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Internet Explorer posted:I'm of the opinion that forced RTO is class warfare and at this point you have an obligation to fight it any way you can. What is "forced" RTO? Being sincere. Just a mandated RTO without allowances for effort and money to implement something that meets it?
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Aug 2, 2023 18:17
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Nuclearmonkee posted:What is "forced" RTO? Being sincere. "you must return to the office and cannot work from home anymore"
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Aug 2, 2023 18:18
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Forced as in "do this or we are spiteful enough to go through the process of sacking you"
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Aug 2, 2023 18:22
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Thanks Ants posted:Forced as in "do this or we are spiteful enough to go through the process of sacking you" And people get very hostile about it rapidly and band together and basically say " ok fire your entire department, enjoy your downtime when everything crashes in 12 hours" I just wish they would loving drop it and move on already, it's been like 3+ years. Get over it.
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Aug 2, 2023 18:24
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Fortune had an article recently -- lol I don't read Fortune, it came to me via Mastodon -- about how companies that tried to force RTO are facing much worse attrition than they thought they would: https://fortune.com/2023/08/01/rese...gleb-tsipursky/
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Aug 2, 2023 18:27
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Internet Explorer posted:I'm of the opinion that forced RTO is class warfare and at this point you have an obligation to fight it any way you can. This take is good and correct. I already quit once over a bad RTO plan. I'll fuckin' do it again.
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Aug 2, 2023 18:28
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Our corporate overlords already lost this fight but some don’t realize it. This field is always short of people and no one has to deal with this RTO poo poo if they don’t want to. Any RTO initiatives I’ve seen have failed, you wind up with half measures like monthly in person meetings. gently caress these assholes
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Aug 2, 2023 18:30
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I couldn't go back to the office even if I wanted to, my entire life is currently revolving around a work from home schedule.
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Aug 2, 2023 18:54
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Sepist posted:I couldn't go back to the office even if I wanted to, my entire life is currently revolving around a work from home schedule.  Doubly so during the school year, which is also assisted by working 2 timezones over from where I live.
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Aug 2, 2023 18:58
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my company tried to force rto two years ago and lost 20% of the it org before they relented
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Aug 2, 2023 18:59
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Sepist posted:I couldn't go back to the office even if I wanted to, my entire life is currently revolving around a work from home schedule.
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Aug 2, 2023 19:00
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Sepist posted:I couldn't go back to the office even if I wanted to, my entire life is currently revolving around a work from home schedule. I *could* but what I would have to do is not something that I'm going to do when, from what I can tell, plenty of other big shops just don't care where their people work. I think this is where management is missing the point. For me, an IT guy, getting sent home during COVID was essentially a sizable pay increase. No more parking, car wear and tear, gas, eating out in a big city, formal dress clothes that wore out loving constantly, etc etc. The entire "going to the office to work" bucket of expenses was quite sizable in my overall budget. So after years of not having to spend that money that bucket is now dissolved and it's just become part of my life. I bought a house, paid off a lot of debt, made some lifestyle upgrades, all of that jazz. I did all of these things after my company announced a formal flexible work thing, and everyone thought it was a done deal. Now, if I have to return to work I have a very sizable *NEW* expense. Not new in the sense that I have never had it before, just knew in the sense that I haven't had it for a very long time and that money has integrated itself into other aspects of my life that I can't easily take it back. And I'm saying this as a single guy with no kids, if I had to juggle child care and a spouse and going from one to two cars or whatever I would quit in a heartbeat.
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Aug 2, 2023 19:04
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I have to think that "big picture" companies compete for employees and that wfh is a simple/cheap enough option to offer people that it'll be around forever at this point. I know I was a bit concerned as the primary earner for my family moving to a rural area that doesnt have a lot of tech jobs but I dont worry at this point. So long as I keep my skills up to date there will be remote jobs out there.
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Aug 2, 2023 19:08
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Well also inflation has mostly dissolved any benefit, and the money that you spent on getting to and dressing for work probably isn't actually there any more even if you bought all the same things you were buying five years ago
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Aug 2, 2023 19:09
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Sepist posted:I couldn't go back to the office even if I wanted to, my entire life is currently revolving around a work from home schedule. Yuuuup. I'm not exaggerating when I say if I was forced to add an hour's worth of commute (half hour each way) along with not being home to do stuff like toss in a load of laundry or put dinner on to cook before the end of the work day, my life would fall apart. The amount of random poo poo I get done around the house on my lunch hour is massive. That's 5 hours of household labor a week that I get back on top of commute time. Conservatively, that's 10 hours a week that I get back to invest in my own mental and physical welfare. It's almost the same as giving me a 3 day weekend every week.
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Aug 2, 2023 19:09
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The Fool posted:my company tried to force rto two years ago and lost 20% of the it org before they relented My old gig pre-pandemic was very big on WFH and flexible schedules. Then about a year before the pandemic, they announced they were getting rid of it and everyone had to return to the office and could only WFH one day a week. I posted about it a bunch in the BFC Corporate thread but the tldr was we saw a reduction of about 25% of our workforce as a result. The bleeding only stopped once COVID hit and they were forced to let people WFH again. Also the funniest part was they tried to compromise with a "core hours" policy, where you had to be in the office between 10-2, but could work remote before or after. You can guess what most people did.
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Aug 2, 2023 19:39
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CLAM DOWN posted:"you must return to the office and cannot work from home anymore" I'm extremely stupid my brain saw "recovery time objective" RTO. Forcing return to office just means all the good people leave and you lose some advantage when trying to hire people with esoteric specialist knowledge.
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Aug 2, 2023 19:40
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I don't own a car, and my on-foot mobility is limited. Either I'd have to get a carshare twice every day or spend an hour and a half each way on a bus to go 10 minutes by car. Both aren't really anything I'm willing to consider, and now that I'm finally growing my skills I don't think in person is really going to offer me any real benefits.
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Aug 2, 2023 19:43
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lol a big place where I live is offering free parking* if you return (I'm in a major city) *Free parking for $30 days, $7/day maximum, which puts you in the "I might get mugged" part of town. Close to the actual building is $18/day minimum. In the building itself is like $30.
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Aug 2, 2023 19:47
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Well our agency is doing a RTO starting with the capital region first but we can expect that whatever they implement will be pushed to the rest of the nation afterwards. They are doing 50% time in office during a pay period so basically 5 of the 10 days in a pay period have to be in the office. The vast majority of our guys dont need to be in an office, and the only reason why they are pushing it is because they need to fill asses to justify building costs or whatever. Less than 10% of the people I service are in the office I work in, the rest are spread out in like 15 counties around me, there is no functional difference for 90% of the people I service if Im teleworking or in the office.
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Aug 2, 2023 19:51
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Insisting on being in an office just doesn't make sense when your business apps are all cloud ones and the work you do is also on a computer you can't physically go and touch. In fact the business has more resilience if a team of five is all WFH because they can't be snowed out the office, their internet won't go out at the same time like it could if a single switch lost power etc. Management of course knows all of this but there are a lot of jobs that rely on looking at people sitting down and sometimes walking over to them before writing appraisals.
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Aug 2, 2023 19:51
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Thankfully I'm more or less safe as long as I'm with my current company as they really aren't buying into this RTO drum beating. All (including me) but two people on my team are multiple states away from the corporate office and we actually closed most satellite offices, shifting to remote work in those locations, in the summer of 2019. So, we were already doing this pre-pandemic. Neither my boss nor my boss's boss care about remote work and prefer to do it themselves. Finally, a few months ago we had a corporate call where they introduced a new head of personnel and she was actually complaining on the call that she didn't get the chance to know people yet because she hasn't seen anyone in person and hoped that would change. The CEO kinda laughed nervously next to her and then went on a lengthy exposition on the advantages that he's seen in going remote. Two months later the new personnel head is not with the company anymore. Actually, come to think of it, July of 2019 is when I really started working from home full time. We didn't officially close the office until September, but pretty much everyone stopped going almost immediately after the announcement that it was going to happen. So happy 4 years working from home for me!
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Aug 2, 2023 20:02
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I always assumed the push for RTO was companies getting upset that they had all this real estate they weren't using. That and the management class feeling like they have to have an eyeball on every worker.
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Aug 2, 2023 20:02
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Thanks Ants posted:Insisting on being in an office just doesn't make sense when your business apps are all cloud ones and the work you do is also on a computer you can't physically go and touch. In fact the business has more resilience if a team of five is all WFH because they can't be snowed out the office, their internet won't go out at the same time like it could if a single switch lost power etc. Management of course knows all of this but there are a lot of jobs that rely on looking at people sitting down and sometimes walking over to them before writing appraisals. My supervisor has like 8 direct reports and every single one is over 100 miles away from his office. After I'm done moving because of a promotion I'll be 3 hours away from his office. His supervisor has like 6 direct reports and each is in a different state. It sort of makes sense for the capital region because the vast majority of the people you serve should be in DC but it doesnt work on any other state/region and I'm sure they are going to push it down to us anyways.
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Aug 2, 2023 20:04
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We have an home office that sits 200 but there are maybe 15 of us on site daily, including everyone in IT. We all work remote 2x a week. But we just knocked down walls to expand our Citrix infrastructure. We have to have on site folks who do government work where clearance is required.
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Aug 2, 2023 20:04
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I'm on a team of 5, 2 of my guys are a state over, and 1 is on a different continent because we needed to be a "global" team. I haven't yet heard a good reason as to why I need to drive 10 miles down the street to teleconference with my teammate on another continent while we work on an environment that is on yet another continent. The most hilarious situation is when we occasionally do come into the office for whatever reason but the rest of the department can't agree on a day so only about 10% of the department isn't in at any given time so we drive in and end up just huddling around a teams call anyways. I know several old heads that quit, and then they show back up 6 months later as a "contractor" at like triple the pay. Maybe I should consider that.
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Aug 2, 2023 20:14
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My company doesn’t even have an office in my country so I’m safe for the foreseeable future.
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Aug 2, 2023 20:51
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Nuclearmonkee posted:What is "forced" RTO? Being sincere. My old gig just said, "you are required to be in office Tues/Wed/Thus. If you have to come in on a Mon or Fri then that does not count and you still have to work the 3 days in a row". Pretty sure what will happen there is that management will be in 5 days a week, call the occasional meeting/team building thing always on Mondays and Fridays. So they slowly work back in 5 days a week and those that don't want to are dismissed. My current gig made a lot of new hires during the pandemic, so mandating RTO means half the company quits and another 2/3 of that would likely leave as well. Buff Hardback posted:My company doesn’t even have an office in my country so I’m safe for the foreseeable future. Ours isn't big enough to hold more than 15 people, and even then the wifi gets spotty. It's more of a physical presence type of office where they can host internal and client meetings. There are a lot of co-working spaces around here but I don't think they are doing very good. $25-$35 a day seems steep.
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Aug 2, 2023 21:34
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cr0y posted:Ugh, I work at an F100 and they are pushing return to work. Here's my experience with it so far. Also F100. The beginning of the year C levels asked folks to start coming in voluntarily a couple days a week. That didn't happen at all. C levels got pissed off and stomped their feet, and now we have a 3 day in office mandate after labor day. 4 days in office requirement after Jan 1, 2024. * Before Covid, generally 3 days in office was expected with 2 WfH days so this is actually worse than before the pandemic. In office attendance is being tracked and monitored by Director levels and higher. Managers are being asked why employees are not compliant. This tracking is used to "open up conversations about performance and expectations", and will be part of our annual performance evaluation next year. Rumor is that if you don't meet in office requirements you can lose 50% of your bonus, which is not insignificant. No hard rule on how long you have to be in the office, but there's going to be some fuckers that ruin it for everyone by showing up for an hour and leaving. My wife also works here and she does about 6 to 7 hours in the office and then wraps a few things up at home. She's been back in the office since April 3 days a week. Rumor is going to 6 hours is minimum expected time in the office, and the report will flag if your badge exit swipe is less than 4 1/2 hours after your entrance swipe. Random comments: They are taking full advantage of the tougher job market and forcing this. They know they pay on average a little better than market, and options have dried up for a lot of people. When the market was on fire they weren't talking about this at all, especially for IT workers. Now things aren't as great, time to put the boot on the neck. Head C level made several comments about already seeing business improvements and better metrics due to return to office for departments that mandated earlier this year. Won't share specifics, but claims to have hard data saying in office is better all around. He's also made comments that 13 out of our 15 peer companies are all forcing return to office, and by golly we can't be different. Company has really left a sour taste in my mouth regarding remote hires. They were fast to hire remote workers during the pandemic, but have done a 180 on them now. They want to focus on locating people near core offices, all future openings will be in office and if you read between the lines it boils down to "If you're remote you have no future here" This doesn't directly affect me, but there's some good people on my team that are remote that are basically being told you have no career path, get hosed if you don't want to move. I've been grandfathered in as Remote despite living somewhat close to HQ. My wife commutes 3 days a week right now, it's about 25 miles each way. They're honoring me being hired remote for now, but if I change roles, get promoted, or do anything else, that remote status goes away. I'm potentially being tapped for a Lead position next year, and that will require in office work. I'm not really interested in it. It would only be a 10% bump and the level of bullshit would increase way more than that. I do go into the office when there's a good reason to. Quarterly planning I go in, other special events. Give me a reason to drive in. This has nothing to do with profit, production, or any of that other bullshit. C levels want to see the troops in the office. We have a vested interest in commercial real estate maintaining it's value, and we're not going to do anything that jeopardizes that. Supposedly we own or partly own a bunch of commercial RE. They want the bustle and energy of folks milling about even though we have hard evidence productivity goes down. They're worried about Culture and all that stuff. I've pointed out to my management team that this is going to negatively affect the company. Talented people have options, and the more talent you have the more willing a company will be to hire you remote. Those folks are going to find other jobs at companies that hire remote workers. We're going to get left with the less talented folks with less options. We're already at a disadvantage due to not being publicly traded, so our compensation doesn't include any sort of stock options. We already have a hard time competing for IT talent especially. Most of them know this, but the C levels don't care. I can go on and on, but it's nothing but leadership trying to regain control of the employees again. We got too much power during Covid and they want it back.
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Aug 2, 2023 21:40
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I actually like being in the office 3x/week or so, and it helped me get some visibility into other teams and processes that I wouldn’t have otherwise. It has helped my career to have casual conversations with managers of teams I have an interest in joining (in a way that would’ve been weird on Slack). Work caters office lunch and gives a big transit stipend which tbh is a pretty nice perk. That said, I would drop a job pretty drat quickly if they insisted on 4-5x/week or ‘beg your manager to wfh’ timekeeping bullshit.
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Aug 2, 2023 21:41
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Your point about it really being about employers losing some control over their employees as if we are some sort of gear in a cog (which yea we are) is spot on. However the employees understand that as well and is why they are so willing to fight and say gently caress off I'm done at a moment's notice. I'm very close with a ton of people in my department and I know exactly what's going to happen. They will come back to the office and collect a paycheck while actively seeking something better, I know it's what I'm going to do.
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Aug 2, 2023 21:47
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In my company's RTO journey they wanted people in to do a round of layoffs. Who was laid off had nothing to do whether you returned to office. Then they did another round a few weeks later, and likely a third with a new CEO
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Aug 2, 2023 21:49
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BadSamaritan posted:I actually like being in the office 3x/week or so, and it helped me get some visibility into other teams and processes that I wouldn’t have otherwise. It has helped my career to have casual conversations with managers of teams I have an interest in joining (in a way that would’ve been weird on Slack). Work caters office lunch and gives a big transit stipend which tbh is a pretty nice perk. I don't mind it. I do find value in those hallway conversations and talking to folks on other teams. I just hate being required to go sit in a cubicle in a noisy rear end environment where I can't focus for poo poo (ADHD) because they want me to do my work there instead of in my home office. I'm also in a bit of a different place in my life, my kids are older now, they're not as dependent on me for everything. One of our SVP's made a comment about how coming into the office is just so nice and it's wonderful being around folks again. Yeah, I'd probably think the same way if I had adult children I didn't have to worry about, a 7 figure salary, and a 15 minute commute from my million dollar mansion in my 170K Porsche and a giant private office. If I was a 24 year old kid living in a 1 bedroom apartment by myself I'd probably like going to the office as well. I got other poo poo to do though and I don't like giving up over an hour a day commuting to a cubicle farm to get less work done.
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Aug 2, 2023 21:53
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skipdogg posted:Here's my experience with it so far. Also F100. Your experience mirrors mine at a huge multi-national finance company that was my previous job. My wife got a dream job offer that was 3 hours away that we were going to move for. The whole time prior to this my work was doing the same lovely thing, return to office 3 days a week, tracking door swipes, etc. Well I got a full time remote offer and put in my notice. My direct boss was cool about it and understood, and even got a counter for me that included full time WFH but she was also very explicit in saying that my career at that company was done if I took it. All the management types had to be in the office, and if you ever wanted a promotion or raise you had to be in office as well.
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Aug 2, 2023 21:56
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Go full malicious compliance. Move into your office. Live their. After a week tell everyone else to get out of your domicile.
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Aug 2, 2023 21:58
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We started an RTO push about a year and a half ago. Management has had to compromise severely on their RTO ask, from 70% of the company averaging 3 days a week, to averaging 1.5. I have an anchor day for our weekly team meeting. The food is good, campus is beautiful, I like my teammates, running in to people randomly is good, I have an office, and I can bail at 1:45. I'm not hating this. I could technically come in at 10:50 and leave on the 1:48 bus, so a day at the office would be chitchat with co-workers, lunch, shitposting, and home by 3.
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Aug 2, 2023 22:02
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A huge portion of IT staff were previously officed in an office building far away from the rest of the campus, and really just far away from anything, despite being nominally "downtown." Any time return to office gets brought up, the one refrain between employees and management is "Nobody wants to go back to <building>" which I think has kept our WFH pretty loose. Because it's a real poo poo-stain of an office they'd be forcing us to return to.
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Aug 2, 2023 22:04
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Vargatron posted:I always assumed the push for RTO was companies getting upset that they had all this real estate they weren't using. That and the management class feeling like they have to have an eyeball on every worker. We sold our office because the lease was up and moved to a smaller cheaper one which can only physically fit 50% of our employees so we are definitely all in on at least reasonable hybrid.
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Aug 2, 2023 22:05
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I have some coworkers that are local to my company and they go in once every other week or so. But the big key is just leaving it there as an option. Once you force people it just pisses them off.
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Aug 2, 2023 22:09
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the higher up your pay and the faker your job the less the issues of working in an office matters to you imo, hence why CEO pissbabies all want it, some lovely managers want it, and most people either want it or were never given the option in the first place.
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Aug 2, 2023 22:19
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