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canyonwalkerThis evening I had dinner with one of my clients. We got the VP of the organization that owns our software, along with the director and manager underneath him who manage our software on a daily basis, to join us. It was an amiable meeting where we talked about a number of things. One of the topics of conversation was where everyone lives and the degree to which we work from home (WFH) or are mandated to return to office (RTO).
My company is remote-first, I've noted before. We actually gave up our last remaining office lease last year. Execs looked at the cost versus the number of person-days of occupancy we had, and decided the value wasn't worth the cost. Our customer exec quipped that his company looked at the same equation and made the opposite decision. Instead of reasoning, "Too few people come to the office, let's terminate the lease," they chose, "Too few people come to the office, let's force them to come back."
But here's the funny thing about the whole equation. The exec in question doesn't RTO. He lives 500 miles away. He works from home. Every person beneath him in his organization is pressured to spend more days in the office. It's tracked. It's a topic in performance reviews. But the VP works from home.
Oh, he's aware of the hypocrisy. Some employees are bold enough to confront him with it. Others go through anonymous feedback sites, where "You work remotely while forcing us to commute to the office, that's ridiculous" is the #1 most common item of feedback. He recognizes all this... and he treats it with the same detachment as he might note, "Huh, there's rain in the weather forecast today." He's hypocritically enforcing a policy he doesn't abide by himself... and he doesn't care.
My company is remote-first, I've noted before. We actually gave up our last remaining office lease last year. Execs looked at the cost versus the number of person-days of occupancy we had, and decided the value wasn't worth the cost. Our customer exec quipped that his company looked at the same equation and made the opposite decision. Instead of reasoning, "Too few people come to the office, let's terminate the lease," they chose, "Too few people come to the office, let's force them to come back."
But here's the funny thing about the whole equation. The exec in question doesn't RTO. He lives 500 miles away. He works from home. Every person beneath him in his organization is pressured to spend more days in the office. It's tracked. It's a topic in performance reviews. But the VP works from home.
Oh, he's aware of the hypocrisy. Some employees are bold enough to confront him with it. Others go through anonymous feedback sites, where "You work remotely while forcing us to commute to the office, that's ridiculous" is the #1 most common item of feedback. He recognizes all this... and he treats it with the same detachment as he might note, "Huh, there's rain in the weather forecast today." He's hypocritically enforcing a policy he doesn't abide by himself... and he doesn't care.
