[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/08/google-to-crack-down-on-hybr...
[2] https://fortune.com/2023/06/08/google-remote-work-office-att...
They have indeed, precisely for offering really good perks that everyone wanted. If they start doing the opposite, others will see opportunity.
> many tech companies are beholden to their Silicon Valley VCs
The tech landscape is much, much bigger than SV. At least if you're not targeting 300k+ salaries.
Then as the Bob's say it just works itself out.
The employers hold the cards because they pay the money and workers who need money and are willing to work in an office are basically the scabs of the remote work union.
Remote workers have no power until they can get everyone to agree not to work in an office
When bad decisions are made, the best people leave first.
We don't know if it is a bad decision yet. It has not played out long enough to affect other parts of the economy or other businesses.
So far all we know is some people benefit from remote work and commerical real estate and local business within are being affected
I agree that in the bigger picture things are still playing out, but if the best performing engineers are working remotely, then mandating that they come back onsite is a bad decision from their point of view. It might be good for the company, but the conflict of interest will result in them leaving.
All of these were known benefits of WFO prepandemic, but then WFH was forced, and worked for a bit as people worked off of relationships established in the past. Then wishful thinking set in, and now reality is kicking in.
That is not to say that there aren’t people who thrive in WFH (this might be you). But a big company needs a system that works across the variety of ppl and teams it employs.
My ideal was and is to form Remote teams, made out of ppl who really are good at WFH. Mixed teams of remote and onsite ppl suck for everyone.
None of these problems were ever dealt with in all the WFO settings I was ever in, so this seems like little more than scapegoating WFH for all the sicknesses that afflict large organizations. I’m currently working on a remote team that’s a collaboration across a few different orgs, one of whom is primarily WFO, and we have the highest rate of execution across all our parent organizations.
The reality of every place I’ve ever worked is that product and project management are really bad across the board, far worse than your so called low-performers. But the top of the hierarchy rarely disciplines itself when it can just let shit roll down hill, which is why we end up with the fairy tales about how the lack of water-cooler chat is preventing the otherwise guaranteed success.
The strife over WFH vs WFO is what I call a standard "all of these are true" problem, meaning that the points people make on different sides are both true - the problem is people want to optimize for different things. E.g. I think all of these are true:
1. People can save a ton of time and money WFH.
2. The additional flexibility from WFH makes it easier for people with outside responsibilities (e.g. child or elder care) to contribute productively in work.
3. Overall productivity, especially for non-rote tasks, goes down measurably when the vast majority of people are remote. The FAANGs appear to have data to back this up. For everyone that says "but I'm more productive!" it's not hard to believe a bunch of other people are taking multi-hour lunch breaks.
4. The overall strength of work relationships goes down when people are remote. Again, not for everyone, but in aggregate.
5. People are spending much more time alone. The article shows the data for this. I think long term this will be particularly bad for society. It's much harder to empathize with people from different groups if you never interact with them, nevermind that loneliness in and of itself is something of an epidemic.
6. WFH makes people less likely to be "career obsessed" in the first place. I think this is the thing a lot of companies are realizing, that if anything the masses are actually getting to see the "wizard behind the curtain". That is, pre-pandemic, loads of tech companies wanted to motivate their employees with grand talk of "changing the world", and it's a lot easier to feel that motivation in a colocated group. Of course, for most companies, you're not actually changing the world, and most importantly, the company doesn't really give a damn if you change the world or not. They just want to make money. So I think WFH leads a lot of people to re-evaluate their priorities into what they want out of life in the first place, and this is overall bad news for companies that want to convince employees that they should put work above all else (primarily for the benefit of shareholders).
And, even today, I suppose I developed some new professional relationships during the pandemic but, yeah, a lot of it has honestly been coasting from the before times. It's always hard to separate out various effects but it would be pretty natural if a lot of people felt less engaged when they don't even need to pretend to be engaged.