• garretble@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    “Could be?”

    We know it is. I don’t wish for Covid again, but remember when all the waterways started clearing up (didn’t dolphins show up in Venice at some point?) and the smog cleared in places that haven’t seen a blue sky in decades?

      • Transporter Room 3@startrek.website
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        8 months ago

        You joke, but a coworker literally said “well there’s no way to really know for sure it was because people were staying inside, it was probably just more forest food than usual that spring” when I pointed out a positive if covid being nature bouncing back just a tiny bit.

        Also can someone tell me what “forest food” is? Sure I know what he meant but that’s no fun

    • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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      8 months ago

      We had a perfect enforced experiment to show that remote work for many positions was just as effective, that people were happier, the environment improved, and that big societal changes were totally possible. Then rich people decided the ideal goal for society was just doing all the same bad shit we’d been doing for decades.

  • Vaquedoso@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Who cares about the environment when we could be hoarding more money. Can anybody please think about those poor CEOs? :(

    • Altofaltception@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      CEOs can make more money by offloading office costs to the employee - if your work force is remote, you don’t need to pay for an office space.

      This increases your profit, because your expenses are lower.

      • krashmo@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        But you can’t invest all that stolen money in inflated office building real estate prices either.

        • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          8 months ago

          This exactly. My boss said the quiet part out loud the other day.

          The CEO owns the building. He pays for the electrical, water, etc. All of that is wasted when only a handful of people come into the office.

          So…he required all of us to be in the office so that his investment works out.

          • eltrain123@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Or he could sell the asset, recoup what value he can from it, and save the utility/service/material expense associated with running a physical office.

            It will eventually even out. It takes time for new business to displace old models, but it will eventually work itself out. In business, ‘no cost’ vs ‘some cost’ will always move toward ‘no cost’. In the short term, businesses that hold physical property (at least the ones that don’t need physical office space) are trying to do what they can to minimize the loss of value from falling commercial real estate values. Inflate the value, sell the asset, then let someone else take the loss.

      • Fogle@lemmy.ca
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        8 months ago

        And it also helps the employees cause they can claim part of their living expenses for business use

        • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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          8 months ago

          Not in the US. They took that away, I think with on of Trump’s “tax cuts”. Now you can only claim it if you are the business (like a contractor or an independent lawyer).

    • Jaysyn@kbin.social
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      8 months ago

      Our CEO is making more money by getting rid of our large, empty office space, giving us yet another advantage over our competitors.

  • Magister@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Never, never, never, will I spend 1h the morning and 1h the evening in traffic jam to do 15 miles, never again.

    EDIT: in winter snow storm it was 2-3h !!!

    • sylver_dragon@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Amen.
      I was one day a week in the office during the pandemic. We had assets which required a physical presence, but with a rotating shift of 1-2 people in the office each day, we could keep the required coverage. Then my workplace started bringing us back to the office in 2022. It started with 3 days a week and we started hearing rumors of a full return to office. It was well know that upper management was hostile to remote work. So, I flipped my LinkedIn profile to “looking” (or whatever the setting was called, it’s been a while). And I started both actively applying and responding to recruiters. I eventually got a message from a reciter who led with “REMOTE WORK OPPORTUNITY”, yes the message started in ALL CAPS, though the rest was normal and hit all the points I was interested in. I figured, what the hell, can’t hurt to talk. That was just shy of two years ago, I have been into an office since late 2022. It’s going to have to be a hell of a bad situation for me to deal with commuting again.

    • Buckshot@programming.dev
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      8 months ago

      Same for me. Last day i worked in an office was March 2020. Haven’t done a single day since and don’t intend to ever again

      • Magister@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Same, March 2020, in 2020-2022 I never went to office not even one day. 2023 got another contract for a year, went there 3 or 4 times in the year to take/bring back some hardware I needed for development. 2024 new remote job 500kms away, go there 2 days every 10 weeks, stay at hotel, they pay.

  • Gork@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    I’ve been forced back to the office. I hate it. I hate the commute. I hate the cubicle. I hate the forced small talk interaction with coworkers.

    I’m more productive when I worked remote. Less hassled. Less tired from not having to commute.

    It makes me not want to work here any longer.

    • Prox@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Sooooo… quit?

      When my org announced RTO, I started looking for another job. A month later I had a new gig and a nice pay bump. Nobody’s gonna look out for you but you, my friend.

    • SendMePhotos@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      For some reason I read that as, “co-workers” and imagined two cows drinking coffee by the water machine chit chatting about nothing.

  • gradyp@awful.systems
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    8 months ago

    I’m someone who vastly prefers to work in an office. It’s kind of a pain in the ass dealing with remote workers, meetings having gone to teams instead of in person, it just feels impersonal and as a former manager it is harder to maintain and keep your staff engaged.

    But this is the modern workforce, and we have plenty of evidence that productivity is still there with a hybrid or remote office. When I was a manager I had to change my strategies, I had to adapt and learn, just like everything else I do in my professional life. Now that I am part of leadership but without direct reports, it’s just more adapting and learning that I am doing to stay relevant.

    poor management is why all these companies are trying to force people back, it’s just people who cannot adapt.

  • PM_ME_YOUR_ZOD_RUNES@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    RTO, much like everything else is about rich people. The Canadian Federal government just announced that all public servants must be in office 60% of the time by September (up from 40%). And the only reason is due to lobbying by real estate holders and businesses downtown.

    I’m so fucking tired of rich people not only having the advantage of being rich but also getting every other advantage handed to them by the government.

  • hark@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Could be? It absolutely is! That would be an extra 50 miles I would have to drive every weekday. They have entire global organizations meeting together to figure out where to set goals for cutting emissions, but these easily-avoidable emissions are fine apparently. The so-called “leaders” aren’t taking the problem seriously.

  • Guntrigger@sopuli.xyz
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    8 months ago

    But my company says it cares for the environment and does environmental things like improving algorithms for patches to reduce computing power needed and therefore save the energy worldwide (an actual example of a recent win by our environment consciousness team right after forcing thousands of people to RTO)

  • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    You mean the same companies responsible for our current climate may not care about what RTO does to their workers or the world?

    : shocked Pikachu:

  • Seraph@kbin.social
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    8 months ago

    Some Executives have no understanding of the need for Deep Work and can’t imagine how the office isn’t good for it.

    The problem is executives have no need of deep work, that’s what they hire others for. Bad executives don’t understand this and assume you need what they need.