But also once you get to the office it’s all just hotel cubes with insufficient conference space. So everyone will still do their meetings virtually on teams, but now with extra steps.
Fuck.
Where I’m at, they got rid of space to put people. So now we have to hot seat our desks instead of having a dedicated desk. Very cool.
Even better when your team isn’t in. So you gotta go in to do Zoom calls …
My team is literally on the other side of the country 😆
Hotel cubes? You mean non-adjustable shared desks with 10 cm high felt partitions which do absolutely nothing to keep you from hearing the espresso machine with perfect clarity no matter where you sit. Also, every team contains at least one consultant who remotes in from another country so all meetings have to be on Teams.
Also we’re making more than ever and projects are launching with thundering success.
Unfortunately we’ve hit on some hard times and are going to have to let some of you go.
Corporations nowadays are more honest about it. They’ll plainly say that it has been their best year ever, but they are letting you go because they missed their financial target… that they increase 10 to 30% every year no matter what.
Good news everyone (bad news for most of you)! In order to meet production targets (satisfy investors), we are optimizing workflows and cutting unneeded redundancies (firing most of you).
I work for local government and we were recently ordered to return to office because leadership was concerned we would look “lazy” to the public if we were allowed to work from home… I don’t work directly with the public in any shape or form. On top of that I’m geographically located about 1.5 hours from the rest of my team so I report to a different office than they do, so we still meet on Teams.
How are we ‘the public’ going to see what you are doing in your home?
Incredible. You are going to meet “on line” but you can’t do it from your home.
As someone with small kids, this would be my preferred way of working. Even with a dedicated room I can’t help myself losing focus and entering magic adventures with unicorns and building equipment.
I’m in a similar spot, my closest teammates are about 80 miles away and everything is over teams. My only solace is the fact no one works in my building so it’s really quiet (almost too quiet at times).
Edit: Solice and solace are different words
“Leadership”
“Everything is going great on its own without my input so I need you to all be inconvenienced so I can look like I’m having an impact!”
“How can I justify being the manager if you are productive alone at home?”
Step 1: replace middle management with LLM
Step 2: LLM produces pointless drivel and feedback that nobody reviews along with occasional misguided suggestions
That is all, there is no step 3 get back to work.
It’s not enough that they have the profitable outcome they demand, they want the. WORKER to understand that they are literally slaves.
Linkedin status update : looking for work
No, they put in a lot of money for these office buildings, and they’re sitting unused. They have leases they still have to pay.
Relevant screen name
And I take it you are OJ Simpson?
No but what if I did it?
If you think I’m arguing for them, I’m not.
Okay fair. But what is meant is that leases, debt, market forces are justifications for class domination.
Remember that all financial activity begins and ends with the banking system. New money is created by banks, it circulates throughout the economic system, and then returns to the banks in greater amounts via interest and exploitation. This all supports a system that ensures a wealthy few have domination over the precarious existence of poor and middle class workers.
Small capitalists are especially vulnerable to these pressures. When you own a business to take a lease on a building then the price they pay is determined by the market. But market prices are driven by political and private interests. The commercial real estate market has been described as a “zombie” for over a decade. Supply is tightly controlled so that owners can return a profit on their profit year over year. This has created unsustainable circumstances, a bubble that could pop if a movement came along to seize it.
Power over the workers is the only thing that the system offers small capitalists, who are as beholden to large capitalists as the rest of us. But for us we get mad at our boss or manager, who is more like an overseer of wage slaves than a plantation owner. Coming back to work means people have to go buy new business attire, we spend more on gas, we put more wear on our vehicles, we get less free time to improve our lives or sustain a work/life balance. And for what? People are more productive when we work from home, we make more money for our companies, we are happier and more effective. What does keeping us poor and stressed and tired do to sustain a rational system of labor, even exploited labor?
But the system isn’t rational. And if it isn’t just about profit and productivity than what is it about?
As leftists have been saying for at least two centuries, it is about the power of one class of owning capitalists over all others.
Its like saying that an automobile drives with its wheels. In a very minor way it is true, but it is a complex machine operated by many essential systems. When we look at the car its important to inspect where the rubber meets the road, and understand the component systems, but to understand it we need to look at how all the seemingly disparate systems operate together, as well as who is driving it and where they intend to go with it.
Return to work is a mandate that one billionth of the world’s population demands of .0075% of the worlds population, in order to control the remaining 99.9925%.
The other side of the coin is, when people WFH, they feel how useless they are.
Is that so? I would argue opposite
Any moment I’m not raising stakeholder value is useless to me.
How do you think they feel useless? I have found 2 versions of work at home. One actually is more productive because they do not have the usual distractions of the work place. The other has a full schedule of chores and fits their work in around doing chores not related to their employment
We were fully remote during the height of the pandemic. Right now we’re on a 3 days a week in office plan, except if you live further than 50km or 1h away. Some also have a grandfathered agreement. Then it’s a single day per week, where we discuss things as a team and grab lunch after. I think it’s nice to occasionally meet your colleagues, especially if you all work very closely together. Doesn’t even have to be once a week.
My mother-in-law’s job has a similar policy, except the range is 80 miles… She lives almost exactly 79.9 miles away from her job. The company refuses to budge, (“if we gave an exception to you, we’d have to do it for everyone”), and requires her to come in three days a week. So she commutes an hour and a half, three times a week.
Insane.
