[michaelt]

If the CEO has a wealth of data and it says with remote working Metric A has gone up which is good, and Metric B has gone down which is bad, they have to make a judgement call about which metric to rely on even though they're making an evidence-based decision.

[LiquidSky]

Great, then share that evidence. The problem is all these royal decrees to return to the office never come with even a shred of actual data to explain them.

Once it became clear that they couldn’t show WFH harmed productivity, their arguments became increasingly abstract (e.g., “office culture”) and finally we’ve arrived at simply “because I said so”.

[RestlessMind]

Why should RTO need data? That was the setup until 2020 and it worked. Especially for the leadership who have grown up in that requirement. Onus is on the pro-remote side to provide data that that works.

Sample size of 1 - at my company, remote sucks even if we tried to go all-in on fully remote. I simply cannot have trusted relationships with my colleagues since everything has to be writing or is possible being recorded when on video. In person, both parties can share candid thoughts in person without any fear of being recorded for ever.

[kyleee]

Sounds like you work in a kind of cut throat place. Is yours a common worry? I have never worried about anything like this in the last ~7 years of working remotely

[RestlessMind]

I also worked at some of the nicest environments (Google) and still, it was drilled into our minds that anything in writing can be used against us or company. In various formal and informal trainings, we were explicitly told to carry out sensitive conversations in person.

[ghaff]

If there's no evidence a call is being recorded, I'm very comfortable that it is not.

That said, I do think it's harder to establish solid working relationships purely virtually. Possible but harder. During the pandemic a lot of people probably coasted based on prior relationships and we're likely starting to see some of capital running out.

[LiquidSky]

>That was the setup until 2020 and it worked. Especially for the leadership who have grown up in that requirement.

And people were very happy with carriages until cars came along. Things change, the world changed, WFH became the new reality. Being stuck in the past way of doings just because it was done in the past is idiotic. Leadership is especially bad about adapting to change because it means actually having to learn and try new things, which 100% explains their resistance to WFH.

Much easier to glance at badge swipe-in times and go chew out some peon than to figure out how to actually do the work of management.

>Onus is on the pro-remote side to provide data that that works.

Sure, and that's already been shown. In 2020 there were dire predictions of productivity drops when WFH was implemented on a large-scale. Turns out, that didn't happen. All attempts to determine the effects of WFH show no-to-positive effects on productivity.

Ergo, it works.

So, again

>Why should RTO need data?

Because, as noted above, there hasn't been any measurable drop in productivity due to WFH. This is why in my first comment I said that the justifications used by management have become increasingly abstract, because there is nothing concrete they can point to as support for their decisions.

Sorry you work in such a harsh environment, consider changing jobs.

[RestlessMind]

> All attempts to determine the effects of WFH show no-to-positive effects on productivity.

Nope, we had a different experience. For the first few months, we all coasted on our prior relationships. Also, it was a pretty unique moment in the history and there was a "let's rise to the challenge" feeling.

Later on as employees churned and new ones joined, as well as the remote fatigue set in, we saw a drastic drop in productivity.

> Because, as noted above, there hasn't been any measurable drop in productivity due to WFH.

There has been, in our company. Management is wondering why we have less output when our workforce has more than doubled in the remote setting. To their credit, they literally went all in on remote. But one key thing they didn't realize is that remote needs rewiring of the entire communication culture. Much easier said than done.