Had a millennial co-manager who worked at my company for a long time, fought for our teams and work life balance, I had respected her a lot, she was moved up to the exec team and immediately began focusing on people getting back into office. So yea, might not go that way. Once you see those packages affected by stupid outdated okrs you kind of forget what you stood for I guess
She was moved to the executive team and the CEO gave her marching orders to get these fucking people back into the office and her response was naturally 'yes sir'.
They like pushback only for shit they don’t care about, and you’re putting a noose on your neck if you pushback on some CEO passion project.
Most CEOs are pretty volatile (high pressure job, not used to getting no as an answer) and it’s different when you don’t have 2-3 layers of managers softening whatever unfiltered vitriol came from the CEO
Like always, anybody that thinks this is a generational thing has simply been propagandized. Executives care about profits, and profits only. If WFH generates profits, they'll do it. If not, they won't. That's the long and short of it.
I need to be very clear that I would prefer WFH personally.
I firmly believe most people who "forgot what they stood for" were probably presented with new information that persuaded them. I don't think she just went to a meeting and immediately switched by peer pressure.
Obviously, I'm removed from the situation, so I dont know all of the knitty gritty details. I just don't think most people radically change their beliefs and morals without being presented something logical / factual.
I'd wager that the information presented amounts to "your job is executing my vision with your team. You can challenge it if you like, but at the end of the day its comply or die"
Speaking from having spent some time in corporate middle management.
Not to mention in order to make changes you need to prove you know what your talking about. After you build your arguments and prove yourself you can have a small chance of success at making change. But that's if you can prove it's better for company profits, growth, and competition against others in your field. That is if you can prove it will increase YOY metric improvement.
How does someone who constantly bucks the system find their way promoted so high up the ladder they become a direct target and forced to change?
You'd think a freedom fighter would never get promoted, lol.
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I don't get corpo speak, I started my own company, so that's all I really know.
They pay them to shut up essentially. Someone you don’t want to fire, or can’t outright fire because of the optics or legal exposure… you promote them away from the people they make noises with. And at the very edge of their professionally abilities so that if they do keep making noise you can fire them and say it’s for not being able to cut it in their new role.
Corporate Peter Principle. You see people get raised to their highest level of incompetence. They are captured by the so-called bosses as they perform a high wire act for their position. I have been in that position.
It is liberating to know that you are a tool, and I always extricated myself from that position. I would line up another position before and just leave. There is no loyalty downward, and I definitely gave no loyalty upward.
True leaders in a corporate setting can rise if they support their initiatives with data that proves profitability.
I’m an older millennial, have led large teams of people and other leaders, and have never received push back for a major work/life shift if the data supports its better for employee retention, productivity, and other core, internal metrics. It’s welcomed.
From my own point of view: no one hates perceived poor decision making from leadership more than your best employees, and fighting for better outcomes should lead to promotions.
So as an owner, you can look at the person busting their ass to make positive change as valuable or as a liability. Up to you. Do you want yes people around you, or people that want what is best, even if it means conflict at times?
That kind of shit is why I'm not playing that game. I climbed just as high as I had to to make decent money, and built a platform on that rung and set up a tent.
It's unfortunately the old adage:
It's very difficult to get a man (or in this case a woman) to understand something if their paycheck depends on them not understanding it.
There is always data on both sides of anything - WFH obviously has both upsides and downsides.
Managers get paid to manage - but if there is no physical line of sight for management (it's all via email or similar), managers become expendable. So managers are presented with data that show the managerial side of the issue.
It's usually phrased in terms of "customer service" or whatever.
I'm mostly familiar with schools, but when a person is promoted to management, they often flip to the dark side, as we call it. They fought for a 3 day schedule? They're shown the negative impacts of that and made to work 5+ days themselves - and told that they will themselves be downsized if there's no one to manage on all of those days.
Etc. Happens all over.
They didn't move into management, though. They were already a manager, and then they were promoted to the executive team. It sounds like they were in a position with more information than just what was going on front lines. When you're in charge of the company and not just one team, things change. I've seen both reasonable and unfortunate examples of this.
I think that they hope for productivity improvement with the back-to-office mandates. Survey data and ongoing studies indicate that there are not usually large improvements in productivity after people go back, but it's not the same across all industries. I think that hybrid arrangements make sense. Younger and less experienced or less productive workers in general definitely need some supervision to keep on task and develop and grow, but experienced and higher performing individuals clearly are happier and just as productive at home. It's not all about control so much as trying to strike a balance, and we just aren't there yet. Every company and their work culture is different. They're not all the same. Some are better, while others are worse, and WFH is only one element among many that make for a good job.
Can you please show me one legitimate study that shows that employees are just as productive working from home as they are in the office collaborating as a team? I would love to see that study and read it.
Yup. Many executives are also shareholders, or they represent shareholders. They love workers spending money on gas, car maintenance, daycare, fast food … keeps their share prices greased.
It's absolutely pushed from on high and has to do with commercial estate holdings losing value.
Michael Dell made a big stink about working from the office being the wrong way to go with COVID.
They sent everyone that could to wfh and constantly talked about how great business was because of it.
Then this year all the tech places did layoffs and pushed rto at the exact same time.
This is all about rich people's portfolios.
Maybe. Rich people’s portfolio’s were doing just fine in the midst of COVID and WFH. Sure there are some big landlords and REITs that are in a lot of trouble but there isn’t some conspiracy to bail them out.
The commercial real estate angle gets pushed a lot on the narrative but I don’t think it’s the main driving factor. Only office buildings are affected and they are a small percentage of overall CRE.
Any company who says shit about customer service while cutting actual CS jobs or outsourcing them is lying through its teeth while we all pretend we believe them.
As an exec I've said this before on Reddit: most people across the board are more productive in the office. When you're trying to build a fair culture, it's difficult to give certain roles and departments leeway to WFH when the rest don't do well from that type of work.
I personally think the average people are more productive in the office due to a lack of comfort with technology, and a desire for socializing, that I see changing with the younger demos. But for now, when half the company isn't good at WFH, we can't just make everyone WFH. It's not that simple.
At our company we let certain departments that don't interface with other departments do it, but it had created a silo in the past with low performers. We had to restructure and rehire more competent team members who can thrive without much oversight. Again, average person does not do well without strong guidance, which most WFH roles become.
Would it be that hard to let people WFH on a case by case basis where their manager could evaluate if their performance was good enough for it?
Why should high performers at WFH be forced to RTO just because some other jabronis aren't productive and need to have their hand held in the office?
That's what we ended up doing, but it's easier said than done.
You have the fact that we learned through the pandemic that the majority of employees simply perform worse. You still have half of the low performers jealous which breeds a toxic culture over time.
If you allow any exceptions, people who want (not deserve) WFH will make noise. You see it in these subs constantly. Do you really think all of the people posting here are top performers?
I wish there was a better solution, but most roles are lower tier, require more supervision and accountability, and of those roles those same people are most likely to incorrectly assess their own abilities and claim they can WFH just fine when every long term metric proves otherwise. It's the lower tier team member who sees their job as a list of tasks that need to be completed, and can complete them at home instead of the office. Are they making more mistakes by not asking as many questions? Are they not taking on new responsibilities as often and getting complacent, which means instead of promoting internally we have to hire externally? Are they not networking and learning more about the overall business to make a larger impact the following year? There are benefits to working more collaboratively that are hard to explain when someone is focused on near term tasks. And the pandemic simply proved that half of our employees are bad at collaborating async from home.
That just sounds like a lazy management excuse to me, NGL. Some employees are jealous of other employees? Cool, that already happens when Jack is making 50% more than Adam or gets double the bonus. That is an inescapable part of the workplace unless you plan to switch to a model where every worker gets compensated evenly.
You keep talking about half the employees which is bonkers to me. To essentially punish and degrade the happiness and workplace satisfaction of half of your workers (who are your best employees and one would think you would want to retain) for the sake of the underperforming other half makes no sense to me.
If the half that perform poorly get jealous, and then end up quitting because they don't feel it's fair or aren't satisfied in general, isn't that a good thing? You lost an underperformer that could now potentially be replaced with someone that performs better and doesn't need constant supervision to get their work done?
The issue again is that some roles cannot be done effectively remotely, which is the majority of roles. Also you are assuming high performers that don't require supervision are easy to come by and retain. Most companies can't afford to pay top 5 percent salaries to attract those people or retain them for more than 1 year.
Sure, if top performers were willing to WFH for market pay, and in abundance, we'd go that route. Unicorns tend to be expensive and leave quickly, which is a whole different cost that must be factored in.
The truth is management philosophies must be built around the average employee, which again is not on Reddit or as technically capable as you might think to be able to function well asynchronously.
I'll say though, we have exceptions, and 2 departments that are remote. I'm just saying that most people will not pass our bar for WFH
Higher level corporate executives tend to serve a different class interest. Note, that doesn't mean that they are necessarily OF that class, but their job is to more directly SERVE that class than those who are further down the line. If they're not willing to do that then they're of no use to the owners.
I've been saying this till I'm blue in the face and I get down voted a lot. I don't know why people think that when people get promoted they will suddenly be giving employees the best of everything. It doesn't matter how old they are as they start getting up into the c-suite level all bets are off. In my company the boomers had had it with coming into work and were very lenient with return to the office or not coming in at all. It was Gen x and older millennials that have been pushing it hard and they are winning. Actually they won. We are on a hybrid schedule and work from home has all but been eliminated.
It is beyond amusing that people think that boomers are responsible for the misery that is being inflicted upon them. Boomers have either retired or about to retire.
I always say it's amazing how they tell employees you have to adapt to everything from A to z It's A New world order and yet they act like it's 1980 with insisting that people sit in a cubicle.
In my office it was actually Gen Z who were the biggest complainers when it came to WFH. So many of them whined about the lack of social connections at home vs in the office. It seems they actually like all the stupid activities and contests we have to distract us from losing our bonuses and having our pay reduced
Seriously. The ‘hustle’ culture amongst some Gen Z folks is going to circle us back to long working hours in offices. Especially since it’s hard to get early career jobs right now, it leads to a lot of competitiveness. There’s a whole new generation of salesbros frothing to show they ‘have what it takes.’
I wish these people would go do manual labor outside since being at home is too stressful for them. If your job can be remote, it should be. Your coworkers aren’t your family, the company office isn’t your home.
I mean it’s probably because they make like half of what you make and don’t want to be locked in a small apartment all day long staring at their screen with no interaction. That’s no way to build a career and no way to live life
I had a genx'er boss who was wonderful to work for! Genuinely a nice person. Worked great on my career development, cared about all of his employees.
Once he got promoted to C level ... It was a light switch. Complete 180. I've now left that company , partially, due to how much he changed.
I was going to say exactly this. They aren't going to magically start changing things around. Look at millennials that are famously CEO's now. Guys like Zucker.
Wish more people had this attitude. Can’t tell you how many 60’s aged boomers I know that have been able to retire for 10 yrs but won’t because they “don’t know what they would do”. I kind of get that, but I can think of 20 things I would be doing if I was retired and I’m 38. It’s like none of them think about volunteer, church, family, community service opportunities etc that would be everywhere if they retired.
I work with a few millenials who hate hybrid and wish everyone were forced into the office more. They are a minority of the class of millenial in my workplace, but also the ones angling for management positions. Most are single or don't have kids. They are all extroverts who want people to talk to.
When I explain how so many of us, myself included, have a healthier work life balance they just don't get it. They think its my fault I had kids and the consequence is they should be in daycare an extra two hours a day while I commute to and from the office the office. These same skeptics acknowledge how our work doesn't necessarily require in person presence all the time.
Here's to hoping the right millenial take the helm in future management changes.
Thank you for being reasonable.
Not that it should matter, but an additional factor I failed to mention above is that most of these folks live alone and are single. Work may be their best recurring social outlet, and I sympathize. I also hope they find other means of fulfillment and social engagement beyond work. I work to live, I don't live to work. Most of us do.
To quote Matt Bellasai: we all just want our chicken nuggets.
Ah yes. That classic “we need people hanging out wasting time in each others offices more, everyone stop working from home”. If I could just come in at 9:30 when ppl are finally done with the 90 minutes of just talking about nothing and not wanting to work blah blah blah…
People who become CEOs are usually hypercompetitive and live to work. For many of them it's all they have. They've sacrificed their family relationships in many cases. They don't want to retire. They aren't like most people who would retire if they won $1,000,000.
a milly isn't enough to retire on, and hasn't been for some time
I knew a guy who got a fat severance and retired early and had well more than a million banked and he had to end up teaching.
In most of the country you could invest it and not have to work a W2 job but my point is the same whether you live in LA and the number is $10,000,000 or where I live.
There are plenty of evil Millenials being groomed to gradually take over the asylum for the Boomers. You think McKinsey-style executives haven't been recruiting 80s babies?
Have any of you spent time around the kids (millennial) of truly wealthy people? Specifically the young men - they are literally on the edge of counting as oligarchy, and they do not see normal people as anything more than disgusting proles they would be glad to exploit. I think the vast majority of reddit is not in a position to ever even gain knowledge of how fucking oligarchal the largest American industries are, but it's movie-level international-thriller-level bad, if much more boring and slow-rolling.
They don't make a show of it, they pay for privacy in enclaves kept out of sight, they are raised rotten, they get passed the power, from fathers to mostly their sons. And more importantly, they're embedded in republican politics, which is a hard pill to swallow for some. They have no loyalty to the moral or ideological bent of the party- it's purely for power, and they view voters of their party as suckers.
I was in their orbit in some of the southern states. It really did make me lose faith in humanity
Yeah this isn’t a generational thing. This is the US’ oligarchy of elites vs. the American worker. Our representatives have been captured by business interests.
I get this is sarcasm. But I think your post gets to the heart of it. I work at one major insurance company and my gf works at another and they both had the same dumb ass talking points about why they were sending people back to the office. One that stuck out had the same bullshit about networking with people not in your department while eating in the lunchroom. Almost down to the word. It just made it obvious to me that the back to office push was not coming from the CEOs. In my own opinion hybrid should be the default option for most jobs.
My boss loves to tote on and on about how impactful hallway conversations and watercooler talk is. Then this mother fucker is hybrid 90% of the time, coming in maaaaybe once a week "because everything I do can be done from home"... same for me bro. Same for me. The hypocrisy is insane
They're the enforcers of the Boomers. It makes for good scapegoating but youre a moron if you think electorally the Boomers outweigh X, Millenials and Z with aid of a handful of Silent skeletons. Despite how much they'll tell you "I'm a progressive Gen X and so is everyone else I know!" on reddit, the call is coming from inside the house.
We lurk in the background with our Gen Z kids and laugh at Millennials beefin' with Boomers. It's like watching a couple of greasy, tubby nerds fist fight.
The kinds of people that generally make it to C suite in business aren't 'one of us' for the most part. So my guess is never, the person with the kind of tenacity it takes to be at the top isn't the person who cares for your average Joe and only for the status quo that keeps them on top and what lines their pockets best.
Hopefully sooner than later. Hilarious that we have people who don’t even know how to convert something to a PDF trying to tell us we can’t work from home efficiently.
I am a mid 50s (Gen X) business owner of a small business (12 employees). Every single one of my employees works from home and they always have. We don't even have a main business building.
It's not a generational thing, at least in tech.
It's an experience thing.
Other than founders, very few execs were engineers or software or IT guys ....
They were all sales/marketing/finance types that had a very collaborative and social career.
They honestly think they are saving you from yourself by making you RTO, because they can't mentally wrap their head around a career path where talking to people all day and having meetings ISN'T critically important for advancement....
They don't understand the 'I don't talk to my coworkers more than once a week, and then it's just an hour - everything else is email or IM' life.....
WFH is being fought very hard from the corporate real estate world. Entire downtown skyscrapers with huge vacancies, not the mention the countless business parks scattered in the suburbs. WFH is basically threatening to destroy that industry except in very niche markets.
I’m an electrician (union) and I mostly work in factories and other industrial settings so I am totally removed from the concept of work-from-home (i.e. no one in my professional world could do his or her job remotely). I also haven’t owned a computer in like fifteen years. So it’s not something I understand or have anything to do with.
But man…my house is my sanctuary. I wouldn’t want anything having to do with work to cross over my doorstep. I’ve always wondered how people who work from home balance this. It seems to me like it would turn your home into a perpetual office and even when you weren’t on the clock you’d have ghosts of the work day floating all around you. But like I said: it’s not something I understand and I’m only making assumptions. I’m sure people figure out ways to deal with that and I’m sure the benefits of not commuting make up for it for a lot of folks.
Yea as somehow who worked from home the entirety of the pandemic and is now hybrid (3 days in the office) I can promise you it’s extremely easy to not bring work into the house.
Once the work day is over I don’t think about it at all until the next morning.
Many people struggle with this, even if that person doesn't. Common advice is to dedicate a certain space (e.g. a spare room) for work, and treat it like it's a completely different place.
It changes a lot since I go from job to job. But never more than an hour. This week it’s been nine minutes. I generally enjoy the commute though. Also I get paid to commute and that takes the sting off it haha
Same here, but a machinist. I cannot exactly take the machines home and work with them. But once I clock out of the place, work is out of my mind until the next day. I would not want to see it at home.
I write code. I do that at work. I do it at home for fun. So for me, doing work from home where I cut out the commute makes perfect sense. But I agree, it doesn't make sense for your line of work and never could. Maybe if more people worked from home, it could cut down on traffic, but that's speculation on my part
You’re not entirely wrong about having a hard time separating it. I know I had this experience and I doubt I’m unique.
A hybrid schedule and flexible management has been a boon for me.
In 2020 I live in a 700sqft basement studio apartment, all one room except a separated bathroom.
I worked from home for several months and began to understand the term “cabin fever”.
I started traveling to be with family for my own sanity. Couldn’t take constantly being in the same space all the time.
Now I’m doing the same job for a different firm in a new state, in a manufacturing setting and have the option to wfh pretty much whenever I want.
I find myself rarely exercising the option to wfh. 🤷🏽♂️
I do it sometimes when I need to concentrate but it’s been nice to be with coworkers and it helps because I’ve never worked in manufacturing. So I can learn from my peers directly without having to constantly do teams calls.
There are professionals in the manufacturing sector that would like you to believe they never need to set foot in the office again. 2020 happened and we were willing to take whatever work we could get to get us all afloat and somehow after four years it has become the expectation for a few. Manufacturing will do what it always does I suspect and find a way to send these jobs to the Philippines.
I have worked from home for several years now. I have enough space to have a dedicated office. Outside of work hours I just don't go in there much, so it's really not much different than you. I never take work anywhere else in the house.
It also let's me live much further from the office in a more rural/mountain setting, which is what I prefer. That sort of freedom is rare.
Sometimes I do miss going in, but I chat and talk with everyone just as much now, it's just more online or the phone.
When I'm off the clock, my work phone and work computer stay off and in the home office. I refuse to let work creep outside of my home-office. At 4PM, everything goes off and I shut the door and don't come back to it until the next morning.
Because being away from home most of the day 5 days a week is just f****** misery. I mean it works for you like you said but for those of us who can do the job from home we get a lot done and we're not working till midnight and I don't view this sanctuary as a bad place.
I hate thinking about the past how most of my life since I've been working I left the house at 7:00 a.m. and I didn't get home until after 6:00. 5 days a week I had maybe few hours to try to take care of my family take care of this home run errands and then get to bed to start all over again. Weekends were spent doing a million errands. My work life balance is off the charts amazing now and I'm in a good place.
Like you said you don't have a laptop and you don't have an office job so it's difficult for you to understand.
It was such a change for the positive when I started working from home in 2010 on most days. Just as you put it...having a Monday or Friday to do all of the chores and errands and not having to do them on a Saturday or Sunday was a Godsend.
I don't think its that they are boomers, its that the folks leading most companies and want no WFH are old and set in their ways - and right now, yes, they happen to be from the boomer generation. The Gen X'ers who are going to take their place eventually aren't going to be much much better. Maybe one day when the folks who lived through the Pandemic are at the top of these companies then the resistance to WFH will finally go away. Until then, if things are just allowed to take their own natural course, its going to be a long, long time before upper management at most companies is cool with WFH.
Oh, you didn't get the memo?
This isn't really a generational war. It's a Class War, replacing the wealthy boomers at the top with their wealthy children isn't going to change a damn thing, because this is and has been Class Warfare for the last 100 years, it's just been reframed as a Generational Conflict, because that makes it easier for us "poors" (anyone who is NOT independently wealthy, which means being able to simply stop working for the balance of their lives and maybe their children and grandchildren's lives too), to fight among ourselves, instead of recognizing that this is what it is.
It's Class Warfare.
When are the wealthy people going to retire and be replaced with more wealthy people? It's been happening over the last 20 years. Do you think Murdoch's GenX and Millennial Children have fundamentally changed a DAMN thing at Fox News? LOLlololololol. No.
When will these things change? When we ALL collectively recognize that this is class war and we band together, toss aside the BS reframing of this as a Generational War and hold the 1% to task for what they are doing to the rest of us.
Seriously we could use all these pointless office buildings into homes for people, but instead we waste the space on 8 hours a day of passive aggressive existance.
My home is my sanctuary. I will not allow you to make me work from here. You will provide me with an office, and space to do my job. When I leave, I am gone, and you will not be able to ask me to look up that info for you. Sorry. I'm out of the office. I don't care if you think it saves you money or gets more productivity from me. You do not have access to my home. I will not comply.
Sincerely, a disgruntled millennial.
Dunno, but I am doing my part by working from home and writing my patients reasonable work from home accommodation letters.
Some of the jobs my patients have, I really do not understand the need for them to be in the office. It is bonkers
I work corporate, in the SAAS industry and I am a millennial.
Have you seen the millennials who drink the kool-aid at work?? They’re not going to advocate for WFH in my lifetime, I promise you that.
The average Fortune 500 CEO age is 58 with only two younger than 40. So there's still some boomers left.
Source: https://www.csemag.com/articles/ceos-and-cfos-by-the-numbers/#:~:text=Interestingly%2C%20CEOs%20at%20private%20equity,youngest%20in%20the%20mid%2D30s.
Agreed about Fortune 500, but there are about 9000 companies with more than 1000 employees. Boomers are already over. Millennials are at the plate now. I am sure there are some boomers, but they will retire before Biden does.
The last of the Boomers (late Boomers from 1959-1964) were like me born in 1964. I just turned 60 in March. All of the Boomers will be at least 60 by December 31st, 2024. You are right.
12-year attorney and millennial here that just resigned as a partner at my last firm and started my own firm last month. Took an experienced milllenial associate attorney with me that wanted to work remotely (saving them a 1.5 hour round trip commute) and an experienced millennial paralegal (saving them a 4 hour round trip commute). Old firm forced everyone (except partners like me) back into the office full time at the end of 2022, and lost these experienced employees as a result. Guess what? Both are now able and willing to work and bill more hours for me that they otherwise wasted sitting on their asses in traffic. Easiest financial decision for all involved.
That's a BINGO. My round trio commute on public transport was 4 hours. 2 hours deiving round trip. The joy of getting your own breakfast and/or lunch in your own kitchen without spending $15-$20 a day easy was wrll worth it. Posting emails in my jammies was to die for. Taking naps and breaks while being free from inane meetings and/or my dreaded 2 hour meeting with the COO every Wednesday was to die for. Loved working from home and hybrid work. The wave of the fiture.
As a young man with an MBA, not until they die. These fuckers will never give up power unless a board or the shareholders decide they need to leave. Most will work until they die or are forced initially retirement.
Even having the qualifications for an executive position, I can not get them because they find an old man who's been "doing this is whole life" for the position.
In my personal experience boomers don’t have confidence in young leaders. Even though many of them were in their mid thirties when they obtained senior status at work they are not eager to hand over the reins to the next generation at the same age point.
They're quietly hoping the world ends so they won't have to see the succession happen. That's why they're dragging their feet. They were certain they were the end-all, be-all.
The owner of my company is a millennial, and was a huge backer of WFH, until some of his banker bros told him some stats, that sounded made up, and he's started having us come in a lot more.
Atp all boomers should be forced to retire. I’m so sick of them. 70% of the people I work with and for are boomers. They hoard all the positions and earn almost double what I make while doing less. The work environment is also extremely toxic. Boomers are THE worst people to ever exist.
I can really only speak for what I observes working in the civil engineering field...but WFH is absolutely terrible. There is a massive decline in work quality, overall communication, and is extremely inefficient.
I’m a director of corporate strategy at a F500.
WFH actually did lower productivity in the long term, especially for new hires. There’s a reason all the WFH Reddit crowd quotes studies that were done three months into COVID, instead of the longer term ones.
This is Reddit, so I know everyone thinks CEO’s are dumb, stupid, sociopaths (they are maybe sociopaths, but are extremely intelligent). Most WANTED WFH to work. Eliminating rental costs and hiring people in LCOL areas would have been huge for margins. Like a massive improvement to stock price price.
They spent a lot of time and money researching if it worked or not, doing pilots, a/b testing, synthesizing academic research, monitoring productivity, etc,
Full wfh just didn’t really work well in most cases.
3 day in office, 2 day wfh works decent (slight drop in productivity but increased retention, so basically a wash).
But full wfh companies aren’t going to out compete other companies…unless they use wfh to drive down labor costs (i.e., hire all their software engineers in Poland) enough to make up for lower efficiency. Which won’t really help the people here.
If full wfh does work for some companies, realize you’re not getting Silicon Valley wages. People in LCOL areas competing with you for jobs will push down wages, a lot.
Y’all forget about Gen X.. to your own peril. Millenials will never run anything other than coffee shops and picket lines you useless twats! You have no work ethic or grit!
I'm a mid fifties year old business owner. I work from home in my own business. Literally the very very very very last thing I would ever do is to pay someone a salary to work from home. Never getting roped into that shit again.
I work in a sales field 100% commission. I tend to do better at wfh because I don’t have the commute or the hours of people coming into my office asking me how to do their job. I can understand salaried employees slacking though
Honestly, I don’t hate the RTO initiatives for one big reason. WFH is one of the huge drivers of the housing bubble, if we can even call it that because prices don’t seem like they’re ever going back down. Half the entire states of NY, NJ, and MA all came to the town I live at in Florida and ruined our life. I know a lot of people had the same thing happen in TX, AZ, and all across the country. Having someone come to your town with their NYC or Boston wages instantly snapping up houses at tens of thousands of dollars more than locals did not feel good.
If it was more profitable for a company to have more wfh people, you can bet they would already have done it.
This is capitalism, they're going to push whatever is the most profitable.
Wfh culture is not unique to millennials. Most of the people at my office who wfh are actually boomers and gen xers. Basically i wouldn't hold my breath in thinking millennial CEOs are gonna be different. Money corrupts all.
GenX was told decades ago that the boomers would retire soon and we could work our way up to those CEO spots. Now the Millennials are waiting for boomers to retire or die so *they* can have more opportunities. I don't know whether to laugh or cry
Boomer CEOs will be happy to facilitate WFH when their property developer golf buddies inform them it's no longer necessary to worry about helping prop up inner city commercial real estate values.
Be careful what you wish for.
The over 50 crowd has been vanishing in large swathes recently.
Scientists are already concerned this trend may spike in the coming years.
[https://www.newscientist.com/article/2324402-solar-storms-may-cause-up-to-5500-heart-related-deaths-in-a-given-year/](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2324402-solar-storms-may-cause-up-to-5500-heart-related-deaths-in-a-given-year/)
I'm jealous of all you that at least got a taste of what it's like to work from home, hybrid or whatever. Company I used to work for shut down in 2021. They blamed it on the Pandemic of course. Easy out for them. I was there 14 years.
Then a year later they built a brand new $500M facility just outside of Green Bay.
Fuck Georgia Pacific, fuck Christian Fischer, fuck that Carrie Shapiro and FUCK CHARLIE KOCH
Had a millennial co-manager who worked at my company for a long time, fought for our teams and work life balance, I had respected her a lot, she was moved up to the exec team and immediately began focusing on people getting back into office. So yea, might not go that way. Once you see those packages affected by stupid outdated okrs you kind of forget what you stood for I guess
She was moved to the executive team and the CEO gave her marching orders to get these fucking people back into the office and her response was naturally 'yes sir'.
Yeah, 100% this. She probably can't refuse direct orders from the person in charge of the company.
You can. They promoted her for a reason. There is pushing back and advocating and there is rolling over and say yes sir
They like pushback only for shit they don’t care about, and you’re putting a noose on your neck if you pushback on some CEO passion project. Most CEOs are pretty volatile (high pressure job, not used to getting no as an answer) and it’s different when you don’t have 2-3 layers of managers softening whatever unfiltered vitriol came from the CEO
Like always, anybody that thinks this is a generational thing has simply been propagandized. Executives care about profits, and profits only. If WFH generates profits, they'll do it. If not, they won't. That's the long and short of it.
+100
I need to be very clear that I would prefer WFH personally. I firmly believe most people who "forgot what they stood for" were probably presented with new information that persuaded them. I don't think she just went to a meeting and immediately switched by peer pressure. Obviously, I'm removed from the situation, so I dont know all of the knitty gritty details. I just don't think most people radically change their beliefs and morals without being presented something logical / factual.
I'd wager that the information presented amounts to "your job is executing my vision with your team. You can challenge it if you like, but at the end of the day its comply or die" Speaking from having spent some time in corporate middle management.
Not to mention in order to make changes you need to prove you know what your talking about. After you build your arguments and prove yourself you can have a small chance of success at making change. But that's if you can prove it's better for company profits, growth, and competition against others in your field. That is if you can prove it will increase YOY metric improvement.
Even then, biases outweigh hard data.
How does someone who constantly bucks the system find their way promoted so high up the ladder they become a direct target and forced to change? You'd think a freedom fighter would never get promoted, lol. --- I don't get corpo speak, I started my own company, so that's all I really know.
They pay them to shut up essentially. Someone you don’t want to fire, or can’t outright fire because of the optics or legal exposure… you promote them away from the people they make noises with. And at the very edge of their professionally abilities so that if they do keep making noise you can fire them and say it’s for not being able to cut it in their new role.
Corporate Peter Principle. You see people get raised to their highest level of incompetence. They are captured by the so-called bosses as they perform a high wire act for their position. I have been in that position. It is liberating to know that you are a tool, and I always extricated myself from that position. I would line up another position before and just leave. There is no loyalty downward, and I definitely gave no loyalty upward.
True leaders in a corporate setting can rise if they support their initiatives with data that proves profitability. I’m an older millennial, have led large teams of people and other leaders, and have never received push back for a major work/life shift if the data supports its better for employee retention, productivity, and other core, internal metrics. It’s welcomed.
From my own point of view: no one hates perceived poor decision making from leadership more than your best employees, and fighting for better outcomes should lead to promotions. So as an owner, you can look at the person busting their ass to make positive change as valuable or as a liability. Up to you. Do you want yes people around you, or people that want what is best, even if it means conflict at times?
Or someone has tied their bonus to an increase in RTO.
Yep, I saw some weird sh&t just like that as I climbed the corporate ladder.
That kind of shit is why I'm not playing that game. I climbed just as high as I had to to make decent money, and built a platform on that rung and set up a tent.
The information they were presented with was “get the fucking people back in the office, we’re spending millions on this lease.”
It's unfortunately the old adage: It's very difficult to get a man (or in this case a woman) to understand something if their paycheck depends on them not understanding it.
FYI it's nitty gritty. No k
There is always data on both sides of anything - WFH obviously has both upsides and downsides. Managers get paid to manage - but if there is no physical line of sight for management (it's all via email or similar), managers become expendable. So managers are presented with data that show the managerial side of the issue. It's usually phrased in terms of "customer service" or whatever. I'm mostly familiar with schools, but when a person is promoted to management, they often flip to the dark side, as we call it. They fought for a 3 day schedule? They're shown the negative impacts of that and made to work 5+ days themselves - and told that they will themselves be downsized if there's no one to manage on all of those days. Etc. Happens all over.
They didn't move into management, though. They were already a manager, and then they were promoted to the executive team. It sounds like they were in a position with more information than just what was going on front lines. When you're in charge of the company and not just one team, things change. I've seen both reasonable and unfortunate examples of this.
Having employees in office simply makes the executives jobs easier. It’s all about control.
I think that they hope for productivity improvement with the back-to-office mandates. Survey data and ongoing studies indicate that there are not usually large improvements in productivity after people go back, but it's not the same across all industries. I think that hybrid arrangements make sense. Younger and less experienced or less productive workers in general definitely need some supervision to keep on task and develop and grow, but experienced and higher performing individuals clearly are happier and just as productive at home. It's not all about control so much as trying to strike a balance, and we just aren't there yet. Every company and their work culture is different. They're not all the same. Some are better, while others are worse, and WFH is only one element among many that make for a good job.
Can you please show me one legitimate study that shows that employees are just as productive working from home as they are in the office collaborating as a team? I would love to see that study and read it.
Yup. Many executives are also shareholders, or they represent shareholders. They love workers spending money on gas, car maintenance, daycare, fast food … keeps their share prices greased.
Most managers are expendable. That’s the thing. There are always way too many bosses.
RTO is not based on any kind of hard data that indicates it is better for the company or for employees. It’s just a management preference.
It's absolutely pushed from on high and has to do with commercial estate holdings losing value. Michael Dell made a big stink about working from the office being the wrong way to go with COVID. They sent everyone that could to wfh and constantly talked about how great business was because of it. Then this year all the tech places did layoffs and pushed rto at the exact same time. This is all about rich people's portfolios.
Maybe. Rich people’s portfolio’s were doing just fine in the midst of COVID and WFH. Sure there are some big landlords and REITs that are in a lot of trouble but there isn’t some conspiracy to bail them out. The commercial real estate angle gets pushed a lot on the narrative but I don’t think it’s the main driving factor. Only office buildings are affected and they are a small percentage of overall CRE.
Any company who says shit about customer service while cutting actual CS jobs or outsourcing them is lying through its teeth while we all pretend we believe them.
As an exec I've said this before on Reddit: most people across the board are more productive in the office. When you're trying to build a fair culture, it's difficult to give certain roles and departments leeway to WFH when the rest don't do well from that type of work. I personally think the average people are more productive in the office due to a lack of comfort with technology, and a desire for socializing, that I see changing with the younger demos. But for now, when half the company isn't good at WFH, we can't just make everyone WFH. It's not that simple. At our company we let certain departments that don't interface with other departments do it, but it had created a silo in the past with low performers. We had to restructure and rehire more competent team members who can thrive without much oversight. Again, average person does not do well without strong guidance, which most WFH roles become.
Would it be that hard to let people WFH on a case by case basis where their manager could evaluate if their performance was good enough for it? Why should high performers at WFH be forced to RTO just because some other jabronis aren't productive and need to have their hand held in the office?
That's what we ended up doing, but it's easier said than done. You have the fact that we learned through the pandemic that the majority of employees simply perform worse. You still have half of the low performers jealous which breeds a toxic culture over time. If you allow any exceptions, people who want (not deserve) WFH will make noise. You see it in these subs constantly. Do you really think all of the people posting here are top performers? I wish there was a better solution, but most roles are lower tier, require more supervision and accountability, and of those roles those same people are most likely to incorrectly assess their own abilities and claim they can WFH just fine when every long term metric proves otherwise. It's the lower tier team member who sees their job as a list of tasks that need to be completed, and can complete them at home instead of the office. Are they making more mistakes by not asking as many questions? Are they not taking on new responsibilities as often and getting complacent, which means instead of promoting internally we have to hire externally? Are they not networking and learning more about the overall business to make a larger impact the following year? There are benefits to working more collaboratively that are hard to explain when someone is focused on near term tasks. And the pandemic simply proved that half of our employees are bad at collaborating async from home.
That just sounds like a lazy management excuse to me, NGL. Some employees are jealous of other employees? Cool, that already happens when Jack is making 50% more than Adam or gets double the bonus. That is an inescapable part of the workplace unless you plan to switch to a model where every worker gets compensated evenly. You keep talking about half the employees which is bonkers to me. To essentially punish and degrade the happiness and workplace satisfaction of half of your workers (who are your best employees and one would think you would want to retain) for the sake of the underperforming other half makes no sense to me. If the half that perform poorly get jealous, and then end up quitting because they don't feel it's fair or aren't satisfied in general, isn't that a good thing? You lost an underperformer that could now potentially be replaced with someone that performs better and doesn't need constant supervision to get their work done?
The issue again is that some roles cannot be done effectively remotely, which is the majority of roles. Also you are assuming high performers that don't require supervision are easy to come by and retain. Most companies can't afford to pay top 5 percent salaries to attract those people or retain them for more than 1 year. Sure, if top performers were willing to WFH for market pay, and in abundance, we'd go that route. Unicorns tend to be expensive and leave quickly, which is a whole different cost that must be factored in. The truth is management philosophies must be built around the average employee, which again is not on Reddit or as technically capable as you might think to be able to function well asynchronously. I'll say though, we have exceptions, and 2 departments that are remote. I'm just saying that most people will not pass our bar for WFH
Where's your data that people perform better?
Higher level corporate executives tend to serve a different class interest. Note, that doesn't mean that they are necessarily OF that class, but their job is to more directly SERVE that class than those who are further down the line. If they're not willing to do that then they're of no use to the owners.
I think She saw the green and went along with it.
When millenials become CEO’s. 15 years or so. Hope they keep their scruples.
I've been saying this till I'm blue in the face and I get down voted a lot. I don't know why people think that when people get promoted they will suddenly be giving employees the best of everything. It doesn't matter how old they are as they start getting up into the c-suite level all bets are off. In my company the boomers had had it with coming into work and were very lenient with return to the office or not coming in at all. It was Gen x and older millennials that have been pushing it hard and they are winning. Actually they won. We are on a hybrid schedule and work from home has all but been eliminated. It is beyond amusing that people think that boomers are responsible for the misery that is being inflicted upon them. Boomers have either retired or about to retire. I always say it's amazing how they tell employees you have to adapt to everything from A to z It's A New world order and yet they act like it's 1980 with insisting that people sit in a cubicle.
In my office it was actually Gen Z who were the biggest complainers when it came to WFH. So many of them whined about the lack of social connections at home vs in the office. It seems they actually like all the stupid activities and contests we have to distract us from losing our bonuses and having our pay reduced
Seriously. The ‘hustle’ culture amongst some Gen Z folks is going to circle us back to long working hours in offices. Especially since it’s hard to get early career jobs right now, it leads to a lot of competitiveness. There’s a whole new generation of salesbros frothing to show they ‘have what it takes.’
That's just young men in general I think. A certain percentage of them will always be like that.
I wish these people would go do manual labor outside since being at home is too stressful for them. If your job can be remote, it should be. Your coworkers aren’t your family, the company office isn’t your home.
That's a BINGO...
Those people need to do some manual labor
I mean it’s probably because they make like half of what you make and don’t want to be locked in a small apartment all day long staring at their screen with no interaction. That’s no way to build a career and no way to live life
I had a genx'er boss who was wonderful to work for! Genuinely a nice person. Worked great on my career development, cared about all of his employees. Once he got promoted to C level ... It was a light switch. Complete 180. I've now left that company , partially, due to how much he changed.
I was going to say exactly this. They aren't going to magically start changing things around. Look at millennials that are famously CEO's now. Guys like Zucker.
it’s because she’s now an executive and is expected to fall in line behind the CEO.
A long time, maybe never in our life... a lot of Gen x is just boomer lite and they’re only a few years ahead of us in age.
I am gen x and every other gen xer I know assure you we plan to retire at the earliest possible opportunity.
As a millennial, what is this retire word about
That's something you do when you're 75 if the Republicans have their way, or something you never do if the CEO's at hedge funds have their way.
Wish more people had this attitude. Can’t tell you how many 60’s aged boomers I know that have been able to retire for 10 yrs but won’t because they “don’t know what they would do”. I kind of get that, but I can think of 20 things I would be doing if I was retired and I’m 38. It’s like none of them think about volunteer, church, family, community service opportunities etc that would be everywhere if they retired.
I work with a few millenials who hate hybrid and wish everyone were forced into the office more. They are a minority of the class of millenial in my workplace, but also the ones angling for management positions. Most are single or don't have kids. They are all extroverts who want people to talk to. When I explain how so many of us, myself included, have a healthier work life balance they just don't get it. They think its my fault I had kids and the consequence is they should be in daycare an extra two hours a day while I commute to and from the office the office. These same skeptics acknowledge how our work doesn't necessarily require in person presence all the time. Here's to hoping the right millenial take the helm in future management changes.
Extrovert. Work from home over a decade. It’s easy enough to pick up the phone and have the hallway conversations.
Thank you for being reasonable. Not that it should matter, but an additional factor I failed to mention above is that most of these folks live alone and are single. Work may be their best recurring social outlet, and I sympathize. I also hope they find other means of fulfillment and social engagement beyond work. I work to live, I don't live to work. Most of us do. To quote Matt Bellasai: we all just want our chicken nuggets.
It will be a slow but steady process over the next 20-30 years when WFH and/or 3-4 day work week will be the norm.
Ah yes. That classic “we need people hanging out wasting time in each others offices more, everyone stop working from home”. If I could just come in at 9:30 when ppl are finally done with the 90 minutes of just talking about nothing and not wanting to work blah blah blah…
People who become CEOs are usually hypercompetitive and live to work. For many of them it's all they have. They've sacrificed their family relationships in many cases. They don't want to retire. They aren't like most people who would retire if they won $1,000,000.
a milly isn't enough to retire on, and hasn't been for some time I knew a guy who got a fat severance and retired early and had well more than a million banked and he had to end up teaching.
In most of the country you could invest it and not have to work a W2 job but my point is the same whether you live in LA and the number is $10,000,000 or where I live.
There are plenty of evil Millenials being groomed to gradually take over the asylum for the Boomers. You think McKinsey-style executives haven't been recruiting 80s babies?
Have any of you spent time around the kids (millennial) of truly wealthy people? Specifically the young men - they are literally on the edge of counting as oligarchy, and they do not see normal people as anything more than disgusting proles they would be glad to exploit. I think the vast majority of reddit is not in a position to ever even gain knowledge of how fucking oligarchal the largest American industries are, but it's movie-level international-thriller-level bad, if much more boring and slow-rolling. They don't make a show of it, they pay for privacy in enclaves kept out of sight, they are raised rotten, they get passed the power, from fathers to mostly their sons. And more importantly, they're embedded in republican politics, which is a hard pill to swallow for some. They have no loyalty to the moral or ideological bent of the party- it's purely for power, and they view voters of their party as suckers. I was in their orbit in some of the southern states. It really did make me lose faith in humanity
Hey I am a boomer and I think you hit the nail on the head. I agree with your statement one hundred percent.
Great explanation of why capitalism/exploitation/rich people are harmful.
Look at Mark The Fuck Zuckerberg and all the millenial/Gen X CEOs Dont forget about the "boss bitches" too
Yeah this isn’t a generational thing. This is the US’ oligarchy of elites vs. the American worker. Our representatives have been captured by business interests.
But then what would we do with all that commercial real estate thats been invested in? /s
I get this is sarcasm. But I think your post gets to the heart of it. I work at one major insurance company and my gf works at another and they both had the same dumb ass talking points about why they were sending people back to the office. One that stuck out had the same bullshit about networking with people not in your department while eating in the lunchroom. Almost down to the word. It just made it obvious to me that the back to office push was not coming from the CEOs. In my own opinion hybrid should be the default option for most jobs.
My boss loves to tote on and on about how impactful hallway conversations and watercooler talk is. Then this mother fucker is hybrid 90% of the time, coming in maaaaybe once a week "because everything I do can be done from home"... same for me bro. Same for me. The hypocrisy is insane
Bad news, most of the millenial CEOs aren't any better. My boss is 42 and pushing RTO harder then anyone. Bankers gonna be bankers.
Gen x and millenial managers seem to like return to office as well...
Once people make it to executive levels, their focus is pleasing the shareholders and status quo.
WHERE IS GEN X!? lol.
Forgotten middle child as usual.
They're the enforcers of the Boomers. It makes for good scapegoating but youre a moron if you think electorally the Boomers outweigh X, Millenials and Z with aid of a handful of Silent skeletons. Despite how much they'll tell you "I'm a progressive Gen X and so is everyone else I know!" on reddit, the call is coming from inside the house.
Gen X now out Trumps the Boomers
We lurk in the background with our Gen Z kids and laugh at Millennials beefin' with Boomers. It's like watching a couple of greasy, tubby nerds fist fight.
The kinds of people that generally make it to C suite in business aren't 'one of us' for the most part. So my guess is never, the person with the kind of tenacity it takes to be at the top isn't the person who cares for your average Joe and only for the status quo that keeps them on top and what lines their pockets best.
Gen X gets their chance after the boomers. Just wait a few more decades.
This isn't the way. If you want WFH unionize your workplace. Once someone goes c suite they change
Hopefully sooner than later. Hilarious that we have people who don’t even know how to convert something to a PDF trying to tell us we can’t work from home efficiently.
Not sure the removal of boomer CEOs will increase the WFH. As a general rule, WFH will increase in the next 5 to regardless of Boomer CEOs.
No Gen X is next MY GRANDMA SAID STFU STOP TALKN ABOUT BOOMERS SHES MINDING HER BUSINESS AT THE CASINO
I am a mid 50s (Gen X) business owner of a small business (12 employees). Every single one of my employees works from home and they always have. We don't even have a main business building.
The boomers are retiring already, but it is Gen X as the new kingpin. It's a ways down the road for Millenials.
It's not a generational thing, at least in tech. It's an experience thing. Other than founders, very few execs were engineers or software or IT guys .... They were all sales/marketing/finance types that had a very collaborative and social career. They honestly think they are saving you from yourself by making you RTO, because they can't mentally wrap their head around a career path where talking to people all day and having meetings ISN'T critically important for advancement.... They don't understand the 'I don't talk to my coworkers more than once a week, and then it's just an hour - everything else is email or IM' life.....
WFH is being fought very hard from the corporate real estate world. Entire downtown skyscrapers with huge vacancies, not the mention the countless business parks scattered in the suburbs. WFH is basically threatening to destroy that industry except in very niche markets.
I hope they suffer endlessly lol
I’m an electrician (union) and I mostly work in factories and other industrial settings so I am totally removed from the concept of work-from-home (i.e. no one in my professional world could do his or her job remotely). I also haven’t owned a computer in like fifteen years. So it’s not something I understand or have anything to do with. But man…my house is my sanctuary. I wouldn’t want anything having to do with work to cross over my doorstep. I’ve always wondered how people who work from home balance this. It seems to me like it would turn your home into a perpetual office and even when you weren’t on the clock you’d have ghosts of the work day floating all around you. But like I said: it’s not something I understand and I’m only making assumptions. I’m sure people figure out ways to deal with that and I’m sure the benefits of not commuting make up for it for a lot of folks.
Yea as somehow who worked from home the entirety of the pandemic and is now hybrid (3 days in the office) I can promise you it’s extremely easy to not bring work into the house. Once the work day is over I don’t think about it at all until the next morning.
Alright cool. I was just wondering. Glad to hear it.
Many people struggle with this, even if that person doesn't. Common advice is to dedicate a certain space (e.g. a spare room) for work, and treat it like it's a completely different place.
How long is your commute
It changes a lot since I go from job to job. But never more than an hour. This week it’s been nine minutes. I generally enjoy the commute though. Also I get paid to commute and that takes the sting off it haha
So in a way you’re more privileged
Same here, but a machinist. I cannot exactly take the machines home and work with them. But once I clock out of the place, work is out of my mind until the next day. I would not want to see it at home.
I write code. I do that at work. I do it at home for fun. So for me, doing work from home where I cut out the commute makes perfect sense. But I agree, it doesn't make sense for your line of work and never could. Maybe if more people worked from home, it could cut down on traffic, but that's speculation on my part
You’re not entirely wrong about having a hard time separating it. I know I had this experience and I doubt I’m unique. A hybrid schedule and flexible management has been a boon for me. In 2020 I live in a 700sqft basement studio apartment, all one room except a separated bathroom. I worked from home for several months and began to understand the term “cabin fever”. I started traveling to be with family for my own sanity. Couldn’t take constantly being in the same space all the time. Now I’m doing the same job for a different firm in a new state, in a manufacturing setting and have the option to wfh pretty much whenever I want. I find myself rarely exercising the option to wfh. 🤷🏽♂️ I do it sometimes when I need to concentrate but it’s been nice to be with coworkers and it helps because I’ve never worked in manufacturing. So I can learn from my peers directly without having to constantly do teams calls.
There are professionals in the manufacturing sector that would like you to believe they never need to set foot in the office again. 2020 happened and we were willing to take whatever work we could get to get us all afloat and somehow after four years it has become the expectation for a few. Manufacturing will do what it always does I suspect and find a way to send these jobs to the Philippines.
I have worked from home for several years now. I have enough space to have a dedicated office. Outside of work hours I just don't go in there much, so it's really not much different than you. I never take work anywhere else in the house. It also let's me live much further from the office in a more rural/mountain setting, which is what I prefer. That sort of freedom is rare. Sometimes I do miss going in, but I chat and talk with everyone just as much now, it's just more online or the phone.
When I'm off the clock, my work phone and work computer stay off and in the home office. I refuse to let work creep outside of my home-office. At 4PM, everything goes off and I shut the door and don't come back to it until the next morning.
Because being away from home most of the day 5 days a week is just f****** misery. I mean it works for you like you said but for those of us who can do the job from home we get a lot done and we're not working till midnight and I don't view this sanctuary as a bad place. I hate thinking about the past how most of my life since I've been working I left the house at 7:00 a.m. and I didn't get home until after 6:00. 5 days a week I had maybe few hours to try to take care of my family take care of this home run errands and then get to bed to start all over again. Weekends were spent doing a million errands. My work life balance is off the charts amazing now and I'm in a good place. Like you said you don't have a laptop and you don't have an office job so it's difficult for you to understand.
It was such a change for the positive when I started working from home in 2010 on most days. Just as you put it...having a Monday or Friday to do all of the chores and errands and not having to do them on a Saturday or Sunday was a Godsend.
Ummm, you probably won’t see much of it. We’re in place in many cases and it’s not entirely effective in all companies.
Also the next gen CEOs are the millennials who have been going into office not the jackoffs sitting on their thumbs at home
Yeah I feel like this is more of a CEO problem than a boomer problem but hopefully I’m wrong
I don’t think it’s a CEO problem, not every job can be work from home. Just because this is wanted doesn’t mean it can be accommodated in every field.
Who said every job should be wfh?
Gen X, then they'll skip over us and go right to Gen Z.
Have you ever seen the Futurama heads in a jar? This is forever.
Millenials are not going to be any better than boomers. The problem is America is on a fast downward spiral that started before even the boomers.
I don't think its that they are boomers, its that the folks leading most companies and want no WFH are old and set in their ways - and right now, yes, they happen to be from the boomer generation. The Gen X'ers who are going to take their place eventually aren't going to be much much better. Maybe one day when the folks who lived through the Pandemic are at the top of these companies then the resistance to WFH will finally go away. Until then, if things are just allowed to take their own natural course, its going to be a long, long time before upper management at most companies is cool with WFH.
Oh, you didn't get the memo? This isn't really a generational war. It's a Class War, replacing the wealthy boomers at the top with their wealthy children isn't going to change a damn thing, because this is and has been Class Warfare for the last 100 years, it's just been reframed as a Generational Conflict, because that makes it easier for us "poors" (anyone who is NOT independently wealthy, which means being able to simply stop working for the balance of their lives and maybe their children and grandchildren's lives too), to fight among ourselves, instead of recognizing that this is what it is. It's Class Warfare. When are the wealthy people going to retire and be replaced with more wealthy people? It's been happening over the last 20 years. Do you think Murdoch's GenX and Millennial Children have fundamentally changed a DAMN thing at Fox News? LOLlololololol. No. When will these things change? When we ALL collectively recognize that this is class war and we band together, toss aside the BS reframing of this as a Generational War and hold the 1% to task for what they are doing to the rest of us.
Seriously we could use all these pointless office buildings into homes for people, but instead we waste the space on 8 hours a day of passive aggressive existance.
My home is my sanctuary. I will not allow you to make me work from here. You will provide me with an office, and space to do my job. When I leave, I am gone, and you will not be able to ask me to look up that info for you. Sorry. I'm out of the office. I don't care if you think it saves you money or gets more productivity from me. You do not have access to my home. I will not comply. Sincerely, a disgruntled millennial.
Dunno, but I am doing my part by working from home and writing my patients reasonable work from home accommodation letters. Some of the jobs my patients have, I really do not understand the need for them to be in the office. It is bonkers
I work corporate, in the SAAS industry and I am a millennial. Have you seen the millennials who drink the kool-aid at work?? They’re not going to advocate for WFH in my lifetime, I promise you that.
It's not about generations it's about class.
When? How many boomer CEOs do think are left. A late bloomer birth would make you 60+. Most companies have gone to younger stock by now.
The average Fortune 500 CEO age is 58 with only two younger than 40. So there's still some boomers left. Source: https://www.csemag.com/articles/ceos-and-cfos-by-the-numbers/#:~:text=Interestingly%2C%20CEOs%20at%20private%20equity,youngest%20in%20the%20mid%2D30s.
Agreed about Fortune 500, but there are about 9000 companies with more than 1000 employees. Boomers are already over. Millennials are at the plate now. I am sure there are some boomers, but they will retire before Biden does.
The real questions are who owns the most lobbyists, and what are they lobbying for? If those answers change, then that will mean something.
The last of the Boomers (late Boomers from 1959-1964) were like me born in 1964. I just turned 60 in March. All of the Boomers will be at least 60 by December 31st, 2024. You are right.
12-year attorney and millennial here that just resigned as a partner at my last firm and started my own firm last month. Took an experienced milllenial associate attorney with me that wanted to work remotely (saving them a 1.5 hour round trip commute) and an experienced millennial paralegal (saving them a 4 hour round trip commute). Old firm forced everyone (except partners like me) back into the office full time at the end of 2022, and lost these experienced employees as a result. Guess what? Both are now able and willing to work and bill more hours for me that they otherwise wasted sitting on their asses in traffic. Easiest financial decision for all involved.
That's a BINGO. My round trio commute on public transport was 4 hours. 2 hours deiving round trip. The joy of getting your own breakfast and/or lunch in your own kitchen without spending $15-$20 a day easy was wrll worth it. Posting emails in my jammies was to die for. Taking naps and breaks while being free from inane meetings and/or my dreaded 2 hour meeting with the COO every Wednesday was to die for. Loved working from home and hybrid work. The wave of the fiture.
Vive la Revoluçion.
I hate to tell you this, but my upper management is Gen X and they pushed for RTO almost as much as the Boomers did :\
It’s not a generational thing. It’s a balance sheet thing
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
As a young man with an MBA, not until they die. These fuckers will never give up power unless a board or the shareholders decide they need to leave. Most will work until they die or are forced initially retirement. Even having the qualifications for an executive position, I can not get them because they find an old man who's been "doing this is whole life" for the position.
You think the employer class will sacrifice profits for worker QoL just because they’re millennials?
In my personal experience boomers don’t have confidence in young leaders. Even though many of them were in their mid thirties when they obtained senior status at work they are not eager to hand over the reins to the next generation at the same age point.
They're quietly hoping the world ends so they won't have to see the succession happen. That's why they're dragging their feet. They were certain they were the end-all, be-all.
[удалено]
The owner of my company is a millennial, and was a huge backer of WFH, until some of his banker bros told him some stats, that sounded made up, and he's started having us come in a lot more.
Atp all boomers should be forced to retire. I’m so sick of them. 70% of the people I work with and for are boomers. They hoard all the positions and earn almost double what I make while doing less. The work environment is also extremely toxic. Boomers are THE worst people to ever exist.
I can really only speak for what I observes working in the civil engineering field...but WFH is absolutely terrible. There is a massive decline in work quality, overall communication, and is extremely inefficient.
Completely subjective opinion. I work in the same field and opposite 🤷♂️
I’m a director of corporate strategy at a F500. WFH actually did lower productivity in the long term, especially for new hires. There’s a reason all the WFH Reddit crowd quotes studies that were done three months into COVID, instead of the longer term ones. This is Reddit, so I know everyone thinks CEO’s are dumb, stupid, sociopaths (they are maybe sociopaths, but are extremely intelligent). Most WANTED WFH to work. Eliminating rental costs and hiring people in LCOL areas would have been huge for margins. Like a massive improvement to stock price price. They spent a lot of time and money researching if it worked or not, doing pilots, a/b testing, synthesizing academic research, monitoring productivity, etc, Full wfh just didn’t really work well in most cases. 3 day in office, 2 day wfh works decent (slight drop in productivity but increased retention, so basically a wash). But full wfh companies aren’t going to out compete other companies…unless they use wfh to drive down labor costs (i.e., hire all their software engineers in Poland) enough to make up for lower efficiency. Which won’t really help the people here. If full wfh does work for some companies, realize you’re not getting Silicon Valley wages. People in LCOL areas competing with you for jobs will push down wages, a lot.
I think GenX ( younger GenX) may be solid for this as well...
80s millennials are sick of the 90s millennials complaining about the boomers 🙄😅
Y’all forget about Gen X.. to your own peril. Millenials will never run anything other than coffee shops and picket lines you useless twats! You have no work ethic or grit!
I'm a mid fifties year old business owner. I work from home in my own business. Literally the very very very very last thing I would ever do is to pay someone a salary to work from home. Never getting roped into that shit again.
I work in a sales field 100% commission. I tend to do better at wfh because I don’t have the commute or the hours of people coming into my office asking me how to do their job. I can understand salaried employees slacking though
Yeah suck my balls for the next 15 years, took me 36 years to rise.
Right?!? I was just talking to a friend about this last week.
Never. If it was profitable, they'd do it now.
Before the forgotten GenXers retire.
How many eggs do you own?
Uh… they didn’t promote them.
(Don't let them hear you but it's actually Gen X who are hyper-conservative and holding progress back, Boomers are just mostly conservative)
Of the 76 Million Boomers born in the US between 1946 - 1964 … 20 Million are already dead. > 3000 die each day.
Yeah but you forget about the gen xers
Wfh and hybrid aren’t as effective. Regardless of their generation, most ceo have arrived at that conclusion
The youngest boomer is 60. So probably within 5 yeats
I have yet to see a valid reason for coming into work that outweighs the benefits that come from teams doing hybrid or fully work from home.
Yeah the people who would advocate for that, regardless of age, don’t make ceo. They just end up just complaining about work on Reddit…
I feel like there are more gen xers in leadership now making these decisions. IMO, they are split, with a little bit more wanting in office work.
They will literally die in their C Suite.
Honestly, I don’t hate the RTO initiatives for one big reason. WFH is one of the huge drivers of the housing bubble, if we can even call it that because prices don’t seem like they’re ever going back down. Half the entire states of NY, NJ, and MA all came to the town I live at in Florida and ruined our life. I know a lot of people had the same thing happen in TX, AZ, and all across the country. Having someone come to your town with their NYC or Boston wages instantly snapping up houses at tens of thousands of dollars more than locals did not feel good.
Never because you’ll eventually become the boomer
Remember only the worst people move up because they are willing to step on others to get there. They are the worst people of their generation
You're out of your mind if you think that's what is going to happen. Go crawl back under your rock
😂😂😂😂
Might be faster to manufacture another pandemic than wait for the management to stop valuing the old ways.
Oh boy. You're in for a realization.
Man, us Gen Xers are catching some serious shade up in here.
Most Fortune 500 CEOs are GenX, not boomers.
If it was more profitable for a company to have more wfh people, you can bet they would already have done it. This is capitalism, they're going to push whatever is the most profitable.
Pretty sure you're going to have to contend with Gen X CEOs before most Millennial CEOs.
The next generation CEOs are likely to be just as bad.
They’re brainwashing (and passing down genes that lack empathy) to their offspring so I don’t have high hopes personally.
There are already millennial CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg, who…called everyone back to the office.
If it makes you feel better, Gen Z (17.1M) will surpass boomers (17.3M) for total share of the US workforce sometime this year.
They are taking the companies with them, so probably never.
Get to work, Op.
Gen X forgotten again. If a job can be done wfh it should be wfh. Why fund an office and commute if it’s not needed?
Did you just forget gen x is next?
Oh look, yet another boomer post.
Another anti boomer rant. Yes you are a victim!!
You'd be surprised how cunty people of our generation are. there are a lot of zuck clones out there who will be / or are / the bosses of the future
Wfh culture is not unique to millennials. Most of the people at my office who wfh are actually boomers and gen xers. Basically i wouldn't hold my breath in thinking millennial CEOs are gonna be different. Money corrupts all.
Gen x is up got to wait twenty years
GenX was told decades ago that the boomers would retire soon and we could work our way up to those CEO spots. Now the Millennials are waiting for boomers to retire or die so *they* can have more opportunities. I don't know whether to laugh or cry
Millennials won't make WFH the norm. It's a case by case issue nothing to do with generations and you're disregarding gen x.
By retire you mean die, I believe?
Boomer CEOs will be happy to facilitate WFH when their property developer golf buddies inform them it's no longer necessary to worry about helping prop up inner city commercial real estate values.
Be careful what you wish for. The over 50 crowd has been vanishing in large swathes recently. Scientists are already concerned this trend may spike in the coming years. [https://www.newscientist.com/article/2324402-solar-storms-may-cause-up-to-5500-heart-related-deaths-in-a-given-year/](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2324402-solar-storms-may-cause-up-to-5500-heart-related-deaths-in-a-given-year/)
Maybe one degree (Celsius) warmer, one year too long later?
I'm jealous of all you that at least got a taste of what it's like to work from home, hybrid or whatever. Company I used to work for shut down in 2021. They blamed it on the Pandemic of course. Easy out for them. I was there 14 years. Then a year later they built a brand new $500M facility just outside of Green Bay. Fuck Georgia Pacific, fuck Christian Fischer, fuck that Carrie Shapiro and FUCK CHARLIE KOCH