Most of the banks in Toronto are forcing staff back into the office a set minimum number of days per week, ranging from 2-4. None are mandating 5 days/week, as far as I know.
I have heard that full compliance is low but don't have any data to back it up.
This peer was typically evaluated as a high performer during performance reviews, but was denied for their request to remain remote, and they decided to ignore the order and accept the consequences.
The organization is also actively monitoring and blocking bonuses and promos for those who are not fully ignoring the mandate but are not meeting the full expectation.
USA based financial institution.
That's what they're saying, at least. My easiest promotions have all been from changing companies; to give up a job because I (hypothetically might) get offered another is a luxury I can't afford right now. And, I'd bet better than even money that there's going to be a lot of "not in the budget" syndrome going around near the holidays.
In other words, them saying that they're actively monitoring, blah blah, might actually be a subtle and distant crack of the whip. The real story is that the job market for highly paid professionals is still absolutely fucker. Employers, of course, know this, and will take any opportunity to capitalize on it, even at the expense of their best workers. It's not 2-3 years ago, when people could peace out at the drop of a hat, because a job would roll in soon enough just by making a LinkedIn post and sending out a handful of resumes.
I'm convinced the back to office mandates come from people who thrive in office environments. Those people succeed, get promoted, become leadership, and then assume everyone else works just like they do. It's absolutely not the case.
That's without going into the many, many studies of office environments which provide empirics disproving common myths about office work, such as the oft-repeated lie that open offices encourage collaboration. Those facts just don't compute for people who love working in those spaces, so they ignore them and repeat happy lies instead.
There are two ways of working, remote or in person. Hybrid is a swan song of bullshit where you get the worst of both worlds and few of the advantages. So organizations need to make sweeping changes one way or another: either restructure towards remote-first or return to pre-covid paradigms by not only getting people back to the office, but also teams back in the same office. Both require some pretty sweeping changes to get there, and it's understandable (if maybe not defensible) that a majority of established organizations don't want to reinvent themselves.
At the end of the day, if in-person is the final vision, yes you should be fired if you don't comply with it. Almost everyone is replaceable, including even the top levels of management. Keeping employees who are actively hostile to (remember, not just disagreeing, but actively disregarding) a core organizational standard doesn't help anything --- regardless of their performance.
All that being said, I find it amazing that companies were presented the opportunity to use a new remote paradigm on a silver platter and decided to scoff at it rather than embracing all of its advantages, but maybe that's why I'm not making those decisions.
It was quite odd. My boss told me to come into the office. I explained how I didn’t want to do that because of personal and professional reasons, I think a pretty rational case. They gave a vague reason “leadership wants it.” I was friends with their boss so I asked the superboss and they said they don’t care.
I never came in. My boss never said anything. Not sure if they didn’t notice. It’s quite possible since I rarely interacted with anyone in person even when in the office. After six months of that, I moved to a new position in my org that is remote friendly.
I think this worked because I’m a “digital worker” who basically just shells into stuff and write code and attends meetings. I don’t actually do anything in person.
It’s also possible (I’d say - likely) that your boss knew, and had no desire to do anything about it.
Yeah, that part of the GP's comment stood out. To even imagine that "bosses" don't notice that their employees are not showing up to the office is pretty far fetched especially for the length of time described. At some point, even the other employees will start talking about it.
I tried to use conditional tense a lot in there because none of this is set in stone. If management only kind of wants people in-office and has higher priorities, maybe y’all will get away with it. But if they’re really dead set on it and you don’t have a union fighting for you, expect to either return to the office or get fired eventually.
Five years ago, I probably would have had my pick of 3-5 offers after about two weeks. This time it was a month for one offer. Definitely a bummer, but the offer was still an upgrade, and so far the new company is working out well, so it’s fine.
If you mess with your people badly enough, the only ones who will stick around are the ones who can’t get a better offer.
He said no. Got fired.
Edit - you say you're willing to quit if they don't agree, so I guess you're up for this possibility. More power to you!
But regardless, outside of rare exceptional circumstances (sometimes there's a deadline and shit's gotta get done), I'd recommend anyone to tell their employer to pound sand if they ask for more work from you than you agreed to.
In the US, the vast majority of these positions are salaried. You get $X/year to perform the duties you're expected to. Because we don't have unions and 99.9% of people are not expert negotiators, "the duties you're expected to" are never actually defined. That means your employer is incentivized to stack as many duties on as they can, until they approach your breaking point. So long as they don't break you, it's free work for them. Employers regularly abuse inexperienced people and desperate people, who don't have the confidence or financial wiggle room to say "no." I applaud those who normalize saying "no," and encourage forming unions so there's a group of experts in the room whose job it is to fight back against this kind of abuse.
If you are on call then you get paid x% more during that tile and it cannot be more than y hours per month (I do not remember the values). You also have to have at least 11 hours of rest between the days.
The duties are not clearly defined either (despite continuous ideas on how to measure them, which consistently fail year after year) which is a good thing: it is not easy to have this as a reason to fire you (you have to have a good reason to fire in France).
We value work/personal life proportions a lot, but we also are very serious when it comes to work. It is only from the outside that it looks like we are constantly on vacation or having lunch (this is true for some parts of the workforce, to the point of becoming a stereotype).
This is required by law? Yeah we definitely don't have something like that in the US (except for life-endangering roles like doctors, truckers, airplane pilots, etc). It's up to each individual to negotiate their acceptable amount of on-call time and compensation.
(Just to be clear, "being on-call" doesn't mean you are actively working, just that you agree to be responsive if someone reaches out to you about a problem. That could take 15 minutes or 4 hours to resolve, but if no one calls then you are not actually working during the on-call time.)
My guess is that they wanted a reason to fire your guy anyway, and he gave them one.
Rest assured their goal is full return to office despite the current "hybrid" model they are pushing, and you are not important enough to them to keep your job while being civilly disobedient.
Big banks, in particular, want to make a big, public show that "we're all going back to the office" in order to, at a minimum, delay the inevitable collapse of commercial real estate concentrated in major cities. On the inside, they're willing to quietly make exceptions if you fit the right profile (key talent, DEI quotas, political buddies, etc.). If you're a regular, high performing employee with no reason to be in an office, go pound sand.
Source: I'm that person. We lost a LOT of good people because of this over the last few years.
Management relays this, you nod with understanding, everyone follows the rule for a week or so when the company is measuring its incredible effects and then everyone comes back to normal.
When this is done right, it is a win-win for everyone.
In one of my previous jobs the boss was asked publicly during a townhall why RTO if a few months later they praised WFH and insisted this is the way forward to the whole company. He seemed surprised, chuckled a little, then paused, and then said that he talked to his colleagues, that is C*Os, and they all confirmed office is much more fun, hence the decision to go 3:2. It was one of the most stupid public answers from a CEO I've ever heard. So if they play their games instead of being honest, it's not surprising employees follow.
Such white lies help everyone to be on top of their duties - your manager knows that they checked the mark called "evangelize the idea to your team" and you know that you checked the mark "I have provided useful feedback by nodding my head a few times". It stops there and life continues.
In an ideal world, we would not need to do any of these because all ideas would be fantastic and everyone would be enthusiastic about them. Unfortunately, I do not live in such a place.
Others go in, have lunch (free canteen), then go home. Having ticked the system for enough days in. Then do their work from home because the office is such a disruptive place to get anything done.
Most managers don't care so long as the work is getting completed on time.
Long term, I'd be wary though.
No need to fire everybody. They just laid off some of the workers and called it a market adjustment. Now the job market is flooded with desperate unemployed. Current employees will be more likely to adopt corporate policy, so they don't have to compete with the masses of job seekers. Job seekers will accept whatever terms they can get, because it's rough out there.
For context - my original remote status was a bit of happenstance through a transfer. It started before COVID but got looped up in the big RTO push.
The critical mistake? My 'new' team didn't write down their not-pandemic-related-WFH-ness, apparently. The clowns in charge decided our disparate team had a magical worldwide office to return to.
Not satisfied in the uncertainty with the "no punishments expected" promise... I found a whole new job. Something explicitly remote.
The main thing I want to express/leave is this: consider whatever your circumstance right now a coin toss. There will be more.
My gf's company (EU, with a US parent company) have started mandating in-office days for new contracts. But this is after moving to a smaller, more remote (and thus much-much cheaper) office space, which is plainly inadequate to accommodate every employee.
Older contracts are off the hook for now, but there are worries for when they try to apply the mandate to everyone.
I worked in Europe and Asia for a very large US company and the mandates from HQ were exponentially weakening with the distance.
If it is from the in-country entity it depends on the country. On France it would get readjusted after some sighting and discussions.
Any idea why that is? My guess is it's related to the commute (no good public transport in the US, ...), but if not, what's so much worse about US offices than EU offices that people prefer working isolated from home rather than have a more social life among coworkers? (I'm an introvert yet was still happy when offices reopened after covid and people were coming in. Having a coffee with a small group is great for introverts imho!)
People have about as much families/kids/... in EU as US so that's not related to it I think
While about the same proportion of Americans live in “cities”, a city in America can be the size of some European provinces thanks to sprawl. This means that even if you live and work in the same city, your commute can be well over an hour each way. This, combined with kids getting dismissed from school at 3pm and having nowhere to go but home thanks to unwalkable streets and a hyper-aggressive CPS essentially criminalizing leaving your 12 year old unsupervised for 15 minutes, makes going into the office a ridiculously inefficient proposition for families.
Not everyone is an annoying extrovert with no empathy :) You can go to the office, I'll stay home.
On a more serious note, commutes are longer and costlier in the US. And I think quite a few people simply moved house to cheaper (and further away) areas and it's not worth it to move back to within commute distance.
It’s common knowledge in the industry. When I worked for a company with EU offices, we always had to be much more careful about hiring and pay very close attention to laws in each country that could force our hands if we hired someone who didn’t work out.
Meanwhile, back in the US we would often hire people who were junior, had non-traditional backgrounds, or who were borderline passing out interviews but showed potential. We knew we could take the risk and if it didn’t work out we didn’t have to be attached to the employee for an extended period of time.
If you want statistics: You can look at compensation as a proxy. US tech companies have to offer significantly higher pay, even adjusting for cost of living, to hire anyone because the situation is stacked in favor of employees. European tech salaries are much lower because they can get away with lower pay.
> I've always assumed that 'at will employment' would make employees significantly more fearful of losing their jobs in the US.
That’s what the internet will focus on, but it goes both ways. Making it less risky to hire and fire employees makes companies more likely to hire more people quickly.
Because this is more often the case. It’s so easy for companies to fire employees that it becomes the employer’s goto strategy for dealing with any kind of turmoil (caused by the employee or otherwise).
I do agree that it’s somewhat easier get hired in the States compared to other markets with more employee protections.
Here in Japan, it’s common for small companies (startups etc) to hire new employees on contract with the “promise” of being seishain (company employee) at the end of the contract. This lowers the risk for the employer, is often terrible for the new joiner, and is a huge red flag.
It’s often used by startups who just can’t afford, or can’t find someone to do the role they’re hiring for. I.e. they list the role as a SE but really want a PM; new joiner enters the company and is let go after a month because they don’t know how to be a PM. It also disproportionally affects foreign workers, as they don’t know all their rights as workers and could be limited in the scope of companies they can work for (due to language or visa restrictions).
Yes, it might be “harder” to find a job since respectful companies are more cautious, but I’d take that over the “come into work on Monday to find the pink slip on my desk”.
The cost structure is also different (when you compare spendings such as retirement, medical, ...)
Would that still be true in the particular case of RTO mandates? I don't think so since "showing up to work" fits nicely into existing employment law on both sides of the pond and is easily documented by employers. The point being that in this particular case of RTO mandates, at-will employment affords you the advantage of being more easily hired elsewhere, whereas you don't lose any practical protection.
Also we all hate each other. The US is a country of individualists, we'd much rather be on our than in a group unless it's for purely social reasons.
I worked for a multinational company that frequently flew people in to the US offices from abroad.
Many people had difficulty adjusting to how friendly and social the United States was, on average. The US norms are much more social and friendly to than many countries.
I’ve even worked with countries where smiling and laughing in a work situation is a faux pas. The US is an extremely friendly and social place by global standards.
We've actually moved to a smaller office since then and are sticking with hybrid.
Also, most EU residences are comparatively tiny, usually flats. It’s just not that fun to stay home all the time in 60 sq meters with a tiny balcony and no central hvac.
Then I think there is a big work culture angle. Europeans are low on bullshit and hustle culture. American workplaces are like worksona performance art, probably not too far off from the performative productivity of Japanese workplaces.
In the EU in 2021, 53 % of the population lived in a house, while 46 % lived in a flat (1 % lived in other accommodation, such as houseboats, vans etc.).
As of 2023, about 65% of Americans live in detached houses, while 35% live in apartments. Around 40% of individuals living in poverty in the U.S. reside in apartments.
But I think, at least in the US, we have a much more combative relationship with our employers. Employers try to squeeze every last drop they can out of their workers with as little compensation as possible. Employers would rather spend $2*X on government lobbying to avoid having to pay their employees $X, just on principal; we select for & encourage sociopaths to run our companies. In return, employees rightly feel they should behave the same to their employers. "Employer wants me to spend 40 minutes in traffic? Nah, screw 'em, I'd rather sit home alone in my basement." Dunno. Seems bad to me, too, but I have a hard time blaming them.
And unlike other countries, a lot of (in person) social community was already weak, and is getting targeted with this propoganda on top of that.
So a lot of folks in the US pretty much are staying home because otherwise it’s just too much to handle. And that puts them in the ‘terminally online’ risk category, which also makes it worse.
Add on top of that shitty commutes, expensive daycare, comfortable homes (with AC and all the amenities), and it’s not hard to see why.
Read any good articles about this phenomenon?
For example - if you’re in Ukraine, it’s hard to complain about the propaganda being abusive without looking like you’re supporting Russia, and complaining about Russian propaganda isn’t going to do anything except encourage them.
It’s straightforward to make the connection if you’re familiar with a couple things though -
Complex PTSD (symptoms)
[https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24881-cptsd-c...]
Also, signs of emotional abuse which are easy to identify as rapidly increasing and more visible society wide trends [https://www.bhscp.org.uk/preventing-abuse-and-neglect/spotti...].
And then add in [https://psychcentral.com/blog/recovering-narcissist/2017/08/...], which has been done across the board by all the political parties for a long time now (they are not the same, but they are both using similar tactics albeit in different ways), plus is commonly being done by many large corporations and advertisers.
None of those links are unique or anything, there are dozens of good sources, including NIH papers saying the same thing. They were just the first ones I found that weren’t blogspam.
Because the US has been in an ever escalating culture war for well over a decade now, and it’s solidly in ‘each side thinks it’s an existential threat’ mode and is policing it’s members like crazy. Partly because it is an existential crisis for Trump now, and he’s making it an existential crisis for everyone else in response.
For example:
- all the liberal women that were told over and over again (and gaslit like crazy) when raising concerns about birth control after the left screwed up and didn’t address the legal issues or maintain control of the Supreme Court when they could have. And liberal men who raise concerns about losing their jobs due to ‘positive discrimination’ are in the same boat. And everyone who is being hurt by inflation/having economic issues right now.
- or all the conservatives that are under a constant fire hose of ‘the libs are coming to take your guns!’ panic while the right does nothing whatsoever to actually protect gun rights, and often passes even more gun control laws than the left. Same with conservative women trying to get sane abortion rules (like rape exemptions, emergency medical exemptions, endometriosis type medical exemptions, etc.). Or anyone that doesn’t want fear fear fear pumped down their throats constantly, or be pushed into a fraudster dictatorship.
Among dozens of other issues.
And the politicians are doing this because as long as they don’t actually solve the underlying problem, but look better than the alternative choice, they are guaranteed to have a lock on their constituents and can do what they want.
And when the constituents start to waver, they just need to push more emotional buttons to keep them in line.
But eventually after pushing those buttons too hard for too long, people start to break in real ways. Which is why it is actually emotional abuse, and causes things like CPTSD. Repeated violence can cause it, but also being repeatedly betrayed and lied to (with negative consequences for the victim) by those in positions of trust/authority, with no apparent way to escape or improve the situation.
For a ‘ripped from the headlines’ example - just look at the recent Presidential debate, and the various back and forth things each side is doing to police it’s members while not addressing any of the actual real problems - for either candidate.
As someone living in the Netherlands and being used to dozens of political parties with various ideologies and convictions, the two-party system of the US has always surprised me as being extremely limiting (e.g. if you don't naturally identify with Democratic ideologies you vote Republican or vice versa).
Edit: None of this is to imply that Western Europe or the Netherlands doesn't have major political issues, for example I'm quite disillusioned about the uptick in popularity of populist political parties (throughout Western Europe but also specifically in the Netherlands).
And having two parties means it’s easy to play us vs them on topics.
Almost anything can be ‘maximally polarized’ into exactly two poles with enough work though - including immigration, male/female issues, business policies, import/export policies, foreign policies (isolationist vs interventionist), etc.
Populism in general is being driven by the same factors everywhere IMO, and many of them are macroeconomic.