• bean@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    The slow march of the return to office has taken another step forward

    No. 🤬 you ‘Fortune’. You’re just spoon feeding the rich what you think they want to hear.

    Amazon and ATT are big but they don’t represent the whole and does not imply return to office is inevitable.

    • futatorius@lemm.ee
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      6 hours ago

      Back in the 1950s, Amazon and ATT would have been General Motors: an imagined safe, brain-dead corporate sinecure. Nobody entrepreneurial or innovative goes to work at such places. Just technocrats, cogs in the machine. Highly trained functionaries from brand-name universities keeping the juggernaut rolling on. Feeding Moloch.

    • mesamune@lemmy.worldOP
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      18 hours ago

      Where im at, there is literally only two companies in town. Comcast and ATT. No other options. So yeah, I have a choice but not really. They get my money no matter what. Wish we didnt have a duopoly…

    • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      Yeah. Just read an article explaining that you lose the best talent by forcing RTO and turnover jumps 14%.

    • HeyJoe@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      The real talent already built the good stuff. Now, all they need is someone to follow SOP’s to maintain and carry on. Improvements and new stuff will take the hit, and they will grow stagnant until someone else starts doing something better, and then they scramble and complain as they start losing money and that’s when they start looking for talent again. Except this time, they will just be hired to put in place whatever the other company did and probably be let go after.

  • Optional@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    AT&T owns a lot of corporate real estate. Its fucking with their books so they have to punish everyone so execs look smart.

    • futatorius@lemm.ee
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      6 hours ago

      It’s more that toxic, sociopathic middle managers can’t torment remote workers as effectively.

  • DominusOfMegadeus@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    “The majority of our employees and leaders never stopped working on location for the full work week—including during the pandemic,” a spokesperson told Fortune.

    And you…you’re proud of this?!

    • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      That makes no sense. Commercial landlords collect rent regardless of how often employees are on site.

      The real reason for RTW policies is that companies want to downsize without firing workers (and thus without paying unemployment). Hence:

      Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told staff they will need to be back in the office full-time, seemingly pushing 73% of his colleagues to consider quitting over the move

      Stankey said 85% of them already lived near one of the offices. The remaining 15%, he said, will have to “make decisions that are appropriate to their lives.”

      • futatorius@lemm.ee
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        6 hours ago

        Commercial landlords collect rent regardless of how often employees are on site.

        When leases come up for renewal, rational companies look at how much space they actually need and downsize their office requirements accordingly. That’s more or less what my employer is doing now. We own a vast building, but now we’ve sublet about a third of it.

      • HootinNHollerin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 day ago

        Two of my previous employers went out of business or are on their final thread and moved out to some small office somewhere. Those buildings have each been vacant for about 2 years now. Can’t collect rent if no tenants

          • futatorius@lemm.ee
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            6 hours ago

            Oh yeah you do, since your revenue depends on how many asses they expect to be in those seats.

            • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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              22 hours ago

              If they are not planning to renew their leases, then they aren’t doing the bidding of their landlords as OP suggested.

              In other words, if a company (for some reason) wants to please commercial real estate owners, it doesn’t have to end WFH.

              And if it doesn’t care about pleasing commercial real estate owners, then it must have some other reason for ending WFH.

              • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝
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                6 hours ago

                Commercial real estate owners need RTO because their stocks and assets are valued on feels. If most companies are paying for empty buildings, line goes down because they are perceived to be sure to sell.

                And especially with really big corps who actually own their buildings, if it’s empty and perceived to be worth less, the company is worth less.

  • abbadon420@lemm.ee
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    21 hours ago

    My work started demanding the same. I can’t do more than 2 days, because my wife works 3 days and we’ve got to do something with the kids. Two days is what I’ve been doing since I started working there 3 years ago. Luckily they won’t be enforcing it for now. I’m bound to them until summer at least. That’s when I plan on finishing my bachelor that they paid for. I love my job, but this (and the bad pay) is forcing me to start looking for something else ASAP.

  • Lifecoach5000@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I’m happy my greedy company closed our office a year ago to save money on the lease. I don’t respect the people in charge but full time WFH is an excellent perk.

    • futatorius@lemm.ee
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      6 hours ago

      After the Black Death, laws were passed forcing peasants to remain on the land so that their landlords could keep wages down. But the numbers leaving were too great and enforcement was spotty because the enforcers also had staff shortages. So people gravitated to towns and wages rose.

    • futatorius@lemm.ee
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      6 hours ago

      It definitely sends a message that “we don’t know what those people are doing unless we can see the whites of their eyes and smell the fear-sweat.”

  • rjthyen@lemm.ee
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    1 day ago

    Can anyone explain to me why companies are pushing RTO? Simply to justify some management positions? Or justify the big buildings they built? To me work from home would have so many advantages for a company and could actually be problematic for some employees. Not only can they save some costs on office space but it opens up their talent pool in a way that could lower wages. They could find someone living in low cost of living middle of nowhere that would do a job for 60k that someone in an expensive city couldn’t justify doing for less than 120k.

    • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
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      23 hours ago

      Its not all. I have found that companies that did not own much real estate have embraced wfh big time and have wound down any contracts they had. Ones stuck with offices they own or maybe long term contracts seem to but I doubt its going to be a good long term call. The only possible usage it might have is to encourage people to quit so you can reduce the workforce without lay offs but that is a crazy strategy as you are losing at best random folks and at worst the best you have.

      • rjthyen@lemm.ee
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        22 hours ago

        I overlooked reducing workforce as a possibility. I’m not in the corporate world at all so I have no actual insight on anything. I’ve just been confused by something I’d consider a win-win being done away with by a lot of companies.

        • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
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          21 hours ago

          yeah everyone is confused with that. Many back to office scenarios have the people sitting in the office video conferencing all day because many of the folks they work with are not at the local office anyway.

          • futatorius@lemm.ee
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            6 hours ago

            And they’re in panopticon bull-pen offices where it’s impossible to hear yourself because the people next to you are also shouting on Teams.

            That’s very much my situation. 3/4 of my staff are from contracting firms based elsewhere. So regardless of where I work, most of my meetings are via video conferencing.

    • Num10ck@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      traditional middle management simply doesnt need to exist of you’re not baby sitting in person. everything else they can do could be AI handled or outsourced. except maybe training up and assessing for promotions. get used to training yourselves and self promotions by job hopping.

      • futatorius@lemm.ee
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        6 hours ago

        traditional middle management simply doesnt need to exist of you’re not baby sitting in person

        I strongly disagree with that. Properly used, middle managers bring a lot. But I would say that, if a manager requires their staff to be on-site in order to manage them, they’re crap managers who should consider a career transition to frying fast food or gutting fish. They’re typically the ones who judge performance by perceived effort and how well the employee kisses ass, and their main focus is managing upwards by sucking up to their bosses. With remote workers, you need an effective way of assessing results or you’re hosed. I’ve been running remote squads since the 1980s, and for the most part, it’s only a problem if you’re an ineffective manager.