this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
414 points (96.4% liked)

Asklemmy

44151 readers
1164 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I have posted this on Reddit (askeconomics) a while back but got no good replies. Copying it here because I don't want to send traffic to Reddit.

What do you think?

I see a big push to take employees back to the office. I personally don't mind either working remote or in the office, but I think big companies tend to think rationally in terms of cost/benefit and I haven't seen a convincing explanation yet of why they are so keen to have everyone back.

If remote work was just as productive as in-person, a remote-only company could use it to be more efficient than their work-in-office competitors, so I assume there's no conclusive evidence that this is the case. But I haven't seen conclusive evidence of the contrary either, and I think employers would have good reason to trumpet any findings at least internally to their employees ("we've seen KPI so-and-so drop with everyone working from home" or "project X was severely delayed by lack of in-person coordination" wouldn't make everyone happy to return in presence, but at least it would make a good argument for a manager to explain to their team)

Instead, all I keep hearing is inspirational wish-wash like "we value the power of working together". Which is fine, but why are we valuing it more than the cost of office space?

On the side of employees, I often see arguments like "these companies made a big investment in offices and now they don't want to look stupid by leaving them empty". But all these large companies have spent billions to acquire smaller companies/products and dropped them without a second thought. I can't believe the same companies would now be so sentimentally attached to office buildings if it made any economic sense to close them.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] Snapz 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Found out today that some executives are afraid of leaks and digital records of certain conversations that could happen in person instead.

[โ€“] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

That's probably it, having every interaction possibly logged/recorded by the employees is pretty bad for a lot of bosses/managers.

[โ€“] andallthat 3 points 1 year ago

That could be a consideration, yes. Funny enough, our whole Legal team has been consistently the one with the LEAST attendance in person in the office.... Overall it seems like forcing your call center employees in office because you're afraid they'll leak strategic company secrets is a bit of an over-reaction. I doubt that the most high-level, secret discussions on mergers and acquisitions or mass layoffs have ever happened in our office to begin with.

[โ€“] koraro 2 points 1 year ago

That makes a lot of sense. But I wish "So we can cover up our bullshit easier." wasn't a reason for it.