Return-to-office orders look like a way for rich, work-obsessed CEOs to grab power back from employees::White-collar workers temporarily enjoyed unprecedented power during the pandemic to decide where and how they worked.
“These elite CEOs probably work 100-plus hours a week and they’re much more work-focused.”
No they don’t. Full stop. Let’s stop fabricating this bullshit. That’s 16hrs a day M-F with 10hrs Sat/Sun. Elon Musk is not doing those hours period, let alone while also finding time to play Elden Ring.
Yeah people need to stop acting like they’re the most hardworking people out there. They definitely are not. Especially when you can be CEO of multiple companies and no one bats an eye.
Well, let’s do some quick math. Let’s count billable hours in a day with a minimum billable hour being 1 hour. If you work a 6 hour work day, and can complete the average task in 15 minutes, that works out to 24 possible billable hours in one day accounting for a total of 90 minutes of actual work.
So yeah, on paper it’s actually really easy to “work” 100 hours per week
I totally agree. I always think it’s weird when they have interviews or podcasts about talking to CEOs and they all say something like “you just have to work hard enough”. Yeah. Okay.
Where are the podcasts where they ask lottery winners for some vapid aphorism about hard work paying off?
They could and should do a podcast of that married couple who gamed and won the Michigan State lottery… I mean that was a lot of hardwork lol.
Jerry and Marge Selbee if anyone wants to look them up.
It was a pretty decent little movie also
Even if Elon Musk is putting in 100-hour weeks, he’s the CEO of five companies, which means being CEO of one company is a half-time gig at most.
Or 20%? 🤔
Highly doubt he actually plays Elden Ring
He played it enough to make one of the worst builds I’ve ever seen. A heavy rolling mage with two shields…
CEOs DO NOT WORK HUNDRED HOUR WEEKS.
CEOs DO NOT WORK HUNDRED HOUR WEEKS.
CEOs DO NOT WORK HUNDRED HOUR WEEKS.
CEOs DO NOT WORK HUNDRED HOUR WEEKS.
NOBODY FUCKEN DOES, YOU’D BE A BRAIN DEAD ZOMBIE
Yeah, on average they do around 60
Its important to note what they consider work too. I’m sorry but spending half of your day getting to meetings and the other half in them is not the same as fixing a layer 3 issue on a critical app, or laboring all day in the sun at 60 hours a week. I don’t subscribe to the idea that work is work. If that were true nobody would mind being a traffic controller over an office administrator.
But work is work. If you’re doing it for the benefit of a business only because they’re paying you to do it then that is the literal definition of work. Just because it’s not hard work doesn’t mean it’s not work?
Besides, that number isn’t self-reported numbers, it’s from a study I read recently, and it was included as a tangentially related point. I could try and track it down if you like.
It’s also important to note that not every CEO is a billionaire of a megacorp. There are millions of small business owners who are also CEOs.
You shouldn’t be getting downvoted for your numbers. I would believe, especially in smaller businesses that the CEOs actually work. Hell, the CEO at my company is a great guy. I meet with him every week and he is there all day with us. There is another layer though, which is the managing partners. They fill the traditional role of the boogeyman CEO people imagine. So we aren’t necessarily mad at the position. We’re mad at the inequality in pay with no tangible or even existent contribution. Especially when these people are taking such a large portion of what could honestly be spread around to make everyone comfortable, at least in my specific situation.
This logic is going to be lost on these anti-work nerds. All business is bad. All workers are gods and all CEOs are lazy scum making billions off the toil of their hoard of exploited office drones. This place…
Oh boy, this will look funny next to my reply.
Fully agree with you, the black and white thinking and the hyperboles used are putting me of Lemmy.
I don’t like it either, but to be honest reddit was about the same.
Unfortunately it’s not a “Lemmy issue” it’s an “Internet issue.” You’re more likely to get engagement from those that disagree rather than from those who already agree.
how does that corporate business casual loafer taste?
I don’t think being inflammatory is helping the situation. I’ve been surprised before, and just because I’m net negative doesn’t mean lurkers haven’t read it and listened.
Every day, I see more and more people on Lemmy complaining about Lemmy.
This place is getting more like reddit all the time!
If all work is not the same why would people perform these difficult jobs where you fix issues on critical apps.
Simple office administration jobs which aren’t difficult can be done by anybody.
Sure, most CEOs get disproportionately paid for the position they’re in but I don’t think they’re job is any less stressful or demanding than actually working with the nuts and bolts.
“if work is hard, why wouldnt you just choose not to do the work?”
This is next level out of touch lol. You’re right though, all those construction workers should just become CEOs!
I actually love my job as a software engineer! I’d rather do absolutely nothing else, as a boring desk job where I sit around looking busy all day would bore me to hell and I’d very likely make 1/3 what I’m making now. I find exactly zero interest in a “people job” even if it paid more because I wouldn’t enjoy it.
So, the reason I do the job I do is because of personal fulfillment and money. Beyond the bare minimum of survival, that’s why people do the jobs they do. It’s not rocket science
Talking about work during a business dinner does not equal hours. Thinking about work ideas after hours does not equal hours. Fostering a business connection does not equal work hours.
And if they do, then I get to count stressing in the shower, arguments in my head while I go for a walk, ranting to my partner about work problems, and keeping in touch with former coworkers.
A third of their job is “fostering business connections,” with the other third being “understanding the company and workforce,” followed by “actually making decisions.”
I do 40 hour weeks. I certainly do less difficult work than a construction worker, but it’s still considered work. Work is work, whether you’re being paid to sit on your ass and draw stick figures or actually doing continuous manual labor.
All I’m saying is just because you don’t consider it work doesn’t mean it isn’t being done entirely for business reasons, for the business, during work hours, which they are only doing because it’s their job. It is therefore definitely work. Not “hard” work but still work
I can’t believe you’re getting downvoted for citing a Harvard study….
Here’s the link for the lazy. https://hbr.org/2018/07/how-ceos-manage-time#how-ceos-manage-time
I’d also work 60 hours a week if I could count getting chauffeured around and eating lunches with people as “work”
My dad had a family friend that was CEO that claimed he worked 80 hours a week. He pulled out a calendar, and not only was it closer to 50-60, about 6-10 of those hours were golf business meetings it was funny. I doubt he would have laughed if one of his workers were calling him out though…
Imo being out with friends and being out with business partners are two totally different states. I can relax with friends, but being at work functions (even if I consider the co-workers I’m with friends) I have to be “on” and I just end up exhausted, even if I end up doing exactly the same thing.
I wouldn’t underestimate the psychological aspect, especially when you have to watch what you say more often than around friends
To be fair I didn’t link it directly in my comment (though I doubt it would’ve changed the outcome). Thanks for tracking that down for me, though!
Lemmy is occupied by 13 year olds who dream of working zero days in their life.
part of that 60 hours is 30 hours of
golftouch grass meetings
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My main take on the pandemic is that employers involuntarily gave their employees a huge benefit set by having to go remote. They had to give this benefit set not just to their buddies or a select few, but to people they consider undeserving or do not trust.
All of their moves since have reflected that they want to put the cat back in the bag.
It’s not about productivity at all and never has been. The studies even called the bluff by comparing productivity and determined that productivity is higher with WFH. The reaction to that has been to ignore the data and lean back into gut feel, because high level management isn’t really about productivity.
You can tell this simply by the fact that their natural environment is the office and very few things in an office environment are actually about productivity. The reason they want return to office is the same reason they wanted open offices: control. It’s easier for them to hover behind you in an open office plan. It’s easier for them to order you around when they don’t have to call you first.
It’s all about control, and likely always has been.
As a manager, I can confirm that productivity drops in the office (even my own). I’ve got team members that choose to go to the office (moreso than me). I encourage them to work however they prefer, and want. You can work anywhere around the world however you wish, including at some nice beach, as long as it doesn’t affect the project.
You sound like a not-dickhead ;-)
A lot of that control is about perceived obedience and perceived productivity.
In many areas you’ll find that ACTUAL productivity matters far less than perceived productivity.
And it’s easier to perceived productivity when you can walk a floor and see people work as you walk by.
This is 100% true and I had to learn it the hard way; perception matters just as much, if not more than getting the job done.
“When you look annoyed all the time, people think that you’re busy.”
- George Costanza
I’ve lived by this advice my whole career and it’s never failed me.
high level management isn’t really about productivity
High level management is about preserving your position as a high level manager and securing the maximum compensation for it.
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As a manager who WFH, if managers are ineffective at their job, it’s either that they suck, or their org structure causes them to suck.
If upper management wants a manager to manage 30 people, of course they will suck.
Keep the team to 8 max so the manager can actually do some hands on technical work as well.
Of course, it could just be that middle management is obsolete but that doesn’t explain why the CEOs aren’t just
laying offSomeone has to suck someone’s dick.
Good, they’ll be left with second rate wage slaves while other companies who trust their employees will be more productive and competitive as a result.
They don’t care. They need to lead/rule over/command people. Second rate or not.
So many don’t understand just how wildly inefficient bureaucratic hierarchies are; what happens isn’t the most profitable thing, it’s the whim of whoever managed to claw their way highest up.
Basically, the decisions are the manifestation of the artificial stupidity of brute force.
How are the MBAs going to pull all their power poses if we work at home?
Through Teams, Webex, Zoom, etc like they already do … all the newer nimble companies don’t care where you are.
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Trust. You’re right, it completely comes down to trust. If you can’t trust the people you hire to work without someone looming over them or watching everything they do, then you shouldn’t have hired that person.
Plus, if you hire someone and have work for them - either the work gets done (and ideally it’s high quality work of course) or it doesn’t. There are actual meaningful metrics. Asses in seats just isn’t one of them.
Managers are managers because they’re good at playing power games, not because they’re good at their jobs. These games are harder to play if people aren’t there. That’s why they’re so scared.
When I got my newest job the boss was bragging about I can work as much overtime as I want at 1.5x. like bitch I want undertime, let me work less!
As a manager, I empower my team to work remotely as much as possible 🤷
Rule for my team is I don’t care where you are as long as shit gets done and I can find you if I need you.
Some managers are actually really good at resolving conflicts without bias and keeping the team functioning smoothly. In tech at least, people who make things aren’t always that great at interacting with other people.
Of course, the kind of manager I’m talking about doesn’t care how/when/where the work gets done, and they don’t micro-manage.
OK OK, I’m not saying all managers are like that. But I’ve certainly met a lot of them in my time.
Seems like the commercial real estate collapse has a lot to do with it too.
Eh, that may play a role for the big firms, but most of the small to mid sized businesses just lease their real estate. They’d realistically come out ahead by downsizing their offices.
I think what we are seeing is management really struggling to adapt and find reliable metrics for performance management as well as to promote employee retention and engagement without the social bonds of an office culture.
Small companies are often under long leases. Our landlord was quite flexible and let us break the lease if we did the work to find a new tenant, but most wouldn’t be.
And yes we are coming out ahead, by quite a lot… offices aren’t cheap even the tiny one we tried to use temporarily… have now ditched that and gone totally remote.
How so?
Super simplified version: the office buildings are losing value due to low occupation. Owners of those buildings lose money if the value goes down. Those owners do not want that.
And those owners can almost always find a compassionate ear from their loyal rich CEOs who don’t want to upset a however many years relationship of “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” kinda thing.
Highly plausible deduction.
I see a lot of people say this but I haven’t seen real data that this is actually a trend. Though I live in Australia, maybe it’s different elsewhere.
If I’m understanding correctly, you’re saying you don’t see the trend of office real estate losing value? This might be a problem mostly for the US, but Manhattan real estate is definitely struggling. There’s also the company WeWork, which is basically AirBnB for office spaces, which is now on the brink of collapse.. WeWork had bought up so much office space for renting out that US banks are legit concerned over what happens if the business fails.
Thanks for the sources, yes looks like the US commercial real estate market is in trouble. Here in Australia it’s not that bad, though there are predictions that there may be issues due to economic reasons, with WFH playing a small part.
My understanding is as follows: A lot of corporate debt is backed by the real estate. For example, McDonald’s food operations are far less valuable than its real estate portfolio. If that property is now worthless because no one wants it and it’s unoccupied, banks now have assets worth less than what’s owed on them. That in turn means when the loan term ends, banks can’t just re-finance the debt, because the collateral that secured the loan in the first place isn’t worth what the debt is. That means big problems for companies who now need those loans as a source of cash to pay off the old loans. They now have to scrape up actual cash to pay, leading to more austerity. Because corps can’t pay the banks, the banks lose out on revenue, which means they have to tighten their belts, and so on and so on in a self-reinforcing spiral. If the corps default, the banks can seize the assets, but again, they’re worthless, so it’s a one-two punch.
It’s a giant shell game, and from what I’ve read economists are afraid a 2008-style crash may be in the works due to the cycle of debt above.
Don’t forget the hoarding of cash offshore too. A lot of themcan pay, they just don’t want to use their own money.
A lot of the foreign currency was brought back under the trump years when companies were given a one time reduction in taxes to repatriot their cash. From 35% to 15% tax rate.
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-12-19/companies-repatriate-1-trillion-since-tax-overhaul
That’s an amazingly non-nuanced response. Very curious.
To add what other folks have said… Banks have a conflict of interest in regards to employees coming back into the office: They hold the mortgages on all that office space. If the work-from-home trend doesn’t let up they stand to lose trillions of dollars.
The bigger the bank the more they stand to lose. This is why banks like Goldman Sachs are extremely vocal about bringing people back into the office and grasp at every little thing that can find to back their claims that, “it’s better”. Even if the arguments they’re making are based on 100% bullshit.
Example: You’ll often hear big bank executives say things like, “teams that work near each other work better” knowing full well that their global workforce doesn’t actually “sit near each other”. On any given internal team employees will live all over the damned world so even if every one of them came back into the office they still wouldn’t be anywhere near each other.
We know this is 100% bullshit anyway because if they actually stood behind these words they’d issue mandates that huge amounts of employees be relocated to the same physical locations and that hiring could only happen locally. They’re not going to do that though because they know what they’re saying is bullshit.
These elite CEOs probably work 100-plus hours a week and they’re much more work-focused.
Oh ffs. I have nothing against Nick Bloom but this statement is so BS. Even if “elite CEOs” could work 24 hours per day, 7 days per week their salaries could not be justified by any means. There are just not enough hours in a day to actually do it.
The mandates symbolize the sharp disconnect right now between the way CEOs and employees think about work.
He’s right about that though.
When I was an intern at a large company, the CIO talked to our small group of interns. He said he worked around that much, and I don’t think he was lying. He told us about his typical day.
The company was located in a big city and he lived in the suburbs with a long commute by taxi and train. He would get up at 5AM to start the commute. He worked on the train and taxi. Then he would leave the office at 5PM, work on the commute home, have dinner and family time for 2 hours, then work until bed at around midnight. He said he was lucky he only needed 4 hours of sleep and how much he treasured the 2 hours he spent with his family every day. It was the only time he refused to take calls.
I think part of the problem why executives mistreate their workers so much is that they themselves are overworked and exhausted. Despite having a ton of money, they don’t get to enjoy it, so it becomes meaningless.
And there’s people out there who work just as much but will never make the same amount of money. When you have the privilege to never worry about cleaning, laundry, taking care of your kids, grocery shopping, cooking, and all the numerous bullshit things that just add up to consume your time that you can wave away when you were born rich allow you to do that. They don’t consume your day and energy.
Not that everyone if suddenly given that kind of time would do what he does, but I don’t think they should. I think he’s the type of person who looking back on his deathbed will regret only spending 2 hours a day with his family. That’s really sad.
on his deathbed will regret only spending 2 hours a day with his family. That’s really sad.
I don’t know if you work and have kids, but honestly 2 hours of focused quality time with your kids is honestly amazing. I get 5 hours with my kid in the afternoon and that’s because I’m privileged and I can pick her up exactly when she gets out of school. I still don’t get to really hang out and just play with her those whole 5 hours because I still have to do things like cook and clean.
Sure on the weekends I manage more, but honestly 2 hours of just nothing but you and kid time is pretty normal for a working parent that isn’t working insane hours. That guy will regret not going to recitals and stuff, but he won’t be disconnected from his kids. I sure didn’t get 2 hours a day during the week from my exhausted parents.
Are you a rich CEO or were your parents? Probably not, your parents probably didn’t have the privilege to not worry about all the things I listed. Which is why they got two hours a day with you because they were taking care of all the little things in life that just have to get done. So yeah, I agree, being a lower class working couple getting 2 hours a day is pretty good.
But imagine if your parents were working that much purely by choice not necessity. Not to make sure you had enough money to have the necessities of life, but to just have a bigger bank dick than the other guys. To have more power and status through money. Someone choosing to work insane hours to get $800,000 per year over $700,000 or whatever could afford to work much much less in exchange to spend way more time with their kids because they have that privilege.
My point is that CEO is squandering the privilege to spend more time with their family, a privilege that your parents didn’t have.
I hear you, but I’m just saying that he probably won’t have any regrets about his kid’s childhood or literally everyone would. He’s spending a typical amount of time with his kids.
Could he spent more? Yeah. Will he have regrets around his life? Yes. That man will die of a heart attack or exhaustion, but his children will know him. And worse still, they’ll know that compared to most super rich parents, their dad paid them more mind than others in their peer group. Wealthy parents tend to offload their children onto others.
I get it. I have a kid and kids really eat into living your life even if you love them.
Some small number of people love being married to their work. And some of these people think since they enjoy it that others must feel the same, and when they see their employees quitting it’s surprised Pikachu face and denial.
I’ve worked as cook and sous chef for about 13 years now. Most I ever made was 55k a year and at that time I was working ~75 hours a week. If we extrapolate to 100 hours… Carry the one… Yup! Still a far cry from the paycheck of a CEO.
cook and sous chef
Mad respect from me. I can’t think of a more difficult job, you have to keep up, you have to juggle orders were some things are easy and some things are hard, you have to deal with the temperature and the standing and the moving. This is a tough, tough job!
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Say it with me: I wasn’t born to work. I wasn’t born to produce. I certainly wasn’t born to keep old rich people rich. I was born to figure out my own purpose, not have it dictated to me.
I don’t live to work, I work to live. But it’s disingenuous to say anyone with talent can easily find another job. Most workers don’t have nearly as much power as tech workers.
Yep. There’s a lot of people out there who deserve more protections against employers because they can’t just get another job so easy, let alone be able to work from home.
and the few who actually need the office structure (which are probably the same kids who did their homework Sunday night instead of on the bus home Friday afternoon).
Speaking as someone who did their homework on the bus to school Monday morning, in study hall, and on Sunday night if there was a lot, I’m way more productive working from home because I can chunk out my work.
Sure, but second rate employees deserve workers rights too. We should at least be careful to not build our rights on their backs.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“Because the labor market is looser and there’s more talent to be hired, I think the employers think they’ll be able to get their way,” Dr Grace Lordan, associate professor in behavioral science at the London School of Economics told Insider.
A certain kind of CEO — noticeably skewing male and older, she said — is drawing from this “command and control” playbook as a way to rebuild an employee base that fits their idea of being productive and diligent.
“This belief of a certain cohort of people, and they are represented across all sectors, that presentee-ism is productivity, for them it’s perfectly rational that if somebody doesn’t want to come into the office then that basically means they’re not somebody who wants to add value to the firm,” Lordan added.
Elon Musk is consistently adamant about workers at his companies from X to Tesla being present in office, going as far as calling remote work “morally wrong.”
A number of firms that benefited from a pandemic bump in business, particularly in tech, went on a hiring spree — triggering the “Great Resignation” as workers quit for ever-higher salaries and perks.
That attitude means certain types of employees will lose out — and return-to-office mandates will likely hurt diversity too if they are strictly enforced.
The original article contains 512 words, the summary contains 215 words. Saved 58%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
For a lot of positions. Remote work is not just the past and the present. It is also the future.
Yep. Once the old boomer CEOs die off, I have a feeling remote work will be more readily available.
It was never about productivity. It was always about control.
And by “look like” we mean “totally are”
Additionally, people have been saying this since day 1. How is this news?
Oh my god, so much this! The only apparent reason I see for many of the “return to office” cases I know about is for middle managers to be able to hold court and lord over their subordinates. As for the actual work that needs to be done, I see little advantage (in fact, constant interruptions for management and colleagues make it quite worse).
These dingles are gonna flex like this just before another Covid surge, I guess?
Sure would be a shame if a lot of those office buildings burned down for no reason…
That would fix everything for the owners because then they can claim insurance and drop the bad assets at the same time
