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Comment by kitsune_ | Hacker News Reader

My theory, which is kind of informed by what I saw it play out in my company: The reason is a psychological one. Most leaders derive their power from in-person interactions. Remote and video calls severely impact that. Those leaders also love having an audience that needs to listen to them whenever they are in the room and the lack of that kind of feedback and adulation shellshocked a lot of them.

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It feels a lot worse to deliver a lame joke at the start of an all hands meeting to a bunch of muted zoom windows with their cameras off. How much of the return to office is leaders wanting that polite chuckle from that captured audience back?

I'm barely being facetious. "That polite chuckle" is really a stand in for all the soft power they wield in person that evaporates with WFH. They have lost a degree of control and power, it is basic human nature to look for a way to claw that back.

new rituals for video-calls and remote interactions are being evaluated by gamers and nerds for decades now, but the application to diversely motivated workers is difficult

I think we're looking for the unified theory of RTO. Soft power is definitely one of them. But every company and group of people have their own mix of reasons.

I bet Amazon's exercise is a hidden layoff process. Other companies probably want to get their money's worth from the office buildings. The management of others wants to see the army of smiling minions that report to them. Others want to see people in the office for control (make sure they're not enjoying too long breaks, or working from the beach, or working double jobs in parallel, etc.). And some believe that people will interact better, easier if they're in physical proximity. Or a mix of this even between managers from the same company.

And sometimes I think some cities push employers to get people back in office because they have no better idea how to keep those centers of activity vibrant, alive, and contributing financially. I remember reading some city authorities complaining that RTO means the death of the city center and the businesses tied to it.

I don't see why there would be one reason to rule them all.

I’d think the reason would be relatively unified among a specific class of similar people, i.e. management everywhere probably wants roughly the same thing when they call for RTO and journalists probably want a different same thing when they trash remote work.

The soft power aspect of jokes, who laughs at what, and when is fascinating. There is even some research on it:

From https://www.thehrobserver.com/indepth/laughing-at-the-bosss-...

>You mentioned that humour and power is intertwined – what is the social impact of this?

>If a boss is trying to be funny, they are automatically trying to get a response, so the use of humour is never neutral or irrelevant. People have a split second to decide whether or not to fake a laugh, or even how much to laugh – trying to figure out if the boss thinks a particular joke is a little funny or a lot funny. At the same time, they are trying to decide what the consequences of not laughing might be.

original paper https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/amj.2022.0195

Alas, it's a nuclear option.

People are going to stay or leave based on random criteria. Your company is going to be left with various deficits and it will take a long while to sort out the hiring mess.

This feels more like it's about power. Those with the power leave, likely to competitors.

The good people always have other options. The bad ones don't.

Immediate supervisors usually know who is good and should be empowered to decide who can WFH. And who they don't want to lose.

Diktats from god are a sign of a disfunctional org.

I am not sure why not more people are not considering that to be the reason. In my last job, it actually made sense to have an in-office audience and yet management was opposed to it due to costs. When we had a round meeting, it kinda transpired to me that upper-management didn't really like to interact with the tech team much. They had a liaison person and that was as much as they wanted to interact with tech people.

To follow on from your premise; I suspect it comes from a misunderstanding of authority. In my experience most leaders have a visceral understanding of authority, but not an actual understanding. Authority comes from submission; anything you submit to has authority over you. The corollary of course is that the submissive person has the power in the relationship; at any time they can say I don't want this any more. Obviously in a work context this means quitting.

So if a leader wants, requires, needs, is addicted to that feeling that people are submitting to them, then things will eventually go downhill as in the end the only people who will work for them will be "yes men".

    "That polite chuckle" is really a stand in for all 
    the soft power they wield in person that evaporates 
    with WFH. They have lost a degree of control and power, 
    it is basic human nature to look for a way to claw 
    that back.

That's an interesting angle and I really mean "interesting" in the literal sense.

My hunch is that the corporate executive's thirst for power generally works a little differently than that, in ways I find it difficult to express.

Why do people want those executive jobs? Quite honestly I don't feel the primary appeal for them lies in the minutia of those in-person interactions -- the polite chuckles and such.

I do not think they typically care about Cubicle Slave #58332 enough to be gratified when they (either individually, or in aggregate) give up that polite chuckle for an unfunny joke. For them, that would be like caring about whether or not an insect laughed at their jokes -- and caring about your token genuflections, about your small personal humiliations, is still caring.

So what is the appeal for them? Well, money and status, occasionally with some loyalty and/or core belief in the company added to the mix.

I think the chuckle serves as a reminder of that status. And if there is no chuckle, it is considered rude, not giving you what your status deserves.

I really wonder if there's a tribal / psychological effect of this kind and if not having to play the submissive / adoration dance made people more interested in practical information passing. Saying this because a few articles mentioned that some full remote teams were much much more effective at actual work, spreading data so that everybody could find solutions or continue work right away.

And that goes up to every levels of the hierarchy.

It's definitely about power and control.

I'd add that it is also a question of geography. The work place is the place where power exists. And so having you inside the company's walls means you are under control.

Yeah I think this is a huge part of the primitive gratification many people get from workplace “power”. You can often get a glimpse of it in-between the lines in more charged situations: some people essentially have a mental model where they are the sovereign of the office space, or speaks directly for the sovereign. It can get very interesting when that model meets reality (where they are in fact not the sovereign, but just another loyal subject under the law of the land).

Exactly this. When I was a junior investment banker we worked brutal hours, often 80-90 hours a week with most days ending at 1-2am. Yet the head of investment banking insisted we always make it to his Monday 8am meeting since he wanted a bigger crowd when he talked. Going from a Sunday all-nighter into this was quite painful.

Off topic question, but what do investment bankers even do for all those hours every week?

I talked once to an ex investment banker who quit to move into tech due to the hours. He had lots of stories about ridiculous hours.

He said most of the time was wasted. It was spent on things like preparing slide decks for executives who then didn't read them, but who insisted the work be done in massively compressed time windows and then delivered by taxi at 6am on a Sunday. He viewed it as very inefficient and mostly a matter of bad culture. The senior managers did it when they were young, so they weren't about to let the next generation get ahead without the same sacrifices.

Sounds like rush week in college

This column had some good insight: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-09-12/banker...

Obviously this is a multi-causal issue. RTO policies spring up for a variety of reasons, often a mix. All those negative narratives sure have some founding in reality, but maybe you can think of benevolent reasons why companies call for RTO?

Here is an example. Ms. Follett [1] made a good case a century ago that value is not created by people but between people. So you need interaction to add value -- something companies are imminently interested in, even if some employees are not. Some interactions, actually anything with more than 3-4 participants, break down over Teams and require face-to-face contact to be effective. Cutting everything down to 4 participants is to put the tool above the people and, to add insult to injury, will create a new pyramid of management levels, which we chucked for good reasons in the last century. So just get together in the office, which you have anyway to set up your football table. Does this mandate a 5-day RTO policy? No, but it shows that there is at least one good reason to get into the office once or twice a week.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Parker_Follett

All these "face-to-face meetings are better" arguments are predicated on the fact that all your teammates are on the same campus. That is just no longer true in a lot of companies these days.

Even with mandatory, 5-day-per-week RTO, you may have 2 team members in the US, 2 in Europe and one in Bangalore, all in their respective offices in their respective timezones. The meetings are still happening over Zoom.

> All these "face-to-face meetings are better" arguments are predicated on the fact that all your teammates are on the same campus.

True. People need to be at least in the general vicinity, yes.

> you may have 2 team members in the US, 2 in Europe and one in Bangalore, all in their respective offices in their respective timezones

Also true, but even before COVID and 24/7 home office we knew that this kind of team setup sucks and we complained -- loudly -- whenever we had to work this way. And while technology improved the main reasons why we complained haven't changed. In short, that's not an argument for or against RTO, it is one against bad work organization.

This is the conclusion I have come to as well. So much of what happens in society can be best explained (imo) by human psychology and our relationship with ego, desire, perceived success etc.

Totally agree. Add to that the fact that in many cases, businesses ran fine without the in-person interactions of these managers… which could mean that we actually don’t need them, the managers I mean. And they are very scared of that.

It's a fair theory and I agree it is one motivator.

But, I also know non-leader individual contributors who firmly believe that in person is better for collaboration, design, and problem solving. Yes, they prefer to be at home, but they believe they need to be in person to do their best work. So, I wouldn't be surprised if many managers believe this too. I disagree with this personally, but I recognize that different things work for different people.

I also believe there are some CEOs who don't own any real estate investments, but feel some responsibility to uphold certain economic values that they believe will help prevent a massive recession that may impact their business down the line.

In other words, I believe there are several factors that are influencing different people to believe in-person is right for their business.

In addition to what you mentioned, most of today's corporate leaders rose through the ranks in 2010's or even before. They have thrived in offices and hence have habits and cultural norms more suitable for in-office work. No wonder they think offices are a better setup.

In addition, a lot of people facing functions (Sales, Management etc) were done in person. There might be a world where those are possible on Zoom, but the workforce has to be trained for that. Why should a company train their 35+ management stack about online people management, when they can just force the RTO?

I agree with the basis of this, but it assumes that a significant portion of people derive their influence and motivation by in-person interaction. Once you take that at face value, there are going to be things you can get done with that tool, that you can't otherwise. It's not a requirement for 5 day RTW, but it also speaks to the challenge of remote only work.

There's a reason people do LAN parties even when you have to lug your rig around, and it's not just food and drink.

nostalgia?

> Most leaders derive their power from in-person interactions.

I think that this is the heart of the issue. Everything else is relatively meaningless.

Why not all three? Helping their feelings of power, Helping their bottom line with attrition, and Helping their real-estate buddies with big dumb investments in tall buildings.

There’s no reason it has to just be one thing

thou, leaders are more dependent on it, imho it impacts all human interaction and mostly for the worse.

we need to adjust our recipe/theory for coherent/functional constellations of humans unless heightened denial of humanity is in our collective interest

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