Companies Are Dragging People Back to the Office
Employees experienced increased autonomy and productivity with remote work, but companies are now forcing returns to the office. This shift diminishes employee control over their schedules and work environment, leading to resentment and a feeling of being manipulated. The perceived benefits of in-person work are often outweighed by the loss of flexibility and work-life balance.
SOURCES (60)
“It means working remotely or location flexibility. WFH is from your residence. Remote roles are independent of a physical HQ for that role. Where it gets abused is when they say remote meaning "you'll go into an office but maybe not the one where the…”
“"Away from the headquarters/main office location" is really all that remote means. "Work from home" does mean work from home. This discrepancy is the entire basis of workers justifying working from say, the beach while on vacation, because they're a "remote worker" rather than "work from home". This isn't new. (Also from a pedantic standpoint, maybe the fields in which you're meant to be studying the biodiversity are in a remote/hard to reach l”
“yep, still micromanagament, working from home would "take" the daily work of 99% of direct leads/heads/group leaders and so on.. not that they can't still do something in this direction working from home, but rather than implementing something new, going back to the "old" system is faster.. LE: ah yes, HR, goddamn HR with their paperwork and everybody needs to be like them for the "culture"”
“Hey all, Know of companies (mid- to enterprise-size orgs) that are still remote? My current role is hybrid but with a lot of attendance micromanaging—not a fan of this plus all things considered, I’m keeping my eyes open for other opportunities. My previous org is enterprise size and they still seem to be 100% remote but I would not entertain reapplying since I was part of a mass layoff and also not fond of my last manager who is likely still there. submitted by /u/bbtyogi [link] ”
“It’s 2 - 3 days in the week in the office. The entire department takes Mondays and Fridays off, and if it’s non-filing season, my boss said he usually works from home on Wednesdays.”
My personal motive is to "work" from home. Take it or leave it
“I love how whenever they talk about connection and collaboration, they don’t acknowledge the reality that many are forced to RTO to offices where are their coworkers are not located! A lot of organizations have operations that are geographically dispersed, and plenty of them have had people go into officer, even if it means employees are still doing most of their interaction virtually. If people don’t acknowledge this reality, their arguments are not made in good faith.”
“The article also cites an HR consultant with another view. Connection suffers with remote work: HR consultant But Cissy Pau, a Vancouver-based HR consultant, said the employers she works with have many valid reasons for wanting their workers back in the office that go beyond productivity and control. "It's more for collaboration, or really, they are finding that employees are not connected in the same way that they used to be," she said.”
“Everyone who is forced into the shitty open floor plan because of RTO should get one of these https://www.tiktok.com/@duckeycaps/video/7636456965400448287 See how fast management changes their toon.”
“Back when people still had their own cubicles, bosses insisted their employees all be clustered around their office so they could stake out their own little fiefdom.”
“The title might sound silly at first but its pretty clear that in The US today most publicly traded companies only really care for and cater to the C-suite. The modern workplace is increasingly revealing that many management decisions have little to do with maximizing productivity. Companies force employees back into offices despite remote work being perfectly viable with repeated studies showing there is no productivity falloff from wfh. Now companies are offering “amenities” instead of higher”
“RTO is as one said - makes more money for landlords. It’s about rich getting richer. They don’t care about employees, most of them anyway.”
“So people are programming on the server in vim or something? There will be a noticeable lag more from distance than the VPN. If you're company has multiple locations around the world, you could set your VPN location to a remote office in another country to see how it feels.”
“Hey everyone, I need some perspective because the anxiety is starting to get to me. I work remotely as a B2B sales specialist for a property management company. Honestly, my day-to-day is pretty straightforward: I send out sales emails, handle inquiries, and lock in bookings. I’m actually really good at it - mostly because the project I’m selling is genuinely successful and high-quality, but also because I’m great at keeping clients happy and keeping things alive. But here’s the problem: some da”
“Want to get people's opinions on this. I moved to a new city and am in a slightly less productive office. I'm still doing well but sometimes when my schedule is slower (now in urban area vs suburban/rural), I feel anxious when it comes to money. I paid off my loans, have emergency fund and maxing out retirement with money leftover. I am typically a ROTH only guy since I am young and have years to grow, but with my anxiety over being slower and not making as much, sometimes I want to move”
“Was hybrid/remote then hybrid and now had to take a role that was fully in office . Commute is short but would love if it was truly hybrid even . Looked for and interviewed for some other roles but they were 20K less with less benefits etc . For now collecting a check and paying down debt/ saving money . Still looking on the side”
“I have a disability and it doesn’t even get to come into discussion. People just immediately shut down when I ask about remote only status for a position. “We need everyone present in the office for communication and teamwork.” Every local position ive seen or been called about is like this. Like it’s some sort of boast that you have too many layers of management or poor communication standards? I have excelled in remote work, but finding it is hard. And for some reason people get even more scru”
“I lost remote work and the RTO is full-time, not even hybrid. I hate it so much, I dread going to work. This has been 1.5 years. I've applied to countless jobs with no luck. I try to remind myself to be grateful I even have a job, but some days are hard.”
“At my last job, I was on a Mac, had admin access, and could run basically whatever I wanted to. I also had needs that practically nobody else had, so it wasn't a big deal. At my new job, I am in a different situation: I'm on Windows, I do not (and will not) have admin access, and I'm mostly just a normal user, from a security standpoint. Nothing wrong with that, and I'm not saying I'm special or that the rules should not apply to you. I take security seriously also, while als”
“My team was laid off. After many months of job hunting, the only offer I got was hybrid. I’m thankful I have the job but I hate every day I go into the office.”
“That’s how all my remote jobs were like except this last one I had 6 months ago. I am so relieved to be rid of it and advise anyone else to leave if they are in a micromanaged job”
“I’ve been offered a remote-first role and I’m struggling to decide whether to accept it. In my current role, I work four days in the office and one day from home. I have a high level of trust and autonomy, work directly with senior leadership, and have built a strong position within the organisation. There is also a possibility that they may offer me three days working from home and two days in the office, however with an onsite L1 to mentor, I'm struggling with that as an option as well. Th”
“So, every since Covid started, I've been working from home. My wife is a Nurse. She would usually cook but during Covid she kind of stopped cooking. It was a stressful time and that's when I started picking up cooking. I'm not that great but the meals I make, I think are ok and sometimes good. I'm not gonna boast it. My wife will eat them usually but sometimes she will eat McD's after work or some fast food or they have some sort of work food event where people buy or bring i”
“That update is a pretty big signal, but I would still keep a quiet job search warm until the budget approval is actually signed. A 32 hour fully remote engineering role is rare enough that grief over losing it makes sense, especially with the schedule fitting your partner and dogs. For the CTO follow-up, I would ask for a specific date when the CFO case should be decided so you are not stuck waiting until week 18.”
“Hi there, I am hoping someone can advise me or if I am missing something to make my case stronger. I live and work in Ontario and I am a little bit less than a year into my job. I live in the suburbs however, and feel most comfortable in the suburbs and this job is downtown. Over the course of my employment, having to go downtown has been wearing me down to the point of looking for a new job locally. I am struggling with commuting downtown, the environment, and working in an office with constant”
“I think it depends. I was starting in my company during covid and we had to work from home. I was just not too shy to ask questions or for quick calls. For some reason taht was easier for me than in office, when i saw people chatting it was harder for me to interrupt. I learned quite fast and the team was happy wirh my output. Actually we had a lot of people starting during covid and they had no issues. But i guess its a person thing and might not work for everyone”
“Curious…. Were you always remote with this job, or did you go home during Covid?”
“Did they cut your salary when you went remote because you didn’t have a commute cost anymore? Can they reduce the requested commute stipend by the fact that you no longer need to use your own internet, toilet paper and electricity during working hours? And while we’re at it, let’s consider less wear and tear on your homes floors … I feel like those debates are a loose-loose and whatever you do, someone can still pick out something to complain about.”
“The original post stated "we got mandated back 3 days a week." That's tells me that OP didn't used to be remote. That he did used to have to go i to the office at somw point in time, although it's unclear weather or not he worked full time on site or was hybrid. I could see an argument if the number of days required in the office were increased from when he was originally hired, for sure. But if it's just reverting back to what it had already been at some point, the i d”
“I noticed a weird pattern in my client list this year. I keep getting three or four people from the same employer within a couple of months. First wave quit over the RTO mandate. Second wave got laid off. The quitters get nothing. No severance, no notice period, and on paper it reads as voluntary. The laid-off group at least leaves with a package. Same company, same headcount reduction, very different exits depending on who blinked first! I assumed coincidence until I read a survey of around 1,5”
“Productivity went up by every metric when people started working from home. There is absolutely no reason to go back except to justify the existence of commercial office rentals. If you disagree then at least make a reference to some.kind of verifiable fact instead of just "nuh uh". It's boring and it exposes your lack of knowledge on the subject under discussion.”
“Before 2019, none of this commuting was ever an issue. You get hired and you show up to work at the stipulated time. Remote work was meant to be temporary until the COVID was over with. Why should anyone be compensated for commuting time? I would let you go in a nano second if you were my employee.”
“Join the club. I would say the largest percentage of people travel to work. If you just happened to live a 5 minute walk away would you post this? Plumbers, machine operators, nurses at hospitals, teachers etc, they all have to be there in person, but it seems white coller workers, seem to think that having to be physically at there place of work office is somehow unfair. If you don't like it, get another job. And the truth about WFH, is people piss around. Grow up, you sound like a whining”
“facts. companies love saying "everyone has to come back" until they realize losing half the team is way more expensive than letting ppl stay remote”
“Except they were hired remote, they state that they were mandated to”back” into the office three days a week. So people worked in the office before and now they want them back in the office. They probably realized that productivity was lacking with work from home.”
“The only way you have a chance to pull this off is apply for out of state jobs. As long as you are within driving distance, you’ll always be at risk to RTO. If you apply for a job out of state and they are willing to interview you then you have a shot. Just my take”
“Congratulations for landing a new WFH role . I’m really hoping to find a remote role again after losing my last remote job of almost 10 years because I can’t imagine going back to an office full time”
“I’m stressing out about this so hard. My husband currently has a well-paid leadership position at a public tech company, and he’s fully remote. He’s on executive track and doing great. His job has been a godsend through my pregnancies and because we have two very young kids (9 months and 2 years old). He helps with the kids and keeps me company all day. Not only that, the flexibility of his job can enable us to live anywhere. We are in the research phase of moving to a no income tax state (Flori”
“I've done full remote and full office and hybrid. Hybrid is 100% my preferred for a variety of reasons. My ideal is 2-3 days in office per week.”
“Company is hybrid. I have a new boss and he wants us to stay busy all the time. We get called out for looking at online shopping sites like amazon while in between calls waiting for the dialer to pick up.. or chit chatting at the water cooler.. or even being on our phones to answer a text briefly. How do ya'll do it? I'm close to calling it quits. A couple of my AE's left for a competitor because of it. submitted by /u/Dangerous-Ant-4292 [link] [comments]”
“I moved to Mumbai for a new job 3 weeks back while my family is in Delhi and I miss them. In new office. it’s hybrid (4days from office) but most people come 2 days and remaining once or twice in 2 weeks and even my manager come for a week in a month and go back to his hometown. I miss my family (wife, kid, parents) and I also dont feel good in the office because I have no team members here. I am paying huge rent in Mumbai. Suggest me how to handle it and ask my manager to allow me operate from”
“I just started a new job and I feel like they hired two people for one workload due to the want of having a physical presence in the office 5-days a week and the organization allowing 2 remote days per week. I’m just wondering if that’s something anyone has experienced before. It’s a satellite office for a larger organization. This office is full of high profile, white-glove support type people and they host events to impress outside entities maybe once or twice a month. The workload is slow but”
“I’m a week into an 8–5 administrative office job at a non-profit that is government funded. I’m paid $20/hour, and so far my tasks have mostly been online research, spreadsheets, and coming up with marketing ideas. The issue is that I have a lot of downtime. For example, one day from around 11 AM to 4:50 PM, I had nothing to do. I asked my manager if there was anything else I could help with, and she said she didn’t have any tasks for me, so I was basically sitting at my desk on my phone for hou”
“Hello, I posted earlier here today seeking advice on remote offer that I received. I got more details on the work life balance. I do not know if this is normal or not for remote work. But the offer letter said i have to be available from 8:30 to 5:30 and potentially after 5:30. I asked if this could be shifted around somehow to end my typical workday at 5. The answer I got was very vague. “5pm will be difficult to manage consistently with deadlines to meet. If the work can be done and it can be”
“Most office jobs do not need to force employees to stay in the office or in front of a computer for the full eight hours a day. If we can complete projects before their deadlines, still make the necessary meetings we need to make with our teams, and finish all our tasks for the day, then why not have us go home early? This isn't really a "find other things to do with your time like take trainings" type of issue. We shouldn't have to pretend to be busy or think or ways to be bus”
“I wouldn’t have done it. That 40k will be eaten up in taking more taxes, commute costs, car maintenance. Atlanta has godawful traffic. I took a remote job when living outside of Chicago, not driving into Chicago in itself was worth the paycut I took. I would’ve easily stayed in the UP. Especially if you don’t have to drive in UP winter weather. Sorry to hear you already accepted the job.”
“My narc boss loved remote work and refused to meet in person at all even though we were all in the same city and requested more in person time”
“I recently went from a role that was fully remote to a hybrid role. I started on what we call compressed hours, meaning I do my 40 contracted hours across 4 days a week instead of the standard 5. This was because we only had childcare for 4 days a week but meant I was leaving the house early, before my daughter woke up, to get to work for 7.45am. It was very very hard for me to do this and I was torn between being so excited for landing my dream job and being so heartbroken at not seeing my daug”