Posted on 09/13/2022 7:06:45 AM PDT by 1Old Pro
In June, Tesla CEO Elon Musk demanded that all employees return to their onsite workspaces, according to a leaked e-mail thread. If workers refused, Musk would consider it a resignation.
Again the news today is that the NY Times can't get people back to work. However, I won't post the link.
(Excerpt) Read more at shrm.org ...
> Yup. once they find out WFM works, they will just ship the jobs overseas.
>
> if you can do the job in BFE america, it can be done anywhere there is a internet connection in the world.
That was already happening even before Covid. Lots of software development jobs were shipped overseas. The problem is that overseas development teams are not as productive as onshore teams, even when onshore teams work from home. Both the volume and the quality of the output are sub-par. I speak from experience as a manager of both types of teams.
Because people who previously took trains and buses are now driving cars and they're not all going to work. I know a few people who previously commuted by mass transit for up to an hour who now drive in a car for 20 minutes.
IIRC, Toobin was “dating” himself and not a co-worker,
Those days are looonnng gone. I think it's almost without exception that everyone I know, from long before COVID, came to the realization that they needed to accept that coworkers and friendship don't mix. There are too many landmines and collateral damages.
Well-said.
If the economy crashes, they won't have a job in the office either.
Related, a company aiming to survive a crash has one huge cost cutting tool available to them; unload the office space; the monthly rent, the liability insurance, the worker's comp insurance, etc.
Hard for companies to do this since they were the ones who started this WFH in the first place.
And the salary and benefits of the low WFH employees and instead focus on smaller high performing teams.
Thank you...I have given it a lot of thought. I could be wrong on some aspects, but I don’t think I am. We shall see.
That fiction died since 2008. Companies cut back to the bone and never recovered. The "work smarter, not harder" was nothing but lip service for layoffs.
I don't know of one small, high-performing team that lasted longer than a year. Once one person left, often moving out and up, the small team couldn't find a replacement at that skill level. Since there wasn't an available pool of talent to pick replacements from, since everyone was in an understaffed team, the problems accelerated.
I witnessed entire teams disappear once the first person left. Their goals, objectives, everything, all got discarded or dumped on neighboring teams.
I'm going through it now where entire divisions are standing up and washing their hands of their own work, citing the inability to retain or attract talent. Corporate is telling the other divisions that they'll have to take over those tasks. So... now instead of having a division full of people in those careers who know who to hire and what experience to look for, we have separate divisions trying to find people with the same lack of success.
It's like telling a general contractor that the electricians quit so the carpenters are going to have to find electricians or do the work themselves.
Some of the recent failures have been spectacular. A smart manager will hold onto anyone they can, even if their four states away working remotely.
That, right there.
They need to be designed so that there is not a single point of failure and be interchangeable.
Good posts—skilled talent is priceless and rare.
Any company or manager that does not “get it” is doomed to failure.
I retired from a profession where there were only a handful of true “experts” in the entire country.
In addition we often had to call on outside experts in areas that affected us now and then. Part of our expertise was just knowing who they were—and building up relationships so that they would take our call. They in turn would call us when they needed our assistance.
As modern life gets more and more complex that is happening in many types of industries and businesses.
Yep. My company started the partial work-from-home option in 2017. I always worked in the office then unless there was crazy weather, but I managed a team of buyers who asked if they could WFH some days. The work got done, they were always available during work hours for question and such and they dialed in to all required meetings, so it worked out very well.
All of them wanted to WFH on Fridays, so those tended to be quiet and peaceful days for me and I could catch up on “grunt work.”
Senior management is usually not knowledgeable enough to successfully design teams—particularly in a fast changing world where all the challenges are not fully understood.
The best they can do if find very sharp and hard working people who can creatively fill any gaps.
Unfortunately the reverse is true. These companies have cut staffing so far that a team of four doesn't have a single point of failure if one person departs, it has four points of failure if any one of them depart.
...and the number of reasons for departing are already high enough; promotion opportunities, retirement, family issues, health decisions, etc. Adding a manager trying to force regression to less effective work in a cubicle farm can trip all four points of failure at the same time when even one would derail the entire team.
They aren’t going to allow companies off the hook, they still have to pay that.
The best They can do is shrink their foot print or move to red states
Absolutely. I don’t want anyone to have the impression I am totally against this concept. I just don’t think it is a “one size fits all” option.
You are very close to reality.
In many companies, there are what I call “Heavy Lifters”.
They make all the key decisions and work very very hard.
They will be calling the shots and the bean counters in HR are going to find companies no longer need THEM.
I am proud to say after nearly 40 years in High Tech....
I am now one of the Heavy Lifters.
My definition of “expert” or your “heavy lifter”.
Most folks do the work because they have been told how to do it.
The “experts” understand the history, why they were told to do it that way and the strengths and weaknesses of that approach.
When something goes wrong they have the knowledge to help re-engineer the process to adjust to the new environment.
Without them the workplace can devolve into chaos very quickly.
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