WFH is dead and buried. Right to WFH bill is pointless

All those companies grew their profits during COVID when they were all working remote.

They are all shrinking profits and headcount post COVID.

Coincidentally they seem to be doing worse working in the office..

Their rate of profit increase was higher during lockdown when people were working remotely. Now they are back in the office the rate has fallen back in line with what it has been for the past decade.

AI has no human interactions. That's the whole point. Its why so many in office workers are being laid off. AI doesn't need an office.

you know you cant link the two things though i presume you are being facetious. I worked in an oil trading business during Covid, they made a fortune, was that because people had to work remotely or was it because of market conditions?

those companies grew their profits during COVID when they were all working remote.

Thats because they were providing the tools and architecture for WFH, it couldn't have been done without these companies products. Of course their profitability went up simply because there was more demand for their products. Their profitability dropped afterwards because there was less demand as people were now returning to onsite work so didn't need their products because they had already loaded up. It happened all over the tech sector . It bit like the covid vaccine, everyone wanted it during covid but not afterwards. It was nothing to do with WFH of the employees of these companies. Id say some of their critical staff in the US were working on site anyways for alot of covid. In Ireland even alot of tech staff were essential workers going to work some of the time.

So bringing people back to the office has decimated them

Yes people in the office are being laid off. Not a great incentive to return to the office.

They will go with whatever direction management goes with at the time. You mentioned Meta - a reminder that they have poured 70 billion into the Metaverse.

I worked in a company that panicked one year, fired a whole bunch of staff, then had to rehire many the year after. CEO's and management decisions aren't infallible. Likewise financial decisions. Likewise non-financial decisions.

Sometimes a company just wants people back in the office e.g. 5 days a week because of one personality

Not directed at you in particular your post was just one of the last in this conversation on updates etc. I will go against many saying this (including those in agreement with me on WFH) but this constant update, daily standup type way of working is very overbearing and for the most part in the type of work I do unsuitable and waste of time.

I worked for years with none of this daily updating then a while back in my previous job we were all forced into these daily updates and weekly manager 1 to 1 (note I never set these with my reports, they could talk to me when they needed be it once a day or once a month but I wasn't so luckily myself with my own manager). They just ended up being a 10am meeting everyday where everyone went though the motions, mostly saying the same things for a week or more on end as the type of work is by its nature slow and challenging so little to say to a clueless manager other than the same high level thing. Another advantage of my new job is none of this, a weekly team update with our manager (as a team not 1 to 1) is pretty much our only interaction with her unless there is something specific on either side that needs discussion. As a team we have meetings to discuss particular things no "this is what I did yesterday" stuff.

A far nicer way to work in my opinion. Now it may work better in different types of work but this is my experience of it.

A lot of them don't to be honest and their company would be better without them (I can see that from one place I worked before). CEOs are for the most part workaholics who boast about working 18+ hour days, working 7 days a week, "no place for work life balance" etc etc. They were brought up being in an office so that's the way it was and so it shall always be. Plus they have all this nonsense about "culture" to spin as their company is a religion to them but employees don't care. They want to do their job and get paid, ideally with with minimal time wasted commuting and work around their personal lives rather than work dictate things. All the evidence points to no drop in productivity in remote or hybrid work places also but the CEOs have no issue ignoring that.

I've heard it all now, companies would be better off without their CEOs.

These threads never fail to disappoint usually it's managers who don't know what they are doing , now it's the c suite , yet the posters here who obviously are below these levels have all the answers.

There are benefits and costs to having your workforce working from home.

The benefits are savings in rental space, heating, etc., people tend to take less sick leave, a jump in productivity, less employee stress because commuting is down etc. However, there are some downsides.

The big downside to having your workforce working from home is in relation to integration of new staff. If you have turnover, culture isn't as easily maintained, new workers don't have those watercooler/coffee/corridor informal opportunities to learn which slows their productivity. Obviously, those downsides increase over time and rise significantly compared to the benefits, because of turnover.

It is not a surprise therefore to see the pendulum swinging the other way after a quantum of years of working from home, with companies looking to establish culture again, onboarding new employees better and monitoring productivity. A new balance will emerge over time with hybrid models even if the pendulum swings strongly towards working in the office in the short term.

I am sure many employees don't care about culture, but that is of itself a culture, often seen in "can-do"-type companies.

Culture exists, whether it is recognised or not.

I saw plenty of "culture" being rammed down our throats in my last job and it drove far more people out the door than gave any benefit.

I am in a new job about two months and yes have only been on site three times so far. I will go in once more probably before I finish up on the 19th for Christmas.

These so many double negatives in that I'm not entirely sure what point you're making.

I think you mean some people feel they are being productive by constantly interrupting people with unplanned meetings. (Drive -bys I call them). They can only do that in the office. Which is why they need to be in the office.

Many of them are using RTO to lay People off. Managing people out is a classic technique. So it's going to be common to lots of places.

Lots of tech places over hired in COVID. They also regularly cull numbers especially of older staff. There's a reason there's a lot of churn and young demographic in tech companies.

Wheres the culture in that.