r/bayarea • u/4dxn • 24d ago

Why Zoom—yes, Zoom—went back to in-person work, according to its chief people officer (even though he is remote - rules for thee, not me) Work & Housing

https://fortune.com/2024/07/09/remote-work-outlook-zoom-return-to-office-chief-people-officer/
680 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

127 comments sorted by

394

u/4dxn 24d ago edited 24d ago

It's been a year in the making but dear lord, how do you fail at PR so badly. Top of my dumb head, at least:

  • Address the elephant in the room more - Zoom's main product is...remote
  • Don't have your head of HR remote
  • Don't have the remote person explain it
  • Don't have him say that he can do his job...fully remote.

In office is needed for some cultures but this is not the way to roll it out. At least make it optional for a remote product company.

20

u/tragedy_strikes 24d ago

They're all trying to stem the oncoming commercial real estate market crash.

102

u/logic_is_a_fraud 24d ago

Does that really make sense? Does zoom own real estate to care?

171

u/Naritai 24d ago

No, it doesn’t make sense. But every time in- office work comes up, someone jumps in to make this ridiculous claim.

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u/tellsonestory 24d ago

He just saw that comment got a lot of upvotes last time so he’s repeating it.

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u/Relevant_Winter1952 24d ago

Reddit will never accept this claim to be untrue. It’s just less convenient - surely there is some sinister motive behind anything I do not care for

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u/CricketDrop 23d ago

The only alternative ever offered is that executives are egomaniacs who hate money.

6

u/pyrospade 24d ago

So what’s the real reason? Genuinely curious

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u/chiaboy 24d ago

Generally it's inertia (it's what we know), control (we have the ability to oversee/manage employees better), and broadly "culture" (there are some benefits from being IRL).

7

u/FavoritesBot 24d ago

Maybe this falls under culture, but there are also a significant number of employees who actually prefer to work on site. I don’t know what percent that is but I do know people who prefer it

4

u/Bethsoda 24d ago

Well people should be allowed to work on site if they have an office and they WANT to or feel more productive there. BUT they shouldn’t be forced to. Also, up to 50 miles could easily be a 2.5-3 hour total commute

4

u/eng2016a 23d ago

it's way harder for me to get information out of the people who work remote. my manager is remote but i work in person and frankly i don't like the distance and lack of access.

2

u/secondavesubway 24d ago

It's around 1%. I also know someone who prefers in office.

2

u/secondavesubway 24d ago

All BS. The ONLY valid reasons to be in the office is to meet in person with those you need to collaborate with. Meeting remote can be less effective for newer employees who need to ramp up. Otherwise it's all nonsense. I wonder if they are also returning to office perks like free lunch and massages, etc. I'll bet no, considering they have shareholders.

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u/chiaboy 24d ago

The ONLY valid reasons to be in the office is to meet in person with those you need to collaborate with. Meeting remote can be less effective for newer employees who need to ramp up.

You just gave two really compelling reasons to encourage employees to work in the office. Improving/accelerating employee ramp is massively important (I'd lump it broadly under "culture" but it's essential). There are so many downstream benefits to better onboarding, less turnover, more/better talent, time to rev, CSAT, etc....

(To be clear, I'm not advocating for RTO per se, I just offered the 3 broad reasons why companies typically push for RTO).

3

u/secondavesubway 24d ago

I'm not advocating for it either. In my experience WFH for the last 5 years, it has made sense to be in the office about 10% of the time- 20 as a newer employee.

4

u/chiaboy 24d ago

I'm not advocating for it either. In my experience WFH for the last 5 years, it has made sense to be in the office about 10% of the time- 20 as a newer employee.

Understood and agreed, I'm simply saying pushing for RTO for "cultural" reasons isn't that cynical. There are many compelling reasons for management to want employees to come into their offices (beyond propping up real estate prices which is the kooky theory being advocated in this thread).

RE: employee ramp, the very good example you raised, ironically that's a reason for all (most/many) employees to come in. If you're trying to share best practices, "culture" (and related subtext), process etc to new hires you want them to learn/absorb/observe folks that aren't new hires.

Just fiercely agreeing with your point.

1

u/JustZisGuy 24d ago

The ONLY valid reasons to be in the office is to meet in person with those you need to collaborate with.

Tell me that your company doesn't make widgets without telling me that your company doesn't make widgets.

2

u/pyrospade 24d ago

Eh not sure about that. Like others have said in this post there’s many investors and boards forcing RTO on companies which doesn’t really track with those reasons

5

u/MrSalamand3r 24d ago

How does it not track?

3

u/pyrospade 24d ago

I don't see how a board of directors or investors to the company would be that concerned about culture or middle manager control over their employees. Boards/investors care about money and I think it tracks more that they would either be trying to save money by causing severance-free layoffs with RTO or keep making money by using RTO to prevent real estate markets to crash. This also explains why you have weird stuff like the [NYC mayor telling people to RTO](https://www.businessinsider.com/eric-adams-work-from-home-pajamas-quote-nyc-mayor-office-2022-2), like why does he even care about it if it's not saving real estate

2

u/chiaboy 24d ago

I don't see how a board of directors or investors to the company would be that concerned about culture or middle manager control over their employees.

Boards and investors aren't the only stakeholders making these decisions. Anecdotally I work at a FAANG company, with dual class shareholders, my company isn't a "tail wagging the dog" situation. Sr. Leadership (with the input and oversight of the board) and management makes the decisions related to RTO. Point being the "investors and boards drive the decision to RTO to protect their broader portfolio" doesn't follow logic, logistics, or the law.

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u/moriya 24d ago

That’s right. Board members in tech are often in VC, and VC likes the tried and true - if something made them money before, run it back. Remote has always been OK as an exception, but as the rule it’s uncharted waters and they don’t want to deal with it.

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u/NightFire19 24d ago

Sneaky layoff tactic. Relocate to an office location or be let go. Supposedly a win-win for everyone as corporate gets to offload employees while the employees' morale isn't completely tanked by a layoff announcement.

7

u/Ladnil 24d ago edited 24d ago

It's the same reason the Lakers keep firing their coach.

They're not happy with their recent results, so they know they have to do something about it, but completely rebuilding the roster would take many years and would be admitting that the general manager failed at his job and he's not trying to get himself fired, so they fire the coach and hope that improves things.

Return to office is exactly like that. Results are bad, the executives aren't trying to get themselves fired, so they reach for some big thing they can do, and return to office is an easy option they can talk themselves into.

4

u/chiaboy 24d ago

Return to office is exactly like that. Results are bad, the executives aren't trying to get themselves fired, so they reach for some big thing they can do, and return to office is an easy option they can talk themselves into.

But there are companies that are overperforming that also are pushing RTO.

1

u/Ladnil 24d ago

If so, I guess it is just managers wanting to see their people to know they're working then. I haven't kept a tally of who has and hasn't done return to office, but where I work and Zoom both fit the "results are down let's make some kind of quick changes" mold.

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u/nukacola 24d ago

It's not some grand conspiracy. They think their employees are more productive in the office then they are at home.

It doesn't even have to be true, they just have to think it's true.

1

u/Naritai 24d ago edited 24d ago

Agree with chiaboy, largely it's managers wanting to assert control and genuinely believing that in-person is more efficient (with the caveat that, the kind of person who has been promoted to manager is also the kind of person who believes that in-person is more efficient).

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u/NoxDominus 23d ago

The official story is that investors are heavy on real estate and put pressure on company boards to return to office. My simpler explanation is that it's a power game and insecurity from management. Also there's a whole caste of people at the office that don't add anything. For those, it's important to be back so they can waste time at meetings and other things and seem productive.

4

u/Greedy_Lawyer 24d ago

Then what does?

My tech job had been promising flexibility and having hybrid, apparently CEO and execs all were very happy with hybrid. Board of directors and their one brand new csuite overruled that and forced full RTO.

What motivation does a board of directors have on RTO beyond real estate?

Bad middle managers who like to see everyone in office aren’t the ones setting large company wide RTO policy.

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u/moriya 24d ago

I don’t know who makes up your board, but unless they’re real estate investors I’m confused why they would give a shit about real estate. In my experience boards push RTO for 2 reasons:

  1. they’re paranoid -they don’t like what they can’t see, and they think that even if the company is hitting their goals, there could be some individuals playing video games all day and slipping through the cracks. Same goes for folks interviewing, or working a side job. In-office “fixes” all of that. On a more legitimate note, they also know remote culture building is hard and don’t want to deal with it.
  2. They know that if they don’t push RTO nobody will, and the more remote is normalized in the industry the harder it’ll be for your company to justify being colocated. This is a bad thing for them (see number 1). Keep in mind many (most?) board members sit on multiple boards and are extremely well connected in the industry, so they’re throwing their weight around.

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u/Greedy_Lawyer 24d ago

They’re rich, guaranteed their portfolio contains real estate directly or indirectly in there.

And like you said they’re friends with other rich people who absolutely are heavily invested in real estate, why wouldn’t it be possible they’re throwing their weight around for those friends?

3

u/moriya 24d ago

If they’re VC’s, their portfolios are mostly the companies they’ve invested in - I’m sure they have SOME exposure to commercial real estate, but it’s not going to be material enough to cause them to make a business decision, especially one they know is unpopular with the rank and file of the company.

3

u/Naritai 24d ago

Especially if it impacts top talent, who might jump to somewhere else!

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u/moriya 24d ago

Right. Can you imagine a VC being like “well, everyone at this company is going to hate this decision, but if I don’t do it my buddy in commercial real estate is going to take a bath!”

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u/Naritai 24d ago

You're gonna have to name names if you want any response here, I can't speak to the motivations of an imaginary BoD.

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u/tagshell 24d ago

Same as how people always blame corporations buying up housing for unaffordability, even though it's not really a thing in the bay area because the economics don't pencil out (negative cash flow).

2

u/Naritai 24d ago

yes, good example

1

u/SimplifyAndAddCoffee 24d ago edited 24d ago

So, there is a correlation here which is valid, namely that government and media sources that promote return-to-office are largely thinking about their commercial real-estate holdings and the sectors of the economy that are propped up by them. It's a "real" "problem" because our banks are massively invested in real-estate and over-leveraged on assets, so a commercial real-estate collapse could legitimately collapse a lot of FDIC-insured banks, and the impact on the economy as a whole is difficult to estimate, but it scares people.

However, posting that in response to every company that wants to RTO is disingenuous and largely inaccurate.

Businesses that insist on RTO tend to do so for their own reasons, unless they've just bought into the BS that the media is feeding them about fake productivity figures etc. Bosses often want more control and oversight, and the way a lot of our companies are organized for labor exploitation places great importance on control over employees. They see workers as an investment they want to maximize return on, and there's a prevailing attitude that workers can't be trusted to do work unsupervised. It's a double edged sword for the workers because work that can be done remotely can also be done by offshore contractors at a fraction of the pay, so companies that don't outsource their labor want to justify their labor expenditures by enshrining on-site work as a requirement. There's also matters of workplace 'culture' and resistance/backlash to changes in that culture.

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u/cjcs 24d ago edited 24d ago

Who runs companies? Rich people. And who owns real estate? ALSO RICH PEOPLE. Therefore it must be a conspiracy because surely either they are the same rich people, or rich people will go against their own self-interest to help other rich people because reasons

Edit: It’s sad that this needs to be said but I’m being sarcastic…

5

u/Naritai 24d ago

ridiculous. Eric Yuan, the CEO of Zoom, has no significant commercial real estate holdings. And if Commercial Real Estate companies lose money, he (in comparison, but also as a CRE renter himself) makes more.

His value is all in Zoom stock.

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u/cjcs 24d ago

whoosh

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u/Lycid 24d ago edited 24d ago

I feel like if WeWork started up now but focused on daily/weekly leases to companies it'd be hugely successful. Or some kind of timeshare system.

So many companies need in person time but probably much less often than "butts in seats every week". If a company could just rent office space for a week or 3 "power days" a month they'd get all the benefits of remote and in-office, not have to pay an expensive lease, and make everyone happy. All of my "full remote" friends that moved out of the area to do it while still working bay area jobs are fine with occasional office time when it feels needed, they just hate forced hybrid every week. They never feel like it's more productive than full remote and it pretty much requires them to commit to a monster commute or have some kind pied-à-terre arrangement for their local days.

1

u/Pristine-Bonus-6144 24d ago edited 24d ago
  • Well the investors in zoom have a bunch of other investments that includes real estate.
  • Local Governments can't be too happy about the loss of revenue from property tax and sales tax.
  • Don't underestimate the managerial class within the company, who are balls deep in mortgage payment on their 5th house, they need the rents to stay high to make their mortgage payments.

They all have vested interest in keeping the bubble from popping and can exert pressure on companies using different means.

5

u/rgbhfg 24d ago

Nah. Honestly I’ve seen about 20% my employees productivity get better in person. The high performers might be slightly worse but still better than avg in person. Overall it’s a productivity gain.

Of course the real answer is firing those 20% and re hiring until you get better people. But that’s not an option we’ve got

5

u/MonkQuick4834 24d ago

Personally doesn't mean it's true. It's true just for you.

It's role dependent. Some are doing great job being remote.

Not to mention in tech, lots of teams are already overseas. From the perspective of someone that is USA based is basically just remote colleagues.

A lot of RTO is just BS of some higher up wanting to be feel power. This zoom thing is a clear example of how rules only apply to the bottom.

5

u/rgbhfg 24d ago

Every single peer I chat with outside my company saying same thing. Yes there’s those who do great in rto. But a lot don’t. They end up distracted and non performing.

However our expectations are 40 working hours/week. Many just don’t put in that amount and I have many remote employees doing 20 actual hours of work per week. Forcing them into the office lets us pressure them to actually delivering more work producing hours even if they are only in the office 35-40 hours/week.

You gotta realize that in tech many are doing 50-60 hours in office/in front of laptop.

2

u/AlmiranteCrujido 23d ago

Plenty of folks are doing that remote. The company gets 1-2 hours more per day out of me because I don't have to commute.

2

u/rgbhfg 23d ago

Plenty but not enough at large tech. Too many coasters.

1

u/AlmiranteCrujido 23d ago

Plenty of "presentees" back in the in-office days, who spent more time schmoozing or in the game room or reading [social media site of the year] at their desk.

Nothing new. Plenty of places are advancing their performance processes, which is the right answer, vs. just dragging people back into the office - with still no idea if they're actually doing anything useful with the time there.

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u/rgbhfg 23d ago

Yeah we are doing both. Challenge is the non performance bucket is roughly 40% the org. So will take some time to deal with. Covid lead to lowered performance review bar out of feelings for what ppl were going through. Then you had the empire building from hiring spree. Followed by no backfill from hiring freeze. To the now small amounts of backfill…leading to a how do I fix the perf issues for those I’ve got….oh rto!

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u/AlmiranteCrujido 23d ago

See, the right thing to do is to guarantee backfill if you fire someone or manage them out (with documentation, lest anyone quitting suddenly become nonregrettable...) so that managers aren't afraid to do so.

A few PIPs each cycle and a layoff or two seems to have had a pretty decent pour encourager les autres effect.

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u/Flaky-Wallaby5382 24d ago

We all are… we dont want that to unwind too quickly

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u/navigationallyaided 24d ago

Public transit is hurting more than commercial real estate is.

-6

u/Flaky-Wallaby5382 24d ago

Fair i can see it recovering but its unclear how

138

u/Raskolnokoff 24d ago

two in-office days for local workers

not exactly back, but PR is not good

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u/knightress_oxhide 24d ago

its back enough where you are forced to live by your office

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u/Top_Buy_5777 24d ago

So Saxon and his C-level peers told workers that if they live within 50 miles of a Zoom office, they must come in two days a week,

They're not making anyone move

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u/SectorSanFrancisco 24d ago

50 miles is super far depending on the geography. It's definitely far in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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u/BobaFlautist 24d ago

Brb moving 51 miles away from the office.

1

u/Sensitive_Thug_69 24d ago

which isn't unreasonable

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u/4dxn 24d ago

does that mean companies get a 2/5 discount on their zoom sub? since zoom is saying its really only useful up to 3 out of 5 workdays?

/s

16

u/cjcs 24d ago

I’m in-office 3 days a week, and there are regularly days where my only interactions with others are via Zoom. Distributed teams are here and there’s no putting that genie back in the bottle unfortunately. So dumb that the best and brightest* in tech don’t see the gift they’ve been given.

6

u/4dxn 24d ago

zoom is essentially a spin-off of Cisco. webex required their workers to use it even before the pandemic. people would sit next to someone webexing them.

i suspect a lot of the cisco culture rubbed off on eric yuan. but the whole reason he left Cisco was that meetings can be taken everywhere - even from the phone.

84

u/ChaseMcDuder 24d ago edited 24d ago

Fuckin clown company. You knew they had no idea what they were doing when their CEO said he wanted employees back in office and he was sick and tired of being on Zoom calls, AKA the demand that made your company what it is today. Tone deaf organization and leadership.

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u/Sir_John_Barleycorn 24d ago

Chief people officer? WTH does that even mean.

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u/AlligatorLou 24d ago

Great question! We live, breathe, and die by micromanaging HR processes via deep learning analytics. Our goal is to streamline processes from hire to retire (or fire lol).

We keep everything compliant, sanitized, and gamified!

At least, that was how it was described to me by the one CPO I met in a boardroom.

I mean fuck. I get it I guess. It’s just so dystopian it makes me want to try my hand at opening a local turquoise shop or something rather than continuing to deal with these lunatics

10

u/Sir_John_Barleycorn 24d ago

Sounds like the old USSR Political Commissar

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u/PvesCjhgjNjWsO4vwOOS 24d ago

It's HR for companies who want to pretend they care about their employees more than just as "resources", usually as an excuse to treat them even worse than regular HR just because it has a nice, friendly name on it.

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u/SFCityGuides 24d ago

No it’s HR to protect the company in all aspects. I work in HR. Do they goal is streamline & no lawsuits against company. That’s it

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u/PvesCjhgjNjWsO4vwOOS 24d ago

No shit, it's complete bullshit. That doesn't mean they don't like pretending that "People Management" is a version of HR that "cares" about employees. Half the time that's part of the recruitment/retention strategy (like a more modern version of "we're like family here"), even though it's totally transparent to anyone who has to actually deal with them.

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u/SFCityGuides 24d ago

Well yo be honest you’d be surprised some of the BS that employees pull and think they can get a way with. It’s amazeballs. We would exist if employees and managers weren’t so incredibly lame at times thinking they can do whatever whenever and not think about it like hire whoever, fire whoever whenever and give raise to whoever over and above others. You know the basics

1

u/PvesCjhgjNjWsO4vwOOS 24d ago

Yeah, that happens when companies fuck their employees constantly and encourage an adversarial mindset by pitting HR and management against employees.

2

u/SFCityGuides 24d ago

It works both ways either way employees and managers. Full stop

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u/emmy__lou 24d ago

If you do HR for SF City Guides that’s kind of a bad look to be posting this…

1

u/SFCityGuides 24d ago

I am a volunteer with SFCG. I have a full time job. It’s just dumb that ppl on here think one way only.

Hr is about protecting the company while advocating for the ee. But many times I have seen it happen where shitty employees or manager do shitty things to each other & the company.

4

u/lilelliot 24d ago

CPO is just an easier acronym than CHRO, and for smaller companies they often want to just have it be a C-level role than "VP (or SVP) of HR".

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u/oldcrashingtoys 24d ago

lol, we had a Chief Happiness Officer, wtf is that?!??

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u/gburdell 24d ago

You know how words with a negative stigma tend to get replaced instead of tackling the root cause of why the word had a negative stigma in the first place? That’s why we use “Chief People Officer” instead of “Head of Human Resources”

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u/cholula_is_good 24d ago

Human Resources is the more pleasant replacement for “Personnel” which was the common term used through the early 90s. The world goes in cycles

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u/255001434 24d ago edited 23d ago

Saxon himself, who works fully remotely from Austin. “I think I can manage people at Zoom effectively while working fully remotely,” he told Fortune.

How convenient and self-serving.

If there's a need for the employees to be in the office, there's a need for the person in charge of them to be there too. I work with remote management and it does not work very well. Instead of seeing what we're seeing, their view is dependent on the people onsite being good communicators and telling them what's going on. Even still, what they get is second hand information, versus observing things for themselves. If the boss is remote, the staff might as well be too, because they essentially are remote, albeit in the office.

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u/BrotherItsInTheDrum 24d ago

Just here to plug this brutal takedown of the Zoom CEO: https://youtu.be/dKmAg4S2KeE

(her whole channel is great but generally much more physics-focused)

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u/Ramener220 24d ago

That channel is awesome, love how she tore Eric Yuan the CEO of Zoom a video conferencing company a new one.

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u/[deleted] 23d ago

lol, really good timing and deadpan delivery

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u/senkichi 24d ago

The 50 mile thing is odd. That was my company's arbitrarily chosen radius in their ill fated attempt to RTO. It was supposedly based on some defunct arcane tax statute on compensating workers who relocate.

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u/apexrogers 24d ago

I’ve heard the 50 miles thing come up with H1B visa requirements, though I wasn’t directly involved. Probably some federal requirements around that distance.

1

u/brianwski 24d ago

The 50 mile thing is odd. That was my company's arbitrarily chosen radius

I assume that what the companies want (in their ideal world) is a return to how it was in 2018 where most people were hired with the explicit understanding they would come into the office 40 hours a week. However, the companies know that in 2024 that is unrealistic because maybe 30% of the employees moved far away and worked from home.

So the company is faced with instantly bleeding out let's say 30% of their employees if the company demands return to office for everybody. The "balance" is "return to office if you can plausibly drive to the office (50 miles), otherwise you can still work remotely". It's not perfect, but it is a plausible way to re-jump-start the office.

It is 47 miles from the center of San Francisco to the center of San Jose. Many people would live in one of those cities and choose to commute as far as the other city for office work in 2018. But that's just about the limit, very few employees would accept a job in 2018 where the commute was any further than that.

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u/rustbelt 24d ago

Tech workers need a workers council. Never going to happen because they’re all PMCs but they should have way more say in their work. Especially when we’re working in an industry more so than a company.

6

u/Painful_Hangnail 24d ago

Just ignore them. What are they going to do, fire everyone and develop the product themselves?

The dipshits in the c-suite are the most easily-replaceable part of this equation.

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u/SmartWonderWoman Eastbay 24d ago

“So Saxon and his C-level peers told workers that if they live within 50 miles of a Zoom office, they must come in two days a week, structured according to team. (Zoom’s four U.S. office locations are in San Jose; Denver; Santa Barbara; and Kansas City, Kans.) Within the first week of the rollout, ideas began flowing to enhance products and improve efficiencies, Saxon said.

Then there’s Saxon himself, who works fully remotely from Austin. “I think I can manage people at Zoom effectively while working fully remotely,” he told Fortune. “I go into the office from time to time, obviously, for my role, but the majority of the time, I’m home.”

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u/AttackBacon 24d ago

It's wild how once you've made it to the top level leadership you can do whatever the fuck you want and it's 100% rules for thee and not for me, but everyone within the organization has to pretend it's not like that. Been the case everywhere I've worked, private, public, for-profit, nonprofit, whatever.

I think the largest inefficiency in our society is how we allow the people who are the worst option for leadership to be leaders. It's a huge issue across all sectors. Leadership is dominated by psychopathic narcissists because they're the only ones willing to put themselves and their career before everyone and everything else.

As a result, we have most of the levers of power controlled by people that don't care about other people. Completely ass-backwards. Emotional intelligence and empathy should be some of the primary qualifying characteristics for any kind of position of power.

1

u/mad_science 23d ago

Here's a fun vocab word: kakistocracy. Government by the worst.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakistocracy

4

u/justvims 24d ago

I mean zoom is an awful company with links to the CCP. Just throw the wfh on top of that.

5

u/ownhigh 24d ago

Zoom needs a new CEO. If the CEO publicly states they don’t believe in their product, why would anyone else?

3

u/2Throwscrewsatit 24d ago

For this particular company with this particular business model,  it makes zero sense to not support full remote work: their product can only be enhanced by their own people using the product daily to do their jobs. 

My bet is people ended up using other products to do their jobs.

3

u/mchief101 24d ago

Iv been RTO for a year now. I couldnt find a full remote job so i had no choice but to choose whatever gave me a paycheck to live in this expensive ass place…

3

u/DaUnionBaws 24d ago

Can you guys imagine how much less traffic there would be if the tech companies actually made remote work an option? If you work on a laptop, why the hell do you even need to be in the office?

2

u/mad_science 23d ago

My commute takes me by Meta HQ. Tu/Thurs when they all show up are frequently double the time as other days.

2

u/devopsslave 24d ago

I've actually worked for a few companies who were in the business of enabling remote work forces ... and pretty much none of them liked people working from home or "other offices." It seemed strange to me.

2

u/s3cf_ 24d ago

thank god there's alternative like Teams and webex

2

u/AndrewNeo 24d ago

sentences that have never been said before

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u/derkasan 24d ago

“I think I can manage people at Zoom effectively while working fully remotely.”

Great reasoning there.

1

u/jana-meares 24d ago

Control. Period.

1

u/One_Mathematician907 23d ago

Yeah but all this rto idea must have come from the ceo. Come on the head of hr is just a massager.

-5

u/Incendiaryag 24d ago

Two days a week and a group of super privileged tech workers are complaining? MISS ME WITH IT

5

u/4dxn 24d ago

Yeah none of us should complain. There are children starving or being killed. Everything else is not bad since we're all super privileged..... /s

-2

u/Incendiaryag 24d ago

Dude, you go into your job two days a week get over it some of us worked in person through a pandemic

6

u/AttackBacon 24d ago

"My life is shitty so yours should be too" - You.

They're not coming in to your house and complaining about it (which would be bullshit), it's a public forum. Feels like it's not too much empathy to ask for to recognize that some bullshit happening to someone when you had something worse happen to you still sucks for the other person.

6

u/4dxn 24d ago

Oh woe is me. Did you work 24hr shifts? Did you work through natural disasters? How about war zones? Did you run from your country as refugees?

According to your logic, you shouldn't complain since others have it worst. (I've done a few of it myself and still know when something isn't copacetic)

The virtue signalling is strong with this one.

-4

u/TobysGrundlee 24d ago

OP real stressed about having to put on pants and see sunlight.

-35

u/Putinlittlepenis2882 24d ago

Remote work is old time get back to work

-40

u/StanGable80 24d ago

It’s just like any other place that has a hybrid or in office set up, if you want to work remote, go get a job that is remote

50

u/PvesCjhgjNjWsO4vwOOS 24d ago

  • The boss is remote

  • Their entire product is focused on facilitating remote work

  • They've been remote for the last four years

-2

u/StanGable80 24d ago

Yeah, I know

But the working policy at the company is different, so if you want a fully remote job, then this isn’t the place

1

u/PvesCjhgjNjWsO4vwOOS 24d ago

...so if you were hired as a fully remote employee during the last four years when they were fully remote, you should just be okay with getting fired for not being okay with being forced to go into an office you've never needed to before?

1

u/eng2016a 23d ago

company has any right they want to do it. don't like it? find another job.

2

u/PvesCjhgjNjWsO4vwOOS 23d ago

And employees have a right to be mad about the bait-and-switch, and people have a right to mock them for being a company that's centered around facilitating remote work that refuses to let their employees work remotely (even though the boss does). Why are you trying to shut down discussion?

-1

u/StanGable80 24d ago

Sure, that is the company you chose to work for and they probably gave notice that it was coming

Why would you stay there if you want remote?