NY Times Report - A Two-Year, 50-Million-Person Experiment in Changing How We Work

[Black Aeronaut]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/10/busin...-life.html

TL;DR: Most people would very much like to keep working from home.

Carefully skirted are outright accusations of racism and sexism, though they are implied.  Used instead are words like "microaggressions" and in an indirect manner.  Hell, just call it what it is: institutionalized racism/sexism/classicism.

The classicism part clearly implied where someone recounts hearing a manager read aloud resumes... and then chuck the ones that did not feature a prestigious school straight into the recycle bin.

Aside: I know people don't like the phrase "There oughta be a law...", but I can't help but feel like this is something that there needs to be a law about - where potential employers cannot discriminate based on education provided the listed school has the degree program you desire in a candidate and that the school meets the accreditation standards.  Sure, it means you'd actually have to see if someone is cut out for the job.  But, as the hiring manager, isn't that your job in the first place?

[classicdrogn]

Facility and maintenance expenses down, employee productivity (not mentioned in the linked article, but from memory of one last year and my brother in law's own workplace's internal assessment) and morale up, why the hell would anyone WANT to make their cube farm drones come back to the hive, beyond maybe a weekly meeting if you're really just dying for awkward waves or elbow bumps in lieu of shaking hands?

[robkelk]

Control. There are still some people who enjoy micromanaging their staff or don't know any other way to manage, and it's easier to do that when they're all in one place where their shoulders can be looked over.

[hazard]

Also, there are definitely jobs that are just plain performed better when everybody is present.

Much of it boils down to corporate culture however.

[Bob Schroeck]

Then there's all that corporate real estate which is sitting unused and costing money. There's no one to sell it off to -- everyone else is facing the same situation -- so the only way to justify owning it and paying maintenance/heating/power/water/etc. is to force employees back into the cubes.

EDIT: As hazard noted, yes, there are some jobs that are better (or can only be) performed in the office, but that's no reason to force everyone back. My employers have acknowledged this -- our productivity is higher than it was two and a half years ago and we're not about to outgrow our office again (as we did a year or two before COVID, requiring an expansion into an adjacent, vacant unit). They like things this way.

[Black Aeronaut]

For the ones where working side by side is a necessary evil, then maybe they should scale up the cubes and make the "open air office" into a place that's actually pleasant and enjoyable.  After all, there will still be people doing the grunt work from home, and as mentioned that means a lot more floor space is now available.

Worse comes to worse, they can always convert offices into condos or something like that and maybe make even more money that way.

[nemonowan]

Not to mention all these big city majors that demand that the commuting workers come back so they will again spend their money in their cities instead of in the towns where they reside.

[Labster]

No one has mentioned the biggest issue: how can companies recruit managers when there are no butts-in-seats to make dance to their whims?  They don't want to actually pay people, so instead they give managers latitude to make people do what they want, when they want.  It's a really big perk.  The boss has a giant perk, and would like to remind everyone of that.  And if we take that perk away, that raw power, are those people going to want to be managers?  That might involve a huge culture shift for the company.

[Bob Schroeck]

I think that's an unfair generalization. Managers are not universally petty tyrants who need visible peons to lord it over. I'm not saying the type doesn't exist -- they do, and in more numbers than they should -- but there are other kinds of personalities willing to be managers and who do good jobs. I've worked for more than a few of the latter in my forty years of employment.

[Labster]

That's a bad generalization, but it does completely apply at some employers as their normal way of doing business. I have a friend who is a senior electrical engineer at this place, and it took years until he could leave the office, and his employee number is under 10. The CEO is the kind of person who likes to work from home, but does not want anyone else to do so. But the one or two days he comes to the office, he gets upset when people aren't at their desks. This is a company you've heard about in the news, too.