@e3 Fidelity wastes so much money on travel. All it takes is one person with the right level of seniority and influence to say "let's get everyone in a room" on a conference call and just like that people are asked to rearrange their lives for an unnecessary work trip. Then they come up with an arbitrary number of days for the offsite before even coming up with an agenda or plan for what they're going to do with that time. Followed by offsite prep meetings to figure what to do at the offsite. In the past i've asked for the agenda so i can plan accordingly as far as when to arrive and depart (ie spend as little time as I'm required to be there) and the answer is always there's no agenda and we'll figure it out sometime before the trip. .
How do you know you need X number of days or even an offsite at all if you haven't even figured out what the time will be used for?
It's another example of useless people making up things they can say they did instead of doing actual meaningful work. To me "having an offsite" isn't an accomplishment but to many it is becasue the optics and culture at this old fashioned company are outdated and predictable.
Most of the time whatever discussions need to happen can be done via zoom (as they were successfully done for 5+ years when everyone was WFH during covid and no one was traveling). Now with RTO I think the the offsite things will be even worse as they try really hard to recreate how things used to be pre covid. Looking back at all the trips i've been on over the years, in hindsight i can't think of a single one that really provided any value.