Almost all remote-work news is negative now but was positive in the beginning of the pandemic. Have you noticed this or am I going crazy?

Earlier in the pandemic many news and magazine organizations would proudly write about how working from home always actually can lead to over working and being too “productive”. I am yet to collect some evidence on it but I think we remember a good amount about this.

Now after a bunch of companies want their remote workers back at the office, every one of those companies are being almost propaganda machines which do not cite sound scientific studies but cite each other and interviews with higher ups in top companies that “remote workers are less productive”. This is further cementing the general public’s opinion on this matter.

And research that shows the opposite is buried deep within any search results.

Have you noticed this? Please share what you have observed. I’m going paranoid about this.

Roody15 , (edited )

Mega corporations have been running dictating government policy and controlling news narratives for quite some time.

Erasmus ,
@Erasmus@lemmy.world avatar

Yes and here is some irony I found.

My company requires us to take various learning course throughout the year. Some assigned - some pick your own. A lot of it is the usual B.S. that everyone has to do.

I was browsing thru the managerial list and picked one of the ones that sounded interesting the other day about ‘How to be a better Manager’ and smack in the middle of the first chapter was this big video with this woman giving this speech about being accepting of people who wanted/needed to work from home or telecommute.

My ears instantly perked up.

The video went on to throw up all this data showing how more and more people were doing this and it had this graph from 2012 on and how this was the natural progression in the workplace and how we as managers needed to be accepting of peoples position and feelings toward this and learn to be accommodating as we would see more of it.

I was like WTF??!

When the course ended I scrolled through it looking for a date and I believe it was 2017.

Amazing how the tune has changed but the data hasn’t.

Hazdaz ,

Probably has a bit to do with how few people were working remote before versus now.

WFH was absolutely not a common thing for average workers per-COVID. Some did it, sure, but that was not even up for consideration for a huge percent of workers. So since businesses had really no choice, a lot of them just went along for the ride and tried it out. The media went along with it and played it up as the Next Big Thing.

But clearly many people abused the policy and aren’t being as productive as they once were, so now the media is reflecting that reality and running negative stories…

xantoxis ,

Reminder that Google itself is one of the companies that wants to end remote work so their real estate doesn’t dive in value.

So don’t be surprised about how search results reflect this bias as well.

When you’ve fully digested that, think about the systems that keep capitalism itself in place.

Twink ,

People really seem to be oblivious to how the ruling class chooses to control the narrative for own benefit. It’s always been known the victors write the history, but I’m very uncertain as to why people don’t understand economical victors also write down the current narrative.

AdamEatsAss ,

I think it’s partially rage bait at this point. At the start of the pandemic remote work was a new idea and it was easy to get views on an article about it. Now you need a shocking title that’ll enrage people to get engagement on the topic.

TurdFerguson ,

New idea? I remember it being a new idea in the early 2000s

AdamEatsAss ,

Since companies adopted computers and the Internet it’s been possible. I remember my dad working from home every now and then. But the idea that almost any desk job could be done remotely full time is new.

TurdFerguson ,

The pandemic definitely pushed companies into finally adopting it, but believe me, it was not a new concept. I remember reading an article 20 yrs ago about Best Buy adopting it, for example, and how it increased productivity and morale, etc. Since then, it’s been catching on, I’ve had plenty of friends that have worked from home since long before the pandemic, it’s just that a lot of companies were still afraid of giving their employees that much autonomy.

gmtom ,
@gmtom@lemmy.world avatar

If you could look into the investment portfolios of big companies and the rich people that run them you would see that the biggest sector is commercial real estate. In the UK pre pandemic, 40% of investments went into commercial real estate. So thats the main reason they are pushing it.

rambaroo ,

It wasn’t a new idea and it wasn’t rage bait. My company internally praised us for increased productivity during the pandemic, and now they’re trying to gaslight us into RTO.

This isn’t about productivity. These companies are lying. This is 100% about real estate investments, tax breaks, and flexing power over their employees’ lives.

SigmarStern ,
@SigmarStern@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I have noticed that working remotely really opened up the job market for me. Instead of being limited to where public transportation can bring me within 45 minutes, I can work for any company within Europe from the comfort of my home office. It makes switching jobs so much easier and I am willing to tolerate much less shit before I quit. That degree of freedom might scare companies. They can’t trap me anymore with the costs of uprooting my life for a better job.

Professorozone ,

I’ve never worked from home, but it seems to me that even if everything else were kept equal, you just saved an hour and a half commute plus the cost of doing so, every day! When you add in the lower cost of food and healthier diet eating at home and a whole host of other advantages. It’s a huge win! Congrats.

uranibaba ,

I worked from home for ~6 months full time, my experience was that I will never do it full time again. For me, it was waking up, watch the same four walls for 8 hours, eat dinner, sleep, repeat. Perhaps my office could have been better but because I was working with support and had to be available on the phone, I could not really leave my computer for an extended period of time (except for lunch break).

A lot of people make it out to be heaven, working from home. I really missed having people to talk to. I believe that it would have been a much better experience if I could have worked from home 0-5 days per week as I saw fit. Bad morning? Work from home. Waking up fresh? Go to work. I’m assuming that you can walk or bike to work. Few things are worse than being stuck in traffic or being on a crowed bus/train, or missing the bus with 1 min, having to wait 15 min for the next one, when with the bike I can leave whenever I want.

demlet ,

I think it’s very situational. I’m already a big shut-in. Working full time at home might not be great for my mental health. It’s sad to admit I use work for social contact, but it’s true. If you have good social connections outside of work, great.

All that said, this whole debate is very classist. There are loads of jobs, including mine incidentally, that require physically being there. I mostly haven’t paid attention to this debate because it doesn’t apply to me or the people I know, and probably never will.

EssentialCoffee ,

Conversely, I found out just how many spoons I was using to function interacting with folks on a daily basis and that the strains my extroverted colleagues were talking about without having people were things I’d just lived with and normalized for my entire life because our society forced you to be around people all of the time.

Give me my four walls, pls. I spend every waking hour on a computer anyway, either working or personal, so it’s going to be four walls one way or another.

Ddubz ,
@Ddubz@lemmy.world avatar

In my observation it has been industry and sector dependent.

Corporate tech and finance are calling for remote work to end. Most of the articles I see where going back to the office is touted are all “silicon valley” type companies and finance/investment firms writing opinion peices.

PR, marketing, and news media, comms fields - which I am in - are doing the opposite. I work in digital media with government clients and my office just had a building contractor come in and walled off 2/3 of our empty cube space that was full pre-pandemic but is now vacant because all those employees remained remote. The positions in that area of the office were mostly copy editors, graphic design, and technical writers. The building owner turned that area into a new office but hasn’t rented it to anyone new yet.

Many of my colleagues are active duty military and government civilians. They all telework as much as 3-4 days a week currently. All of their jobs are administrative in nature and almost all of the military people are officers.

It is important to note that the military has loosely instructed liberal telework at unit level discretion because of record low retention rates. I’ve been working in/for government for a long time and even before 2020, federal contractors and DoD civilians have usually had telework of some kind provided what they did was something that could be taken home.

When I worked in DC in the mid-00s it was common to see offices engage rotating flex schedules because of the insane traffic and hours long commutes in the DMV corridor.

But, I suppose it’s all anecdotal. Where you live and what you do for work are going to impact reality more than anything. Watching the MSM speculate and reading nonsense opinion articles in the Atlantic or Times aren’t going to give you any real information.

All I can say for sure is my office has fully remote and hybrid only. We are guaranteed two days WFH a week but all salaried employees have optional flex schedules and can work non-concurrent hours as long as deadlines are being met. But again, I work for a massive international fed contractor that does largely administrative and PR consulting. So all things that have a history of WFH schedules already.

rubberducky182 ,

not only industry and sector dependent, also dependent on the country. at least in my personal bubble (in Germany), remote work is still very common. I also heard from companies who openly advertise remote work and get much more job applications because of it.

wintermute_oregon ,

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    Anticorp ,

    It’s about money. Large corporations get city tax breaks to build their headquarters. The government gets a lot of money from the employees that report to those offices. The catch is that those tax breaks usually require minimum occupancy of the building. If everyone works from home then the government doesn’t get all their road tolls, gas tax, parking fees, sales tax on food, speeding tickets, parking tickets, etc. Since the government isn’t getting their kickback they stop giving the company tax breaks. So basically millions of people are being forced to do stuff they don’t want to do, just so really rich entities can be richer.

    lemmyseizethemeans ,

    It is mostly about the commercials mortgage backed securities market

    platysalty ,

    I'm split in the middle. I manage projects and also help with sales administration. I prefer in-person meetings for bigger discussions because human communications are built for face to face.

    Deep discussions are just much more effective when you can read the room.

    ItsMeForRealNow OP ,

    Yeah I think its about the control too. So fucked up.

    MisterRoboto ,

    There’s money in real estate. There’s even more in commercial real estate. There’s less money in commercial real estate that’s vacant because people work from home.

    Deiv ,

    It’s not only real estate…cities give incentives to companies that meet a quota of in-office employees since it drives the local economy

    Strayce ,

    A lot of these companies are locked in to 5,10 or 20 year leases. If they were sensible they’d just eat the loss and take the extra productivity and happier staff, but that’s not how the corporate hivemind works. They’re paying rent so they have to justify it by having bums on seats, or they’re bleeding money for what looks like no reason.

    Anticorp ,

    Most of them get tax breaks from the city, but only if they maintain a minimum occupancy. So they’ve lost their tax breaks and they want them back. As always, it comes down to money.

    Feathercrown ,

    I’ve actually still been seeing positive news

    ninbreaker ,

    Real estate tycoons have a huge microphone

    eramseth ,

    Yeah its the PR machine in action.

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