X [Doubt]

CEOs, admit they used feelings over logic and everyone had to just pretend it made sense?

CEOs will admit nothing.

Shareholders like to hear that employees are having to come to the office, being fired, or pissing in bottles. It means more money for the shareholders.

“Every hour we’ll beat our lowest performing employee with a pool ball in a sock.”

The line goes up.

I thought the point was to get people to resign so they didn’t have to pay severance?

This won’t happen because no one is measuring productivity. If they had any way to measure productivity or even cared about it, there wouldn’t be bullshit jobs. CEOs will never admit this, because it was never the point.

Return to office mandates were never about productivity. They are about fulfilling obligations to municipalities that gave them tax breaks on real-estate in exchange for hiring a certain number of local employees.

I sincerely thought this headline was from the onion. I don’t think a lot of CEOs have the humility to admit fault.

CEOs will never admit shit until they’re paid to do so.

This reads like an onion headline.

It’s almost like people don’t want to be slaves of sociopaths to enrich themselves at the expense of all else.

Who could have known?

This will probably happen as the sunk cost fallacy of existing office space goes away. They have these big office spaces leased out and they’re contractually stuck with that cost. Those leases will expire over the next few years, and a lot of them will decide they don’t need them anymore. Until then, they’re paying for something that isn’t getting use, and there’s mental pressure to force the issue.

This will coincide with a collapse of the office rental market. The places heavily invested in that market see it coming, are dreading it, and are driving headlines saying how much better office work is.

My perspective on this after all my experiences over the past three years or so, working at three different jobs that service hundreds of customer sites and thousands of professional workers, is simply: forcing either work from office, work from home, or a combination of both (aka hybrid), is the wrong move. Your best talent will walk of you force them to do something that they don’t want to do. I have seen coworkers and users alike, find new jobs both when forced to WFH and RTO and even with hybrid.

The take away is, work should be flexible. It should be where the workers are most effectively able to complete their duties. If that’s the office, workers should have the ability to do that. If that’s at home, they should be able to do that. If it’s some combination of home/office, again, they should be able to do that.

If I’ve learned only one thing about work over the pandemic and this “post pandemic” hell, it’s that above all, people want to be able to make that choice for themselves. Any worker worth employing is going to be productive regardless of their location, and for short durations, workers can accept working from home or the office or whatever, even if it’s not their preference (eg, the 2020/1 lockdowns). A bad worker will be able to find ways to look busy will while not doing work regardless of if they’re working remotely or not, though, in my experience most workers just want to put in the effort, and get paid, and they do. Those that are there to do as little as possible and collect a paycheck are actually pretty rare. People want to work. Giving them the option of choosing where and when to do that is empowering and beneficial to their attitude and work ethic; not to mention, it’s also beneficial to their mental health.

Simply, forcing them into either working from home, or the office, or both via “hybrid” is going to have at least a few, wanting to walk.

We have the technology to support both styles of work and taking that choice away from workers will only serve to make those that want the opposite, disgruntled. If you value your workers, then let them choose.

Bluntly, given what I’ve seen from business owners over the same three+ year time period, they don’t care enough about workers to make them happy. It demonstrates a complete lack of shits given about what works want.

If you’re a business owner and you have any consideration for those you employ, give them the choice and you will be rewarded with more work, and better work done by those you employ. Anyone who forces the issue, one way or the other, will have some that are happy and some that are very unhappy about it. Choose wisely.

How long till 4 day work week?

They didn’t do it because productivity. They did it because real estate prices. Also they like to watch people work.

I like working in an office

I think this is because the reason to get people to get back into office was to protect commercial real estate values.

Now that the third tallest tower in LA sold for 45% its previous selling price, the dominoes have started to fall.

Now, it will be about getting people to work from home and trying to get out of these buildings as they are a failed investment.

So we are going to start seeing companies “offer” to let people work from home. They may even ask you to take a pay cut or something for the privilege.

This is just my prediction and I’m not an expert in these fields. So take this with a grain of salt.

If you are working in an office by force and they offer to let you work from home with a pay cut, I’d hold out a few months as they may start forcing people to work from home at full pay.