These kind of articles are sooo dumb. Those tech CEO's are acting like complete idiots.
1. You can measure productivity in a precise way only in some mindless repetitive jobs e.g. are Twitter employees more productive now that they are in the office. How do you measure that (if you measure it in profits, app quality etc. I'd say that they are much less productive)
2. Each person is different. I may be 10% more productive at home than in the office, and my coworker may be 20% less productive. Why do I have to be in the office because of some stupid statistic?
3. Fine, let's say people who work at home have lower productivity. But working from home enables you to hire people from all over the world as well as people who cannot go to the office for various other reasons. I'm not a big tech CEO, but somehow it seems to me that the best candidate in the world, working at 90% of their capacity will still perform better than the best candidate who happens to live in your city and is willing to travel.
4. Working from home is also linked to a better well-being, which means less turnover, better working environment etc.
5. Most importantly: the fucking planet is dying, because of carbon emissions and you want to just dismiss the obvious and already implemented solution for reducing those by letting people not travel to work, just because of some 10% profit increase.
If the CEOs are "complete idiots", make your own work-from-home company and compete with those complete idiots who demand going to the office, and let's see who wins. This is how it works. Other than that, whining "my boss is an idiot" is the national pastime of the average worker for centuries.
And what is that supposed to tell us? If it's so awesome, work for Automattic, or start companies like it to dominate other spaces. Where's the problem?
I just can't stand this learned helplessness in people, like the writer's strikes in Hollywood. Oh the studios are terrible, oh they're doing literally everything wrong all the time. But I'll just sit in the middle of the street, shout cringe at people and demand slightly higher pay.
Go out and show people what you can do if you know how to do everything better. And if not, at least stop complaining about your boss and go back to work.
You are extrapolating a lot out of a simple statement pointing out there is an example work-from-home company that is very competitive, and appears to be winning. They aren't winning so much that they're able to make Tumblr profitable, but better companies have tried and failed.
Other remote first companies have been attempted, and flourished, such as Buffer. DigitalOcean. Not sure how current this list is:
So your solution to being underpaid as workers is instead of organizing and pushing back as workers, as it is the legally recognized of labor for over a century, is to start your own competing studio? If that is what you consider "cringe," then you have successfully signaled your virtues. Very well.
Consider how poorly supported is your evidence: "some companies are successful with work-from-home". Good, so? And some companies are successful with work-from-office. Now what? Back to square 1.
This is why I extrapolated. Because you didn't simply tell me this to inform me Automattic exists and they work from home, or did you? No you had a whole point there. That somehow that's evidence that this model is good for everyone, maybe even better than other models. But those points are very poorly supported. And the way to support them is by practicing what you preach. Start a company, be better and win. In any case, I cringe because I watch people fail at basics of life.
If you want to cringe because I'm pointing out basics of life, such as "be the change you want to see" and you won't see your demands served to you on a silver plate simply because you were loud and obnoxious by "pushing back", then cringe. But you still won't get what you want.
Company owners own their companies. Not you. They can run a company how they want, as long as it's legal. It's legal to ask your workers to come to work. If you don't like it, quit and work elsewhere, or start your own.
Say I'm at absolute dismay of how Musk runs Twitter right now. But he has the right to run his company into the ground. Or maybe he'll teach us something (but mostly what not to do). But people who don't want to be abused, should leave and go work elsewhere. That's it. If you go whine to Elon, he'll fire you, and he has the right to.
It is not a thesis, it is a reply to your challenge of "make your own work-from-home company and compete with those complete idiots who demand going to the office, and let's see who wins."
> But use you didn't simply tell me this to inform me Automattic exists and they work from home, or did you?
Actually, I did! Which is why I linked to the list of other WFH companies as well. Some of them may be even competitive as well, you may check.
> That somehow that's evidence that this model is good for everyone, maybe even better than other models.
I never said that. You are projecting. I am fairly agnostic on the idea of which work model is best. More data needs to be collected.
> They can run a company how they want, as long as it's legal. It's legal to ask your workers to come to work. If you don't like it, quit and work elsewhere, or start your own.
Collective bargaining is also legal. You may call it cringe, but it is a valid mode of behavior. So what's the problem here? People are choosing to exercise an option that is legally granted to them.
> But people who don't want to be abused, should leave and go work elsewhere. That's it. If you go whine to Elon, he'll fire you, and he has the right to
No one disagrees that people can be fired in at-will states. But people may also choose other options besides simply taking it, or walking. You present a false dichotomy here.
> If you want to cringe because I'm pointing out basics in life, such as you won't see your demands served to you on a silver plate simply because you were loud and obnoxious by "pushing back", then cringe. But you still won't get what you want.
An overuse of 'cringe' is in itself cringe. Expand your vocabulary, for chrissake.
Collective bargaining is an option, but in this particular uber-monolithic form, which is in effect the supply-side version of a monopoly (a monopsony) it means the end for everyone involved, either now or later. For Hollywood writers in particular, this "later" moment has arrived. Watch the strike, and how it's failing (and will fail ultimately) and learn.
Monolithic structures can't adapt. They're toxic in nature and fail sooner or later, but not before they ruin everyone involved.
Disruptive open office plans are just as bad as they ever were. It's part of why we took to WFH so well. And the amount of time we can spend on chit-chat at the office is greater, many more opportunities.
Reminder that there is a solvency problem in Commercial real estate now that a lot of companies have not renewed their leases post pandemic.
Reminder that for the past 2 quarters there has been a steady stream of opinion pieces coming out of Fortune, WSJ, and FT. All with more or less the same message, remote bad, RTO good.
They somehow found a study that agrees with their agenda, and disregard all the previous body of evidence that doesn't support their opinion. Take this piece with a giant pinch of salt.
Another article pushed by banks and commercial landlords. Remote work isn’t going away anytime soon, the pandemic was the reality slap for a lot of employees, they found that the work indeed can be done remotely in efficient and effective ways, without the compromises on all office shenanigans, commute troubles, wasted time, bad launch in a short launch break, and for some even being away from their families and barely seeing their kids on the weekends. Remote work simply shifts the power back to the employees, not entirely but at least it balances thing out, and that’s something corps do not want, they want to treat employees like kindergarten kids and when you achieve something the reward is something cheap and humiliating like this:
Can’t believe I didn’t think of this earlier? Why not Tim Cook? Runs the biggest and most profitable company in the world and pushes RTO. They make innovative products people love. Wouldn’t that be better?
No. Choose the guy who overpaid for a company, trashed the business, can’t pay its bills, and is now getting into battles with the city and his landlord over permitless “improvements” to the HQ.
No, because I don’t trust them, and honestly don’t care much if I did as I disagree with the idea that being in an office is necessary (for most jobs).
I read the title as something akin to “[people you’re supposed to think are smart] know this so it must be true”.
With that reading, Musk seems like a particularly bad choice.
The experiment is well-designed to have statistically sound sample sizes all performing directly comparable and quantifiable work. BUT maybe at the cost of relevance to knowledge work in the US:
The researchers observed data entry workers in Chennai, India, who were working either in an office or at home, and found that those randomly assigned to working from home were 18% less productive than office workers.
Yes, that's a little unfair to a study in a field where sound experiment design often is hard to have. But only a little.
Odd. The archive.is version is blurred for me but wayback is not. I have uBlock enabled, maybe something is slipping through that uBlock or one of my other add-ons is catching. Perhaps NoScript or Disable Transitions
1. You can measure productivity in a precise way only in some mindless repetitive jobs e.g. are Twitter employees more productive now that they are in the office. How do you measure that (if you measure it in profits, app quality etc. I'd say that they are much less productive)
2. Each person is different. I may be 10% more productive at home than in the office, and my coworker may be 20% less productive. Why do I have to be in the office because of some stupid statistic?
3. Fine, let's say people who work at home have lower productivity. But working from home enables you to hire people from all over the world as well as people who cannot go to the office for various other reasons. I'm not a big tech CEO, but somehow it seems to me that the best candidate in the world, working at 90% of their capacity will still perform better than the best candidate who happens to live in your city and is willing to travel.
4. Working from home is also linked to a better well-being, which means less turnover, better working environment etc.
5. Most importantly: the fucking planet is dying, because of carbon emissions and you want to just dismiss the obvious and already implemented solution for reducing those by letting people not travel to work, just because of some 10% profit increase.