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want their remote workers back at the office, every one of those companies are being almost propaganda machines which do not cite sound scientific studies but cite each other and interviews with higher ups in top companies that “remote workers are less productive”.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.

nightscout ,
@nightscout@lemmy.world avatar

Yes, I have observed this and it is very frustrating. In many cases, these “articles” are opinion pieces being circulated by those with a financial interest in commercial real estate (or someone carrying the water of someone who has such an interest). Those who have any sort of financial interest in commercial real estate are going to be against remote work for obvious reasons.

Cities and real estate moguls arguing that people have to engage in an absolutely fruitless, draining, exhausting, expensive commute to keep a handful of people rich. They want to punish you to keep some elite people rich.

What needs to happen is workers need to fight back as much as possible. If your job can be done remotely, make it a priority to work for a company that allows you to do your job remotely. There’s NOTHING about my job that requires me to go into an office. I have worked successfully at home for many years and if my organization required me to come in, I would do everything I could to leave and find something else that allowed me to telework. If you’re looking for a job and have the luxury of being a little bit choosy, let recruiters know you will ONLY consider remote options.

Anecdotally, I think these opinion pieces are way overblown. My spouse was recently contacted by a recruiter about a job. The job was not remote and my spouse told the recruiter they would only consider remote-only options. The recruiter sighed and said, “That is what I keep getting told.”

Boozilla ,

It’s about money and control. Money invested in and harvested from owning commercial properties. Control from making employees do things they don’t want to, just to beat them down and “keep them in line”. A lot of bosses exercise power for its own sake, unfortunately.

I have empathy for folks who want to collaborate, and/or be mentored, and/or socialize at work. I no longer want or need those things from my job, but…I came up that way so it would be hypocritical of me to say that others shouldn’t want them.

On the other hand, cars are destroying everything and commuting in 2023 (if you don’t truly need to) is just dumb. Progress always comes with some amount of pain and adjustment.

dangblingus ,

Businesses wanted to seem like they cared about people’s health and safety at the beginning of the pandemic, now commercial property values are tanking and that means the ruling class loses a vector from which they can siphon wealth away from the working class.

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.

Stinkywinks ,

Middle management wants to have a reason to exist. They want people driving to work spending money on the way there and back. Landlords care about their giant office buildings not being rented that should instead just be replaced with affordable housing.

BeardedGingerWonder ,

No doubt you’re right about some middle management and I see this said a lot. Anecdotally I don’t believe I’ve met any middle management that want to be back in the office. If I’m honest I don’t think I’ve ever met middle management that enjoys middle management, it’s a ton of fucking stress keeping senior management happy with heir batshit detached requests and interpreting it into something moderately sensible so individual contributors can be productive and actually achieve the shit that needs done.

Meanwhile Steve can’t seem to wrap his head round the fact that just because he likes formatting his code a particular way isn’t a good reason to ignore the team coding standards, Cheryl and Sushant have decided to book expensive holidays for the same week without clearing the leave first - so I’ll be spending Christmas supporting the app on top of everything else even though I booked it off in the system in January and ultimately I hate this fucking job because I can’t do the thing I’m actually fucking good at.

hibsen ,

Preach. I hate almost every day as a manager of managers, and I don’t give a rat’s ass if any of them or their employees ever come into the office ever again. If their content is completed on-time and it’s quality work, they could make it while living in Nepal for all I care, but of course we’re being forced to come back to the office 50% of the time to do the same work we did at home for three years.

I’m doing what I can to encourage people to apply for exemptions and approving all of them that I can before someone decides I’m “not supporting the return-to-work initiative” enough and fires me. Frankly at this point it’ll be a relief.

aaron_griffin ,
@aaron_griffin@lemmy.world avatar

The negativity comes almost entirely from two sorts of people

  1. Rich property owners who are seeing their valuable office buildings plummet in value.
  2. People who socialize primarily with work-mates and don’t have other groups

To 1, fuck 'em. To 2, eh, maybe find a hobby now that you don’t have to commute 2 hours a day

Misconduct ,

One of my sups from my old job was recently complaining that people weren’t required to come in more than two days a week and pushing to increase it because the office is lonely without them. She and people like her are the absolute worst. Main character syndrome doesn’t even begin to describe them and I wish nothing but the worst for them in life tbh

Sheltac ,

That’s not main character syndrome, that’s just sad.

Buddahriffic ,

Some extroverts think it’s everyone else’s duty to energize them.

Bartsbigbugbag ,

That’s not an extrovert, that’s an energy vampire.

kurzon ,
@kurzon@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Can’t agree more.

doom_and_gloom ,

[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

    •
    aaron_griffin ,
    @aaron_griffin@lemmy.world avatar

    For sure it is, but I at least feel with have to emphasize with them a little to solve this situation

    Ataraxia ,
    @Ataraxia@lemmy.world avatar

    I say fuck em to 2. I hated those people in the office. They wouldn’t leave me alone. It was irritating.

    Aux ,

    A lot of people love WFH, a lot of people hate WFH. This forced experience has caused yet another split in society.

    HerrLewakaas ,

    Why? Just let people work wherever the fuck they want to, no reason to divide society. If anything, division is just a tool for companies to manipulate us into doing what they want us to

    Gingernate ,

    I think it was forced because of covid. Now that covid isint an issue, I completely agree

    Aux ,

    Because people are different.

    meldroc ,

    I think a lot of it is crappy control-freak managers, used to “managing by walking around”, who feel lost when all the peons are out and working remote.

    The companies that let workers act on their own recognizance are most likely far more pleasant to work for, while the companies that have a million little rules and do things like forced RTO tend to be the ones with asshole bosses that are miserable workplaces.

    steakmeout ,

    Nobody hates WFH.

    meekah ,
    @meekah@lemmy.world avatar

    Only a sith deals in absolutes

    Mikina ,

    I really don’t like WFH, it’s not working for me personally, and I’m really glad that we have an office I can go to.

    paddirn ,

    I’ve got small kids, so while I generally like WFH, there have been times where I absolutely just wanted to GTFO and go into the office. Our company did full WFH for awhile, then gradually phased us back in to the office, but for me the best schedule we had was where we were one week in-office, one week WFH, that was the absolute best and gave me the best of both worlds. Without kids though, I would probably prefer WFH a good portion of the time, just so I could have some freedom during lulls in the workload to catch up on home stuff.

    meldroc ,

    I’m sort of like that - I LOOOOVE WFH, and do it all the time, but at the same time, I work for a brewery that is probably one of the few genuinely good and decent workplaces, and going to the office at the brewery is genuinely fun. Helps when you have cool coworkers, and can drink beer while you work (though that’s rough on productivity…)

    itsJoelle ,

    Nobody hates optional WFH with no strings for doing so.

    Personally, I love WFH. I love being home and by myself. Additionally, I may end up not leaving my house until the weekend and I love it since I despise driving. But I understand that would drive people insane. However, for me, I needed to recharge my introvert batteries over the weekend instead of seeing friends. Now I’m a social butterfly in my off time ☺️

    Zink ,

    Is it possible for me to love WFH but also avoid it most of the time because my productivity is shit at home?

    Having a nearby office with the option to work from home is the best of both worlds for me. I guess for those of you who do better working from home, you could take or leave the nearby office part!

    hydrospanner ,

    Key difference is that you realize that different people work differently.

    My workplace is full of talking heads in upper management who constantly repeat what boils down to, “I’m more productive in the office than at home, therefore everyone must be more productive at the office than at home, therefore we need to bring everyone back.”

    Which is obviously horse shit.

    I live alone, and working from home not only means no commute, no parking costs, comfy clothes, and all the conveniences of home…it also means having all my notes and documents at hand, not having to function from a random empty cubicle, no distraction from constant non-work-related chatter, no interruptions from coworkers walking by and deciding to talk, and when we’re in crunch time, it also means I’ll consider working OT to help speed things along! Working in the office means “don’t even bother asking me to work OT”.

    I work harder, get distracted less, and somehow have better technology uptime from home, so it benefits my employer and I prefer it. All my meetings still have to be online because there’s rarely ever a time where all parties are in the office at the same time.

    The only reason for me to come into the office is because someone 3+ grades above me said so.

    Zink ,

    Yeah, looking for a one size fits all solution to something with so many effects on people’s daily activities is asking for trouble.

    It’s great that now the wfh option exists much more substantially than a few years ago, but it sucks that so many seem to want to stuff that cat back in the bag. It seems counterintuitive if your goals are maximizing profits and talent retention. It makes me wonder how much of it is driven by the order class trying to protect real estate investments.

    ycnz ,

    Mediocre executives loathe it with every fibre of their being.

    kogasa ,
    @kogasa@programming.dev avatar

    I don’t hate it as a concept, but I recognize that it contributed to my burnout during the pandemic. I would personally prefer a hybrid schedule over pure WFH.

    Aux ,

    A lot of people hate working from home. People with kids, who want to spend some time of the day in peace. People living in house shares with bad neighbours. People living with abusive partners or parents. People with mental issues who feel more comfortable with people around them. Don’t be an ignorant dick.

    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…

    SocialMediaRefugee ,

    It isn’t propaganda to look at the real-world ramifications of this.

    1. The hard drop in commercial real estate is going to end in a lot of big loans going unpaid. Might end in some bank failures.
    2. The drop in assessed value is going to hit cities hard in the pocket as they depend a lot on these property taxes from commercial properties to pay theirs bills (social programs, subsidized public transportation, police, fire, public housing, roads, etc).
    3. It will increase sprawl as more people can now live anywhere and push into wilderness areas and we lose more open space.
    4. A lot of small businesses depend on those dense commercial areas. You’ll see more contractors, restaurants, etc having to close and downtowns getting deserted like happened in the 70s as people fled to suburbs.

    You see a lot of people saying “just turn them into residences!”. It is very difficult and expensive to turn buildings designed as open office spaces into residences.

    ItsMeForRealNow OP ,

    But corporations have achieved very difficult things in a very short span that cost very many billions like - pivoted to AI which was very difficult until ChatGPT became popular.

    monobot ,

    Well… mabye they shulould have been nice to workers and have normal apartment prices.

    I wouldn’t call those examples real world, they created their own problem. Real world is worker trying to live semi normal life.

    MechanicalJester ,

    Re: Sprawl. The world is actually rather empty. A lot of changes are going to happen in domino fashion.

    MajorHavoc ,

    Indeed. And work location is still only one of many reasons to prefer city life. Cinemas, grocery stores, bars, stadiums and playgrounds aren’t going to instantly spread into our most rural areas.

    MajorHavoc ,

    Good points. Regarding point 2, I think we’re going to see cities shift to trying to attract people rather than corporations.

    Attracting an employer is now a less reliable way to attract their staff to a community.

    I suspect we will soon find that policies that attract great grocery stores into a walkable neighborhoods are more effective for cities than implementing lax corporate tax policies.

    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.

    SmoothIsFast ,

    It’s called all the corporate leases on buildings in major cities. Wall Street bought up all the bonds surrounding those debts and with nobody needing to continue work in cities, those corporate real estate prices are about to crash really badly if they can’t bring people back to cities. That means their balance sheets go out of wack and certain positions become untenable to maintain, not to mention they stand to loose a shit load of money. Hence everything saying its bad now, they need people to move back or their investments fall. It’s not about productivity, emotional benefits, collaboration, but about wealth for the elites.

    SocialMediaRefugee ,

    Most people depend on 401ks and IRAs for their retirements now so wall street affects almost all of us. Pension funds are invested also and good chunks of them are in real estate. It isn’t just “elites”.

    SmoothIsFast ,

    Your s and p 500 is not filled with corporate real estate bonds, the hedge funds shorting and pumping the market are using these bonds for collateral to play the opposite side of your investment. Stop acting like this has a negative effect on the general populace. If anything it would be a boost to the regular folks as those short the s and p would lose collateral and have to buy back in on their short positions, increasing the return of 401ks and the like. It harms the most enriched funds that short almost everything in our market after supplying unlimited VC funding to inflate the companies value before IPO. This particular problem is squarely an elite problem not a general one ffs.

    postmateDumbass ,

    Your 401k makes $1. The elite gain $1000000.

    lackthought ,
    @lackthought@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

    poor management all around, grasping at short term solutions because they can’t see past the next quarterly financial reports

    our company actually closed several offices due to low in-person turnout after the pandemic started to ease up, and they said they would just sub-lease out the buildings to recuperate money

    those of us in the office cities are now fully remote

    MajorHavoc ,

    Well said. “Grasping at short term solutions beacuse they can’t see past the next quarterly financial reports” is at the root of a lot of problems today.

    It irritates me that more investors and stock owners aren’t speaking up about it. We should all want our corporations to make better choices.

    Marcy_Stella ,

    It’s simple, during the pandemic they couldn’t have workers come in but they couldn’t have just no work force so they pushed for work from home and made it seem like a big positive to keep money flowing into their pockets. Now that they can have people come into the office they need to justify their leases and justify their middle management oversight so they need people coming back to the offices. It’s not about whats convent or comfortable for the workers, it’s what can make them the most money and justify expenses as to not spook investors. If the company could cancel even half of their leases they would and have most everyone work from home and maybe even cut back on middle management. However they got 20-30 year leases to save money(in month to month payments) and it’d be really expensive to exit the deal sooooo justifying the lease is more important.

    chicken ,

    it’s what can make them the most money and justify expenses as to not spook investors

    Seems contradictory to me. I think they don’t actually give a shit about making the company money, they’re just straight scamming investors in favor of their own personal interests where they can get away with it.

    RedstoneValley ,

    I’d say it’s not all black or white. In my industry (software) most of my friends and colleagues have strong opinions about staying remote. It’s mostly along the lines of “either let me continue to work from home or find someone else”. Also most of the headhunter messages I get on LinkedIn offer up to 100% remote jobs. Of course this is all anecdotal and depends heavily on the field of work. But maybe it’s worth considering that you have the power to shape your own future. If you do not want to work in an office, you’ll find something else. Don’t let those corporations fool you.

    assassin_aragorn ,

    I think remote work is here to stay exactly because of what you’ve said. Companies always want highly skilled workers and experts. Those people have a lot of leverage when it comes to offers and hiring. Offering and maintaining remote work is a big plus when weighing offers, especially when you consider who these knowledge workers are.

    They’re at least 5 years out of college and many have started families. And they’ve realized that they want to spend more time with their family and kids and not waste it commuting to work. Most are probably 10+ years of experience in their relevant industry and with 12-15 year olds. I feel like that demographic had a massive awakening with COVID about where their priorities lie.

    I think it’s unlikely for remote work to stay at just the experienced knowledge professional level. Hell with 3 years of semi relevant experience I was able to leverage +$5000 on my salary for a remote job. Companies need more and more skilled office workers. This opposition to remote work won’t last, I think.

    McScience ,

    See I’m in software dev and I am constantly getting recruiter calls asking me for in-office work. I’m the guy saying “you literally cannot pay me enough to go back in an office”… but I’d gladly take 2/3 or maybe even 1/2 my current pay for a 4-day, 32 hour work week.

    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.

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