Let’s not forget that all “return to office” mandates are really just a way for the C-suite to reduce headcount while appearing strong/decisive, avoiding negative press (and therefore spooking investors), and not having to pay severance.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a big fan of Teams. The fact that the software is named after a common organizational unit, and also a feature within the software is named after that same thing, is insane. Also, I haven’t seen such an unnecessary resource hog since the original Microsoft Edge.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Also:

Gotta keep the commercial real estate market from imploding.

Whole lotta corpo money and financing tied up in that, sure would be a shame if most office space just wasn't actually needed for most office work.

Also also:

Most managers just personally need the ability to neg employees in-person, even if it is detrimental to actual output, that doesn't matter, what matters is sating their need to feel powerful and important.

Anyway, Zoom did basically the same thing either earlier this year or last year... yep, Zoom employees, the people who make and sell business oriented virtual collaboration software... all need to RTO.

Found it: https://fortune.com/2024/07/09/remote-work-outlook-zoom-return-to-office-chief-people-officer/

[–] whatwhatwhatwhat@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Oh yeah, I totally forgot the real estate side of things.

I work for a midsize company that divides up their office space rental costs between divisions/departments. Our CEO also owns the commercial property management company, and he also owns the holding company that owns the building.

He’s been fighting me for a while now on my division’s “flex work” policy. Finally he gave up, but my division still pays our “fair share” of rent despite several of my team members moving out of state. Oh well.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Yeah thats called you realizing your CEO is scamming the entire business and running it as a franchise that he somehow is both in charge of and also not fully legally / financially responsible for.

That reminds me of how a huge part of why SEARS went out of business was because they broke each building up into the floor space sections per department that each ran as their own mini psuedo businesses and effectively had to pay footage based rent to that building's GM...

As opposed to, you know, a business leveraging synergies, fostering teamwork and having a solid central leadership... nah, fuck all that, each SEARS location is now its own marketplace of competing fiefdoms, all the departments hate all the other departments, central command is now just Pontius Pilate washing his hands over all the bloodshed he oversees.

IMO that kind of set up should just be illegal, its fraud with extra steps.

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