Return to office is ‘dead,’ Stanford economist says. Here’s why
Return to office is ‘dead,’ Stanford economist says. Here’s why
The share of workers being called back to the office has flatlined, suggesting remote work is an entrenched feature of the U.S. labor market.
Return to office is ‘dead,’ Stanford economist says. Here’s why::The share of workers being called back to the office has flatlined, suggesting remote work is an entrenched feature of the U.S. labor market.
I say this as a rare person who prefers to work in office.
Good.
Seriously, would much rather work with productive happy people. the remote work phenomenon has proven that between reduced traffic, the commercial real estate bubble, the fact that we’re literally all connected to each other 24/7 through the series of tubes means it’s about time we restructure the workforce.
237This is the thing. Remote work as an option helps everyone. Lower costs for the employer, happier employees, the people who do want to work in an office have a better time because it's less crowded, the people who need to care for kids or parents have an easier time...it's entirely a win for everyone.
Except real estate companies, and therein lies the problem.
143nothing has made me more sick recently than learning that these investor scum are trying to flog people back into the office because they gambled too much money on office buildings, so obviously this is the correct next step. never mind eating the fucking loss, never mind gambling on sports like a normal human being, these fucking vampires think they get THAT much control over your life for THAT petty and convoluted and i am sorry COMPLETELY FUCKING MADE UP reason like 'we gambled on offices too much'
54What gets me is that in this mad dash to address climate change, WFH is a valuable tool to reduce emissions from commuting. I remember driving during the early lockdowns and thinking it would be possible to skateboard down the freeway. You'd think Democrats would be encouraging WFH as a part of their green initiatives, but I can see that having donors in real estate and fossil fuels might run counter to that.
35It’s even good for the environment! The amount of time, money, and energy (and that energy needs to be generated somehow) used to support everyone’s daily commute is IMMENSE. More than a few cities noted significantly improved air quality when the quarantines were in effect in 2020, and there’s still a noticeable difference in a lot of places.
11
it’s about time we restructure the workforce.
I suppose a big part of that will be managers learning how to measure productivity more accurately than your clocked-in hours. That’ll be the most interesting change.. the “corporate welfare” program of just getting paid to occupy a desk space will have to be replaced with more sophisticated real performance measurements.
I have no idea how that pans out in software. Every bug is vastly different so they can’t merely count the number of bugs you fix. SLOC is a bit of a sloppy measure too.
12I'm a manager of an entirely WFH team, it's easy. I have weekly one on one catch-ups with everyone in my team, where we discuss the work they are doing any blockers or anything like that that has come up. And a fortnightly team meeting.
And if anything urgent does come up they just call or message me at the time.
You measure the output not some BS KPI or how long they worked that day. I trust my people to be adults and come and go from work as needed, as long as they are still getting their work done idgaf how many hours a day/week they work.
Ultimately as their manager I'm there to try to remove as much of the corporate or political BS from my team's lives as possible, so they can focus on doing great work (whilst also being accommodating to any personal issues that crop up for them)
34Thanks to Goodhart's Law, that doesn't work. Any number used as a performance target ceases to be a useful measure, because people minmax them. You need to be able to look at a feature in a system, and evaluate if they completed it in an amount of time commensurate with their experience.
You need to think of productivity more abstractly, and have a lot of relevant expertise to assess it. Good management is hard, basically.
18Sadly, I don’t think so. The pandemic-era cash grab solution was software that’s basically spyware, logging keystrokes, mouse movements, taking screenshots, etc. Some clever individuals just taped vibrators to their mice and walked away for breaks. You’re asking middle management to do real work here, ya silly.
6Maybe it’s because I reached management right as the pandemic started. Got my first management job in Jan of 2020, we were home in March and I hadn’t even some of my direct reports yet. It was an incredibly stressful few months but learned a lot and fast. Wound up being the only department that maintained a full staff and in fact grew the team during the pandemic.
1
I'm a bit torn. There are pros and cons for sure, at least when "the office" isn't just a cubicle you report to maybe with a neighbor you don't mind. The social aspects of the job (if there are any not on a phone/computer already) can be so much easier in person.
Though that's not a reason what so ever to force people back. That seems like a blatant attempt to keep the value of commercial realestate up.
6I miss the office I worked at where I got a corner office (private!!!) and free lunches.
I do not miss the office where I worked in an open plan near the floor kitchenette and could hear people making coffee and chatting all day, or my coworkers on calls at their desks, or the keyboard clacking...
8The social aspect is pretty easily solved with audio and/or video calls.
0
My wife is a high school teacher. We returned to her classroom one evening after dinner this week so I could help her put together some shelves. After 30 minutes of assembly, I realized I needed to use the bathroom. She gave me her keys and pointed me towards the staff bathrooms. Whilst sitting on the porcelain throne, I realized that I couldn't remember the last time I did a #2 in a public bathroom. I've been WFH since March of 2020 when COVID started, and while I'm sure I've crapped in a public restroom in the past 3+ years, it's so infrequent that I can't remember.
That's not really the point though, more that I've actually been thinking about it all week and reflecting on what working in an office used to be like - crapping next to your coworkers, packing a lunch, trying to look busy when you just aren't feeling it that day, the small talk, and everything else that result in me being absolutely drained by the time I got home. Seriously, sometimes I would just sit on the couch and stare at the wall for 30 minutes when I got home.
It took the greatest global event of the 21st century to shift us to WFH. We can't let companies force us into backsliding into these out-dated work practices when all common sense says otherwise.
112Tbh, I still stare at the wall for 30m after a busy day WFH sometimes. A bit of indecision on if I have energy to start this or that, but more just letting my brain cool.
I'm fairly introverted, but more social than many. Watercooler talk doesn't really bother me unless it's awkward and unescapable. So I have that going for me.
35
because absolutely no one wants to be forced into it while being denied the incredible quality of life benefits of being able to stay at home?
55So my employer has been pretty cool about the whole return to office thing. We all had collectively agreed that the vast majority of our jobs could be done remotely. Unless the position absolutely required a physical presence in the office, such as running cables or certain leadership positions, we all were given the option to be permanent work from home.
38I don't mind the office these days, but that's because I live 9 minute walking distance from it.
I still work from home some days though, so I guess that says something.
24Cons: *Added stress of fighting traffic for no reason *Added expense of gasoline for no reason *More burning of fossil fuels for no reason *Worse bathrooms that you have to share *Worse kitchen that you have to share *Worse dress code *Less ergonomic office chair *Worse monitors *Slower Internet (in my case, at least) *More annoying disruptions from coworkers *Less peace and quiet needed for concentration *Have to sit in traffic yet again after you get off work
Pros: *Managers get to feel more important when seeing all their little worker bees' butts in their chairs. *Promotes shitty "office culture" *Corporate real estate owners get to keep collecting rent
20The company I work for and the company I used to work for are doing return to office right now. Thankfully I'm not impacted because I live halfway across the country.
17because I live halfway across the country.
best of luck.
It sadly hasn't stopped a lot of companies to still do RTO
20I appreciate it. Not to sound conceited, but I'm very secure in my position.
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Among the primary benefits: no commute, flexible work schedules and less time getting ready for work, according to WFH Research.
They forgot: being able to secretly simultaneously work 3 full-time overlapping jobs to triple your income.
16Where can I find these trivially easy jobs with no meetings?
29Not sure people are finding meeting-free gigs. I read about someone holding down 4 jobs who once had to attend 3 meetings at once (that story might have been in Wired mag, not sure). Like a DJ he had multiple audio streams going with headphones and made a skill of focusing where his name would most likely come up. I’m sure there’s also a long list of excuses like “had to run to stop the burning food” or whatever. Presumabely a long list of excuses to wholly nix a meeting in the first place as well.
Some people are secretly outsourcing some of their work as well, which works for workload but not for meetings.
11
I had a coworker who did exactly this back in the '90s. He was an expert in a really obscure programming/database platform/language from the 1970s (called "Cyborg") that only had a few people left that knew anything about it. It took literally hours to compile even the tiniest code changes so his job mostly involved sitting around doing nothing waiting for the compiler to finish. He managed to eventually get a WFH situation (with dialup lol) that paid him $300 an hour, then went out and got two other similar WFH jobs that paid the same since his actual work load was just a few minutes per day for each. $900 an hour in the 1990s.
6
Some companies have taken this as an opportunity to lower wages for remote workers, but honestly, I kind of don't mind too much. Between being able to cook my own food and not having to commute, not having to pay for car repairs, etc, working from home honestly saves thousands per year. Plus, you really can't put a price on the enjoyment of not having to commute like 2+ hours per day. The quality of life benefits are immense. It's pretty great.
Being forced into an office just to have asses in seats sucks. I've done that twice before, and I don't want to do it again.
7What monitors are those?
1It's hard to say. Here's a high res version I found, but it's a stock image and usually they remove branding in those. https://iongroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/T5502_Blog-Featured-Image_1-2048x1114.png
1The stands look very much like a few models of Dell i have at my work.
1
I know you guys are going to hate this, but I’m seeing a trend develop that no one is talking about. Work in our office is being divided up differently, jobs are morphing. There’s the work that can be done from home, and the work that can’t. Guess which one the bosses are talking about farming out to third world countries.
In my opinion hybrid is the way. Go in three days a week, do the things that require a physical presence, don’t worry about your job getting off shored.
-12They've been trying to offshore for decades. They're gonna keep trying. It's little more than a dog whistle to tell you what kind of dysfunctional they are.
12IMHO hybrid is the worse. Before Covid, when we worked in the office, I had my own desk, my parking space and all the meetings were held in meeting rooms. Now I have to be in the office 3 days a week and we have hot desk system, limited parking spaces and everyone is on a video call all the time. The office is now super loud and just not a nice place to work. There's not enough desks for everyone because the company can hire more people without expanding office, Parking spaces are reserved using some appa and disappear in 10 seconds. Hybrid just add some much hassle without any real benefits. Just bring everyone to the office or let everyone work from home.
7Guess which one the bosses are talking about farming out to third world countries.
guess what quality will be affected.
There's amazing workforce in those countries. But also some very bad. And companies that try to sell you their cheap labor generally aren't known for good QC
6This (outsourcing) was already done 20 years ago in my industry. WFH changes nothing.
3Guess which one the bosses are talking about farming out to third world countries.
🥱 It's 2023 dude, if they could offshore work they likely have already. Hell, in the last reduction in force at my company they fired a bunch of employees at our "third world country" office.
3I've thought this occasionally, but at least in my job, we've had lots of "remote work" for years by dint of being in a different building than other people. If that was going to be outsourced, I think they would have tried by now. It's really surprisingly hard to get effective consultants when they're based in the same country, but as you go overseas, you quickly end up with paying simply for "check the box", which probably is already mostly self service clicking and AI at the cutting edge (Amazon support "chat" anyone?). The problem is, you can tell an auditor you have function X, but in many cases that function becomes useless to others in the org.
IDK, I think there's been multiple indicators we're not currently on an offshoring swing.
3
A VPN is only as secure as the endpoints. You have to figure cyber criminals are seeing countless opportunities. Breaking into the right insecure home network could get you into fortune 500 servers.
-26I suggest you read up on Zero Trust. Corporate networks often aren't any more hardened than the average home router NAT device. VPN done right is no less secure on a home network because you control the endpoints you let connect. But the best plan is not using VPN at all, and instead authenticating the person and device on a per service basis.
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