[x86_64Ubuntu]

So if people don't care what managers think why would the owners bother having them? It seems shortsighted to think that management won't have a say, explicitly or implicitly, in guiding these orgs back to an office based workspace.

[FpUser]

Managers are nothing but employees. Same as developers and other groups. The owners might consider their opinions along with the opinions of the other groups. There is nothing special about managers. And it is the owners who decide how and what to spend their money on. Not the managers.

>"..won't have a say, explicitly or implicitly..."

Nice try. What are you implying under "implicitely"? If this is what I think it is, the managers are just as replaceable. Often it is actually easier for the owners to replace/get rid of a manager than from good salesperson/developer/etc.

[victorronin]

"There is nothing special about managers."

Managers are very often (especially in a bigger organization) is the only channel how information flows to owners.

As a result, managers can paint very different picture of the same situation (as an example, that people working remotely from home are less productive).

May be in some abstract world, "managers are just employees and there is nothing special". In reality they wield a lot of power to sway company in one or another direction.

[FpUser]

>"As a result, managers can paint very different picture of the same situation..."

What you describing is a fraud. In a big organization managers are not uniform group, there are multiple levels and factions. They will happily report on each other if the picture is grossly distorted. There are also a lot of metrics and built in controls in big orgs that can and are being used to estimate how particular policy affects the bottom line (profitability).

In reality there are companies whose bottom line did suffer from WFH and there are companies that had actually have profits increased as the result. If you think the latter group will revert because some low level managers feel insecure about their position I have a bridge to sell.

[birdyrooster]

The services and products companies have been delivering during the pandemic were developed largely before the pandemic. Owners can see this. It’s not just low level managers, rather it’s about middle managements perspective in general.

Management and cross organizational relations rely on rapport and relationships amongst baby boomers and Gen X people who greatly prefer in person interaction. Maybe engineers won’t come back to the office, but they sure will be.