I’ve come to recognise a simple truth about why companies are pushing for returning to full time work from office, is this.

There’s a lot of middle managers who have been taught to synonymize work with misery. Like a Freudian dog, they’ve learnt to believe that work happens whenever they see someone being miserable in front of a computer.

That’s why they want to see in person all the non verbal cues of a programmer experiencing misery. Without it, they don’t get the reward response of thinking that work is happening, even if the work is literally happening faster from home.

I think there are a lot of middle managers who are feeling extremely nervous about the fact that wfh is making it obvious their roles are unnecessary

This might actually be true

Yea pretty much

At own company I was at I heard a story about a manager (who’d gone before I got there) who actually shouted at a graduate developer because he was too happy.
Dick managers are real

Not gonna lie. I have a department head position at work. I was really against bringing people back to work. My employees were responding FAST to every query, working their asses off whilst having all the proper facilities at their disposal at home.

Not a single-fucking-issue.....well other than the CMS admin sometimes falling asleep and taking about 3 or 5 calls to wake him up. Regardless, it fucking worked, my men were well rested, happy, and on a cheerful mood.

When they sent us all back I said on a large meeting that my people were working in a more productive environment with no distractions from home. And that forcing them to come back for the sake of doing so was just stupid. I did say the word "stupid" in a meeting. IDGAF

A boomer ass senior directive mentioned to me "You need to understand, the public is most at ease when they know there are people at the office"

I retorted with "bad perception does not triumph over tangible results"

CONT: so yeah, it is a control thing, that is why the "great resignation" is happening. Even as a manager, this is other manager's own fucking doing and lack of knowledge, discipline and proper leadership, if you can't control your people on remote then go ahead and fucking drop your title and go somewhere else. "I nEEd FaCe to FaCE" well fuck you, people in tech don't.

this is fucking stupid, I have 2 employees that are diabetic and I worry about them getting fucked over with corona, but the execs needs to have that piEce oF miND

Fucking boomers

@TrevorTheRat hahaha that sounds wrong. Sounds like a fancy name for a prostitute or how to become a manager (by managing upper cock really well)

" even if the work is literally happening faster from home."

unless we count household chores and side projects, speak for yourself. in our case the communication within the team pretty much died, more info silos got created (unintentionally), my productivity dropped a big time. the worst part is, i got my access to the office renewed and technically can work from there, but there is no point going as nobody is in there.

@nibor @AleCx04 @hashedram and sexual harassment. every corporate video on the subject will go out of its way to say "it's not about sex, it's about power" but even in the videos it manifests as unwanted touches and proximity.
Given the alarming rates it happened in 2019, and assuming that the creeps miss the chance to perform most of their creepiness, a significant part of the "my subordinates should get back into the office" crowd wants to rub their pants in front of people.