Blizzard developers say return-to-office policy 'cost us some amazing people'
pcgamer.com
pcgamer.com
Even if 80% of companies RTO the remaining 20% that recruit remote-only jobs will create massive disruption in top performers. HR has their head in the sand because so many companies are either freezing hiring or reducing headcount, but there's a real issue here. Talented people just don't need to consider onsite work, period.
The only way you work onsite is you are inexperienced or you don't have another job. Maybe you want a big name on your resume. Either way those are jobs that will need to be filled again.
In this article, they state openly that Blizzard is managing a crisis to ship multiple products. The cost of a failed product release outstrips their lease cost by orders of magnitude. I don't get the play here. What's the outlook on the next release cycle without talent?
Or you are in the subset of people that prefer working in-office. They aren't nonexistent, although that's frequently assumed on this site.
And who don't work for an employer who, simultaneous with RTO, is working to make in-office work a shit experience.
Hot-desking* in an open-office space, while you Zoom with your remote teammates based in a different office? WHO WOULDN'T WANT THAT?
* Now euphemized as "hoteling."
I actually like working in-office, but FFS, at least give me a cube with some storage, open desktop space, 3 or 4 walls that are taller than I am when sitting (and preferably when standing) that's in the same building with my team.
Just FYI, I was a consultant for Deloitte in the early 2000's in Boston and they called it that even then, because consultants frequently travel and were out of the office anyway, so the incentive of paying for less under-utilized office space was already there.
And, heh, if you didn't reserve a desk in time then you basically got stuck in the hallway on a "floater" terminal with a lot of foot-traffic behind you
Yes that's a shitty setup. People I know, who prefer hybrid, prefer that only when the rest of the team is in office as well.
The problem is that you can't have a discriminatory work policy. If for example you make a rule that "if you are considered productive, you can work more days from home; if you are considered to be becoming less productive, then you must come to the office more," then a few things happen, first and foremost being that people who are visibly in the office more are perceived as slackers, which can be a self-fulfilling belief, and the people who are out of the office more are "primadonnas" or "boss bootlickers". All of this creating more tension, as the "productive mostly from-home'ers" are also less likely to get promoted, etc. Basically there are a bunch of knock-on effects from treating employees differently in this capacity.
I have a friend who had hard data showing he was more productive when he was WFH and he still ended up having to RTO after covid lockdowns. I'm sure this wasn't a decision made lightly by management.
There's always the option of finding a 100% WFH company where they basically don't hire (or end up retaining) anyone with any ADHD =) and where those highly self-disciplined folks can go to thrive. But a large company like Blizzard won't be it.
I almost want to apologize to the people who are more productive when 100% WFH for having to comply with RTO policies for the sake of people like me. People like me are grateful for your sacrifice.
At the risk of getting downvoted I do think there's another subset of people who are convinced they are more productive WFH but actually aren't. Or, know they aren't, but don't care. I think this realization is what sparks these draconian RTO policies by upper management.
Part of it may be that working on-site is still culturally considered the default, and WFH an exception. This creates an interesting asymmetry: if you're less productive at home than in the office, then obviously you should work from the office; if you're less productive in the office than at home... then you're a bad employee and should be let go.
It seems to me that those who want to return to offices are a bit like the target market for the iPhone Mini: a very vocal minority.
And they are a minority indeed [0]. In fact, if the average HN poster was a white male, the RTO crowd would be overrepresented and thus it would explain that, in each one of these debates, there is always a good bunch claiming that in person office work is great.
[0] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-post-pandemic-offic...
YMMV. It seems to me that "zealots" on either spectrum (fully remote or fully office) are vocal minorities. Most of the people seem to prefer hybrid, where they get to go to office a few days a week and spend time WFH a few days.
HN crowd seems to have a lot of vocal proponents of fully-remote work.
The numbers given don't seem to back that up.
Either way, the hybrid model is also polarizing, as it proves ineffective over time when people go to the office in non overlapping days, effectively turning going to the office into the same experience as working from home, just away from it.
My annecdata is that I feel far more productive (concentrated) at home, but going in 1-2 times a week is very important for incidental communication that can have important consequences. I currently manage a fully remote intern, but we have him come ~ two days every month. So far this seems to work.
As an example, right now I am living and working in Amsterdam. My commute is 10 minutes by bike or 25min walk. I generally prefer to work in the office since I like the free exercise, context switch, and my office is also nice. However if my commute was longer than 60 mins, and in a car or public transport, I would want to work remotely.
And before anyone asks, yes, happily married, kids at home, excellent home office, healthy social life.
Great, but it's a pretty isolating idea that you should spend all your time with the same few people. It's nice and healthy to context-switch and spend some time around different people.
I've been part-time remote since ~2012, full-time since 2016. I've recently taken a hybrid role. I really, really enjoy going into the office twice a week these days. The change of scenery is helping my brain. Plus, my kids preschool/daycare is equidistant from our home and the office, so it's not actually adding any measurable commuting time to my life. My daily commute is ~40 minutes in total regardless of where I sit my ass down to work.
I'm fortunate that my life is set up this way but I know from going into the office twice a week for months now that I'm not alone, most of my colleagues are in similar situations.
That said, I'd be perfectly happy to go fully remote as well. Wouldn't come to my mind to advocate that others to have to go to the office, just because I enjoy it once in a while.
To clarify my marital status is single but that has nothing to do with my relationship status
Also I live in nice and connected parts of town and prioritize short commutes, ideally walkable and bikeable
I think the end is going to mash out, but the real underlying problem that nobody wants to directly address is managers know who they'd be fine with working from home, and those who they are not so fine with (and it could all be entirely legitimate). Since they can't discriminate, they just slam to the lowest common denominator.
I can't speak for anyone but myself, I can only speculate. Maybe the lone office warrior wants to get away from noisy construction at home, family, etc.?
I know we have been WFH since March 2020, and we're _just_ starting to talk about RTO. No one wants to, but the state institution we work for is about to demand it. We have plenty of low performers that may work better (or, with some of them, actually work) being in the office. For our team, that would come at a significant disadvantage for those who _can_ work remote who now have to juggle managing the lower performers.
Obviously, it'd be easy to let go of the low performers and replace with more solid people, but being a state employee makes that somewhat difficult (HR, salaries, etc).
They are still statiscal oddities.
One has to be several layers deep in the bubble to think otherwise.
I'm glad I left to get world class experience, and I'm glad I'm back to stay.
So I expect young people will do what I did and move on site.
The issue is the cost of getting to work, and even to live near work.
Just getting to work is a significant expense, parking, having a vehicle that's good enough to commute in, insured for commuting, and always repaired before the next weekday, it adds up.
When the pandemic kicked off WFH, I suddenly found myself with an extra $10,000 or so in my pocket each year.
Then I moved away from work, which allowed me to go from renter to homeowner (with rental income that helped me get approved). My monthly COL is lower, and between paying my mortgage and home appreciation, I've accumulated $300,000-$400,000 in equity over 4 years.
Back in town, I'd still be a renter hopelessly saving up for an apartment with maybe 10-20% of my current net worth.
tldr: My office was actually pretty nice, but not having to physically live near or get to it, has put me in a dramatically higher socio-economic class.
It's such an amazing own goal that as municipal politicians overly pandered to the nimby attitudes of established wealthy homeowners, and disallowed any and all new housing in desirable near downtown areas, they induced a requirement for massive, shitty commutes, which people are now naturally and smartly abandoning for WFH as soon as they can, thus destroying the economies of said cities' downtowns.
All of it could have been avoided if cities actually let housing be built.
I still often go into the office purely for the enjoyment of a pleasant and healthy 15 minute bike ride into work. I recognize however that most colleagues do not have that privilege of a short commute, and I understand completely why they'd rather stay home.
Perhaps to some extent, but the type of housing in cities is mostly restricted to apartments, which is not satisfying for everyone, especially those that prefer living outside the city.
I promise you no one in HR wants this once people told them that. This is entirely pursued by majority shareholders and C-level.
I think even that varies—partly by the nature of the organization.
Most HR people I have known have not been "people people" so much as they have been "process people"—they lived for rules and procedures being meticulously spelled out and required to be followed to the letter.
(...And then there's the finally-now-former head of HR I knew who was mostly just a "platitudes person"—any problem that came to her, she had a whole bunch of pleasant-sounding drivel to say to get the person with the problem to go away, only later to realize their problem was never going to be solved, at least not by HR.)
I hate to say it, but I have to recognize when I’m without leverage. I’ll absolutely go back to the office if it means I have a job.
I think this might be part of the strategy of the current layoffs, to kinda push the issue with economic force. Who knows?
>several grueling months of unsuccessful job searching
Do you not have a network of people you can ask for work?
This always used to be my lifeline. 2022 was the fourth layoff of my career, and each of the three previous times, someone I'd worked with previously got me in the door at their new place, and I had a job again within a month.
This time, I've had at least half a dozen direct referrals from former coworkers, and only one has even gotten me to a hiring manager interview. Brutal doesn't even begin to describe it.
As a consolation, I've gotten a bit of freelance work through my network, but since that reduces unemployment benefits, it doesn't really help pay the bills so much as it helps support my mental health.
what's going on with the current layoffs is that companies overhired from 2020 to 2022, and now they're over-firing to compensate.
there's also a snowball effect to it, because if you see that you could fire your people and re-hire roughly equivalent new talent for less, that's very appealing for the kind of manager who sees staff as a cost center.
and there's also a real estate invesmtent factor, both in terms of ego ("I met with architects for a year to build our shiny new campus, of course you peons will be more productive where I can keep an eye on you") and in terms of actual financials ("we've been spending $X per year for property taxes on this empty building").
of course it's always going to be a blend of factors, especially in an industry where tons of research proved open plan offices were detrimental and open plan offices became the norm anyway.
A box full of cash will convince many to come to the office a couple of times a week. It's still very hard to get FAANG expensive-city level compensation with a true promise that you will still be fully remote 1 year from now.
For the companies trying to pay startup wages plus demand in office, that will end badly
There's a legal employment concept called "quit for cause", it's kind of the inverse of "fire for cause". In CA (and very much IANAL), if your contract is for remote work and you are required to RTO, that'd qualify as "cause". AFAICT you can tie this to other things, like "I can quit and keep the signing bonus", "I can quit and get my first year's stock", things like that - at least on a legal level. Negotiating that in (and enforcing it) are other questions.
Mix in monkey-see-monkey-do management of smaller firms, and of course straight up class antagonism towards workers, and you've got RTO über alles.
I partially disagree: if necessary, rent out various parts of this office space to multiple companies.
For instance, MPK 2x are essentially airplane hangers.
All companies act in their best interest and that’s kind of it.
b) remote work has been making office buildings obsolete for decades now. it is fundamentally absurd to say that you need people to get together in one room in order to build a distributed system. neither office buildings nor the "open plan" spaces inside have made any real logical sense for the tech industry in a very, very long time.
Devil's advocate: maybe it's a low-cost way to avoid layoffs? As in "we'd like to reduce headcount, but layoffs are expensive and look bad. If we enforce RTO, a certain percentage of our less-dedicated employees will quit and we won't have to pay out severance etc..."
I keep sharing that many companies have not defined the remote policy. It's up in the air and they simply haven't said anything about not working remote. My fear is it will all end in two weeks, asking all non-dedicated full time remote workers to be in the office.
Now what happens when your company's processes require high performing people with experience that can't be hired just of the street? Or need several months to years worth of recruiting to replace?
It's a nice dream to have everyone wfh, but most people may not have that leverage / experience.
Going for work from home with defined "in office" periods (say one week a month at an office or working resort or whatever) can be a better division, but that puts the people who thrive in an office environment at a disadvantage.
Everybody thinks they’re special until they’re not. Tons of top talent at Amazon and Facebook were recently laid off. You’re not safe just because you’re smart.
Remote introduces some challenges to be sure, but you gain access to such a wider pool of talent and it is such an employee benefit.
If you want the best talent you probably need to offer remote work or be ready to pay double because it is worth that much to most people. I would not hate the idea of working in an office a few days a week again, but the only way I am even going to consider relocating is for, at minimum, double my current salary and some kind of contract with guarantees.
I’ve seen no data to support that.
> The only way you work onsite is you are inexperienced or you don't have another job.
Speak for yourself. Among the engineers I know who are "top talent", many of them prefer hybrid while small fractions prefer either fully-remote or fully-office setup.
One employee (who does not want to work in the office) claims return to work is the cause without providing any evidence. I would be very wary of drawing the conclusions you are. For all we know they are in crisis because their employees are producing 10x less when working from home versus when they are in the office.
Blizzard's chief operating officer, the person whose job is to avoid such crises, quit/was fired when Microsoft acquired Blizzard. He went to Yuga Labs, the Bored Ape Yacht Club people. That may be part of why Blizzard is in trouble.
We've passed "peak office". Between work from home and better AI, there's just no real need for about half of the US's office space. Tearing down suburban office buildings to build housing is now a thing. The office building itself now has negative value.[2]
It's even worse in retail. Shoppers are not returning to malls.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/10/business/commercial-real-esta...
[2] https://www.loopnet.com/learn/deal-of-the-month-22m-office-t...
About the only thing that malls had left going for them was trying on clothes; and a bunch of stores shuttered their dressing rooms during Covid and never re-opened them.
So why bother? Order online and return what don't fit, and stay away from the ghastly creepy malls.
However, in the last several years the attitude of malls has changed. We had a spate of kids being kids and running through the local mall last year and it scared all the shoppers. Now they won't let kids in without an adult and keep hassling them at every turn. Malls have become a hostile place to shoppers. At least in my area.
For a picture of the mallrat era, see the intro to "Fast Times at Ridgemont High". (1982) [1] That mall, the Sherman Oaks Galleria, was torn down in 1999.
That's interesting to hear. Places I shop in Canada have all re-opened their fitting rooms so maybe it's a regional decision?
I've seen speculation that free returns might not be as abundant as they have been in the past.
I personally dislike returning goods, so I'd rather go fit stuff at a mall when it's something that needs a good fit. Especially jeans, I apparently have a strange pelvis because I find it very hard to find comfortable jeans. But stuff like T-shirts and socks are pretty easy to order online.
I just wish they would sell the same damn jeans year in and year out and stop futzing with the sizes and fits.
If they decide to end free returns, who's going to "devour" them? I don't think there's anyone left with a mouth big enough.
Amazon is also mildly disliked by all their customers anyway.
No idea how it's in America.
If your goal is to ensure that you're getting rid of your top talent, it's a fine strategy.
It’s not that simple. For folks who prefer remote, remote is a benefit. For folks who prefer an in office work style, remote being an option is an “anti” benefit since it totally kills the value of in person work.
You’re going to lose top talent either way. The last org I worked at went remote and lost a bunch of high performers to places that were in office.
I ended up leaving for unrelated reasons. It seems like things ended up totally stabilizing and now they are in a happy state of remote culture, but it absolutely cost them along the way.
It's a benefit to everyone, whether or not they use it.
I don't support "return to the office" mandates, but the reasoning is sound: the value of an office is not realized unless most people attend.
Or take the permanent desk and remote into all meetings anyways.
Usually, you're not going to fire your top talent over corporate policy for the plebs. You're going to bend the rules.
If the company isn't bending for you, you might not be top talent - and more like just slightly above average talent - in which case, yeah, the company doesn't really care about you.
And if you really are top talent, you're not concerned if your company doesn't bend. You can go anywhere. Who cares?
I think the term "key person" is probably more helpful - you can be a key person (and thus your employer might go out of their way to retain you) without necessarily being "top talent" by virtue of eg being uniquely qualified, in a position where it would be disruptive/expensive to replace you, etc.
...anyone who isn't an ice-cold sociopath? Your job is often a big part of your identity, particularly in the games biz which is so passion driven.
Leaving behind a project you grew, kickass tech you had a hand in, and friends you made is a major life trauma, even if you're doing it voluntarily to chase something new.
However, it is still just work! It's not my company, it's not my identity, and it gives me no value as a human being. You are not your success. My colleagues are not my friends, though we can hang out and have fun. My accomplishments at work are not my value as a person, though they give me satisfaction.
Work is work, don't buy what they're selling, and put down the cool-aid.
I'd argue this is unhealthy and a recipe for disaster. But different things work for different folks.
> Leaving behind a project you grew, kickass tech you had a hand in, and friends you made is a major life trauma, even if you're doing it voluntarily to chase something new.
There's kickass people at most good companies. The idea you can't make work friends & work on cool stuff unless at your current job in your current role seems limiting.
This is the start of the Dead Sea Effect as described in http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-d...
(posted many times) https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=brucefwebster.com
The most interesting discussion is likely https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23166786 from May 13, 2020 with 127 points and 128 comments)
Using RTO to increase attrition is an absolutely brain dead strategy.
I've been WFM for 7 years now. I don't think RTO is a bad thing, but its all situational. How silo'd are projects and how much inter-team coordination do you need? How long is your commute? What kind of person are you (some people just work better in office environments)? Do you need physical access to equipment? The list goes on.
Being fully remote has allowed flexibility for team members to relocate without being forced to leave and thats been the biggest advantage. Going from a FTO to WFO or RTO is a big transition that requires re-defining workflows and communication mechanisms. Products like Zoom and Slack have made that far easier, but the bigger the organization, the harder the transition.
Personally, I miss having an office. I've lost human connection by being isolated at home that isn't replaced with normal social interactions. Maybe thats just older men not making time, but office space traditionally filled that role for me.
Some of my best memories, and most productive times, were when me and a couple of co-workers would walk down 5 flights of stairs to get some Dr. Pepper at 3:00 in the afternoon. It helped break up the day and get your brain juices flowing again. And the caffeine didn't hurt. It's kinda hard to get that when you WFH.
I think people are afraid of pair programming and it's very weird, as I love it. I do it a lot on zoom but it's not as good as in person.
I find myself more productive at home because there's often way too much office chit-chat between meetings that does nothing but serve to distract. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but there's an understanding among my hybrid team that if we need to get something done, we'll be WFH those days. Not to mention, I'm senior enough to always be in meetings and never program anymore, and for that I can do anywhere especially when the people I meet are in different parts of the world.
For me WFH is definitely more productive. For a start, I don't have to commune for 90 mins into office. If I RTO I'll politely remove all meetings from other time zones out of 9-5 because I need to catch a train or drive a car.
Also, by WFH I don't have people who happens to enjoy a lot of chatting and "collaboration in person" to suddenly appear in front of me and request a talk! God finally I can work.
Specifically, anyone holding the bag of commercial real estate - particularly in high CoL cities.
Edit: I strongly suspect there is a story here because if you happened to be holding that bag you would lobby, lie, cheat, steal, whatever you needed to do to try and get out from under that impending doom.
Lots of games released that year. Link Hall Of Light[0] for the game?
Their interests just happen to be against, literally everyone else in terms of a full reversion.
How the communication flows from the government or RE developers to executives is beyond my understanding, but it looks like there is not much willingness to rethink how corporate office space can be used in other ways, and more willingness to just go back to the status quo.
Lots of city tax revenue vanished when people stopped coming into work.
as a former WoW player (since beta!)
we're all wise to the situation that if Blizzard gets its userbase back it will return to its previous abusive ways
its reputation is unsalvageable
If true, talk about incompetent management. If you need to slim down, ideally you'd want to identify the people and groups that can be laid off with least overall damage and do it all in one shot. "Layoffs by RTO" is a great way to have your best, most-employable staff trickle out over a period of months - constantly reminding anyone left behind that they're stuck working under a bunch of ding-a-lings so they might decide to leave next.
How is Bobby still getting paid "the big bucks" to run ActivisionBlizzard this way?
For the benefit of all companies, we need to find a way to produce more people qualified to lead large organizations so that they’re easier to swap.
I support policies that make it easier for people to make organizations and remove roadblocks to achieve this. This will make existing companies leaner and produce more stock of qualified leaders.
It's surely not easy, though. It requires a number of skills on communication, organization (time management, adequate environment), and a good amount of discipline, both from managers and "managees". But I don't see companies trying to develop such critical competencies deliberately. They simply send people home and dream with the resulting cuts in costs -- at least that's my experience.
I've seen WFH working amazingly well in some places; working terribly in others; or even working well at the beginning and deteriorating after some time; and, in the cases where WFH worked well, that happened essentially out of luck.
Each time I left an employer since I started- a basic requirement in my job search was -“remote”
Just as important as the job title and salary range.
I’ve managed remote teams myself and understand the unique challenges WFH can create - however, it is up to the company leadership to set clear expectations about what WFH looks like (and what it doesn’t).
Company’s mandating return to office failed in setting expectations and managing to them accordingly. Don’t blame the entire workforce- learn from what didn’t work for your company and adapt. Otherwise, you’ll be left behind by those who did.
The more interesting question, IMHO, is whether companies mandating a given work style will be more efficient than others that give people the choice. And among the ones mandating a style, whether one style in particular is more efficient in general.
Which company from the options below is more likely to beat their competitors in the long run due to higher efficiency, quality, time to market etc?
1) A company that can hire ANY 100 workers who will fully work from home. 2) A company that can hire ANY 100 workers who will fully work from the office. 3) A company that can hire ANY 100 workers and give them the choice.
As the article suggests, top performers can pick jobs anywhere and anytime. Even a depression as bad as 1929 still maintains about 60% employment. RTO will just drive away two kinds of people: top performers who prefer remote work, and people who are OE. Even for the second group, they are still good performers as they can handle two jobs without being noticed.
Either way, only those inexperienced and coasting are going to stay. Good luck pushing out projects then.
It’s a lose-lose. And hybrid isn’t a solution at all; it’s a bad outcome for both sides.
Over time things are just going to settle into remote orgs and in person orgs, and all that’s happening now is that companies are deciding which side of the fence to come down on. Either choice hurts in the short term.
I think the discourse on forums like this one and Reddit, dominated by highly-online folks (especially engineers), has given folks a skewed perspective on the general population's preferences regarding office work. Most folks in my personal network do not work in tech. Among them the solid majority prefer a hybrid setup, with only a small portion preferring full-time remote or full-time in-office. But that leads to a very strong majority preferring that their organization have an active and vibrant office.
I think it's pretty clear that this is a topic that people have organic, gut-level differences of opinion on -- and not without a very substantial basis (thinking here of the experience of people who hate WFH and find it to be as damaging to their mental health as others find it to be liberating).
I'm still in the camp that holds that on balance there are more benefits to WFH, and fewer downsides - provided everyone is on board. But what's needed to bridge the divide is more empathy for the other side - not a bullet to the head of everyone who disagrees with us.
I've worked in all ranges from fully on-site to fully remote and it's all in organization and workflow and I can absolutely see some manager seeing drop in productivity when trying to pretend no changes are needed to be made for remote work.
Maybe they can have management require being in office during key parts of projects or for parts of the month. Rather than a mandatory 3 days a week thing across the board.
You are now paying rent (and utilities) for a space that is severely underutilized for 80% of the time.
What about the food catering? The security? Parking space?
All these collaterals cannot be dynamically scaled up and down at will.
Plus you don’t need catering nor the total office size demands when you have 20% utilization at various times.
You can offer those perks through monthly stripends not via the office. You can also stripend traveling costs to the office for the allotted monthly group time.
Usage can also be coordinated and staggered virtually to manage demand.
It’s going to require adapting to a new reality not pigeonholing the old system into the new one just in case people might use the office all at once.
Downsizing the office space to ensure handle just 20% of the headcount might be the answer, but:
a) It will take time
b) Getting rid of 80% of your office space is not really that much easier than getting rid of 95% of it, which is why the various companies are trying not to do it at all.
So much for RTO being good for communication.
https://kotaku.com/blizzard-diablo-iv-world-warcraft-remote-...
You know what I keep wondering, why don't these companies look at the numbers and say "if you want to WFH you will get a 20% paycut" instead? People who are good at their job and like the company might just stick around even then. They get to save on top expensive talent.
It was killed before it got to committee, and my second hand understanding is the Biden administration didn’t like it because it risked “possibly killing down towns across America”
We could’ve had it better, but we chose not to
That being said, I don't think its possible to start a remote manufacturing business/factory.
Basically, if we want these rights of remote work, we're going to have to unionize and fight for them.
The elites already have this right.
The lines are being drawn. Fight or acquiesce.
Why choose to work for people who's morals you don't agree with and force them to change their minds instead of aligning yourself with those that you consider virtuous and running a company the right way? I cannot understand wanting to perpetuate bad companies and bad managers and owners.
It's like joining a defense company and try to force them to sell crutches vs going to work at a medical company designing crutches.
A non-union workforce has no such bargaining chip.
companies that allow WFH are more flexible then RTO companies. Top talent seems to like WFH more than RTO. In a few years we will see which companies improved: RTO or WFH?
this is a hilarious thought. have you just joined the workforce?
I have no doubt that many employees are individually just as productive or more so when WFH. But collectively, does something suffer? Are teams less productive, less creative? Less opportunities for spontaneous collaboration, etc? What reasons are companies using for justification when they make these RTO decisions?
In any case, hybrid work (eg: 3 days in the office per week) seems to be becoming the norm here in the UK. That seems like a good compromise to me.
You'll have to ask them, but you can't possibly think that companies always (or even most of the time) do the best thing for the company, right? There's so much evidence to the contrary in just daily business life, not even including the big news events, that any sane person would know that companies often do things that are contrary to their own existence, because "existence" is not a driving factor in capitalism, it's profit.
So the exact same as a non-union workforce.
> If most people want WFH, companies that refuse to allow it will have to pay more to attract or retain talent.
I love how people just assume companies are this perfect machine that both know what's going on and understand the choices made, especially in a thread where Blizzard clearly isn't able to deal with their choices and almost certainly didn't intend to lose such talent.
Ironically, quit if you don’t like it only works at scale if there is collective action. And collective action is hard if you’re doing it on your own, separately from everyone else.
Say you have company X that makes SaaS. They mandate RTO for all workers. If there are really as many people wanting remote work as you say, then a remote work competitor Y will spring up and talent will start bleeding from X to Y. That happens a lot not just with remote work but all sorts of disruptions that company X types don't like to adapt to.
Speaking with your feet assumes you have the luxury to do so and the other side is willing to listen.
And that lower pay is still double what you can make in other countries.
Is this the hill we want to die on? Don’t we have a lot to lose?
The market is Moloch : https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
If you could get your first born's weight in $precious_thing , you'd have a line of people doing just that. Sell a piece of your humanity and autonomy? Cool!
Hell, "the market" people would reinstitute slavery if they could.... Oh, wait, they did. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/economics/indentured-servit...
"The market" is whatever the fuck you can get away with to get even more money for you. Most are ethical-ish, but if you look too hard, you might see the 10 year olds in the butcher plant, or the 8 year olds assembling your Apple shit.
I think that summarizes what I think of anyone who leans on "the market".
Its also worth pointing out that 'the market' memes that people lean on have other requirements; the most crucial is buyers and sellers having equal power, which the labor market immediately discards, by dint of the relative urgency and immediate outcomes of failing to make a deal on the market.
A person selling labor has to balance their price against the urgency to secure food, shelter, and access to medical care.
A company buying labor can frequently afford to wait months or even years and it may not even make sense for them to hire some one at market rate - the more you pay someone the more others expect to be paid and the more they expect to see their own salary grow.
It's something to reflect on when people think companies are behaving stupidly for having interview processes that leave unfilled positions for months - the buyers on the market have fewer and different pressures than the sellers, maybe what they are doing isn't stupid just inhuman.
Some companies will enforce RTO. Some will not. The market will decide how valuable that is, and remote-capable companies should benefit for it.
Some companies are remote by default! You can get a different job!
The factories/companies in the industrialized society copied this format and culture exactly as it was in late 18th and early 19th centuries. In this format, the benefits of the commons (in this case the capability of remote work that technology enables) is removed from the serfs artificially by forcing them to return to work just like how the unwilling serfdom was forced to go work in the factories by shutting the commons off to them by passing enclosure acts.
but this isn't the case, it's management making BS decisions no one really likes. the market is in favor of capital & management in the current market climate so collective action is the only way to push back imo
> If most of my colleagues and the owners of the company I work for decide they prefer to work in an office
If most of your colleagues prefer the office, I assume your union wouldn't push for mandatory WFH.
As for the owners—well, reducing the effect of their preferences on the experience of workers is the point of a union.
How many stories have we seen now where employers have reneged on their fully remote forever policies?
Interestingly, the people you name specifically don't want you to do that. For example, Lulu Cheng Meservey: https://kotaku.com/call-duty-mwii-activision-union-busting-l...
It seems like at least one of these statements has to be false. My guess is that remote work is not actually good for all companies, which is leading some of them to call for RTO. Other companies will keep it, but perhaps not as many as employees would like. The same could be said for many aspects of work, like free lunches/dinners/massages, which are also disappearing as the supply/demand equilibrium is shifting as you describe.
On paper a union kinda makes sense until you see your union dues going to support batshit candidates for office. Here in the US virtually all unions support left leaning policies and the democrat party. Time and again the democrat party claims one thing and does another. Like the backstabbing the Biden administration did to Railroad workers. They did not settle that in workers best interests. They solved it to prevent economic disruption.
I would rather negotiate my own salary needs than leave it to a union.
Technology workers make tremendous amounts of money once you hit middle to senior level career stages. Even more so if you have a specialty. No way would folks given up that level of autonomy.
It is simple enough that the remote work issue is settled through the job market. If a company advertises for only onsite work, they have that choice. Likewise me as a worker can exclusively look for remote work. Despite this economy, the technology worker still dictates the terms. For now. I am sure it will go in cycles like everything else.
No it doesn’t. Don’t get me wrong, that would be nice and all, but that isn’t the point of DEI.
Every one is replaceable, including this manager who is questioning senior leadership. Complaining about it on Twitter isn't going to change anyone's mind who has made these decisions, it's just going to result in your own dismissal. It's a lot better to quiet quit and look for a new job if you feel your job has become impossible.
I don’t think they’re intending to change their leaderships mind. But maybe the mind of other leaders less feckless.
I really wish you weren't though - it makes me somewhat sad to see how often the more motivated and passionate a person is about what they do and even the success of their company, the more likely they are to eventually cross some political or etiquette boundary and end up paying for it.
Motivation and passion are for the little people. They would do well to remember not to let their passions trick them into speaking out of turn.
Companies that punish employees by termination not for insufficient productivity, but rather for differing opinions on how to run the company well eventually discover how bad of a mistake that turns out to be, even if they're no longer capable of recognizing said discovery.