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Comment by 4iuvosvjf23 | Hacker News Reader

If there's data supporting RTO then why do they justify it with vague appeals to "company culture" and "watercooler moments" rather than just explaining the data?

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Probably because saying "some employees in WFH are playing videogames all day instead of doing any work" is not a politically correct answer so then corpo-speak about culture and values it is.

They don't even need to say that though, just present some evidence to make me believe this is something other than an arbitrary management cultural preference and I'll feel much less imposed upon and bitter about it.

Anecdotally, when Cyberpunk dropped during covid winter of 2020, all the big gamers on the team had nothing to show for over a couple of weeks in terms of output.

I'm pro WFH, but it was obvious the productivity of some people had dropped significantly after the switch to WFH and were actively avoiding dodging work due to no more in-office oversight and being too close to many fun distractions at home, like their gaming rigs.

You want proof, well obviously the management or company has no proof that those employees were playing cyberpunk all day on their gaming rigs at home, since they don't have CCTV in your living room, but the guys were admitting it themselves during some calls with other colleagues, which correlated with the major drop in their productivity.

Again, I'm pro WFH, but let's not pretend that there are no slackers in this racket who would abuse every bit of trust and privilege to do very little work. I'm sure everyone met some.

The data is in the attrition reports they run - more often than not, it's a soft layoff, while still justifying the rent cost and investments they've put into their office space.

Control. They want to fucking own you and every aspect of your life.

Why would they want that? That seems delusional to me. What they want is all the normal things corporations are criticized for: short term returns, growth, employee productivity, etc.

Why would my organization VP want to "fucking own you and every aspect of your life"? That is extremely strong language, and I'm having a hard time taking it seriously.

Nah.

In a corporation 80℅ of the work is done by 20% of the people and by design there is a lot of redundancy aroud. The worst thing that can happen is for the drones to figure out just how badly they are getting screwed.

Productivity? If you can figure out how to measure it let me know.

Here:

https://issendai.com/psychology/sick-systems.html

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/

https://libcom.org/article/phenomenon-bullshit-jobs-david-gr...

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