CNN Sees 'Escalating Battle' Over Returning to the Office at Tech Companies (cnn.com) 179
CNN explores tech-company efforts to curtail remote working. "Salesforce is trying to lure staff into offices by offering to donate $10 to a local charity for each day an employee comes in from June 12 to June 23, according to an internal Slack message reported on by Fortune."
CNN notes a recent walk-out at Amazon protesting (in part) new return-to-office policies, as well as Meta's upcoming three-days-a-week in-office mandate. But CNN adds that it's Google that "has long been a bellwether for workplace policies in the tech industry and beyond" — and that recently Google announced plans to factor in-person attendance into its performance reviews. "Overnight, workers' professionalism has been disregarded in favor of ambiguous attendance tracking practices tied to our performance evaluations," Chris Schmidt, a software engineer at Google and member of the grassroots Alphabet Workers Union, told CNN in a statement. "The practical application of this new policy will be needless confusion amongst workers and a disregard for our various life circumstances... "
Schmidt said that even if you go into the office, there's no guarantee you'll have people on your team to work with or even a desk to sit at. "Many teams are distributed, and for some of us there may not be anyone to collaborate with in our physical office locations," Schmidt said. "Currently, New York City workers do not even have enough desks and conference rooms for workers to use comfortably."
A Google spokesperson countered that its policy of working in the office three days a week is "going well, and we want to see Googlers connecting and collaborating in-person, so we're limiting remote work to exception only...."
CNN notes a recent walk-out at Amazon protesting (in part) new return-to-office policies, as well as Meta's upcoming three-days-a-week in-office mandate. But CNN adds that it's Google that "has long been a bellwether for workplace policies in the tech industry and beyond" — and that recently Google announced plans to factor in-person attendance into its performance reviews. "Overnight, workers' professionalism has been disregarded in favor of ambiguous attendance tracking practices tied to our performance evaluations," Chris Schmidt, a software engineer at Google and member of the grassroots Alphabet Workers Union, told CNN in a statement. "The practical application of this new policy will be needless confusion amongst workers and a disregard for our various life circumstances... "
Schmidt said that even if you go into the office, there's no guarantee you'll have people on your team to work with or even a desk to sit at. "Many teams are distributed, and for some of us there may not be anyone to collaborate with in our physical office locations," Schmidt said. "Currently, New York City workers do not even have enough desks and conference rooms for workers to use comfortably."
A Google spokesperson countered that its policy of working in the office three days a week is "going well, and we want to see Googlers connecting and collaborating in-person, so we're limiting remote work to exception only...."
Oh, this is good (Score:5, Insightful)
I literally have better crosses to die upon.
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Exactly.
There are so many benefits of working at home that once you compare WFH with WFO, the choice is blindingly clear: office work is completely unnecessary for many positions.
Re:Oh, this is good (Score:5, Interesting)
And we have empiric proof thereof now.
Until 2020, companies could at least claim that WFH doesn't work, is too expensive to implement, would lead to lower production quality and whatnot, and we couldn't even point to a counter example.
We can do that now.
There is ZERO reason to cart your corpse to another building for most office jobs. At least none that don't come down admitting that you're worried about your investment in real estate in and around the office building and that you have no fucking clue how to manage.
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Depends. Can everyone work from home? If not then you're substituting a commute in a car with running an additional AC unit all day, running extra lights, most probably ones no where near as efficiently as those in commercial buildings.
During the winter many people voluntarily returned to work in Europe just to reduce their own heating bills.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but I don't think it's as clear cut as you think and may be worth a detailed academic study to form that conclusion.
Economy of nations, individuals or corporations ? (Score:2)
Dude, You have to think about the differences between who profits and who pays.
If you are building a zero sum game, then yes, its more efficient for everyone to be at one place. But if you go down this route, you should sleep in the basement at work, and your kid should be schooled in the warehouse etc.
In this case, a lot of people who got used to the benefits of working from home (no commute, no issues with babysitters if the kids are sick, better lunches or whatever it is that people enjoy) are now angry
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I don't have a lease, but fuel (~$200/mo), insurance ($140/mo), and parking ($100/mo) alone cost me about $450/mo. And then there's the 3 times per year I have maintenance which usually clocks in at $150-200 depending on what needs to be done (synthetic oil is expensive). And if you have a lease, what's that worth now? I've seen low end cars run $200/mo.
An additional A/C unit and extra lights running are not going to cost you $650+/mo.
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Heating or cooling will depend on where you live, there are many places with temperate climates where it's fine to sit around with no heating or cooling operating, or opening a window is sufficient cooling etc.
Lights are only needed during the night, most people work during the day.
The heating/ac cost is probably less than the commuting costs in many cases, if you can commute cheaper than that then you probably live within a short walk of your office and you're not part of the problem in the first place.
If
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The push for the return in the office is a consequence of the political pressure from the cities and towns. Working from home reduces the need for eating out, reduces the need for shopping in the expensive town cente
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Re:Oh, this is good (Score:5, Interesting)
This. Workers need to play the environmental angle. How can companies pretend to be "green" when they want to force workers to needlessly commute?
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Let's thank COVID-19 4 WFH! :P
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There's much to be grateful over Covid.
I really hope for a new version soon.
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But who will pay for the tax breaks corps are getting when relocating to Texas/Arizona? Surely not the corps!
What about your SVPs real estate investments? Won't someone think of the passive income stream of their executives?
And let's not even talk about the poor, starving Saudi princes.
Re: Oh, this is good (Score:3)
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I have a better idea.
For every day you let me work from home, I'll drop 10 bucks into a charity of my choice. Deal?
No?
Gee, why not?
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They get: Employees in the office and a tax deduction. You get: Unsolicited mail asking for more donations and a bill for gasoline. Their scheme is a win-win for them and a lose-lose for you. Why would they want to do something that *benefits* employees? :-)
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No?
Gee, why not?
Because managers are the ones that get to make decisions. The rest of us aren't smart enough and we're expected to just do what we're told.
Re: Unless you got to take their power away (Score:3)
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I don't think you're going to have a choice.
Well. It depends. Given that I have done WFH for now something like 15 years (except customer meetings and some other meetings, and, obviously, in-person teaching), I think I very much have a choice.
True, people that are not very good at what they do may not have that choice. But given how much "an office" actually costs, I am pretty sure they will also go into the WFH direction. For example, I know one Fortune 500 company that does not even have enough office space for all workers anymore. They now expect
There's always going to be a handful of people (Score:2)
That said it is possible you'll be swept up in the rushed force people back into in office for the sake of profits. You're a Fortune 500 company that doesn't have enough office space is about to have all the office space the
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I am not going to be swept up in anything. And I do not work at that Fortune 500, I just know people there.
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Ugh please stop citing The Fifth Element as if it were a documentary.
It was a great movie in most respects, but it was just a story bro. FFS at least link the clip
Re: Unless you got to take their power away (Score:2)
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People keep screaming "inflation" but originally, it wasn't inflation, it was scarcity: Now, businesses are down-sizing because double-digit growth is not sustainable for multiple reasons. The spending spree after the pandemic is causing growth but mostly it's just counter-acting the down-sizing.
So it's possible the working class will demand a new deal.
This is why there's so much money in AI and robots: The pandemic gave the wealthy a reason to invest in it. The result will make employment a privilege, creating a new class of have-nots, similar to the gig-econ
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Re:Unless you got to take their power away (Score:4, Insightful)
The upper class has been engineering recessions since at least the 1990s when that movie was made. The chair of the Federal reserve is currently trying to engineer one right now.
Jesus fucking Christ you never stop with this same bullshit over and over again, and your nice big citation is a fictional action movie. No one is engineering a recession. The upper class does not benefit from it in any way shape or form, and reducing inflation and buying power != forcing a recession.
Your understanding of economics is extremely lacking. Your social skills are even worse considering how many times your stupid theory has been debunked here on Slashdot. And yet you persist.
So a certain amount of unemployment (Score:3)
Re:Unless you got to take their power away (Score:4, Insightful)
The upper class has been engineering recessions since at least the 1990s when that movie was made.
Ah, so you're giving us a conspiracy theory.
The chair of the Federal reserve is currently trying to engineer one right now. He has repeatedly said that his goal with raising interest rates is to cause an increase in unemployment which he claims will reduce inflation. Whether you believe him or not he's trying to cause a recession and he has an enormous amount of power to do it.
Funny how everyone in the upper class got the memo not to talk about it this recession causing conspiracy except for the chair of the Federal reserve.
Or, the fed could just have decided that reducing inflation is worth the cost of higher unemployment (and a potential recession).
MBAs in the late 90s figured out a cycle that would maximize profitability. You want to overwork your employees but if you keep that up they burn out. So what you do is every few years you cause a recession and do a round of mass layoffs.
Ok... I think it's true that companies take advantage of downturns to do layoffs and get rid of lower performing employees...
But the rest?
The survivors are just grateful they still have a job so they work unpaid overtime without complaining.
And this is supposed to stop the burn out how??
And why don't a few of these MBA's break ranks and start making ridiculous profits by shorting the market as the recession starts?
After a few years of this the burnout sets in and productivity drops and the risk of workers demanding better working conditions increases. So you hire back up to give a little bit of relief for a year or two and then do the next cycle.
Again, you already established the cause of burnout as overworking employees before layoffs, not understaffing after the layoffs.
Your conspiracy theory is getting confusing.
It's a system. You have people who have spent decades studying how to maximize the amount of work they can get out of you while minimizing the amount they have to pay for it. We should hardly be surprised that after all that time and effort they've come up with a system.
That's a very 19th century fighting over the pie way of thinking. Companies make money, especially in the tech sector, by increasing revenue per employee.
The massive increase in manufacturing coupled with the build back better plan is making it hard for them to cause that recession this time but they're going to keep at it and they'll eventually get their recession and their layoffs.
You know the people who really get hammered in a recession? Those rich folk.
I mean, they generally still come out of it rich, but they're the ones who hold all the stock, so the drop in stock prices hits them the most. Again, they still reach the end alright, and they certainly end up much better than the ordinary folks who get laid off, but a decent number still go bankrupt because they're overextended thinking the next recession is far off.
The MBA class does not want recessions.
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Chris Tucker. And don't go diss'ing The Fifth Element just because someone attempted to misappropriate some of its awesomeness. ;-)
Re:Unless you got to take their power away (Score:5, Insightful)
The typical adult today already lives hand to mouth. No one did that to them. They buy expensive phones they don't need, expensive cars they don't need, gamble, drink, use drugs, buy brand name clothes, and piss away money on all sorts of stupid shit that they not only don't need but doesn't make them happy or improve their lives.
I'm certainly not saying that most of us don't have some 'vice spending' that could stand to be cut...but I hear this same crap from my mom and this sort of gross oversimplification doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
My grandfather, with a high school education before he was drafted into WWII, was able to have a house built and raise three children on a single income, and that was fairly normal for the time.
Barring some highly exceptional, lottery-level case (that kid Ryan on Youtube or some Onlyfans starlet sort of thing), even with a master's degree, it's exceedingly rare to be able to do that today, especially south of 35. With the median income in the US being $54,000 a year, it's exceedingly rare to get a four bedroom house for $108,000, or even $162,000. Medical expenses are their own bottomless well, but my grandmother got cancer in the early 80's and got a month of cancer care that was entirely covered by medical insurance. The only insurance that's going to cover that in 2023 is basically unaffordable to someone with the median income bracket that afforded cancer care 40 years ago.
So, yes, we can agree that many people spend more money than they should on one vice or another, but even if someone lives without every vice or unnecessary expense you pointed to, the math simply doesn't work. You can't make-coffee-at-home your way to a house, you can't prepaid-flip-phone yourself into 20 years of retirement savings.
I'm not some uber woke leftist...but their solution of "just let the government pay for it all by taxing the 1%" is no less a non-answer than "you spend money you don't have on things you don't need and that's the sum total of why you're living hand-to-mouth".
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Your grandfather didn't buy a 4-bedroom house like today though. More likely it was something around 800-1,100 square feet with basic appliances, one bathroom, and no air conditioner. The change in standards is a big part of the affordability problem.
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My grandparents had a 4 bedroom house. Their house was bigger than mine is. I've got central air conditioning, they had a mix of window / in wall air conditioners. Sure, my appliances are nicer than what they had when I was a kid, but not that much nicer.
Near me most of the land was developed into housing after WWII. The less desirable land got filled in by the 80s. If you see anything more recent than that, it's almost certainly got some sort of issue.
The big issue is the areas with a good economy where pe
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Whoops, I need to correct myself here. My house ($450 000) was only 32 times more expensive than my grandfather's house ($14 000), or 2.85 times more, accounting for inflation. My salary at the time ($120 000) was 13 times more than his ($9000), or 18% more, accounting for inflation. He dropped out of high school, and his house cost 1.5 years salary. I have a bachelor's in CS and work as a programmer, and my house was 3x my salary. And my house is older and smaller. He supported his wife and 2 childre
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Bingo. I live nicely on less than 2K a month. This includes purchasing a band saw, drill press, planer and misc hand tools and materials for my current project.
All you need is the ability to ignore the "Oooh, lookee! Gotta have!" impulse.
Gonna Get Interesting (Score:3)
Will ChatGPT improve to the point that many of the Work From Home crowd can be replaced by AI?
It could be cheaper than Mumbai "talent".
Re:Gonna Get Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
And how would it be different if those same people had to do the same work in an office?
I'm genuinely curious; what difference would it make? If AI can replace someone working from home, it can replace someone working from an office.
Face it, many of us just aren't going back, period.
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There's a bunch of research that suggests typical companies end up with lots more employees than the optimum. It happens for a variety of reasons, but one of the big ones is that managers are typically measured by "how many people are under them."
It may be that these perverse incentives continue to operate as normal and you're correct. Or it might be that remote workers don't enjoy the same surplus and the superfluous ones get eliminated. I don't think it's really obvious either way.
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Yes, physical spaces tend to collect more bodies over time, I don't know why that is but it may be manager-itis at work.
When my company went full-remote, I don't recall hearing of any layoffs. It could be that they did some careful trimming here and there, but as far as I know, no one got canned just due to the move to remote.
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People at my company were fired if they couldn't work effectively remotely. Some were told they need to be in the office and we tried to work with them first, others just were not worth the effort.
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Yes, some people are inherently unable to perform without being watched or monitored. Those people can find an office job or fall by the wayside.
Frankly, if someone doesn't have the discipline to manage themselves without being watched or "nannied", that's their problem. It shouldn't be the company's problem. I'd probably fire them too.
Yes and no (Score:2)
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ChatGPT is already at the level where we could replace a lot of C-Levels and other useless management bodies with it.
Wonder why we don't.
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To be fair, a lot of C-Levels can be replaced with the ultimate in no-damage-doing, namely "nobody". ChatAI is only the 2nd best choice.
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Even with another model, there are still things that AI doesn't do well. I recently did a query asking an AI to write a few commands to create an encrypted filesystem under ZFS with a file as the key. It outputted nothing even close to the real command that did it.
Yes, it -might- be able to help, but what it does is change development from having a blank slate, to having stuff, but having to debug Bard's or ChatGPT's output, which could take as much time, if not more, than writing it from scratch. Simila
Re: Gonna Get Interesting (Score:2)
But we have increased productivity and pay which is why we do employ children so much. And we are at a point where people are acquiring real skills and are demanding money. So for semi skilled work we know want children, but it is dangerous for them
Right now employers are using threats, like they used the Pinkerton 100 years ago. At some point money will have to be negotiated for j
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I think you've got that backwards. The Work From Home crowd are the ones who can be productive without their boss hovering over them. It's the Must Work At the Office crowd that will be easier to replace with ChatGPT.
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Well, yes and no. WFH is white-collar work. ChatAI is going to replace a lot of low-difficulty, low-qualification white collar work. Hence many WFH people will be replaced. But it will go even faster for the work-from-office people because they are more expensive, requiring an office.
However as soon as qualifications need to be higher and some actual insight is required, ChatAI is unusable and will do more harm than good. And no, it cannot be "improved" to fix that.
I'm not going back (Score:5, Informative)
See title.
I'm not going back, never, ever. It's just not gonna happen, and if cities have indigestion because of it, I fail to see how that's my responsibility.
I like sleeping in an extra hour every day.
I like not having to commute.
I like the flexibility to relax during the day while still working.
I like not having to bring food to work or paying inflated prices at local eateries.
I like not having co-workers sharing their germs with me.
I like being able to be home as soon as my day is done.
I like not having to drive next to crazies in the snow and rain.
I like not grinding my way through traffic.
I like not risking my car to the driving skills to the bozo next to me.
I like not waiting at stoplights.
I could go on (really, I could) but you get the idea. And that idea is that I'm never going back to an office, ever.
Re:I'm not going back (Score:5, Funny)
Someone doesn't want their $10 gift card!
Re:I'm not going back (Score:5, Insightful)
Counteroffer: For every day I don't have to come to office, I donate 10 bucks to a charity of my choice.
Deal?
No?
Why not?
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Counteroffer: For every day I don't have to come to office, I donate 10 bucks to a charity of my choice.
Or, for every day I don't have to come to office, I'll actually do some work. Ya can't beat that deal!
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Someone doesn't want their $10 gift card!
Lol
Errr, I mean, "Woo hoo, that would almost pay for 0.02857142857 of my monthly downtown parking costs!" (at $350/month)
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How long before you have to create another account for your new name JustAnotherUnemployedGuy?
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How long before you have to create another account for your new name JustAnotherUnemployedGuy?
I don't know. I plan to work for as long as I feel like it, probably a few more years. I'm bashing and stashing my 401k. I'm about to up it to a 50% contribution rate because I can afford to. Might as well because the matching funds are free money (my favorite kind!).
Then again I may wake up next week and go, "Fuck this, I'm done."
But I like what I do, I don't have to work very hard, and I'm paid well. People appreciate what I produce, and some of it's actually fun.
So yeah, all in all, I don't know. Somewhe
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Given you sound about as sociable as a cornered rat I doubt any of your colleagues in the office miss your presence anyway. JustAnotherAspieWierdo would be a good new handle.
Lol, why so salty, honey? What nerve did I hit? :)
I bet your parents change the subject when people ask about you.
Anyway, thank you for your insightful contribution to this topic.
Cheers!
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Pot kettle black?
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...I hit a deer with my car and decided I didn't really need to replace it. We've been fine with just the one car for almost six years, now.
I hadn't thought about that, but that's a good point. WFH can translate into not needing as much "stuff" just to carry on with your life.
I could probably get rid of one of our cars (we have 2) and it would hardly affect us since I work from home. If both of us were commuting and we lost a car, suddenly it'd be a scramble to secure transportation.
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That is very unlikely with an aging population causing lower workforce participation. Unemployment for skilled work is probably never hitting those rates until we have something very close to human level AI.
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I'm in IT security. With a background in finance auditing and law. Can you guess what my leverage is when working for finance groups where the C-Levels are responsible with their personal wealth if something goes sideways and they can't show that they did everything they can to prevent it?
The fun bit is that I don't give a fuck about money. I don't care about that junk. Anything I can produce at will and at the amount I need is, essentially, worthless. So you can get me for cheap. I ask for about 50% of the
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"The problem is you don't actually have any leverage by yourself except for the handful of skills you've managed to obtain."
Yes, but none of us in this situation are working in a vacuum. If 90% of your workforce says "No", who has the leverage then? Are they going to fire everyone and bear the expense of hiring hundreds or thousands or even tens of thousands of newbies?
For example, my company has ~350,000 employees. Just the cost of the shipping labels and logistics alone to return our laptops would run int
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none of us in this situation are working in a vacuum. If 90% of your workforce says "No", who has the leverage then? Are they going to fire everyone and bear the expense of hiring hundreds or thousands or even tens of thousands of newbies?
That's really not the concern, is it? If you fire "everyone" then you've got enough newly unemployed people desperate to pay their bills that they are going to go looking for any solution to their problems. This is both a problem itself, and also an opportunity... for the worst people.
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That's really not the concern, is it? If you fire "everyone" then you've got enough newly unemployed people desperate to pay their bills that they are going to go looking for any solution to their problems. This is both a problem itself, and also an opportunity... for the worst people.
I hear what you're saying, but that level of layoffs would cripple most companies, possibly fatally. They could, in theory, fire everyone, but everything they're doing, all the projects and initiatives and programs and whatnot would basically stop dead in the water. Keeping them going would be a nearly insurmountable task.
I mean, they're up to their ears in it now just keeping things going, and that's with loads of experienced people at the helm. Demand management alone would stop or slow to the point where
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For qualified IT workers that is not going to happen anytime soon. IT still needs at the very least half a century to become reliable, established tech. And until that happens, you need qualified people.
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and.... just who the heck is it that I am supposed to be randomly interacting with that makes this desirable?
Good point...I'd bet they'd tell us something along the lines of, "but the group synergy cohesive team player idea pollination blah blah blah..."
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Mmmm, maybe.
Or maybe the building owners/renters could wake up to the fact they they can avoid $30K per month* renting 1/2 a floor in a downtown area that no one really wants to go to anyway. As in, "Oh boy, I get to drive downtown five days a week, woo hoo!"
And $360K a year is not a small sum of money, even for large corporations. I know company was only too happy to transfer that money to their bottom line. And that doesn't even figure in all the attendant problems and costs that come with a physical spac
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The economy's bottom has fallen out, and even L1 phone tech jobs where I work are being staffed with people who used to make 250k/year doing full stack development, with 300+ candidates for these jobs, almost all of them grossly overqualified.
First, that's not true. There are still more tech jobs than qualified applicants.
Second, even if it were true, it would be a very temporary situation. I mean, yes, if a bunch of people unwisely spend all of their earnings while earning $250k per year and then lose their jobs, they will have to temporarily take whatever jobs they can to avoid losing their shirts when the gravy train runs out. That goes without saying.
But that's not the end of the story. For every one person like that, there are ten peopl
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You may a lot of claims about what the job market is like currently regarding demand for jobs versus the supply of developers. You did not cite economic analysis that supports what you are saying.
Neither did the original poster. But there are over 200,000 unfilled tech jobs [computerworld.com] in the United States alone. That is somewhere close to four jobs for every person who is expected to graduate with a CS degree within the next year. Most laid off tech workers find jobs almost immediately [wsj.com].
There are so many unvalidated claims here. Where do you get the 10 people to 1 person statistic.
Well, here are numbers for how much people are saving [comparably.com]. So maybe it's more like 3:1 between people who save nothing and the ones who are saving enough to retire significantly early.
Either way, the point wasn't the number. Th
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Driving a Maybach or piloting a yacht are nice things too.
I don't own either of those things, and I don't want to. I live a pretty modest life and I'm happy with that I have. Maybe you lust for junk like that, but I don't.
and people going from the Amazon offices to working in the warehouse, you drive into the office just like all the rest of the other schmucks do.
Nope. I could literally retire tomorrow and be done, so no, I won't be driving into any office ever again. You might have to, but not me.
Seriously, when I said I'm never going back into an office, I meant it. I'm not sure why those words are so difficult for you to understand.
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I've already made a decent amount because of children like yourself, and I only see that trend accelerating.
Lol, you haven't been paying attention.
I'm like 15 minutes away from retirement, sonny. I was putting in hours while you were still carrying a Speak 'N Spell.
I'm fully vested, have cash in the bank, stocks, real estate, etc etc. I've saved and invested, and my homes and cars are paid off. I could go out tomorrow, buy a car or two, and it would barely amount to a rounding error in my net worth. That's the result of decades worth of work.
The point is that no one in the world has the leverage to force me back
What we heard: (Score:5, Insightful)
Google spokesperson: "...we want to see Googlers connecting and collaborating in-person..." and we don't care how much they hate it, how much sacrifice they must make for it, how pointless it is, or how dangerous it might be to them. This is our way of asserting power over our subordinates, and making sure they remember who is in charge, so they don't get too uppity.
This bullshit about how in-person collaboration is more productive than online collaboration is just a nice-sounding rationalization to cover up the ugly truth.
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Great. Let's get together with the C-suite every day for an hour or two at the office.
We want to connect and collaborate after all, right?
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Google needs to justify owning its overpriced office park in Mountain View. Downsizing it would be too big of a hit to the executive team's ego!
Re: What we heard: (Score:2)
I suspect it's actually driven more by the incredible leverage these companies get by having an economic army they can decide to march elsewhere, or ask to vote against "unfriendly" local politicians, or whatever. How are they going to get a billion dollar tax bribe every few years if they can't dangle forced relocation in front of a state? And how will they get local political candidates to fear them if large chunks of their workers don't vote in that district?
Ultimately, we're increasingly showing empiric
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It's like kindergarten all over again. "These are the kids who will be your friends, whether you like each other or not! Fun is mandatory!"
blame the legal department (Score:2)
Any publicly traded company that is currently allowing its employees to work from home and continuing to pay for a lot of expensive but empty office space is likely being warned by their lawyers that they are going to face stockholder lawsuits if they don't sell the office space for a profit -- which isn't going to happen in todays climate -- or get their employees back into those offices.
Love it! (Score:5, Interesting)
They are literally willing to spend the money as long as they don't actually have to give it to you.
And then some people wonder why the majority of us feel like upper management types suffer from a complete disconnect from reality.
Like it's perfectly okay to tank your stock by ten to twenty percent, as long as you get ESG points with your unpopular marketing.
To be perfectly honest, I am actively working towards being beyond caring. I have tried to bring some common sense to the table for decades and all it's gotten me is burnout. I cannot fix this world. It doesn't want me to. Hell, it's usually calling me names or laughing at me for the attempt.
I'll try to be a spectator. Do what you will. I'll try to wade through the sewage you create. It's just hard to every day realize a bit more how misguided I was in thinking Star Trek was a goal for most people.
The hacker ethic (Score:5, Insightful)
Pekka Himanen wrote a book, "The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age" where recounts the problems management had with the first generation of tech workers. PC enthusiasts were an enormous, self-taught reservoir of talent for an exploding industry, but when companies like IBM told them they had to wear ties and work on things like spreadsheets for banks, the hacker types told them to fuck off. The result was a new style of management, with beer and pool tables and at least apparently meaningful work. Those guys made an entire industry change their management style.
In the meantime, tech workers have been commoditized, the pool tables and beer have been disappearing, and now the tech worker is considerably more replaceable.
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I keep hearing that the tech worker has become a commodity but I disagree.
The tech field has become so enormous and vast that the tools have been made more friendly to the masses. So what we now see is a lot of jobs that can be done by people with, relatively speaking, low tech affinity.
However, the field, as mentioned, has grown so much that the need for people with high tech affinity still has exploded right along the keyboard monkey positions.
And I don't think the manpower pool has been keeping up with t
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I agree. From what I see, not only is the need for IT workers growing all the time, their jobs get more complicated all the time and the damage when they screw up gets higher and higher. Eventually, in 50-100 years or so, IT will be established tech, things will move very slowly and at that time the demand for competent IT workers may decrease. But not before.
Yes, vendors claim all the time "buy this magic box and all your IT problems are history". They have been doing that for 30 years now. It does not wor
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Code monkeys are a replaceable commodity. And if you pay peanuts and want them to jump through hoops, you will get the monkeys who like this.
Personally, I have less of a problem with peanuts. I have a problem with the hoops. Mostly 'cause I'm not a monkey.
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In some ways yes. Mainstream, full stack development, you can hire people left and right to do that work. However, there are a lot of tech niches which are out there that can't be filled with cheap workers, be it embedded development where RAM, storage, and CPU just don't have the headroom, and a developer can't throw whatever stuff they can scape from npm into a project.
There are still a bunch of technologies out there that need experts. NFTs have been abused, but they still have some real world uses th
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In order to transfer an NFT I still have to pay the gas fee, and my transaction still has to be recorded, so I haven't gained anything. From my point of view the network is still centralized, and I'm still having to go through a third party and pay money in order to make the transfer. This is not a solution to Ticketmaster, because it doesn't solve the problem of their capture of venues.
I'll donate it myself (Score:2)
Don't worry about the charity, I'll happily donate the 10 dollar per day myself to a charity not to have to spend my day in your cage.
Desperate Attempt More Like (Score:2)
https://www.marketwatch.com/am... [marketwatch.com]
Gotta keep those valuations up somehow. No one is going to pay top dollar on a building with no people or businesses in it.
Workers should really exploit this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to demand better conditions. Or just tank the portfolios of the wealthy real estate owners (of whom a few are also their bosses). I am fine with either outcome honestly.
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Oh don't worry, your tax money will keep them from having to face the consequences of their bad investment choices.
Fuck Salesforce (Score:2)
Salesforce is trying to lure staff into offices by offering to donate $10 to a local charity for each day an employee comes in from June 12 to June 23
Hey, how about taking some of the money you're saving after laying off thousands of employees, and pay people enough to where they actually want to come back, instead of making a tax deductible donation, you fucks? Also, your product is shit.
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CNN driving another wedge into society (Score:2)
Most Googlers work in teams that span the globe (Score:2)
Like most of us who work for corporations of any size, our coworkers live and work in other countries. Google's push is worse than unnecessary, it makes no logical sense.
Vote with your feet. (Score:2)
If the job on offer requires you to be physically present, make your decision and opt out or don't. Market forces will deal with the company - or maybe not.
If you got your job under work from home conditions, you might be entitled to continue it it in that way. But if the company is returning you to pre-pandemic conditions, you aren't owed the new world.
After 30 years in offices, I work from home, and so do my teams. And I have seen levels of absenteeism, "yellows cameras" for hours, and shitty productivity
Past time for programmers to organize... (Score:2)
If there is one reason or time to programmers and other IT works to brand together and collectively bargain, this is it. The big tech employers could not survive a strike of any length of time, they can't hire enough replacements, things will stop working too quickly.
And you are doing is ultimately saving the company by reducing resources it doesn't need. Less office space, less management. This isn't trying to hold onto a old model that isn't competitive so some people feel more comfortable.
This is just fo
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This is also not elementary school where I HAVE to go to, no matter how much I get bullied.
I can go to another job that gives me what I want. And guess what, they exist. Good engineers are not wanted, they are hunted. My inbox alone speaks volumes. And "100% WFH" is pretty much the baseline of perks these days.
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There's something to that, but there's also something to some people just needing someone else to tell them what to do. And that can happen via email or zoom or whatever as easily as face to face. Maybe easier, because having a written record of what you're supposed to do leaves no doubt about what it is. Only an incompetent manager who will fuck you over at the drop of a hat balks at written instructions.
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Only if you let it.
I just won't let it.
Re: Not just return to work, 996 is back (Score:2)
This sounds like a very uniquely west coast tech hub problem. Virtually anything east of the rocky mountains is still screaming for employees, and the rising wages in the trades will peel off more and more graduates that just never make it to the white collar pipeline.
The woes of a few cities that put all their chips on a one industry bet will have weird job markets, for sure. And if you've put down roots you may get a raw deal. For everyone else though, it's an employees market. For the first time in my ad