Hell No, RTO
This post is a summary of my in-depth podcast episode on the same subject:
First, I feel like I need to confess something. I actually don’t hate the office! I’m an extrovert. I like office clothes and to some degree, I even like office politics - the challenge of them at least. And after-work karaoke is one of my favorite activities.
Ever since my college days when I worked as an admin at a law firm, I had my eye on the corner office. But in 2020, with sudden shelter-in-place mandates and a very uncertain future, I had to rethink my whole approach to my career.
I’d already had a decent amount of remote experience, so I knew how to engage my team at a basic level from across the country. Still, I created a few more ways to encourage and support community, and I also worked with my team to build other ways to connect and, well, we had a record year. In fact, the whole company did. For companies like the one I worked for, remote work was an undeniable success.
Then, in 2023, the RTO (Return to Office) mandates started trickling in, getting more and more punitive by the month. CEOs moved from bribes to threats and they backtracked on their promises of supporting remote work, even gaslighting the workforce by telling us we were less productive at home when we knew the opposite was true.
What gives?
I think old-school managers want employees back because it’s easier for them to coast. These are the kinds of managers to let the trappings of the office do the work for them, instead of consciously creating an ecosystem to thrive regardless of proximity.
It absolutely burns me up that execs like these think that being near their team means they’re managing. But worse than that are these talking points about collaboration, and water-cooler connections, when these are the same execs who have bought and sold companies to the point that “the office” doesn’t exist anymore the way it used to even 5 years ago.
The gaslighting is worst when employees who are forced to go to “the office” end up spending their days on Zoom calls anyway because colleagues are on other teams in other cities and countries.
To add insult to injury, desks for the common employee have gotten smaller and smaller, and equipment worse and worse, so tell me again why we’re more productive at “the office.” I dare you.
