Return-to-office orders look like a way for rich, work-obsessed CEOs to grab power back from employees::White-collar workers temporarily enjoyed unprecedented power during the pandemic to decide where and how they worked.
“These elite CEOs probably work 100-plus hours a week and they’re much more work-focused.”
No they don’t. Full stop. Let’s stop fabricating this bullshit. That’s 16hrs a day M-F with 10hrs Sat/Sun. Elon Musk is not doing those hours period, let alone while also finding time to play Elden Ring.
Yeah people need to stop acting like they’re the most hardworking people out there. They definitely are not. Especially when you can be CEO of multiple companies and no one bats an eye.
Well, let’s do some quick math. Let’s count billable hours in a day with a minimum billable hour being 1 hour. If you work a 6 hour work day, and can complete the average task in 15 minutes, that works out to 24 possible billable hours in one day accounting for a total of 90 minutes of actual work.
So yeah, on paper it’s actually really easy to “work” 100 hours per week
I totally agree. I always think it’s weird when they have interviews or podcasts about talking to CEOs and they all say something like “you just have to work hard enough”. Yeah. Okay.
Where are the podcasts where they ask lottery winners for some vapid aphorism about hard work paying off?
They could and should do a podcast of that married couple who gamed and won the Michigan State lottery… I mean that was a lot of hardwork lol.
Jerry and Marge Selbee if anyone wants to look them up.
It was a pretty decent little movie also
Even if Elon Musk is putting in 100-hour weeks, he’s the CEO of five companies, which means being CEO of one company is a half-time gig at most.
Or 20%? 🤔
Highly doubt he actually plays Elden Ring
He played in enough to make one of the worst builds I’ve ever seen. A heavy rolling mage with two shields…
Good, they’ll be left with wage slaves while other companies who trust their employees will be more productive and competitive as a result.
They don’t care. They need to lead/rule over/command people. Second rate or not.
So many don’t understand just how wildly inefficient bureaucratic hierarchies are; what happens isn’t the most profitable thing, it’s the whim of whoever managed to claw their way highest up.
Basically, the decisions are the manifestation of the artificial stupidity of brute force.
How are the MBAs going to pull all their power poses if we work at home?
That’s why I’m sticking with my company. They even sold about 90% of their buildings and we are never going back to office. They have saved billions, why would they send us back? They make sure to tell us that we will never be sent back to office, unless someone chooses to. There is one office left for those who want to work there.
Trust. You’re right, it completely comes down to trust. If you can’t trust the people you hire to work without someone looming over them or watching everything they do, then you shouldn’t have hired that person.
Plus, if you hire someone and have work for them - either the work gets done (and ideally it’s high quality work of course) or it doesn’t. There are actual meaningful metrics. Asses in seats just isn’t one of them.
Managers are managers because they’re good at playing power games, not because they’re good at their jobs. These games are harder to play if people aren’t there. That’s why they’re so scared.
When I got my newest job the boss was bragging about I can work as much overtime as I want at 1.5x. like bitch I want undertime, let me work less!
As a manager, I empower my team to work remotely as much as possible 🤷
Some managers are actually really good at resolving conflicts without bias and keeping the team functioning smoothly. In tech at least, people who make things aren’t always that great at interacting with other people.
Of course, the kind of manager I’m talking about doesn’t care how/when/where the work gets done, and they don’t micro-manage.
OK OK, I’m not saying all managers are like that. But I’ve certainly met a lot of them in my time.
Seems like the commercial real estate collapse has a lot to do with it too.
Eh, that may play a role for the big firms, but most of the small to mid sized businesses just lease their real estate. They’d realistically come out ahead by downsizing their offices.
I think what we are seeing is management really struggling to adapt and find reliable metrics for performance management as well as to promote employee retention and engagement without the social bonds of an office culture.
Small companies are often under long leases. Our landlord was quite flexible and let us break the lease if we did the work to find a new tenant, but most wouldn’t be.
And yes we are coming out ahead, by quite a lot… offices aren’t cheap even the tiny one we tried to use temporarily… have now ditched that and gone totally remote.
It’s also to make sure the commercial real estate market doesn’t crash
Imagine if all that commercial real estate was converted to affordable residential rentals!
Lol, I know, fuck me right?
LOLLL… “affordable”
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Say it with me: I wasn’t born to work. I wasn’t born to produce. I certainly wasn’t born to keep old rich people rich. I was born to figure out my own purpose, not have it dictated to me.
I don’t live to work, I work to live. But it’s disingenuous to say anyone with talent can easily find another job. Most workers don’t have nearly as much power as tech workers.
Yep. There’s a lot of people out there who deserve more protections against employers because they can’t just get another job so easy, let alone be able to work from home.
and the few who actually need the office structure (which are probably the same kids who did their homework Sunday night instead of on the bus home Friday afternoon).
Speaking as someone who did their homework on the bus to school Monday morning, in study hall, and on Sunday night if there was a lot, I’m way more productive working from home because I can chunk out my work.
Sure, but second rate employees deserve workers rights too. We should at least be careful to not build our rights on their backs.
These elite CEOs probably work 100-plus hours a week and they’re much more work-focused.
Oh ffs. I have nothing against Nick Bloom but this statement is so BS. Even if “elite CEOs” could work 24 hours per day, 7 days per week their salaries could not be justified by any means. There are just not enough hours in a day to actually do it.
The mandates symbolize the sharp disconnect right now between the way CEOs and employees think about work.
He’s right about that though.
When I was an intern at a large company, the CIO talked to our small group of interns. He said he worked around that much, and I don’t think he was lying. He told us about his typical day.
The company was located in a big city and he lived in the suburbs with a long commute by taxi and train. He would get up at 5AM to start the commute. He worked on the train and taxi. Then he would leave the office at 5PM, work on the commute home, have dinner and family time for 2 hours, then work until bed at around midnight. He said he was lucky he only needed 4 hours of sleep and how much he treasured the 2 hours he spent with his family every day. It was the only time he refused to take calls.
I think part of the problem why executives mistreate their workers so much is that they themselves are overworked and exhausted. Despite having a ton of money, they don’t get to enjoy it, so it becomes meaningless.
And there’s people out there who work just as much but will never make the same amount of money. When you have the privilege to never worry about cleaning, laundry, taking care of your kids, grocery shopping, cooking, and all the numerous bullshit things that just add up to consume your time that you can wave away when you were born rich allow you to do that. They don’t consume your day and energy.
Not that everyone if suddenly given that kind of time would do what he does, but I don’t think they should. I think he’s the type of person who looking back on his deathbed will regret only spending 2 hours a day with his family. That’s really sad.
on his deathbed will regret only spending 2 hours a day with his family. That’s really sad.
I don’t know if you work and have kids, but honestly 2 hours of focused quality time with your kids is honestly amazing. I get 5 hours with my kid in the afternoon and that’s because I’m privileged and I can pick her up exactly when she gets out of school. I still don’t get to really hang out and just play with her those whole 5 hours because I still have to do things like cook and clean.
Sure on the weekends I manage more, but honestly 2 hours of just nothing but you and kid time is pretty normal for a working parent that isn’t working insane hours. That guy will regret not going to recitals and stuff, but he won’t be disconnected from his kids. I sure didn’t get 2 hours a day during the week from my exhausted parents.
Some small number of people love being married to their work. And some of these people think since they enjoy it that others must feel the same, and when they see their employees quitting it’s surprised Pikachu face and denial.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“Because the labor market is looser and there’s more talent to be hired, I think the employers think they’ll be able to get their way,” Dr Grace Lordan, associate professor in behavioral science at the London School of Economics told Insider.
A certain kind of CEO — noticeably skewing male and older, she said — is drawing from this “command and control” playbook as a way to rebuild an employee base that fits their idea of being productive and diligent.
“This belief of a certain cohort of people, and they are represented across all sectors, that presentee-ism is productivity, for them it’s perfectly rational that if somebody doesn’t want to come into the office then that basically means they’re not somebody who wants to add value to the firm,” Lordan added.
Elon Musk is consistently adamant about workers at his companies from X to Tesla being present in office, going as far as calling remote work “morally wrong.”
A number of firms that benefited from a pandemic bump in business, particularly in tech, went on a hiring spree — triggering the “Great Resignation” as workers quit for ever-higher salaries and perks.
That attitude means certain types of employees will lose out — and return-to-office mandates will likely hurt diversity too if they are strictly enforced.
The original article contains 512 words, the summary contains 215 words. Saved 58%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
And by “look like” we mean “totally are”
Additionally, people have been saying this since day 1. How is this news?
For a lot of positions. Remote work is not just the past and the present. It is also the future.
Yep. Once the old boomer CEOs die off, I have a feeling remote work will be more readily available.
These dingles are gonna flex like this just before another Covid surge, I guess?
Sure would be a shame if a lot of those office buildings burned down for no reason…
That would fix everything for the owners because then they can claim insurance and drop the bad assets at the same time
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Is FTFY
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