For now all they can do is complain about having to go to an office to be a spoiled, overpaid tech worker. If I had that job I would be keeping my mouth shut and enjoying the paycheck, but to each their own I suppose.
Because sitting in traffic pissing your life and time away is #worthit.
Because being able to eat a healthy lunch you make youself is lame.
Because going to the office to attend virtual meetings on Chime is the best.
The thing is, the incompetents who are not experts in org politics get sidelined/moved out, and the ones who remain relevant are experts who keep rising with the singular goal of building their fiefdoms. They would sell the company for pennies if they could get 2 more promotions.
By now there are enough incompetent people at VP and director levels in most companies. There is no way to identify performers from the CEO level, and at VP and director levels the incentives are to find the people best for yourself, not for the company.
If that's true, it'd add insult to injury, for the people who were interested in the better FAANGs... but got turned off by the stack of months' worth of prep materials that FAANG in-house recruiters would send to candidates, for their kabuki theatre of interview processes.
One of my recent theories about the interview processes promoted by FAANGs is that they (by accident or design) tend to neuter students against becoming upstart competitors. Think of all those students in school who could have time for side projects, considering startups, developing skills that woudl be useful in startups... and instead FAANGs have trained students to conceive of the very skills as passing the FAANG interview rituals, and to spend their spare time practicing for those rituals. Not only are those students less likely to start a startup, but startups that happen still have to find the workers who are amenable to thinking like creative engineers, and working as a team focused on a shared goal, despite all the FAANG-like messaging to young developers that has infected CS departments and broader industry.
The interview process is flawed, but it did prevent totally incompetent candidates. Now instead of being replaced with an alternative which measures something else, it has just been watered down.
Tech workers on the other hand, say engineers, can easily get a high paying FAANG job without a 4yr degree - just spending time grinding leetcode or a coding bootcamp. Not to mention the RSUs, office perks like free lunches, WFH, on site laundry and daycare, flexible time off, no set work hours… come on
It is prima facie absurd to say that tech workers can "easily" get a job at FAANG; if it were that easy to work at FAANG surely the 50%[0] of Software Engineers who make less than $121k or 75%[0] of Software Engineers who make less than $152k would simply do so.
[0]: https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/software-develope...
There are people who work at FAANG without a degree, but that's the absolute minority. Most people have spent years on a formal education, many of which have a master's or even PhDs.
WFH perks like lunch, laundry, and daycare.
Frankly, I don’t get this drive to RTO. The only gain is face to face meetings might improve productivity (in some people). The downside is increased pollution due to commuting - even with EVs you are wearing out tires increase the amount of micro plastics in the environment, wearing out their batteries, and wasting electricity.
Even without RTO, people will still leave for other jobs if the grass is greener on the other side. If anything, WFH makes it easier for someone to go job hunting and do interviews.
If the environment is your downside to RTO - you’re reaching.
The loss in productivity when someone does 2 hours in traffic a day is probably a more compelling argument. Companies also have to stock their pantry, hire more office management, renew their office space leases.
> 2 hours in traffic a day
I'm starting to wonder if demanding that commute being paid work time would be a reasonable tradeoff (that I wouldn't take myself). If being at the office is part of the job description, then commuting logically follows as a job function.
At the moment, employers are ripping into employees time at the monetary expense of employees. Should we just live closer? Sure! Let's talk about compensating employees for property prices and home security.