... And then they came for WFH

[herzlos]

Jun 19, 2023 14:14:32 GMT -5 easye said:

I can't wait to see their model of what corporate life in a open floor plan workspace looks like!

I'm sure they'll focus on all the happy faces on a commuter train at 7am on a Monday morning...

[maddocgrotsnik]

Jun 19, 2023 16:14:45 GMT -5 herzlos said:

Jun 19, 2023 15:50:47 GMT -5 maddocgrotsnik said:

I should receive notification, probably in a quick meeting, maybe by email.

If I get the 6%? After tax that should be around £120 extra a month. Which is definitely tangible and welcome.

Does that get you back to where you were before prices went mental? I got about an extra £100/month and it doesn't even cover the increase in my energy bills.
It's better than nothing though, but I still had a moan about it

More or less? Also getting £70ish back thanks to having paid off my tenancy deposit loan. And I’ve nuked my council tax bill for the year already.

[easye]

Amazon CEO tells employees to return to the office or their days may be numbered

www.cnn.com/2023/08/29/business/amazon-jobs-return-to-office/index.html

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told employees to get on board with the company’s return-to-office plan or to consider employment elsewhere, the company confirmed to CNN, after a report by Insider highlighted Jassy’s remarks from a recent internal event.

Jassy’s message reflects Amazon’s continued pressure on US office staff to comply with a policy requiring them to report to a physical office at least three days a week.

As part of his remarks, which Amazon shared with CNN, Jassy said during the event this month that while employees are entitled to disagree with the company’s decision bringing workers back into the office and to criticize it, they are not entitled to disregard the policy.

He also predicted that for those who could not accept the policy, their prospects for remaining at Amazon appeared grim.

All it takes is a few high profile companies to normalize the return to the office and kill WFH. Amazon appears to want to lead the charge.

[herzlos]

I wonder if these "Get back to the office or else" companies also hire a lot of H1B's, because otherwise threatening jobs over something stupid tends to cause the better staff to go elsewhere.

[pacific]

I think it will happen in certain sectors (is already happening) - see also, small companies with megalomaniacal bosses, who just like to exert power and force their will on their staff.

The difficulty they will have (and just speaking from the UK/IT-based industry) is that teams are even more fragmented now geographically. The office I work in, which was previously centred around one county, now has team members from all over the country that were recruiting during and after the pandemic. My partner has just taken a job in Manchester, which she travels to a few days a month. In either case, if a new manager said "all in the office now" it would not only have a big economic impact on the company (someone having to travel from London on the train daily would probably cost £800-1000 per week) as they have 'home worker' as their agreed contractual location, but if you are a trained/accredited worker in whatever discipline, you will just leave and find a job elsewhere.

So for Amazon to be effective in what they are doing here, it will most likely affect admin-type jobs which don't require a large amount of training (and therefore the staff saying "no" are easily replaceable) or it needs everyone in the industry to do the same thing at the same time - and those other companies won't because, thank you Amazon, you've now made our recruitment pool larger thanks to those staff leaving your company - and so those companies are incentivised to not force office working.

[Haighus]

I am actually in my first ever job where I can do some WFH as of this month (medical research) and it is a refreshing option after years of frontline wardwork. Haven't used it yet as still finding my feet.

It seems to be massively dependent on bosses. My supervisor so far is very much not the controlling type, and therefore my workplan is very flexible. They don't need to see my arse in the office to determine if I am being productive (on an objective or subjective level).

[easye]

One downside for job seekers with the prevalence of remote work is that when you go to get a new job, you are no longer competing against the local pool of talent, you are competing with a National pool of talent. If WFH ends as a practice, that will re-localize the talent pools.

I know at the Global Mega-corp I work for, they have all ready made Hybrid go from 2 days a week to 3. I am having more and more contacts with folks in conference rooms again. During the pandemic we sold my local building as we went WFH, we also hired folks from across the Nation, so a "global" call back would be pretty difficult; even for the executives of my part of the organization.

[pacific]

easye - I think that very much depends on the industry and the skill bases. For my area, which is quite specialist software, and where I live in the arse-end of no-where, the only way I can really get a 'local' job is if I move to London. And I would honestly rather change career than do that.
This was evident in being able to actually get skilled staff once we switched to a national recruitment model, forced on the company by the pandemic, and suddenly had 5-6 applicants for jobs with the right experience - before it was lucky if there was a single applicant, so they usually had to bring in juniors to train up.

Haighus - the hilarious thing about that, and is a point a mate of mine made: Do they think lazy people do any more work in the office? I used to work with a guy who was a master of the alt-tab, could seemingly do it without having his hand on the keyboard and with eyes on the back of his head if someone was walking behind him. That guy would be spending all day on the Man Utd web pages if he was at home or in the office.

[semipotentwalrus]

I think the genie is out of the bottle. The productivity loss of not allowing WFH is going to be felt.

[easye]

www.npr.org/2023/09/01/1196731284/return-to-office-rto-hybrid-remote-work-from-home-zoom

Remote work is harder to come by as companies push for return to office

Back in 2020, when schools were still virtual and city dwellers were living their lives in masks, Jamie Dimon emerged as one of the earliest critics of remote work.

"There's a huge value to working together in terms of collaboration and creativity and training the younger people," the CEO of JPMorgan Chase told MSNBC in August that year.

Three years later, Dimon's message is unchanged. The difference now is that the sentiment has gone mainstream.

Today, even Zoom's leadership is extolling the benefits of in-person work.

"What we've found is, people have enjoyed coming back to the office," says Zoom's Chief People Officer Matthew Saxon. "There is a buzz. There's something about being able to go have lunch with your teammates."

With the pandemic declared over, much of America seems to have settled on the idea that at least some in-person time is beneficial — even necessary — for workplaces. But what remains under hot debate is how much time is needed and who gets to determine that.

According to Kastle Systems, which tracks security card swipes, building occupancy in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and the New York metro area is barely breaking 40%. Houston tops a list of major U.S. cities with occupancy reaching 60%.

It's a sign that many office workers who enjoyed greater autonomy while working from home are not readily giving up that up, even as their employers step up demands for them to come in.

also of note from the story.....

Employers now have research — albeit limited — to back up their demands. Studies have found people get more feedback when they're in the same space as their coworkers, leading to more opportunities for advancement. And while findings on productivity are mixed, there's evidence that fully remote workers encounter more friction when trying to convey information quickly.



After an outcry from Republicans in Congress, the Biden administration has called on federal agencies to "aggressively execute" the shift to more in-office work this fall, a move that's already sparked clashes with federal employee unions.

Thanks Republicans!  There should be some campaign ads about this.... but their won't be. 

Finally......

Employees at Farmers Insurance, who just last year were told they would stay remote according to reporting by the Wall Street Journal, now face a requirement to work in-person three days a week if they live within 50 miles of a Farmers office.
**********
The cooling economy may be adding pressure on employees to be more visible on the job. On Monday, Farmers Insurance announced it was cutting 2,400 jobs, or 11% of its workforce as part of a restructuring.

As I suspected would happen.  There is a reason so many business executives have been claiming a recession was coming.  They wanted an excuse to do their employees dirty. 

It appears the Work-From-Home revolution is still far away.  I can only imagine the 4-dat work week is even further behind.  

[Haighus]

With things like this, I am reminded of the approximately 60%:40% extrovert:introvert split.

There are definitely some people who enjoy the social aspect of being in the office, and they may even be in the majority.

But there is still a significant minority of people who get drained by extraneous social interaction, and I am confident they are the folks who prefer WFH on the whole. From my own (introvert) perspective, it is definitely one of the benefits of being at home.

[Emblematic Wolfblade]

Honestly, I expect a lot of extroverts like WFH too. Saving money and time by not having to drive into an office, getting to sleep in, and taking more frequent breaks all come to mind as big tangible benefits.

[skyth]

Sept 2, 2023 4:39:46 GMT -5 Haighus said:

With things like this, I am reminded of the approximately 60%:40% extrovert:introvert split.

There are definitely some people who enjoy the social aspect of being in the office, and they may even be in the majority.

But there is still a significant minority of people who get drained by extraneous social interaction, and I am confident they are the folks who prefer WFH on the whole. From my own (introvert) perspective, it is definitely one of the benefits of being at home.

Problem is that extroverts make the rules.

[Haighus]

Sept 2, 2023 9:17:37 GMT -5 Emblematic Wolfblade said:

Honestly, I expect a lot of extroverts like WFH too. Saving money and time by not having to drive into an office, getting to sleep in, and taking more frequent breaks all come to mind as big tangible benefits.

Sure, and some introverts will enjoy going into the office/find themselves more effective there (esp. if they have a good, close-knit team around them). They are broad categories with lots of different people and circumstances.

However, the article above mentioned socialising as a big reason for coming into the office. I think this is much more likely to apply to extroverts than introverts, because it is likely to energise extroverts and drain introverts. As such, reaching an in-office proportion of 60% in Houston seems about the maximum you might expect without forcing people into the office (although I suspect much of that percentage is already forced).

[Haighus]

Sept 2, 2023 9:30:22 GMT -5 skyth said:

Sept 2, 2023 4:39:46 GMT -5 Haighus said:

With things like this, I am reminded of the approximately 60%:40% extrovert:introvert split.

There are definitely some people who enjoy the social aspect of being in the office, and they may even be in the majority.

But there is still a significant minority of people who get drained by extraneous social interaction, and I am confident they are the folks who prefer WFH on the whole. From my own (introvert) perspective, it is definitely one of the benefits of being at home.

Problem is that extroverts make the rules.

Extroverts and morning people. Which sucks for me...