Bosses mean it this time: Return to the office or get a new job! — As office occupancy rates stagnate, employers are giving up on perks and turning to threats::undefined
worker: Gets new job
Employer: Shockedpikachu.jpg
It’s funny how at least American employers act like we’re not at full employment. While the market isn’t as good for employees as it was about a year ago, the employees still have more leverage than the employers.
It’s not quite that simple. The job market is pretty wonky right now. Around 180,000 tech workers got laid off at the beginning of the year (including myself) and even in high-level somewhat niche roles, I see job postings that have 300-1200 applicants.
At this point businesses have two options:
- Bite the bullet, terminate lease agreements and pay the fines associated, then advertise yourself as a full remote company and attract global talent.
- Be penny wise and pound foolish, stomp your feet, slowly hemmorage the best employees until you’re left with people whose only talent is playing office politics.
We’ll see how this plays out in the long run, it wouldn’t be out of character for the owner class to start needling their pet politicians to devalue currency even more to put those pesky workers in their place.
There is another option:
- Downsize the office to better fit with the number of people who do actually want to be in the office, either full or part time, and don’t cause a huge ruckus about people who prefer to work remotely.
At my job, most people are in the office 2-3 days a week, but there are a few who are there nearly every day. We also have some people who are remote/WFH, including a few who are remote even though they live very near by.
owner class to start needling their pet politicians to devalue currency
Literally no capital investment firm would ever do that. This severely weakens their positions for growth via M&A and limits their ability to globalize trade.
Says a person that doesn’t know the difference between “you’re” and “your”. Not very persuasive.
I see no counter-arguments in your reply.
Says a person that doesn’t know the difference between “you’re” and “your”. Not very persuasive.
My brother in Christ, there is a way to correct someone’s syntax. This is not the way.
Not very persuasive.
Your sentence fragment invalidates your entire argument.
The first sentence is also a sentence fragment and the period should be placed before the ending quotation marks.
“not very persuasive” is not a sentence fragment. Sentences need a subject, verb, and a complete thought.
“Don’t do that” has an implied subject of (you). “Not very persuasive” shares the same type implied subject and is a complete sentence.
Bonus fun fact, the shortest complete sentence in the English language is “I am” but not “I’m” because contractions are inherently dependent.
“Don’t do that” is a correct imperative sentence, which as your link says does not have a subject. “Not very persuasive” is not imperative and is indeed a sentence fragment.
I’d choose “fire me and I’ll collect unemployment instead of giving you a free out for finding my replacement without paying for my exit”.
Feck off. Ill give the bastards 2 days in office, no more. I’ll sacrifice salary for personal time. As it stands, I’m considering applying for a 2nd full time remote job. And I’ll code away 90% of that work.
Headline seems weasel-wordy.
Numerically vague expressions (for example, “some people”, “experts”, “many”, “evidence suggests”)
I.e., are most bosses doing this? 50%? 20%?
Bold strategy cotton let’s see how it plays out for them.
I can tell you the headline the bossman will have in the coming months.
No one wants to work anymore
But, lets me honest, that’s basically the free square in bingo now.
Executives: But we have a 20 year lease on this enormous office building! You guys have to come back! Besides, we can’t breathe down your necks or waste 6 hours of your day (plus commute) if you’re at home actually being productive! Wait, why am I telling the truth? I never tell the truth. Not too my wife, my mistress, my kids, my parents, or the IRS, much less you parasites! Don’t you know how much more money I could have if I didn’t have to pay you ungrateful peasants?
Should’ve known my company would never let work from home be permanent. They own the building and the land.
“The pendulum has shifted from employees having all the power,” wow how could that have possibly happened
And they’ll win, eventually. They’ll take the L, replace employees over time and suffer for it but in the end they will win and we’ll all be back in office
Especially if the pay higher wages to get fresh blood.
If they pay me more to go back into office, then I’ll take the trade if the money is high enough. Everything has a price, as they say. But it better be worth all the extra shit you have to deal with, least of all being the sick people at the office. I haven’t gotten sick since COVID started basically
Yes, we can still go in but now we have measured the difference and can judge what it would take to make it worthwhile.
Is anyone actually living this out there or is this all just bullshit?
:raises hand:
One of the offices doesn’t even have room for all the employees. They have people working in conference rooms.
Absolutely living this out. I just quit my job at Amazon because they wanted me to be back in the office or be fired, in a different city than the one I live in and started at the company at, eleven years ago. I chose to quit so that I’m still rehirable if I need to go back.
Other people have it worse than me, especially if they are on H1B visas where the option is RTO or GTFO of the country if you can’t find employment soon enough.
Haven’t dealt with it personally, but know of people who have. The one constant is that the places I’ve heard of that have a RTO mandate are short-staffed and brain-drained.
My work has us on a stupid hybrid schedule, but if WFH is ever ended completely, I’m gone.
I haven’t seen it, personally (Toronto)
I am one of those folks that simply doesn’t have the personal discipline to work from home. There are literally dozens of us. While office life is lonely now, there’s no way that people who don’t need to be in the office to be productive should be made to come in. That said, my GF has a coworker who is WFH for a company that is based in the South but they chose to live in NYC (they didn’t live there at first) and are getting paid NYC wages, which somehow doesn’t seem fair.
I’ve got a weird and kind of opposite experience to your GF’s coworker: I started my current job as a remote employee this year. I think the median wage in my area is like 50k, but I’m making more than twice that because of my role’s market rate in areas like Silicon Valley and NYC. So I’m living relatively large considering my area. But I’m also not actually living large right now; we went for a 15 year mortgage term to minimize interest and allow us to actually live it large when we own our home at a relatively young age. It’s definitely weird to know I’m making baller wages compared to a lot of folks around me, but living within similar constraints as them.
