180 points

The fact that they have to resort to checking logs to determine who is coming into the office should be enough proof of how pointless working from the office is.

If you literally can’t tell without a literal in/out log, you can’t claim performance or communication as reasons for requiring it. You’re literally saying “we can only tell if we check the logs.”

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93 points

It’s not about performance, it’s about control.

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71 points

It’s not about control, it’s about billions of dollars having been invested in commercial real estate.

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60 points
*

People keep claiming this this, and yet it does little to explain hmthr large number of smaller companies that have no real estate holdings.

Also, it totally overlooks what the actual purpose of money is to the wealthy, namely control. It’s not money for money’s sake, nor is it control for money’s sake, but rather money for control’s sake.

Meanwhile, WFH is a big shift in worker autonomy. Many employers have treated employees working from home with extreme suspicion, going so far as to accuse us of theft just because they can’t directly watch us sit at a desk. They installed computer input trackers on remote hardware, they got belligerent over the idea that people maybe - just maybe - they were doing laundry or soemthing on company time, and they’re nettled over the idea that people were sitting on their couches.

This isn’t the behaviour of people concerned about their stock portfolios, or of landlords upset that their renters may not renew their lease in 5 years. These are not rational actors making rational decisions about long term consequences. These are people who have lost their fucking minds over having given up just the slightest, insignificant amount of control over their employees lives and, importantly, having handed it over to those employees.

They’ll happily take a productivity hit, a revenue decline, or even a massive loss in institutional knowledge if it means clawing back these miniscule gains in worker power.

And if we’re lucky, it’ll cost them significantly more control over workers in the long run.

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27 points

For some. For others, it’s the other.

For some, both.

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5 points

But, they would save billions of dollars by selling it back. This is textbook sunken cost fallacy.

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4 points

Sunk cost fallacy.

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12 points

Depends who “they” are. Middle managers can tell who comes in and who is performing, but most of them don’t care or want to work remotely too. Executives who can approve a program like this are the ones pushing return to office.

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100 points

Do what you want, but please stop posting jobs as remote unless you actually want to hire remote. I am applying for the posted remote job. I am open that I intend to work remote. Why the fuck am I getting an HR person on a phone screen telling me they really want people in the office??

Stop posting remote. You don’t want me and I don’t want you. We don’t need to talk!

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18 points

They know they won’t get good applicants if they don’t.

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15 points

When I was going through a job hunt last year, I encountered a few of these. I either reported them on the job listing sites, typically as misleading, or told my recruiter.

I doubt anything came of it, but its what we still need to do when they pull this shit.

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67 points

sources of data such as IP address information transmitted via Wi-Fi, ceiling-mounted heat sensors and weight-triggered sensors attached to chairs that can track workplace occupancy levels, executives and technology providers say.

Sorry americans, but your executives are getting paranoid.

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29 points

What a lovely place, I wonder if they’re hiring?

“VALMOND! Your butt to non-butt is only at 87%!! You’re also colder than your colleagues!”

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15 points

Getting your raise denied because the bald person next to you has a higher head temp average

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3 points

Yeah so infuriating, he also only swipes twice when going to the toilet. Lackey.

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9 points

Always have been.

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41 points

Don’t resist. Leave. Tell employers that are hostile to remote workers that you can find work elsewhere.

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14 points

Resist while you leave. Best of both worlds.

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2 points

Resistance is futile. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist)

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23 points

Absolutely ridiculous and serves nothing but to make the CEOs feel better.

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