It’s been almost a month since we were required to return to the office in the name of "collaboration," and all I have seen is people including leaders finding different ways to minimize their time in the office.
Leaders have families to take care of too, so many leave after just a few hours because they need to pick up their kids from camp or school. It’s a reminder that everyone is balancing work with personal responsibilities.
Meanwhile, I haven’t seen any meaningful increase in collaboration. What I have seen is hours lost commuting, searching for parking, walking to and from the office, and dealing with all the extra logistics. It feels like a significant waste of time and energy that could have been spent doing actual work.
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@w3 I predict right before Christmas they will announce 5 days in office AND remote workers outside the 1 hr radius need to relocate or quit before 2028. They already sent the surveys out to all the level 9s and above. KJ tried to play it off as a compensation survey. Which, was a complete lie because the thing asked specifically about moving to Tempe or STL and whether or not you own or rent your house and if you will do the same if you move. Gotta thin the herd as much as possible before PP makes us go public on her way out the door.
/ They want us to quit. They don’t want to pay severance, get bad PR, etc. This is a consulting strategy, likely coming from the strategy team up in nyc headed up by the Little man himself. Headcount reduction through attrition. Make policies so bad that people quit. Next we will have 5 days a week in office bc 4 is working so well ;), and back to business professional because we’re all client and have to keep up appearances.
@dr the Executive Team doesnt care about long term success or legacy (they just say they do), they want extract as much as they can for themselves before jumping ship.
I find it funny that we are always 2 steps behind the latest trends. As we double down on outsourcing, AI, and RTO as our magical way to grow AUM, our competition and smaller companies will start to see that remote and flexible hybrid work is a cheap and easy way to poach and retain talent. In 2028 the commercial real estate market is supposed to see a massive amount of cancelled office leases which will result in companies going back to focusing on the overhead costs of keeping a building vs working remotely. We will be 5 days in office at this point and will have fired all our HBAs outside the 1 hr radius if they fail to relocate to STL/Tempe by 2028. As the AI bubble pops and companies see it is not the end all be all for replacing workers, other companies will start to see it while we double down on sunk cost AI programs and use it as a "flex" (humble brag??) nobody cares about. We will continue using cheap labor over in india despite constant errors and risk. Don't worry though, the smart people are in charge and have everything under control. /s
@dr Don't these mo--ns see that they can make more $ by not being short sighted greedy SOBs? EDJ could be a shining example of how to run a large company while not sh+tting all over your employees. But no, we decided to be a future case study of what NOT to do to your 100yr old company.
The goal of this was to do exactly as we continue seeing in these comments; make people want to quit. It doesn't matter how we feel about it, they're achieving their goal. If and when they decide to be more strict, it will be because they didn't see the numbers they wanted yet.
They made the realization that if they're going to pay for remote work, they can pay 1/4 as much for remote work via offshoring. This of course completely ignores quality of work and "loyalty" as corporate loyalty is only to profits. If they're going to pay the "premium" for local work, they better be in-person.
What shocked us all is finally realizing that Jones is just another corporation. It cares for its own best interests and the little people don't matter. The next realization is that corporate loyalty is a scam. Loyalty is a mutual concept; be loyal to your family, your friends, your morals, your aspirations; but NEVER a corporation, NEVER your job. Do what's best for you, and if you don't want to leave now be sure you have a backup plan because now more than ever you may not have a choice.
@a7 couldn’t agree more with word by word. Already looking out for other remote options, having 15+ years with company but all the experience will be gone as soon as something better comes up. Wake up EDJ.
@OP I do less work now than I did as a HBA (10+ years). I give them 8 hrs on the dot of work, then bounce. I used to always work longer and volunteer for side projectd because I didnt want a target on my back and was motivated to get stuff done while at home. I WAS MORE PRODUCTIVE for the slow learners on the ELT jv squad. To the bootlickers, ELT parasites, any other stooge who thinks 4 days in office is a good thing, it has backfired in spades. You mo--ns will only have your quality people quit and go to competition while their knowledge walks out the door. The commuting and non stop noise/distractions make this place a soul draining shithole where people make more errors and simply dont care about the fallout. Congrats ELT, your ghoulish obsession with making our lives miserable is going as planned. However, you d-mb low iq pieces of sh1t will take it on the chin the longer we continue to participate in this circus. The company is spending more $ now to keep the lights on VS during covid when everyone was remote and productivity was solid (we even bragged about this in 2022!). We were in high level bonuses too. Now? The culture is dead, nobody cares about anything long term, and 90% of the company hates you. Not dislikes or disagrees with, hates! You let the mask slip these last couple years about how you felt about home office associates and now we can all agree the feeling is mutual. I look forward to the day when karma finds all you d-mb ba----ds who wrecked this place. We had a good thing going here where everyone was happy and you couldn't leave it alone, could ya?