End of an era: Zoom tells employees to return to office for work

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 156 points – End of an era: Zoom tells employees to return to office for work
nypost.com

End of an era: Zoom tells employees to return to office for work::Zoom is asking all of its employees to return to the office for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began, when the tech company blew up as one of the main means of communication when people were forced to work from home.

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Pretty bad optics when your company depends on enabling collaboration in virtual settings.

Leading by watching asses in seats.

What's the point of Zoom as a product then?

So CEOs can do another corporate word salad all hands meeting while at his beach house.

To talk to coworkers in other buildings I guess. That's what it seems to be for these days.

I'm not sure why so many companies are obsessed with getting their employees back to the office, not needing to have everyone within a 1 hour radius of your offices opens a lot of doors when it comes to recruitment while not affecting performance.

I'd speculate some combination of control over employees (poor management practices, etc) and making use of owned land/offices that are difficult to sell otherwise. Not much else makes sense to me, especially for tech companies where nearly the entire job exists in virtual space of some kind - no wrenches to turn.

Edit: Someone else suggested a way to "lay off" folks by having them voluntarily leave the job to avoid the return to office. That also sounds pretty plausible to me with the extent to which companies are starting to squeeze with what feels like an incoming recession period.

Using it as a way to reduce your workforce is so short sighted. The top performers are the ones most capable of getting a new job and most willing to leave over the issue. Instead of it being a calculated set of layoffs in specific areas of the company it’ll just be all the good employees leaving.

When my former employer went remote for covid, Meeting culture got worse, comms became less efficient and arguably collaboration did suffer. Defect rate in code also increased amongst the junior cohort and we determined (staff survey) it was due to senior and junior developers having fewer opportunities to connect and engage with high quality pair programming and mentoring sessions.

Half the table decided this was because remote work doesn’t work. The other half speculated that it’s because we tried to recreate the “in office” experience remotely, and that doesn’t work well. Sadly the company refused to adapt, and many were laid off. There was also a sizable tax break we got by being a large office that bought people into the city and support the local economy which likely had a material influence in their decision to layoff most remote/hybrid people.

My point with the anecdote is that I truly believe it’s rooted in a failure to adapt office culture. Willfully or unable too, it’s too nuanced to assert generally, and there’s also an entire segment of the workforce where on-site is essential and I’m not qualified to comment on.

Recent analysis of data suggests that productivity suffers when employees work remotely, and the effect is more dramatic the longer people remain away. This contradicts earlier studies conducted during the pandemic.

I'm not saying I agree.. just that this is the reason.

Do you have any sources? All I can find is articles from Forbes

Here is a recent paper that showed an 18% decline in productivity when workers moved remotely.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w31515.

Another study, originally published during the pandemic, initially found an 8% increase in the number of calls handled per hour by employees of an online retailer when they began working from home. The original study is here.

https://scholar.harvard.edu/eharrington/publications/working-remotely-selection-treatment-and-market-provision-remote-work.

Apparently new analysis of the data has shown a 4% decline instead of an 8% improvement. I can't find the revised analysis but this was quoted in Bloomberg and the Economist .. both behind pay walls unfortunately.

Because most people can't wfh. I work with many that maybe do 1 or 2 hours of actual work every day. When they're in the office, their productivity doubles. Management won't fire them because it takes over a year to fill most positions. And the pay is very high so it's not that.

Get this shitty rag out of here. NYPost is fucking propaganda spreading filth

Calling it "end of an era" as if remote work is over, no matter how interest remains among workers and companies still offer it, is definitely a propaganda move.

Clickbaity article

Zoom [...] is now asking all employees within 50 miles of a company office to go in at least two days a week on a hybrid schedule.

So it's not "all of it's employees". Plus, it's a hybrid schedule, which, for better or worse, has now become a standard across most organisations around the world.

Not that clickbait though. They are selling a product that makes WFH possible and yet aren’t fully utilizing it. Where are they located? 50 miles is a long commute.

Hour long commutes each way to appease corporate is still a bad joke.

I honestly think it’s good to get into the office space just for a change of mentality and scenery and a little socialization. Helps you get out of being at home all the time kind of funk.

I agree, being able to go into the office has been a nice change of scene and variety in the day (not to mention addressing the social atrophy I’ve experienced over the last few years!)

It’s the ability to make that a choice is what’s important. Corporate lifestyle is so dammed dehumanizing, with my bi-annual 5 star rating, the threat of at-will employment, lackluster vacation and total dependency on employer provided healthcare… It’s no surprise that the ability to have any autonomy over working hours and location has become such a divisive topic. :(