this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2024
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

What we need is one big union.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 hours ago

And proper labor laws. This seems like a no brainer for your environmental goals and reduces congestion, and frees up real estate for re development to Appartments.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago

Not like that >:o

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 hours ago

Justifications to lose employees.

[–] [email protected] 55 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (2 children)

The slow march of the return to office has taken another step forward

No. 🤬 you ‘Fortune’. You’re just spoon feeding the rich what you think they want to hear.

Amazon and ATT are big but they don’t represent the whole and does not imply return to office is inevitable.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 hours ago

Back in the 1950s, Amazon and ATT would have been General Motors: an imagined safe, brain-dead corporate sinecure. Nobody entrepreneurial or innovative goes to work at such places. Just technocrats, cogs in the machine. Highly trained functionaries from brand-name universities keeping the juggernaut rolling on. Feeding Moloch.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 14 hours ago

Where im at, there is literally only two companies in town. Comcast and ATT. No other options. So yeah, I have a choice but not really. They get my money no matter what. Wish we didnt have a duopoly....

[–] [email protected] 42 points 21 hours ago

Hope they don't like talent. The brain drain continues.

[–] [email protected] 84 points 23 hours ago (5 children)

WhY cAnT wE rETAiN oUr TaLeNt!?!- greedy CEOs in the future

[–] [email protected] 47 points 23 hours ago

Future? It's happening now

[–] [email protected] 30 points 23 hours ago

"Nobody wants to work anymore."

[–] [email protected] 23 points 22 hours ago

Yeah. Just read an article explaining that you lose the best talent by forcing RTO and turnover jumps 14%.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

The real talent already built the good stuff. Now, all they need is someone to follow SOP's to maintain and carry on. Improvements and new stuff will take the hit, and they will grow stagnant until someone else starts doing something better, and then they scramble and complain as they start losing money and that's when they start looking for talent again. Except this time, they will just be hired to put in place whatever the other company did and probably be let go after.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

AT&T hasn't updated toll free routing control in almost 11 years. Their bvoip portal is similarly antiquated. What good stuff have they been developing?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 21 hours ago

Warner Brothers!

. . . wait

[–] [email protected] 12 points 23 hours ago

Retain who? Anyone not in a brick and mortar, or in HQ, is over seas.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

AT&T owns a lot of corporate real estate. Its fucking with their books so they have to punish everyone so execs look smart.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 hours ago

It's more that toxic, sociopathic middle managers can't torment remote workers as effectively.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

“The majority of our employees and leaders never stopped working on location for the full work week—including during the pandemic,” a spokesperson told Fortune.

And you...you're proud of this?!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

The majority of my "leaders" have been full remote since pandemic. Of course, they stopped approving full remote immediately after they got theirs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

Even before

[–] [email protected] 8 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

My work started demanding the same. I can't do more than 2 days, because my wife works 3 days and we've got to do something with the kids. Two days is what I've been doing since I started working there 3 years ago. Luckily they won't be enforcing it for now. I'm bound to them until summer at least. That's when I plan on finishing my bachelor that they paid for. I love my job, but this (and the bad pay) is forcing me to start looking for something else ASAP.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 17 hours ago

Or start a union

[–] [email protected] 33 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Doing the bidding of the commercial real estate industry, which is one layer below the banks in the layer cake

[–] [email protected] 9 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (2 children)

That makes no sense. Commercial landlords collect rent regardless of how often employees are on site.

The real reason for RTW policies is that companies want to downsize without firing workers (and thus without paying unemployment). Hence:

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told staff they will need to be back in the office full-time, seemingly pushing 73% of his colleagues to consider quitting over the move

Stankey said 85% of them already lived near one of the offices. The remaining 15%, he said, will have to “make decisions that are appropriate to their lives.”

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

Commercial landlords collect rent regardless of how often employees are on site.

When leases come up for renewal, rational companies look at how much space they actually need and downsize their office requirements accordingly. That's more or less what my employer is doing now. We own a vast building, but now we've sublet about a third of it.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

Two of my previous employers went out of business or are on their final thread and moved out to some small office somewhere. Those buildings have each been vacant for about 2 years now. Can’t collect rent if no tenants

[–] [email protected] 3 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

Right, but if you have a tenant then you don't care what their WFH policy is.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

Oh yeah you do, since your revenue depends on how many asses they expect to be in those seats.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Companies that are hybrid and go remote don't renew their commercial real estate contracts.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

If they are not planning to renew their leases, then they aren't doing the bidding of their landlords as OP suggested.

In other words, if a company (for some reason) wants to please commercial real estate owners, it doesn't have to end WFH.

And if it doesn't care about pleasing commercial real estate owners, then it must have some other reason for ending WFH.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Commercial real estate owners need RTO because their stocks and assets are valued on feels. If most companies are paying for empty buildings, line goes down because they are perceived to be sure to sell.

And especially with really big corps who actually own their buildings, if it's empty and perceived to be worth less, the company is worth less.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 21 hours ago

I’m happy my greedy company closed our office a year ago to save money on the lease. I don’t respect the people in charge but full time WFH is an excellent perk.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 23 hours ago

Property holdings will always be more important to corporate America than the people that they employ.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Performative cruelty, corporate style. Know your place, peasants.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

After the Black Death, laws were passed forcing peasants to remain on the land so that their landlords could keep wages down. But the numbers leaving were too great and enforcement was spotty because the enforcers also had staff shortages. So people gravitated to towns and wages rose.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Gotta watch those wage slaves

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

It definitely sends a message that "we don't know what those people are doing unless we can see the whites of their eyes and smell the fear-sweat."

[–] [email protected] 5 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Can anyone explain to me why companies are pushing RTO? Simply to justify some management positions? Or justify the big buildings they built? To me work from home would have so many advantages for a company and could actually be problematic for some employees. Not only can they save some costs on office space but it opens up their talent pool in a way that could lower wages. They could find someone living in low cost of living middle of nowhere that would do a job for 60k that someone in an expensive city couldn't justify doing for less than 120k.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Its not all. I have found that companies that did not own much real estate have embraced wfh big time and have wound down any contracts they had. Ones stuck with offices they own or maybe long term contracts seem to but I doubt its going to be a good long term call. The only possible usage it might have is to encourage people to quit so you can reduce the workforce without lay offs but that is a crazy strategy as you are losing at best random folks and at worst the best you have.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

I overlooked reducing workforce as a possibility. I'm not in the corporate world at all so I have no actual insight on anything. I've just been confused by something I'd consider a win-win being done away with by a lot of companies.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

yeah everyone is confused with that. Many back to office scenarios have the people sitting in the office video conferencing all day because many of the folks they work with are not at the local office anyway.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

And they're in panopticon bull-pen offices where it's impossible to hear yourself because the people next to you are also shouting on Teams.

That's very much my situation. 3/4 of my staff are from contracting firms based elsewhere. So regardless of where I work, most of my meetings are via video conferencing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

traditional middle management simply doesnt need to exist of you're not baby sitting in person. everything else they can do could be AI handled or outsourced. except maybe training up and assessing for promotions. get used to training yourselves and self promotions by job hopping.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

traditional middle management simply doesnt need to exist of you’re not baby sitting in person

I strongly disagree with that. Properly used, middle managers bring a lot. But I would say that, if a manager requires their staff to be on-site in order to manage them, they're crap managers who should consider a career transition to frying fast food or gutting fish. They're typically the ones who judge performance by perceived effort and how well the employee kisses ass, and their main focus is managing upwards by sucking up to their bosses. With remote workers, you need an effective way of assessing results or you're hosed. I've been running remote squads since the 1980s, and for the most part, it's only a problem if you're an ineffective manager.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 21 hours ago

In my company we just went from 2 office days to 1 per week, and the wheel is still turning just fine.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 21 hours ago

Not like China just totally owned you, right? Yeah, let go of your top talent. Good idea.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Even the customer service representatives in Egypt ?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

Egypt's gotten too expensive, it's been moved to Borneo.