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"If you’ll allow me to be paranoid, I believe that the shibboleth of office face time is something that is being pushed as a means of control."

It's not being paranoid when it's the truth. The sheer volume of rhetoric to say — without *too many* people hearing — "Let's get back to 2019! I mean normal!" is breathtaking. Orwellian, too, oftentimes. And it's absolutely centered on maintaining hegemony and control. I'm sure there's a certain class of twentysomething bootlicker that's all in on Jamie Dimon's braindroppings, but when even the entry-level traders of Wall Street firms are like "fuck. this." then you know the wind has changed. These executives are scared, and the more they make and the more they cultivate sycophantic C-suite and middle-management coteries, the more terrified they are.

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Love it. I've said from the start of remote work due to covid-19 (although many companies were already doing it-the smart ones), 2 things are going to collapse. Commercial real estate--you don't need the bricks-and-mortar overhead. And the middle management/so-called mentors, supervisors etc you mentioned in the article. Employees of ALL ages work best when truly trusted by leadership or trained and educated about what matters. And face time is NOT in the curriculum.

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Good grief - this article is really spot on.

Also, every office i've ever worked in has had bullies - usually inadequate, dysfunctional managers. Never again.

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A lot of refreshing comments from the VT guy in this article that echo a lot of your points made, Ed. In particular, the acknowledgment that many things from a quality people management perspective either weren't done or weren't done well in the "old way" to begin with. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/01/05/era-flexible-work-higher-education-has-begun#.YdV6nb3LwmE.linkedin

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In my experience, the main driver of the "GET BACK TO THE OFFICE" din is from the desperate pleas of ineffective middle-management losing their reins of power and their opportunity to abuse their underlings. I left a toxic work environment for a remote job in 2020 and it's saved my health, not to mention my life. My old position is being advertised now as in-office only, even though the role can be done 100% remotely and requires no face-time. They will have a hard time finding someone to fill that position for so little money, but my old manager needs to have staff in their line of sight in order to get the freshest narcissistic supply available to them.

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When you look at articles like this, you DO have to look at the media. You would think of all jobs, this one would be great for remote work. AND, the big media are constantly getting dinged for being in elite coastal cities.

And yet, so many media jobs are still required to be oin New York, say, and in an office. I think I saw one for Golf Digest that required you work in New York City, that golf hotbed. And the Onion's AV Club said all their editors/critics had to be in Los Angeles (since most live in Chicago, most critics are leaving).

Maybe it's just this New York arrogance, or the romantic notion of being in a NEWSROOM with other reporters. Or maybe that they're all giant corporations, too. It's weird how this topic seems to kill reporter brain cells, or they're just shills for the corporate line. (Which makes you wonder about EVERYTHING they report on...)

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Jan 10, 2022·edited Jan 10, 2022

So, i felt understood in one of my most silent and controversial opinions, this article made my day, thank you and it was great.

Other than that, here are two observations if i may, and, considered that none is currently here to answer, even if i may not:

1- the word "lazy" is still a thing but should have gone extinct together with dinosaurs if the world was a perfect place and society was the completion of a fully successful design of and for all (hélas, we're not there yet).

On a context based analysis, a "lazy" person is in fact either someone worthy of respect in a thoug position having health / social issues who shouldn't be stigmatized but rather supported (because of ethical reasons and because what gets discarded by society instead of being understood and integrated generally comes back in worse ways) or someone worthy of respect who's abilities are not being acknowledged or misplaced in the workplace, generally because corporate structures (hierarchies) imply a rigidity that keeps full functional progression stuck.

2 - Old people, just like anybody else but since longer than many of us, believed a bunch of trauma informed lies like for instance: "working hard and sacrifice are worth it and produce good results" and "it's a matter of deserving, not a matter of structure" that are going on sice centuries and on which most of our larger systems are based including states and cultural systems so the businesses and organizations that are making the mistake of impeding the shift of remote work are also to be contextualized into a larger environment that is quite complex, wilder that most of us are used to believe and that needs to be shifted through the right ways.

Overall, remote work will surely make it, yet, as it is for everything tech, it's essential to plan the hows correctly so better for it to come later than expected than to become the next dystropic bullshit of an already too long series of bullshits that made the world way less appealing than it could be.

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I suppose "know your enemy" applies here: CNBC/NYT/WaPo/WSJ have to read by someone, if only to have their propaganda called out.

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"Marissa Mayer" - she's proof the old guard aren't always old (though she is if you're under 30), and how authoritarianism is a toxic trait of the threatened. I've also noticed the recent load of anti-remote work hit pieces in 2021, that seem to have decreased for now. Every point - bullseye.

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The media has been trying - and usually failing - to lathe their own deranged reality for as long as I’ve read newspapers. I suspect the UK/Murdoch was first, then exported to US news in the 90s/00s with a stronger veneer of intellectualism, before their causes célèbres were imported back into the crass UK sphere.

This is absolutely a media spin rather than coming direct from business, as you’ll see a much more mixed debate in the Financial Times editorial. It just happens there are plenty of execs willing to help out journos with their predetermined story pieces.

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