Return to the office? These workers quit instead.

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 241 points – Return to the office? These workers quit instead.
news.yahoo.com

Return to the office? These workers quit instead.::When Rowan Rosenthal heard about Grindr's return-to-office mandate during a virtual town hall meeting in August, anxiety, confusion and anger set in. The principal product designer lived within a 25-minute bike ride from the company's Brooklyn office but instead was required to report to one in Los Angeles, where Rosenthal's department was assigned. This doesn't make sense and there's no way this will happen, Rosenthal thought. But it did happen. And two weeks later, Rosenthal realized that desp

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There it is, buried in paragraph 26:

"He and his colleagues believe that the company's move was the result of workers' decision to unionize."

I'd argue this is not a valid "technology" topic, and is instead more about capitalism, workers' rights, etc.

Remote work is a product of technology. In this case it's disrupting work culture: thanks to technology, workers now have the capacity to do productive work at home, and want to continue doing so. Their managers want them to commute to the office, even when that costs more resources, so this is a social aftereffect of a technological disruption.

Really, it's up to community moderators whether stories of social disruptiion by technology is a paradigm worthy of being reported here, but it is related to technology

As a manager, I don’t care where the hell you are if you’re productive and available when you need to be. And no manager worth their salt in my org currently thinks otherwise.

This is all a game played by C-level executives who want warm bodies in the office chairs they paid money for so the buildings they leased/built are full and look like a hive of activity. It’s Optics + Real Estate + Finance + Status Quo mixed with a bit of “back in my day”.

Don’t forget some of these companies got tax write-offs or rebates by agreeing to lease in a certain city and stimulate the local economy with X number of workers. Then they signed off millions of dollars to build/lease office space and outfitted it with desks and chairs and networking and everything else required.

Removing an article is something Hitler would do. Mods who remove posts are worse than Hitler.

Layoffs are unpopular so companies are tightening the belt by making the working conditions less hospitable.

Return to office is designed to have employees leave willingly so they can reduce headcount without making employees feel unsafe about budget cuts.

What they don’t seem to care is top performers are the ones most able to move to another job with better working conditions.

With a trim at the bottom by letting go of low performers and encouraging top performers to leave they are just trending toward mediocrity.

All of that pales in comparison to this:

We created X growth in profit for our shareholders.

If a company is publicly traded, the shareholders are now by law their highest obligation. It doesn't matter if that growth comes in the form of new clients or salaries unpaid through RTO policies. No other appeal matters other than generating more profit than the previous quarter at any cost.

Not maintaining. Not healthy business. Growth at any cost.

designed to have employees leave willingly so they can reduce headcount

But it's always the best ones who leave first.

Are they really that stupid, or do they only have best ones? ;-)

The best ones are generally paid the most.

You got a cycle or two of firing the best hiring cheaper promoting from inside until you lose all of the useful people in the company than everybody moves on in the cycle begins anew

Have you ever worked in a place where 20% - 30% of all workers have left (voluntarily or not)?

Forget your cycles then. It feels like the company is unable to do anything useful anymore, and then even the ones who don't give a damn about anything, those who only let time go by, are starting to look for a way out of there.

Yes, three times now, I've begun to envy the ones getting severance and moving on.

The smart companies will use a pretty decent carrot on a stick to retain just enough people to retrain the new people.

The best ones are generally paid the most.

And generally the ones you don't want going to a competitor...

Yeah, they can try it with me, but they'll be minus a senior devops engineer, and I don't think they'll understand how their build scripts work without me. FAFO, corpos.

That’s what they want, no severance to pay! Fuck these corporate assholes playing games with their employees

Don't forget to file for unemployment. If you were hired as remote, going to the office means a major change in your job. If anything it will make your scumbag company do extra work.