Employees are Quitting Instead of Giving Up Working from Home:
The drive to get people back into offices is clashing with workers who've embraced remote work as the new normal.
A six-minute meeting drove Portia Twidt to quit her job.
She'd taken the position as a research compliance specialist in February, enticed by promises of remote work. Then came the prodding to go into the office. Meeting invites piled up.
The final straw came a few weeks ago: the request for an in-person gathering, scheduled for all of 360 seconds. Twidt got dressed, dropped her two kids at daycare, drove to the office, had the brief chat and decided she was done.
"I had just had it," said Twidt, 33, who lives in Marietta, Georgia.
With the coronavirus pandemic receding for every vaccine that reaches an arm, the push by some employers to get people back into offices is clashing with workers who've embraced remote work as the new normal.
While companies from Google to Ford Motor Co. and Citigroup Inc. have promised greater flexibility, many chief executives have publicly extolled the importance of being in offices. Some have lamented the perils of remote work, saying it diminishes collaboration and company culture. JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s Jamie Dimon said at a recent conference that it doesn't work "for those who want to hustle."
But legions of employees aren't so sure. If anything, the past year has proved that lots of work can be done from anywhere, sans lengthy commutes on crowded trains or highways. Some people have moved. Others have lingering worries about the virus and vaccine-hesitant colleagues.
And for Twidt, there's also the notion that some bosses, particularly those of a generation less familiar to remote work, are eager to regain tight control of their minions.
"They feel like we're not working if they can't see us," she said. "It's a boomer power-play."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Wednesday June 02 2021, @02:40AM (14 children)
I'm blessed to live in an area where coronavirus just isn't much of a problem (very low population-density country) and the work habits in my company haven't changed one bit. As a result, I go to the office normally every day. And thank goodness for that: I need the clear separation between home and work. I need my 45 minute bicycle commute. It helps me switch context between work time and me time.
Maybe it's just me, but I friggin' hate homeworking: you're where fun happens but you're working. Your office is 50 feet from your bedroom. The family and pets - whom I love at any other time - are constantly bothering the shit out of me and breaking my concentration. I have to attend video-conference meetings, which are a surefire way to give me a massive headache each and every time...
I'd quit if I was force to do this for longer than a couple weeks. Honestly, homeworking is fucking awful for me.
(Score: 0, Troll) by krishnoid on Wednesday June 02 2021, @03:11AM (3 children)
Pluses of quitting: not having to pay for daycare
Minuses of quitting: having to pay for your own health insurance, plus, you know, not getting an income
Daycare, seriously? She couldn't ask someone to watch her kids for literally six minutes?
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Wednesday June 02 2021, @03:41AM (2 children)
They drive fast in Georgia, but not that fast. It's the six minutes plus the travel time to and from. And yes, she did ask someone to watch her kids - the daycare center in question.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday June 02 2021, @05:16AM (1 child)
I meant bring them with her, then ask someone in the office. "There's $20 in it for you if you keep my kids alive for six minutes."
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @09:15AM
$100 if you don't (and get rid of the bodies).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @03:53AM (7 children)
I love working from "home".
I can work from wherever my phone has enough service to tether to my laptop. Those locations have included, the backyard, next to a lake near my house, on the top of a local mountain that is a nice hike up, and at several local beaches.
I also can e.g., do laundry, etc. while working, leaving more of my weekend free.
I do not want to go back.
Some software/services my work decided to use (like the extremely horrible and shitty MS Teams), has been my only pain point.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Oakenshield on Wednesday June 02 2021, @06:56PM (6 children)
If you're doing laundry and other things, you're not working for your employer. That's probably the reason Portia Twit didn't want to go back. We're bringing them all back here too. They have till the end of July to get their shit together. If they want to quit instead, good riddance. The one's belly aching the loudest are the ones who never seem to get their work done from home.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @08:35PM (5 children)
I signed up for a job where I put in n hours for $x. We are a wage slaves, selling our time to our employers, usually 8 hours per day, but we are legally required to be allowed breaks. It is just that the breaks during work from home are long enough to do something useful to ourselves (like starting a load of laundry) vs. too little time to do anything useful while working at the office-- far away from our homes.
Free your mind. From your comment, you believe yourself chattel of your employer.
(Score: 2) by Oakenshield on Wednesday June 02 2021, @10:00PM (4 children)
It took a whole month of weekly emails to get one of our WFH people to grace me with a reply. During our recent monthly Webex staff meeting, they announced the callback plans. The first one to complain is the woman that everyone else is complaining about not doing her work since she started WFH. She doesn't have time, apparently. She did actually manage to log in this past month for the one hour meeting. This is nothing short of amazing, since she only managed to make four of the past twelve. We had to wait to hear the other grumbler because she didn't even make an appearance on Webex. She only showed up to the staff meeting twice in the past twelve months.
As long as you make it hard for me to do my job because you won't do yours, I won't care one whit if you quit. Don't feel too offended if the rest of us do high fives when you drop your notice.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mechanicjay on Wednesday June 02 2021, @11:07PM (1 child)
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 2) by Oakenshield on Thursday June 03 2021, @01:32PM
You are absolutely correct. It is a failure of management. It demonstrate two things.
1) WFH unmasks the obvious bad employees that manage to escape detection during normal times.
2) Some people will do whatever they can get away with and WFH make it easier to accomplish.
Others see what is going on and think, "Why should I bust my ass when X gets a full paycheck and got a 14 month vacation?" One of our employees stopped responding to anyone by phone or email for an entire week last month. I had people calling and stopping by my office asking me if I had seen or heard from her. Why would I? She's not in my department. Even though it wasn't on the schedule, I'd bet she was on a beach somewhere with no cellphone service.
We have another guy who has a sick father out of town and he comes in maybe once a week. The other days, he doesn't respond. I have people coming to me asking to give them accounts on his cluster. I don't have any access on it. Too bad. Send him email. He might be in next week... sometime.
WFH only works if an employee is self-motivated and reliable. There are many that do not fit that category. It has been an absolute clusterfuck here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 03 2021, @08:40AM (1 child)
Why are you still employing her if she doesn't work or show up to meetings?
(Score: 2) by Oakenshield on Thursday June 03 2021, @01:34PM
Good question. She doesn't report to me.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Fluffeh on Wednesday June 02 2021, @05:28AM
I think there's a good balance between both types of working.
Of course, it is dependent on the type of work you do, but what we've noticed (I work for a multinational retailer) is that where prior to covid, we thought we needed people in the office five days a week, we probably don't. But after the complete lockdown here and moving to a complete remote working solution, that's probably not the best answer going forward either. Can it work with a crisis environment? Sure. Are some things missed because of it? Yes. Whether it is incidental conversations, or informal meetings that aren't able to be had in the same way even via a video link, there is a slight incremental loss that builds. The lack of work/life separation is also a very valid issue, where folks who aren't able to maintain that split are being burnt out as they just do that extra hour here or there - or for many hours each night.
We are looking to have people come back into the office on a schedule that works for them, but also works for the company. Is everyone happy? No. Was everyone happy when we went into lockdown? No. Is there a surprising crossover with people that didn't want to remote work, and those that don't want to come back int the office? Surprisingly, yes.
A job has to work for both the employer and the employee. The almost forced remote working solution has certainly made a shift in what CAN be done and that has resulted in a vastly different set of possibilities, but for many, the pendulum swung a long way, and now it is starting to swing back. It won't end up in quite the same place, but it will probably end up closer to where it went to rather than where it was originally.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Wednesday June 02 2021, @08:54AM
I was in the same boat as you before Corona. The separation is nice and you have to actively adapt to working from home. Took me several month but now I can switch cleanly. Also I have fiber and working from home is identical to sitting in the office. The big plus is the meetings. What used to be Dilbert-style time wasting has now become a bearable break in between. I miss the 30 min bicycle commute and I still have to force myself to compensate for that exercise. And the kids have to be away of course.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @02:46AM (22 children)
Once the Big Corps get back in control, you/we would all crawl back - "can I have sum mo, sir?"
Corporatism is Borg.
Too bad - libertarians have no brains to see this despite the centuries worth of historical evidence.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @02:55AM (1 child)
Too bad - liberals have no muscle to push back
(Score: 3, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday June 02 2021, @01:59PM
Posted on an article about people pushing back.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Wednesday June 02 2021, @02:57AM (3 children)
I can tell your work experience is not a happy one.
Hint: if Big Corps get you down, try to work for a small company. Being a corporate drone has its advantages, but you may not be built for that. I know I'm not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @02:58PM (2 children)
Agreed. I started my own business 4 years ago and don't regret it. Happy staff due to "humane treatment", happy clients, flexible hours.
One of my staff just had his father die. He started 2 months ago. I said "take whatever time you need and we'll see you in a few weeks, don't worry about your paycheck".
When I worked for a borg-ish company 10 years ago and my own father died, I had 3 days of combined vacation and sick time. They wanted me back in the office after 3 days. I told them to zark off and started my plan to launch my own business. Now I have ~40% of their clients and more are switching every month.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @06:45PM (1 child)
Having worked on the other side of the fence, there's something many don't consider. There are a lot of really really awful people in this world, and the more you grow, the more of them you encounter - regardless of how hard you try to screen. People claiming family died when they didn't for completely arbitrary reasons (omg - i must go hiking in Chile like right now) isn't even scratching the surface of the stupidity you have to deal with. It makes people jaded and cynical.
It's also why I think the trend of companies growing as large as they possibly can is just dumb. Google did a lot of really great and awesome things with a handful of pretty decent engineers. Now they have tens of thousands of some of the best on-paper developers, and they've become a useless, inept organization that's doing little more than milking their successes of decades past.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 03 2021, @01:25AM
My issue with your first criticism is they're being pressed to exploit the system. If they're taking unpaid sick leave maybe there's more efficient means to deal with vacation time, including increasing it. The whole architecture is fucked. You sleep for work, you eat for work, you purchase a car, insurance and gasoline for work, it's probable there are at least 40 hours of your week dedicated to work, and you spend most of those 52 weeks of a year working. At what point is that fair, or reasonable, or balanced? And to add insult to injury you've got to finagle the request, you've got to compete in the market for time demand, and I reckon decent folks are apt to consider their coworkers and the stress it'll put on them - ironically to the benefit of the business that is shafting you. I don't have a dog because I can't take care of it because I'm too busy - a dog in my care would be neglected. A person in your care is equally so by similar processes - you shouldn't have people in your employee that you can't care for.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Sulla on Wednesday June 02 2021, @04:21AM (7 children)
The big shift we are going to see is manufacturing going from "yeah we will automate that when we get around to it" to "in the process of automating" due to managers being pissed off at their inability to hire workers. We have had a problem locally finding people to work jobs that pay 22 to 25/hour with healthcare because of the extension of unemployment benefits and no requirement to prove you are trying to find employment. Early in the pandemic when manufacturing shut down employees filed for unemployment, even when they opened back up a month later employees would rather take their 400-500/week plays 300/week extra and just not work. Management decided rather than hire anyone with a SARS pandemic work break with questionable reliability is cheaper and less rage inducing to finally get around to automation. You get to keep all the workers who stuck around and raise pay, and get rid of all the ones who you don't want to deal with.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @05:19AM (2 children)
Bullshit
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday June 02 2021, @03:42PM (1 child)
It's exactly bullshit and everybody knows it.
So why is Sulla so blatantly lying about it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @05:24PM
Because it fits the rightwing narrative, and all his media sources are parroting the same slop. Doesn't matter that it is factually incorrect, it just feelz right(wing).
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @08:23AM (2 children)
That isn't how unemployment works. If you layoff someone and then open up and attempt to rehire a month later and they refuse to come back to work, then they lose their unemployment. Any manufacturing plant that pays "$25 + benefits" would know that.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Wednesday June 02 2021, @10:53AM (1 child)
And of course there's the question of how many of those who don't want to go back are actually staying in unemployment, rather than having gotten a better job.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @10:05PM
Look at the demographics of people not working. More men are working now than before the pandemic. Women employment rates have plunged. So have elderly individuals and other groups. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to realize that if there is a dramatic difference across demographics, there is probably more than just the money involved.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @09:27AM
So Ayn Rand was right after all. Fancy that.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by crafoo on Wednesday June 02 2021, @11:23AM (7 children)
I always thought the neo-fascists were the biggest cheerleaders of huge corporations (with some government control of course). Also the communists, who just want one big corporation, essentially. Libertarians seem more like small business people. I'm not saying that they don't have their share of unrealistic fanatics, and taken to the extreme their ideology is just as unworkable as the other two.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @03:02PM (1 child)
LOL--yeah, but when our ideology doesn't work, we don't send the government out to cage you like an animal or kill you for non-compliance.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday June 02 2021, @06:41PM
The United States of America has the largest per capita prison population on the planet and Arizona is busy stocking up on Zyklon B. So yeah, we do more locking up and killing for non compliance than just about anybody else.
(Score: 2, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday June 02 2021, @03:47PM (4 children)
Deregulation helps big corporations way more than it helps small businesses. Especially when a lot of those regulations are giving small businesses an "unfair" advantage when it comes to things like OSHA compliance.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @06:51PM (2 children)
Absolutely false. You frequently see market dominating oligopolies eventually claiming "regulation is needed" because they are big and rich enough to buy off the govt regulators so that the regulations suit them. It becomes another barrier to entry for newcomer businesses. Those newcomer, potential disrupters are small businesses.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday June 02 2021, @06:58PM (1 child)
Right....when the oil and gas companies were busy lying their asses off about climate change it was because they LOVE regulation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 03 2021, @01:30AM
It goes both ways. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 03 2021, @12:21AM
Small business owner here.
This is complete, utter hogwash. We spend days keeping up with paperwork that our large competitors just hand off to one person. And they're the ones pushing for regulation, because compliance is a barrier to entry.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @02:59AM
Well, my bosses fart in my general direction. Cough, cough, ack...&(~@#^*$...thump.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @03:02AM (3 children)
[Looks to see if there is a job opening available now]
Working from home can be nice, but what they forget is anything that can be done remotely can and will be outsourced to India as soon as the companies can avoid getting their faces plastered on the news. Which is just about now, as things are getting back to "normal".
Although, I wonder where this job was physically located. There is a lot of job growth in the Alpharetta, GA area, and many offered remote working. Look at a map and it doesn't look that far from Marietta. Until you try to drive there and you find the only two real routes take you either through a tiny narrow road in downtown Roswell, or on an extra out-of-the-way drive through road construction going down 285 then finally up and up and up 400.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @04:10AM (2 children)
Intel is discovering the hard way that just because you can outsource to India and Malaysia and pay less per employee you are not guaranteed to beat your competitors. Cultures that do not consider lying about progress and schedules to be unethical bring about a whole slew of managerial and performance problems.
source: I work for Intel in a US team that had to takeover a shit ton of work that a Maylasian team kept lying about their progress on. The Maylasian basically squandered 9- months of Sapphirerapids schedule.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @04:36AM
Intel hires people that can't spell the name of that country?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @02:27PM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Mykl on Wednesday June 02 2021, @03:13AM (5 children)
Working from Home is OK, though I find I need a day or two in the office to stay fresh. I would be OK with returning full time.
What I can't stand though is being home with the kids when they are undertaking remote schooling. I'm constantly checking on them to make sure they're on track, and they tend to run around in the background while I'm on conference calls. Driving me nuts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @11:56AM (4 children)
> ... Driving me nuts.
Tell me again why you chose to have kids?
It's not like there is a shortage. At least in my case there was no shortage of friends with "rent-a-kids" that I could enjoy in smaller doses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @01:38PM (3 children)
Oxygen thief.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @05:17PM (2 children)
Riiiight, someone foregoing offspring and contributing to the economy and supporting the economy that keeps your lifestyle going without adding more consumers is an oxygen thief? Buddy, I see why you're mad, your brain is telling you the oxygen is being stolen . . .
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @06:54PM (1 child)
You think society continues if nobody has kids? You are a complete idiot.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @10:11PM
Tons of people are having kids, idiots like you.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday June 02 2021, @03:18AM (4 children)
It's still a buyer's labor market. And, Joe Biden is promising to open the border to bring a few million more workers in.
Go ahead, quit your job. You'll regret it later when you can't find a job. They won't fire a hard working Mexican just to make room for you.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Wednesday June 02 2021, @03:25AM (1 child)
Not to mention, hard-working Mexicans have gotten really good at remote-working since that massive, impenetrable wall was bult all along the southern border a few years ago and none of them can enter the US anymore...
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @09:32AM
Totally worth every penny.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday June 02 2021, @02:29PM
Says a guy who enjoys his weekends off.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 03 2021, @10:56AM
Now, it's all about atmosphere. Look, we want you to express yourself. If you think that bare minimum is enough, then... Ok, but some people choose to wear more and...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Sulla on Wednesday June 02 2021, @04:12AM (6 children)
Right after the virus hit one of our neighboring departments hired six new people for some newfangled tax they were implementing. I was told my glorious 8x8 high-walled cube I had fought to keep for years was being split into two offices. I was given the option to fight for a cube or work from home forever. So now that most people are going back to work I'm converting my shed into an office.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DECbot on Wednesday June 02 2021, @04:49AM (4 children)
That's a stroke of good fortune. It certainly much better outcome than what I've had. During the pandemic we had an office remodel and I got one of the shittiest desks in our group office despite being second most senior in a group of more than a dozen. Middle of the floor, back to the room, and next to the door where the neediest salesman enters and demands your time right now--your current project, customers, and support request be damned. About 90% of my work I can do from home, but I'm getting told that we're going 100% in office by the end of the month. The last couple of years, we've transition from small, family run feeling with a lot of flexibility and perks to middle-sized bureaucratic fiefdom with tight budgetary restraints despite our group's year-on-year-on-year record profitibility. I'm starting to get the serious urge to polish the resume and see what may be available. I think the most frustrating aspect of the position is an ever expanding scope of responsibilities but no discretion to focus on any one aspect of the position.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Wednesday June 02 2021, @05:07AM (2 children)
+1 RIP that sounds horrible
My boss is trying to get everyone in accounting to work remorse, otherwise we get pulled into endless pointless meetings and can't get our jobs done. Pandemic and office space losses made it easier.
From what I've seen managers who like/trust their employees used this as an excuse to let the employee decide, managers who didn't used it as an excuse to try and get rid of peopeople who don't comply. Other than that the most eager to go back to work are the highly social people who spend all day talking and joking around with coworkers who never got their jobs done anyways.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @09:35AM (1 child)
Do you just make shit up because it sounds like it might be true?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @12:03PM
If you have to ask...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 03 2021, @10:42AM
If they didn't moved you in the basement and took your red Swingline, don't set them afire. Yet.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @02:04PM
Lol. Libertarians don't have the balls to complain about working conditions because they are afraid of looking like they are pro-labor.
(Score: 2, Informative) by crafoo on Wednesday June 02 2021, @11:29AM (6 children)
I've always found it odd that so many people in the "work from home" camp are generally clueless about just how much actual work has to get done on real things, with real people doing things. It's like there is this whole class of people that live their lives on a computer and have slowly lost touch with reality.
research labs, engineering labs, production lines, _all_ of the trades, all of maintenance and construction, power systems, mining, safety, .. these work from home people realize they are disposable support staff for the real work, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @11:48AM (2 children)
It is a valid point that this discussion has mostly been about office workers, but — and a big but that is — more and more menial/manual work is going to be automatised, pushing more and more people into the office-work group to have a job. In the US there will obviously be substantial differences between the individual states as some rural states have way more people doing manual labour than most other states, relatively.
(Score: 2) by NateMich on Wednesday June 02 2021, @04:21PM (1 child)
That's not a good place to end up. Office work is the easiest thing to outsource, and if you're working from home now, why would your employer not just hire a remote person from another country that they can pay less for?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @11:25PM
Good question.
I work for ... let's call it a large and expanding business. Expanding, including international. Not Fortune 500, but not chickenfeed either.
This company has contractors across the globe. My team alone has people in at least three timezones in the US, at least one additional one in South America, and at least one in Europe.
The funny thing is that they could, quite literally, hire two people in $cheap_country for the cost of hiring one developer here in the US, but they have a lot of US developers and are actively hiring more across a range of disciplines from back end and DB stuff through to front end mobile app.
Why might that be? Scared of diversity? Definitely not. Scared of language gaps? Nope, the US-based devs span every group you can think of and then some. Sex/gender/skin hue/religion? Nope, nope and nope all down the line.
Maybe it's lax US employment laws that let Snidely Whiplash pack 'em in like sardines and work 'em 'til they drop? Nope, some of those $cheap_country laws make the US look like a worker's socialist paradise by comparison, especially in some states.
It comes down to working culture. The folks who are used to working in the US (regardless of where they're from) understand certain things about get-shit-done that are intrinsically difficult to get from other cultures. It doesn't mean that other folks are bad people or lazy or dishonest or any of that. It means that their foundational approach to working relationships has not gone in the same direction, with results that are counterproductive.
Now you can try to handwave this away as hard as you like, but when you find that a hard-nosed, bean-counting, khakis-and-polo MBA who elbowed his or her way up the blood-greased stairwell into Mahogany Row will actually willingly shell out hard money for a grouchy, jeans-and-heavy-metal-t-shirt-wearing US-based developer, and will do so repeatedly over the course of years despite ample opportunities to hire double the headcount or more in cheaper places with laxer employment laws, you should start asking yourself hard questions about what the difference is, and in the immortal words of Deep Throat: Follow the money.
In fact, the remote work thing has made it cheaper to hire the US-based developers than before, because in the past you could work someone from, say, Bulgaria remotely and sort of shrug and say: "Enh, whaddya gonna do, pay for his plane tickets?" but a US developer was sucking up that aircon and floorspace in your trendy Seattle or Boston office block, and now they're not. They're cheaper than they were, and generally more productive.
Weird.
Unless you account for working culture.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @01:43PM (1 child)
The restaurant and entertainment industries really are optional too. It's been weird seeing liberals mostly talk like restaurants and bars are critical infrastructure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02 2021, @03:01PM
" rel="url2html-23363">https://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/124-drinks-local-bar-make-up-pandemic-losses-report
Yeah, real weird. That's helpful, thanks.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday June 02 2021, @06:46PM
HAHAHA, yeah go tell that to Colonial Pipeline and JBS! [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday June 02 2021, @02:16PM (2 children)
Who puts 6 minutes (360s) meetings on a schedule? Is that some new "power-meeting" management trick? I would be pissed if I was summoned to the office for a six minute meeting to. That said I did once, or twice, spend about 6h by train to attend a meeting that went on for about 20 minutes. So I guess that might have been worse. At least it was more or less the entire work day and they paid for dinner and they eventually realized the stupidity of it and now off-site meetings are more like half-days or more. It's just such a waste of time otherwise.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Wednesday June 02 2021, @02:52PM (1 child)
I've been saddled with meetings like that at jobs before, though of course they didn't tell you up-front that the meeting would be that short. It was always some "mandatory" meeting with a threat of disciplinary action for anyone skipping, and it usually either happened on my day off (making me go in for just the meeting) or on a workday but an hour or two outside of my shift, forcing me to hang around because it wasn't enough time to go home or do anything interesting. They were never worth the time, but what really pissed me off was when I had to go in for a meeting that ended in under 15 minutes and could have been more effectively handled with a fucking memo.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NateMich on Wednesday June 02 2021, @04:23PM
If the meeting can be handled in six minutes, then I'd have to question why it wasn't just an email thread.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by srobert on Wednesday June 02 2021, @03:32PM
I've been working from home for 14 months. Just started back in the office yesterday. We'll be on a 1/2 and 1/2 schedule. But I've noticed that the supervisors are forced to work full time in the office. The supervisors only make 10-20% more than I do. I've learned to like working from home so much that under the circumstances, I wouldn't accept a promotion for double my current salary.