• @garretble
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    14122 days ago

    “Could be?”

    We know it is. I don’t wish for Covid again, but remember when all the waterways started clearing up (didn’t dolphins show up in Venice at some point?) and the smog cleared in places that haven’t seen a blue sky in decades?

      • Transporter Room 3
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        1222 days ago

        You joke, but a coworker literally said “well there’s no way to really know for sure it was because people were staying inside, it was probably just more forest food than usual that spring” when I pointed out a positive if covid being nature bouncing back just a tiny bit.

        Also can someone tell me what “forest food” is? Sure I know what he meant but that’s no fun

        • andrew
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          122 days ago

          Forest food in the form of more sunlight from reduced smog lol.

    • @[email protected]
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      1022 days ago

      We had a perfect enforced experiment to show that remote work for many positions was just as effective, that people were happier, the environment improved, and that big societal changes were totally possible. Then rich people decided the ideal goal for society was just doing all the same bad shit we’d been doing for decades.

  • Vaquedoso
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    7322 days ago

    Who cares about the environment when we could be hoarding more money. Can anybody please think about those poor CEOs? :(

    • @Altofaltception
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      22 days ago

      CEOs can make more money by offloading office costs to the employee - if your work force is remote, you don’t need to pay for an office space.

      This increases your profit, because your expenses are lower.

      • @krashmo
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        4122 days ago

        But you can’t invest all that stolen money in inflated office building real estate prices either.

        • @[email protected]
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          922 days ago

          This exactly. My boss said the quiet part out loud the other day.

          The CEO owns the building. He pays for the electrical, water, etc. All of that is wasted when only a handful of people come into the office.

          So…he required all of us to be in the office so that his investment works out.

          • @eltrain123
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            422 days ago

            Or he could sell the asset, recoup what value he can from it, and save the utility/service/material expense associated with running a physical office.

            It will eventually even out. It takes time for new business to displace old models, but it will eventually work itself out. In business, ‘no cost’ vs ‘some cost’ will always move toward ‘no cost’. In the short term, businesses that hold physical property (at least the ones that don’t need physical office space) are trying to do what they can to minimize the loss of value from falling commercial real estate values. Inflate the value, sell the asset, then let someone else take the loss.

            • @[email protected]
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              222 days ago

              Yeah, but the CEO personally profits from RTO, while the company profits from reducing their office footprint. Easy choice. He’s not loyal to the company and neither should @[email protected] be.

              • @Buddahriffic
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                121 days ago

                If the company is publically traded, shareholders could sue over that conflict of interest.

      • Fogle
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        422 days ago

        And it also helps the employees cause they can claim part of their living expenses for business use

        • @[email protected]
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          21 days ago

          Not in the US. They took that away, I think with one of Trump’s “tax cuts”. Now you can only claim it if you are a business (like a contractor or an independent lawyer).

    • Jaysyn
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      722 days ago

      Our CEO is making more money by getting rid of our large, empty office space, giving us yet another advantage over our competitors.

  • @Magister
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    22 days ago

    Never, never, never, will I spend 1h the morning and 1h the evening in traffic jam to do 15 miles, never again.

    EDIT: in winter snow storm it was 2-3h !!!

    • sylver_dragon
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      1422 days ago

      Amen.
      I was one day a week in the office during the pandemic. We had assets which required a physical presence, but with a rotating shift of 1-2 people in the office each day, we could keep the required coverage. Then my workplace started bringing us back to the office in 2022. It started with 3 days a week and we started hearing rumors of a full return to office. It was well know that upper management was hostile to remote work. So, I flipped my LinkedIn profile to “looking” (or whatever the setting was called, it’s been a while). And I started both actively applying and responding to recruiters. I eventually got a message from a reciter who led with “REMOTE WORK OPPORTUNITY”, yes the message started in ALL CAPS, though the rest was normal and hit all the points I was interested in. I figured, what the hell, can’t hurt to talk. That was just shy of two years ago, I have been into an office since late 2022. It’s going to have to be a hell of a bad situation for me to deal with commuting again.

    • @[email protected]
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      822 days ago

      Same for me. Last day i worked in an office was March 2020. Haven’t done a single day since and don’t intend to ever again

      • @Magister
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        222 days ago

        Same, March 2020, in 2020-2022 I never went to office not even one day. 2023 got another contract for a year, went there 3 or 4 times in the year to take/bring back some hardware I needed for development. 2024 new remote job 500kms away, go there 2 days every 10 weeks, stay at hotel, they pay.

      • @Magister
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        222 days ago

        2 or 4 days every 10 weeks, it’s 500kms away (300 miles) I stay at hotel

  • @[email protected]
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    4722 days ago

    I’ve been forced back to the office. I hate it. I hate the commute. I hate the cubicle. I hate the forced small talk interaction with coworkers.

    I’m more productive when I worked remote. Less hassled. Less tired from not having to commute.

    It makes me not want to work here any longer.

      • @WindyRebel
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        221 days ago

        I’m already into all that shit!

    • Prox
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      1022 days ago

      Sooooo… quit?

      When my org announced RTO, I started looking for another job. A month later I had a new gig and a nice pay bump. Nobody’s gonna look out for you but you, my friend.

    • @SendMePhotos
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      222 days ago

      For some reason I read that as, “co-workers” and imagined two cows drinking coffee by the water machine chit chatting about nothing.

      • @MrVilliam
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        322 days ago

        The supply and demand of labor. Labor is a market and the market has decided that office work that can be done remotely but is being required to be done in person in an expensive city costs significantly more, either due to housing costs in the city or the cost of longer commutes. Don’t like it? Move your office to a cheaper, less populated location.

  • gradyp
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    22 days ago

    I’m someone who vastly prefers to work in an office. It’s kind of a pain in the ass dealing with remote workers, meetings having gone to teams instead of in person, it just feels impersonal and as a former manager it is harder to maintain and keep your staff engaged.

    But this is the modern workforce, and we have plenty of evidence that productivity is still there with a hybrid or remote office. When I was a manager I had to change my strategies, I had to adapt and learn, just like everything else I do in my professional life. Now that I am part of leadership but without direct reports, it’s just more adapting and learning that I am doing to stay relevant.

    poor management is why all these companies are trying to force people back, it’s just people who cannot adapt.

  • @[email protected]
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    22 days ago

    RTO, much like everything else is about rich people. The Canadian Federal government just announced that all public servants must be in office 60% of the time by September (up from 40%). And the only reason is due to lobbying by real estate holders and businesses downtown.

    I’m so fucking tired of rich people not only having the advantage of being rich but also getting every other advantage handed to them by the government.

    • @[email protected]
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      22 days ago

      Yeah. It’s why I have no respect for any regular person who looks out for these rich fuckers.

      They never, ever look out for us.

  • @hark
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    2622 days ago

    Could be? It absolutely is! That would be an extra 50 miles I would have to drive every weekday. They have entire global organizations meeting together to figure out where to set goals for cutting emissions, but these easily-avoidable emissions are fine apparently. The so-called “leaders” aren’t taking the problem seriously.

  • @[email protected]
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    1822 days ago

    But my company says it cares for the environment and does environmental things like improving algorithms for patches to reduce computing power needed and therefore save the energy worldwide (an actual example of a recent win by our environment consciousness team right after forcing thousands of people to RTO)

  • @ChicoSuave
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    1522 days ago

    You mean the same companies responsible for our current climate may not care about what RTO does to their workers or the world?

    : shocked Pikachu:

  • @Burn_The_Right
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    1522 days ago

    It’s terrible for everyone except billionaire property investors.

  • @[email protected]
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    1222 days ago

    The cats out of the bag, and businesses know it.

    This is why they never want us succeeding in improving our lives. It reveals how they’ve been lying to us and we were just stupid enough to go along with it.

  • @RememberTheApollo_
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    1122 days ago

    Already is.

    My commute is already about 10% longer thanks to the extra traffic. People fled the city and moved to the burbs after covid, then RTO hit and now a bunch of them are on the roads. Easily added a measurable amount of time to my drive, and I’ve been doing the same commute for a decade.

  • @yeahiknow3
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    1022 days ago

    “Could be?” Like the way falling on your head from 5 stories up “could be” unhealthy?

  • Seraph
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    22 days ago

    Some Executives have no understanding of the need for Deep Work and can’t imagine how the office isn’t good for it.

    The problem is executives have no need of deep work, that’s what they hire others for. Bad executives don’t understand this and assume you need what they need.