Technology

My entire department, and honestly probably 95% of my company do all of our work on a computer on the network, that's the only requirement, it can be a PC at a desk on site or a laptop on WiFi at a coffee shop or home or the beach for that matter.

My company did the big RTO mandate last year after 6 years of WFH since Covid first started. Those 6 years marked some of the highest productivity and highest job satisfaction ever.

Then the C suite decided they either didn't like not being able to watch their worker bees go, or maybe they also had financial investments in the commercial district (conflict of interest if they do IMO) or maybe they got lonely? Or maybe they just read a stupid article that told them they should assert control by making their employees lives harder, who knows? But ours, like so many, all did it seemingly blindly like a fad, with no real reason or goal and just a vague empty promise of "collaboration and culture" whatever THAT even means.

Also really funny that in the same paragraph they will praise "cloud data", "cloud AI", "remote servers", but the humans can't be remote because reasons.

The real sore point that I resent VERY much is that half the company is out of state, so exempt, including my supervisor. So now me and my team commute in to an office to sit in a sad cube by ourselves and then we still have to join a video call for every meeting, but doing that from a conference room is hell compared to a headset and your own laptop, not to even mention all the technical issues we keep having while everyone at home stares blankly waiting for us, it's so dumb.

All I know is for me and my team and every single person I've talked to, the collaboration is so much worse in-person. The communication is worse. They wave their hands and say "collaboration", but then if one person is talking on the floor it is disrupting 50 people that can easily hear every word. The morale is worse. Everything takes so much long to do. So much time and money is wasted sitting in cars in traffic for no reason. I don't get it. It was a huge win-win when we all went WFH. We worked more, did more, were happier and more productive, saved money, saved time, communication was better since everyone was on the same level field.

Mandating RTO is wild to me, it feels like going back to typewriters in a world of laptops, because "well we used typewriters in the past, it's the way it's been done"

Then on the flip side, some people want and do better in a central office, fine, have that available, but don't mandate everyone does it. It should be up to each worker or their managers to figure out the actual need and what is best. "One size fits all" doesn't work, it fits 1 person and excludes 10.