bridges in the country.
I fucking hate neoliberalism.
It's responsible for the vast majority of society's problems at this point.
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If you pay for a building that can house 100 workers, but only 20 come into the office and the other 80 work from home, you have way more space than what you need. You could probably rent a place half as big for half the price and still have room.
Would you rent a 5 bedroom, 4 bathroom house with a 3-car garage as a bachelor? I mean you can but you're paying for way more than what you actually need.
When that's all they build, do you really have a choice?
It's an interconnected issue where the value of real estate is dependent on people having a use for it.
What’s the point?
Middle management needs something to do to justify their useless existence.
Idk what podcast or whatever uses "middle management" as a scapegoat, but this is the dumbest fucking meme.
Like CEOs and middle management are the problem but SVPs and department heads are totally cool? How does that make sense? Whoever initiated this just had one shitty boss and 0 professional corporate experience.
I absolutely guarantee you that middle management is not making "return to office" decisions.
Some of my coworkers love going into the office. They're also really bad at responding to slack. I wonder if these are related.
Anyway, we should all unionize and push back against this kind of nonsense
During the pandemic, when we were all forced to work from home, one of my coworkers would incessantly bitch and moan about how he missed being back at the office.
He is the kind of person who pulls all sorts of bullshit out of his ass and starts treating it as if it's true. At some point he started going around saying that "productivity when WFH is ok but everybody is complaining that they can't make plans for future projects without face to face time". When our director got curious and asked him where he had heard about this, he changed the topic.
Basically this is a person who doesn't want to do anything and makes a career out of going around and pretending to be working and calling meetings when they're not needed. For this kind of person, WFH is deadly as it clearly shows that their "skills" are not needed for the company's success.
I dunno man, if those people played it right, WFH would be the best. Still getting nothing done, but now you get to stay home every day.
Yeah, for people like me that finish the asigned tasks in very little time, Office culture is torture since yeah, we shouldn't show how fast we work since it will only end up with our workload increasing, but having to pretend to work or working slower than would like is the worst. At home I just prepare partial commits or simply commit once at the end of the day, or do whatever whenever and people don't monitor when were those lambda functions edited, when was the pipeline launched... etc. They only care if it's done for the next day. And it is, and they are happy. They don't need to know I spent 6 out of 8 work hours playing Baldurs Gate 3, do they?
Exactly. Which I think is the reason these executives are so gung ho about RTO. They realize people aren't spending 100% of their time and attention on their work every day, and that's what they want and expect. I'm not sure if they realize people will do the same thing in the office, except they'll drag it out and make it seem like it took longer as you described. They probably don't care.
I think part of it is this corporate mindset that they own you if you work there. And you should be grateful for the job they've provided, and that means working every minute of every work day. No amount of data showing that's less productive/efficient will ever get those people to change their minds. Because in this case, for these people, it's about feeling superior and showing "dominance".
There was a time when I would have jumped at the chance to work for one of these companies.
Hell, I even interviewed with Google 17 years ago (for a position that I was thoroughly overqualified for).
But, these days I don't think they could offer me enough money to convince me it would be worth it... Unless there was a HUGE upfront signing bonus that wouldn't need to be repaid no matter what happens.
They're shooting themselves in the foot by drastically reducing the talent pool available to them.
It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see how it works out for them.
To be fair working there 17 years ago would've probably been ok. Like, hard work for sure, but very well compensated and still had the famous company culture. These days it'd be like willingly stepping into a meat grinder.
Thanks
If I remember correctly, didn't Google offer lots of staff facilities and benefits?
...oh right, now they also care about office attendance....... welp there goes the "don't be evil" motto
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Control freak management as the article says
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The two or three out of a hundred employees that get given an inch and take a mile, ruining it for everyone else that isn't taking the piss
It doesn't have to be unprofitable. They just don't need to "maximize their return". They want tax credits and subsidies for low income housing so they can make the same profit as a bidding war for a luxury condo. It's greed.
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