I worked from home for 3 and a half years working in the Tax industry, specifically, technical support for tax softwares. Throughout that 3 years I was paid way over what I would be making in office, had more time for myself (even raised a kitten) and started my mental health journey with the extra time. I luckily also had insanely good management and they were completely fine with disagreements and compromise and they GENUINELY advocated for us Front Line workers going through the day in and day out of our jobs. Well a new CEO came, and this article is the embodiment of what is wrong with corporations and how they continue to overstep their boundaries.
I understand that the Pandemic was a lot of the reason why WFH was introduced because they would rather have people working at home than not working at all. Well now that the smoke is clearing Huge Fortune 500 companies are screaming, pissing, even going as far to threaten management to force employees back into their corporate boxes for the most mundane jobs. I understand if you need employees to come in to Pick items at a factory, or do manual labor, total get that. But 95% of my job was to talk to customers on a headset and send emails. Why does it need to be done in their environment? “Well people do better in office environments.”
BUT DO THEY REALLY?! We constantly read and see stories about office politics making people's lives hell! And so many companies offshore their employees (especially in technical support) and pay them close to nothing. I don't see anyone complaining about the recent layoffs because they would rather offshore work since people don't want to go back to the offices.
Also, the CEO of Google mentions “It should be this way because it's always been this way and it's my belief so they have to come back.”
SIR YOU ALL ARE ACTIVELY REPLACING YOUR WORKERS WITH AI AND OTHER TECHNOLOGIES, WHAT IS TRADITIONAL ABOUT THAT?!
These corporations only care about traditions when it actively works against their work forces. You wouldn't dare tell a CEO to get rid of AI because it's not the norm, so why do they get to pull the tradition card on something like WFH which reduces travel and gas emissions, no one has the excuse to be late when your work setup is down the hall, and no one is going to get into a car crash at 7 am trying to beat traffic into the city (Nashville has a 2 hour travel time to get into the city from ANYWHERE and I pray for people in Atlanta)
Lastly, the CEOs of these companies don't come to work every single day, they don't work weekends and holidays, we are lucky as Americans to get 4 weeks off in a year and they are trying to say “You're lazy for wanting to work in comfort.” RIGHT, because they're doing work in their mansions, penthouse offices with people to help them with every little thing. If I'm expected to work in discomfort why aren't you? Why can't I have the same level of comfort when it comes to my work? Comfort and Laziness should not be synonymous terms for each other.
https://fortune.com/2023/08/03/amazon-svp-mike-hopkins-office-return/