Having worked the last 4 decades, changes have occurred. Probably one of the worst is working from home. People can't communicate by way of wire. In person is the only true answer. It is hurting our company right now, as there are many who have left and many who have not but still wrongly believe that we should never set foot in the office. Those who have left have negatively affected morale of those who have stayed. Take it from someone who has pretty much seen it all.
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OP, this argument doesn't carry water for this simple reason that the number of teams geographically co-located and who actively collaborate/converse in-person is extremely small and shrinking with every year.
The rationale against RTO is that hopping onto Skype or Teams from home is no different than doing it from the office so why should people have to make the sacrifices inherent in commuting if there's no tangible benefit to the Company?
How many times did we hear at the height of the pandemic that we kept the company moving forward and had record earnings. We pivoted to our new environments and made kitchen tables into offices and play rooms into classrooms only to be told that we need to be in person to collaborate! What in the entire he-l have we been doing for 2 years? Such horse sh-t! We could easily continue to run this company remotely and have employees that feel valued and respected. People don't leave companies, they leave bad managers/ management. Fu-k chuck!
Worked remotely in a distributed team since 2006. You know, before Wachovia, when the WF data centers were only Tempe, Shore view, and Cassie Hill. Bridge lines worked just fine, and Lync too, long before Microsoft ever bought Skype.
You really think “people can’t communicate by way of wire”?
Are you still sending faxes? Have you made sure that your telegraph is working? Have you fed your carrier pigeons today?
OP also enjoys screaming at clouds, telling the neighborhood kids to get off his lawn, and hand writes stern letters to the editor of his local newspaper.
It's kind of funny that some of you arguing with OP can't spell fallacy nor do you know the correct use of 'here' and 'hear'.
Based on what you have said, there should me only one massive office with all employees and no geographical disbursement of personnel. Great concept from a Business Continuity Planning perspective (Not!).
Are you trying to set some sort of record for downvotes Mr. OP.
OP: I have worked for 4 decades as well. I've done a careful analysis of your post and come to the undeniable conclusion that YOU ARE NUTS! It's people like you that give the rest of us "boomers" a bad name.
OP, what, not even a hybrid of some in the office and some out of the office. All or nothing, is that you're point?
Stop printing the Internet OP, and start using MS Teams. You seriously don't need to be in the office to get work done.
We want a copy of everything as backup so we email even when we are sitting next to each other.
Why are you posting hear instead of telling us in person?
OP - well done with that post. 56 down votes. Snowflake meltdowns left and right. Lol.
I left sc--w them after a quarter of a century of my life spent here its all about the $$$ not customers best interest or employees just $$$$. You could die at your office desk or home does not matter to them ! The rules are a joke . They would rob your grandma and have an affair with your wife ! Glad i quit !!!!! Probably saved my life.
@OP+1gdSippP
My dad is an 81 year old ex farmer. He hated computers all through my childhood. He didn’t understand what good they could do and thought of them as more of a toy. I helped him modernize his farm operations 20 years ago as I finished college, and today he says he couldn’t live without his laptop and tablet. All of his investments, bookkeeping, supply ordering, and farm automation is done via internet and his two replacements that now took over the farm operations hardly ever see him. He has more free time, less stress, and was able to slip into retirement easily.
There isn’t much that needs to be done face to face these days. The pandemic just helped push everyone else ahead to where we should be versus keeping us anchored to outdated business practices.
If you've seen it all OP, then you know that there are a LOT of distributed teams in this company. I'm in one. If I go to the office, I'm still "communicating by wire". There are no peers, direct reports, managers, or anyone else even remotely related to my group at my assigned location. Our group can't colocate in a big hub because we have to be physically close to customers distributed across the nation. I appreciate that there are jobs in this company in which in person collaboration is essential to success, but that's not true of every role and if you've 'seen a thing or two' then you know that one size never, ever, 'fits all'.
What are you talking about??? Wish I had your job.
What are you talking about??? Wish I had your job.
Realistically the office has been made 95 obsolete with new tech that is actually 25 years old. The only reason for going into an office is the real estate that was purchased and used for the original intent of provided a work environment for working with files and taking phone calls.
I worked in an office in my EDS years when our team sat in a section altogether. The cubes had high walls and provided a measure of privacy for the layout. The manager sat in an office directly across form the cubes. This stopped being the case when offshoring came into play as more teams were from other countries. Even in the buildings teams were spread across different floors and if it was a campus, different buildings. The progression of technologies negated the need to be physically next to your co-worker if they were on your team. This has been the case for over 20 years!
If the OP is actually being legit they are living in a world that has since ceased to exist. If this work was done from a remote location, AND the company was able to provide services AND make more profit, that means its a PROVEN FACT that WFH for those jobs should continue.
If anything the company is actually hurting itself by not focusing on what worked during the pandemic and trying to press this RTO because someone said if should be done blindly without seeing the bigger business benefit of remote work.
What they should be doing at this point is undertaking studies and plans to see how to turn this now obsolete use office space into housing. They could recoup a high degree fo their original investment in these structures by converting them to lease or selling them as condo units.
This goes to show t hat those that are so called movers and shakers are only adept at a few skills and not really the folks that are what the media and other outlets make them out to be. A true savy business person would have been on top of this at least 10 years ago.
Okay, boomer.
Dude I work with spreadsheets and email. If you need me to sit with you in an office to go over them, you need to let a youngster replace you. I have meetings (audio only) via Skype all day and it works great.
I won’t do video conferencing either.
Shut up, Chainsaw, we know it's you. Fu-k off
Dude! Seriously!!! Because you say so??? I'm at 4 decades as well and completely disagree! We have advanced to video conferencing allowing the collaboration of people across the globe without having to be in one room regardless of time zones AND it saves $$$. RTO is an archaic mentality. I have WFH for over 20 years (top performer). Moral has been negatively affected by once being a valued, respected, acknowledged and rewarded employee to a warm body they prefer would quit so they dont have to pay a severance. Senior leadership has proven they only care about themselves and their bank accounts. Did you get a 20% increase?
The people that left left to preserve their morale.
What made up crock of sh!t is this? Those working from home are bringing down the morale of those who go to the office?
And those of us who were essentially forced to leave are negatively affecting the morale of the ones left behind?
You’re completely out of your mind!
Ok Gramps. Time to retire.
People can't communicate by way of wire
This is a falacy. We've been communicating by way of wire for a century or so.
However, nowadays we communicate by way of video.
We've been doing it since the Internet was invented.
It's actually pretty cool, you should try it.
Couldn’t be more off-base on this one, sorry!