The latest get your ass back in the office story: AT&T

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

Another thing, since most companies insist on these stupid open concept office designs, trying to get work done with a bunch of assholes yapping around you or on the phone is annoying as hell. Lately I have been doing Wednesday and Thursday in the office. The director of our business unit wants everyone here on Wednesday as a “collaboration” day. So when the office is full of people it’s less than ideal with all the commotion and people talking. Today, so far there are three of os here. Very quiet and much better. No remote work tomorrow since I work 9-80s. That should be our next topic where folks bitch and complain that everyone needs to work 5 days a week. Wrong.

[Captainant 27521]

Just now, Patricio Swayze said:

Another thing, since most companies insist on these stupid open concept office designs, trying to get work done with a bunch of assholes yapping around you or on the phone is annoying as hell. Lately I have been doing Wednesday and Thursday in the office. The director of our business unit wants everyone here on Wednesday as a “collaboration” day. So when the office is full of people it’s less than ideal with all the commotion and people talking. Today, so far there are three of os here. Very quiet and much better. No remote work tomorrow since I work 9-80s. That should be our next topic where folks bitch and complain that everyone needs to work 5 days a week. Wrong.

Funny story - one of my customers is doing the same thing. They opened a GORGEOUS new office right as COVID ramped up and it sat unused for two years. Now they require everyone to come in Tues-Thurs, but those days are measurably (by the technical and business metrics they tracked during the WFH transition) less productive than they were before - mainly because those in office days are slam jam packed with meetings and middle managers getting into the middle of every process so they can show how much they contribute

[AUS-97HORN 11735]

8 hours ago, Wilcox Cummingtonite said:

^This is exactly why WFH is gonna be fucked for some Americans soon. Corps will realize they can just hire Sandeep instead who will take half the pay to do 5 times the work “remotely” from India.

Sucks for people who actually are able to be productive working at home. I’m not one of them, but I envy those that can.

As a whole Americans are very opinionated regarding working with a "foreign" voice.

In my industry, they know they pay extra to speak to someone with an American or even Hispanic accent, and the vast majority of them pay that.

In my experience, the moment a customer hears a heavy Indian accent, they shut the fuck down on the call. 

Customers are also notoriously impatient.  They will occasionally accept a 4-8 hour response on a tech question.  But they wont put up with every question they ask taking a full business day to respond.

Employers keep running out of qualified candidates that live within 60 miles of their offices, the remote worker boom was the reason many of them were able to fill open positions. 

WFH will continue to exist for many white collar jobs.    And especially for any jobs that require hiring more than the cheapest possible worker.  

Edited May 18, 2023 by AUS-97HORN

[Snake Diggity 4614]

35 minutes ago, Patricio Swayze said:

Another thing, since most companies insist on these stupid open concept office designs, trying to get work done with a bunch of assholes yapping around you or on the phone is annoying as hell. Lately I have been doing Wednesday and Thursday in the office. The director of our business unit wants everyone here on Wednesday as a “collaboration” day. So when the office is full of people it’s less than ideal with all the commotion and people talking. Today, so far there are three of os here. Very quiet and much better. No remote work tomorrow since I work 9-80s. That should be our next topic where folks bitch and complain that everyone needs to work 5 days a week. Wrong.

Fuckin A this.  My previous job had a cafeteria table style setup, just long ass tables, not even cubes.  They made me come in at least once a week.  I’m in that motherfucker trying to talk to clients on zoom while twenty other people are doing the same thing.  Couldn’t hear shit.  Ridiculous.

[MonkeyDoughnut 10186]

For all of you blaming shitty mangers for WFH failures, where are all your companies finding all the non-shitty managers at? We've got some great employees but finding non-shitting managers has been even harder than pre WFH. 

[CooterBrown 17951]

1 hour ago, Bateshorn said:

My previous employer owns its footprint and the former ceo was obsessed about in person post Covid. He tried to get people back in the office before the vaccine was wide spread.  It led to a lot of disgruntled employees, mass retirement, and a bad hire situation.  
 

The first thing the new CEO did was loosen up RTO and give more managerial flexibility, and employee moral and hiring uptake jumped almost immediately.

We have a mix of owned and leased properties in multiple states.  We had our class A lease on South Mopac. We are giving that up and that's over $1.5M/year.  Our light industrial we own. The initial plan was to add a 3 story office building at that Austin site for around $20M to house the Mopac professional staff and that's been nixed. Instead, cubicles are shrinking down so they can increase seating by 25%. It'll move to the hoteling model once that's complete and still have excess capacity.  Our corporate HQ leases 15 floors in a high rise in OK. Once hoteling is rolled out there, they'll be able to go to half that amount easily. Okies still love to go to the office a lot, otherwise, they could shrink it further.  Our Kansas City office was going to have to either expand our owned office building or move but now they're well below capacity.  IIRC, the unofficial word was WFH was going to save 40-60% of annual real estate costs once leases end and expansion projects are cancelled. Our staff turnover has decreased and recruiting has improved also. Our IT department is 100% remote and that has dramatically improved recruiting.  We could get good staff in OK but it took a long time and a lot of effort because the hiring pool is pretty shallow.   When we rolled out our WFH policy during COVID, the first rule was you had to live with 1 hour of a physical office location.  Then that changed to anywhere within the 5 states we have offices. That limit was strictly because Finance didn't want to set up additional state income taxes in our payroll system.  I have heard there are 4 other "secret states" in the system already that, if you ask and the state is already in the system, you can be allowed to reside there also.  I imagine we are 2-3 years from Finance just saying fuck it, just live in the US.

Edited May 18, 2023 by CooterBrown

[Js1 85162]

23 minutes ago, AUS-97HORN said:

As a whole Americans are very opinionated regarding working with a "foreign" voice.

In my industry, they know they pay extra to speak to someone with an American or even Hispanic accent, and the vast majority of them pay that.

In my experience, the moment a customer hears a heavy Indian accent, they shut the fuck down on the call. 

Customers are also notoriously impatient.  They will occasionally accept a 4-8 hour response on a tech question.  But they wont put up with every question they ask taking a full business day to respond.

Employers keep running out of qualified candidates that live within 60 miles of their offices, the remote worker boom was the reason many of them were able to fill open positions. 

WFH will continue to exist for many white collar jobs.    And especially for any jobs that require hiring more than the cheapest possible worker.  

My old firm outsourced some work to India (disaster) and El Salvador (okay for time zone, terrible for communicating effectively) and this firm outsourced some work to Belfast (again, disaster, as having has a 1 day delay due to time zones). 

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

Fuckin A this.  My previous job had a cafeteria table style setup, just long ass tables, not even cubes.  They made me come in at least once a week.  I’m in that motherfucker trying to talk to clients on zoom while twenty other people are doing the same thing.  Couldn’t hear shit.  Ridiculous.

Lulz. I worked for a company a few years back that tried this dumbfuckery. The VP of our division who came up with this brilliant idea to have all of us sitting at trading tables thankfully jumped to another company and the new VP corrected the situation. Where do these people come up with these asinine ideas?

[Pato del Muerto 52397]

Not a corporate level but my wife hired a guy on one of the gig apps to do some work.  He is Ukrainian or Estonian or something, but he worked American time zone business hours in order to get American gigs. 
reading this thread, I guess that’s not typically the case?

[Snake Diggity 4614]

16 minutes ago, MonkeyDoughnut said:

For all of you blaming shitty mangers for WFH failures, where are all your companies finding all the non-shitty managers at? We've got some great employees but finding non-shitting managers has been even harder than pre WFH. 

I think there’s not so much different skills required but that the same skills are valued differently.  The ability to find/vet/hire good employees who you can trust/empower gets a heavy premium in wfh.  The ability to effectively micromanage or do your employees’ jobs for them becomes worth less.

In my current gig the chain of command (2 levels above me and including me and the level below me) is made up of people who all have extensive experience of working from home and managing people remotely, so that helps.  It also helps that they’re all married people with kids who don’t view their job as the end all be all, but treat the company with the respect it warrants.

Any manager with the “I got here because I paid my dues and put my time in the office” attitude is unlikely to be an effective wfh manager.  
 

I think as time passes and boomers/GenX starts to retire we will see a lot less pushback on wfh and a lot more people who can be effective wfh managers.

Edited May 18, 2023 by Snake Diggity

[Macanudo 12946]

Something else everyone needs to remember and someone said something similar upthread....   Employees are fungible assets to the company.   Major American corporations don't give a flying fuck what the employees want.   We are throw away assets to them.   They churn and burn us and as long as their share price keeps going up, so be it.   Institutional investors are the only ones who matter.  If the quarterly beat expectations and the CEO can report continued growth with more on the horizon, that's all that matters.   

They don't give a shit about us.

[Snake Diggity 4614]

1 minute ago, Macanudo said:

Something else everyone needs to remember and someone said something similar upthread....   Employees are fungible assets to the company.   Major American corporations don't give a flying fuck what the employees want.   We are throw away assets to them.   They churn and burn us and as long as their share price keeps going up, so be it.   Institutional investors are the only ones who matter.  If the quarterly beat expectations and the CEO can report continued growth with more on the horizon, that's all that matters.   

They don't give a shit about us.

That’s true.  But I think whether or not companies can consistently achieve profit growth and stock price appreciation over the medium or long term without American employees remains to be seen.  My opinion (based on demographic trends) is that treating employees as disposable is a loser bet over the next 10 years.

[Macanudo 12946]

17 minutes ago, MonkeyDoughnut said:

For all of you blaming shitty mangers for WFH failures, where are all your companies finding all the non-shitty managers at? We've got some great employees but finding non-shitting managers has been even harder than pre WFH. 

This is another thing that bugs the shit out of me....    Companies spend almost zero time either mentoring internal employees on leadership skills or provided new management hires with training.   In my line of work (Retirement) we often hired people from "similar" industries like insurance but they didn't really know our business.   They get thrown in with little to now training on "what" their team does and no time to learn it.   Those that survive are not necessarily the best managers, just those that adapted and/or perservered.  

It REALLY chaps my hide because over the years, I have developed several different programs for managers.    I built out a Manager Resource Group.   The intention was to have all managers withing out department be part of it with the intention to share best practices, mentor each other, etc.   I sent it up along the line and got approvals before someone in the C suite nixed it because he was worried about "time away from daily tasks."  He obviously didn't read the proposal because the intention was 30 minute meetings monthly with an hour at the quarter marks.   We couldn't spare 2 hours a quarter.  So, we piloted it within a smaller section for 6 months.   But then, last July, they shitcanned 50% of us and are outsourcing our jobs to India and the Phillipines.  I developed a Leadership Toolkit for engagement, employee recognition, management skills.   Again, I got approvals and kudos from my immediate management team and then it got killed by the same guy because "managers should know how to manage." 

WTF?   

Apparently, managers just "know."

[Macanudo 12946]

9 minutes ago, Snake Diggity said:

That’s true.  But I think whether or not companies can consistently achieve profit growth and stock price appreciation over the medium or long term without American employees remains to be seen.  My opinion (based on demographic trends) is that treating employees as disposable is a loser bet over the next 10 years.

The other part of this though, is that as long as the C suite folks get fat paychecks and golden parachutes when the company staggers, they don't care. 

The rich stay healthy and the sick stay poor.  

[MonkeyDoughnut 10186]

23 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Not a corporate level but my wife hired a guy on one of the gig apps to do some work.  He is Ukrainian or Estonian or something, but he worked American time zone business hours in order to get American gigs. 
reading this thread, I guess that’s not typically the case?

Eastern bloc countries have some seriously talented coders who don't seem to sleep.

[Captainant 27521]

22 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Not a corporate level but my wife hired a guy on one of the gig apps to do some work.  He is Ukrainian or Estonian or something, but he worked American time zone business hours in order to get American gigs. 
reading this thread, I guess that’s not typically the case?

It's not the case with big contracting firms like TCS or Accenture, etc etc. They have a bucket of people they can throw at your project, and they'll work during their timezone.

A buddy of mine does a bunch of sales engineering for a Poland-based company, and he shifts his time to Poland time so he can actually contribute to the normal business cycle. If he didn't he would be losing out on a ton of opportunities too. 

The big consulting firms don't need to chase opportunities - they have an army of MBA holding zombies steering the business and following the orders of McKenzie to outsource and contract their labor, rather than nurture and grow your own workforce.

[Macanudo 12946]

1 minute ago, Captainant said:

It's not the case with big contracting firms like TCS or Accenture, etc etc. They have a bucket of people they can throw at your project, and they'll work during their timezone.

 

Accenture can throw a bucket of people at a project.   That doesn't mean they can do it proficiently.   I have personal and direct current knowlege of this.  

[next2naus 436]

ain't gonna lie....I'm happy for folks to go back to work and the WFH to get back to being mostly us IT Sales folks. I'm tired of the local traffic, places being filled/busy duriung the day, and the relentless virtual meetings. I want to get back to meeting my folks in person. 

[F250 28736]

27 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Not a corporate level but my wife hired a guy on one of the gig apps to do some work.  He is Ukrainian or Estonian or something, but he worked American time zone business hours in order to get American gigs. 
reading this thread, I guess that’s not typically the case?

I have a group of employees in Romania that work local time. In my experience the Eastern Europeans work their own time zone for EMEA coverage. I've never had any cover an American shift.

 

[irishtexan 11459]

8 minutes ago, next2naus said:

ain't gonna lie....I'm happy for folks to go back to work and the WFH to get back to being mostly us IT Sales folks. I'm tired of the local traffic, places being filled/busy duriung the day, and the relentless virtual meetings. I want to get back to meeting my folks in person. 

You think traffic is going to get better with people having to drive to their office every day? And why would places being filled/busy during the day matter if you're in the office meeting your folks in person? 

[F250 28736]

13 minutes ago, MonkeyDoughnut said:

Eastern bloc countries have some seriously talented coders who don't seem to sleep.

I'm in security and the Eastern Euros are scary good. I have a team of threat hunters and pen testers in Romania and sometimes I think they are a little too good. How did you get so good at this? Were you a member of some Russian hacking group as a teenager?

 

17 minutes ago, Macanudo said:

Accenture can throw a bucket of people at a project.   That doesn't mean they can do it proficiently.   I have personal and direct current knowlege of this.  

[GhostOfTomJoad 9321]

The last 6 years of my career consisted of:

• 2017 - 2019, part of enterprise ops teams responsible for relocating employees from an owned, massive campus in NW Austin into to-be-built leased facilities off Parmer east of I-35. Oh yeah, everything would now be open concept
• Ribbon cutting w/ CEO in Sep of '19. March of '20, COVID sends everyone home
• Some ops and lab personnel start returning in early '21. Between late '21 to early '22 worked on global initiative to update collaborative and virtual meeting capabilities, including updating a couple dozen in our brand new facility in an attempt to lure people back to the office (while HR is simultaneously pushing Work Your Way/WFH and using it as a recruiting tool)
• Late '22 - early '23, employees are still only coming into the office at about a 15% clip. Corporate begins massive push to reduce leased RE expense. 
• This April - "Hey, GOTJ, thanks for busting your ass for 35 years. You're 18 mos. shy of early retirement. Here's your severance. No hard feelings, ok?"

All kinds of fun out there.

[Wally Fairway 5533]

21 hours ago, rage-a-holic said:

2. Pathetic married guys who use the office to escape their wife/kids.

Hey - there is no reason to get personal with your shit, and to start doxing out lives to everyone. 

[Wally Fairway 5533]

7 minutes ago, GhostOfTomJoad said:

The last 6 years of my career consisted of:

• This April - "Hey, GOTJ, thanks for busting your ass for 35 years. You're 18 mos. shy of early retirement. Here's your severance. No hard feelings, ok?"

All kinds of fun out there.

Yeah - I've been downsized/right sized/whatever they want to call shitcanned and fuck that shit. Sorry to hear it dude. 
I've been riding the contract/temp train for over 2 years - trying to get a spot where I can get off the hamster wheel, but the stock & bond markets and my kids/grandkids keep fucking up my plans

[MissingInAction 24870]

I will never forget what a self proclaimed "leader of excellence" said to me many years ago: You dont have to know the job in order to manage it.

Fuck MBAs in the goat ass.

[Celery Man 20913]

My experience with a sw team in India is that they required highly defined very repeatable chunks of work which still needed a lot of review and rework. Goes without saying that there are dogshit US programmers and great ones in India but culturally I believe the education is much more focused on memorization and application of known solutions rather than understanding the underlying concepts. Like pilot school in Indonesia.

I'm not gonna go full immamac but I am surprised 3 years in at well compensated professionals haven't figured out a decent home working situation. I know that not everyone is just in meetings all the goddamn time but dark room, recliner, laptop microphone, come on buddy. Fuckin smoke alarm chirping every 90 seconds in the background for months makes me start second guessing how much I can rely on you for anything.

[52-80 19128]

1 hour ago, MonkeyDoughnut said:

For all of you blaming shitty mangers for WFH failures, where are all your companies finding all the non-shitty managers at? We've got some great employees but finding non-shitting managers has been even harder than pre WFH. 

All the great corporate leaders are here, posting in this thread, waiting for their chance to shine

[Macanudo 12946]

44 minutes ago, GhostOfTomJoad said:

 

• Some ops and lab personnel start returning in early '21. Between late '21 to early '22 worked on global initiative to update collaborative and virtual meeting capabilities, including updating a couple dozen in our brand new facility in an attempt to lure people back to the office (while HR is simultaneously pushing Work Your Way/WFH and using it as a recruiting tool)

I have co-worker who left for USAA in late 2022.   He lives in Houston and was told that he did not need to be in San Antonio.  Some time within the last few weeks/months, USAA issued a RTO with no exceptions.   Either move to a location with a USAA office or move on.   The stupid thing is that it would have been OK for him to relocate to Colorado Springs (where USAA has an office) even though his entire team is in San Antonio.   So it's fine to manage remotely them from CS but not Houston just because he is sitting in a USAA office?

And yes, HR units continue to promote Hybrid/WFH/Remote jobs even though there is the high likelihood that those companies will eventually change the rules yet again.

[Captainant 27521]

1 minute ago, Macanudo said:

And yes, HR units continue to promote Hybrid/WFH/Remote jobs even though there is the high likelihood that those companies will eventually change the rules yet again.

And workers will have no recourse for having potentially turned down other offers because of the fraudulent job requirements. God bless right to work states. Gotta make sure those workers know their place and are thankful to their job provider for keeping them off welfare. 

[Homercles 10205]

10 hours ago, Wilcox Cummingtonite said:

^This is exactly why WFH is gonna be fucked for some Americans soon. Corps will realize they can just hire Sandeep instead who will take half the pay to do 5 times the work “remotely” from India.

Sucks for people who actually are able to be productive working at home. I’m not one of them, but I envy those that can.

The same people who are confidently telling everyone to ‘get your ass to the office’ seem to usually be the one’s passing around shitty memes bagging on millennials yet struggle with a Firestick, run to work to hide from their family and take pride in quantifiable but ultimately meaningless metrics like hours worked.  

[TKthunder2 4981]

23 minutes ago, MissingInAction said:

I will never forget what a self proclaimed "leader of excellence" said to me many years ago: You dont have to know the job in order to manage it.

Fuck MBAs in the goat ass.

 

7 minutes ago, Macanudo said:

The stupid thing is that it would have been OK for him to relocate to Colorado Springs (where USAA has an office) even though his entire team is in San Antonio.   So it's fine to manage remotely them from CS but not Houston just because he is sitting in a USAA office?

These are hitting close to home.

Moved into tech management during COVID after being a senior engineer for years on one solution but then they assigned me to a different solution based out of Nebraska.

So yeah, don’t know the solution very in depth and manage remotely as well.

But all the metrics and reviews all say my team (half of which I’ve hired directly) is fucking good so who the fuck knows.

[Captainant 27521]

18 minutes ago, Homercles said:

The same people who are confidently telling everyone to ‘get your ass to the office’ seem to usually be the one’s passing around shitty memes bagging on millennials yet struggle with a Firestick, run to work to hide from their family and take pride in quantifiable but ultimately meaningless metrics like hours worked.  

It's crazy how many boomers in the workforce are seemingly proud of how shitty they are with technology. Like dude, it's not a good thing to be helpless. But by God, they'll build so many goddamn dashboards and reports that absolutely nobody will ever use or look at and bring no new value to the business 

[AUS-97HORN 11735]

12 minutes ago, Macanudo said:

And yes, HR units continue to promote Hybrid/WFH/Remote jobs even though there is the high likelihood that those companies will eventually change the rules yet again.

 

9 minutes ago, Captainant said:

And workers will have no recourse for having potentially turned down other offers because of the fraudulent job requirements.

 

And HR and other companies wonder why there are more and more reports of OverEmployed folks "working" 2-3 remote jobs at the same time.  They understand that remote work can be pulled at any time, and rather than run around begging for a job, they already have 1 in the bag, maybe two. 

The more these  HR fucks push against remote work, the sooner they will realize they cant get workers who will accept their pay scale that live within driving distance of an office.  The C.O.L. that close to major cities is becoming problematic for anyone not making more than the median income in that metro area

even the cheapest rentals in the greater Metro Austin area (not "Austin") are pushing $2,000+ for a 2/2- which is what most single under 30s will accept as a bare minimum place.   That plus the long commute requiring a car that isnt a beater, means the avg sub 30 single worker is going to need to make at least $65k a year just to barely live in Austin.   and another $15-20k a year if they want to live by themselves.

 

[Captainant 27521]

9 minutes ago, AUS-97HORN said:

even the cheapest rentals in the greater Metro Austin area (not "Austin") are pushing $2,000+ for a 2/2- which is what most single under 30s will accept as a bare minimum place.   That plus the long commute requiring a car that isnt a beater, means the avg sub 30 single worker is going to need to make at least $65k a year just to barely live in Austin.   and another $15-20k a year if they want to live by themselves.

Well yeah man, real estate investors and auto manufacturers deserve profits too! What are you, some sort of communist to dare to possibly impugn upon their god given right to record profit margins against the necessities for in office work?

 

But real talk, it's fuckin crazy. When I started my career in tech in Austin back in 2014, I was making around $60k - but covered all my expenses, student debt payments, going out with friends, fuckaround money, and even saved some to boot. That's just completely impossible now. My duplex unit that I used to rent near Mueller has more than doubled it's market rate in the five years since I moved out of Austin. I don't know how anyone affords a typical middle class lifestyle without a household income of over $100k/yr

Edited May 18, 2023 by Captainant

[immamac 42727]

14 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Well yeah man, real estate investors and auto manufacturers deserve profits too! What are you, some sort of communist to dare to possibly impugn upon their god given right to record profit margins against the necessities for in office work?

 

But real talk, it's fuckin crazy. When I started my career in tech in Austin back in 2014, I was making around $60k - but covered all my expenses, student debt payments, going out with friends, fuckaround money, and even saved some to boot. That's just completely impossible now. My duplex unit that I used to rent near Mueller has more than doubled it's market rate in the five years since I moved out of Austin. I don't know how anyone affords a typical middle class lifestyle without a household income of over $100k/yr

spoiler: they don't

[gurt 738]

1 hour ago, Celery Man said:

My experience with a sw team in India is that they required highly defined very repeatable chunks of work which still needed a lot of review and rework. Goes without saying that there are dogshit US programmers and great ones in India but culturally I believe the education is much more focused on memorization and application of known solutions rather than understanding the underlying concepts. Like pilot school in Indonesia.

Yep, and these are going to be the real casualties of AI.  I've never heard anybody who has had to work with Indian SWE/IT teams come away happy, myself included. Most of the time it is tearing-your-hair-out frustration.

[Nivek 16880]

20 hours ago, Neonmoon said:

Fixed it for you. Remote work is being blamed for the overall problem of people at work. The majority of people are idiots and can’t be trusted to not play on social media. Just because people pretend to work at the office, doesn’t mean their productivity is great. These people should have been replaced before the pandemic but firing people is hard. Call it outsourcing. Blame it WFH. Fine, but the problem is the majority of people are entitled cunts that don’t like making widgets 

I do not believe this.  I believe people will do the work if they believe in it and if they have the work to do.   If you are fumble fucking around 10 minutes before a presentation and your next project requires you about 20-30 minutes to get started, then you have free time.  That is a perfect time to play candy crush or order a new cat toy from Amazon.  Or if you are stuck in a line to process your data because someone else's project is a higher priority then you can do all you can and just fucking wait.   So many positions and situations can be described as hurry up and wait.    Candy Crush just meant that person waiting for something.

 

[next2naus 436]

2 hours ago, irishtexan said:

You think traffic is going to get better with people having to drive to their office every day? And why would places being filled/busy during the day matter if you're in the office meeting your folks in person? 

Traffic: Commuter traffic is different that local secondary street traffic

Business: yeah....I enjoyed it more when every Tom, Dick, and Harry wasn't at Home Depot, the Grocery Store or wherever at 10":00 AM or 2:00 PM, it was easier for me when those folks were in their offices. Sales guys life has gone from 50% in front of clients (in some years is was 25% f2f and 25% virtual) to 100% virtual. 

[Nivek 16880]

1 hour ago, MissingInAction said:

I will never forget what a self proclaimed "leader of excellence" said to me many years ago: You dont have to know the job in order to manage it.

Fuck MBAs in the goat ass.

There is some truth to that.  I managed a team that included vertical seismic profiler experts.  I didn't know very much about it and I couldn't QC that data.  Just as previously my boss was a VSP expert and they couldn't really QC my work.   None of the bosses above me knew jack shit about the work and had ZERO experience with doing either.  

[crash_davis 23090]

I've managed engineering, finance, IT, and PMO teams. Some jobs greatly benefit from having everyone at the office, some don't matter.

It's all about control anyway. For some managers, it's one less headache to have to micro manage assholes who suddenly become lazy with all the new found freedom. 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13422]

4 minutes ago, Nivek said:

There is some truth to that.  I managed a team that included vertical seismic profiler experts.  I didn't know very much about it and I couldn't QC that data.  Just as previously my boss was a VSP expert and they couldn't really QC my work.   None of the bosses above me knew jack shit about the work and had ZERO experience with doing either.  

A boss doesn't have to know the ends and outs of everyone's job. And they definitely don't have to be an expert at everyone's job. If they were, they should be in the worker bee role.  

A boss needs to understand the goal, what it will take to achieve it, and conflicting priorities. Details aren't necessary for that.

I can even argue that a boss, well versed in the work effort, could be a hindrance. In my experience, with that type of boss you have to perform the work the way the boss would do it. Which doesn't mean it's the best.

[Captainant 27521]

3 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

A boss needs to understand the goal, what it will take to achieve it, and conflicting priorities. Details aren't necessary for that.

Hard disagree here. How in the hell will you know that your team or project is mapping business needs to technical outcomes in a way that actually returns the budget back as revenue? How are you as a manager going to be able to take ownership of any of that process or approval process if you don't have even a cursory understanding of the details?

[MissingInAction 24870]

15 minutes ago, Nivek said:

There is some truth to that.  I managed a team that included vertical seismic profiler experts.  I didn't know very much about it and I couldn't QC that data.  Just as previously my boss was a VSP expert and they couldn't really QC my work.   None of the bosses above me knew jack shit about the work and had ZERO experience with doing either.  

Thanks for proving my point. 😍

[gmr548 16557]

1 hour ago, Captainant said:

Well yeah man, real estate investors and auto manufacturers deserve profits too! What are you, some sort of communist to dare to possibly impugn upon their god given right to record profit margins against the necessities for in office work?

 

But real talk, it's fuckin crazy. When I started my career in tech in Austin back in 2014, I was making around $60k - but covered all my expenses, student debt payments, going out with friends, fuckaround money, and even saved some to boot. That's just completely impossible now. My duplex unit that I used to rent near Mueller has more than doubled it's market rate in the five years since I moved out of Austin. I don't know how anyone affords a typical middle class lifestyle without a household income of over $100k/yr

They don't - what is typically thought of as a middle class lifestyle is decoupled from the middle of the income bell curve and has been for some time. Healthy funding of savings, a couple vacations a year, etc... That's squarely the realm of the top third or so now. If you consider one partner staying home or working part time as part of that equation, shrink it even more.

[BabaYaga 15238]

32 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

A boss needs to understand the goal, what it will take to achieve it, and conflicting priorities. Details aren't necessary for that.

 

Agreed, but the boss also needs to understand delegation - which for it to be successful, those delegated roles must have a robust understanding of the overall goals in order to be effective.  Siloed roles doesn't mean siloed information.  This means an effective leader must know enough about the roles to properly fill them with professionals and then get out of their way and let them execute.  

Ironically, during covid I had friends that complained that they felt that they were on a shorter digital leash than when in the office - managers paranoid that they were fucking off, so they were getting constant emails/pings vs. in the office, they could shut their doors and work.  

[Nice Guy Eddie 13422]

53 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Hard disagree here. How in the hell will you know that your team or project is mapping business needs to technical outcomes in a way that actually returns the budget back as revenue? How are you as a manager going to be able to take ownership of any of that process or approval process if you don't have even a cursory understanding of the details?

Best managers that I've had have never been experts in the field for each of their employees. Sorry that you've had a different experience.

Your experience is also stuck with the 1940's opinion that the most productive worker should be promoted to the manager role. My experience is that this person can easily be the worst manager. 

[fattyflattie 4637]

2 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Best managers that I've had have never been experts in the field for each of their employees. Sorry that you've had a different experience.

Outside of operations thats largely true, imo. I’m certain there’s also fields where it cannot be true.  I’ve followed our president to a couple of companies now, and he never knows too much about our technical operations.   He does know how to make lots of $$$$ for everyone, and knows who to let free to do the operations to get to that goal.   

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

Best managers that I've had have never been experts in the field for each of their employees. Sorry that you've had a different experience.
Your experience is also stuck with the 1940's opinion that the most productive worker should be promoted to the manager role. My experience is that this person can easily be the worst manager. 

Also, not everyone wants to be a manager, such as myself. I want to do my job the best I can, but have no interest in being a Project Controls Manager.

[Captainant 27521]

1 minute ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Your experience is also stuck with the 1940's opinion that the most productive worker should be promoted to the manager role. My experience is that this person can easily be the worst manager. 

I disagree on that front - not every individual contributor would be a good manager. It's a completely different skillset - no doubt. But every great manager that I've had also had at least a 100-level understanding of the work that their team was responsible for. It doesn't mean that they're a SME on everything, but it also means that they won't be making promises to business partners that aren't possible to achieve 

[BabaYaga 15238]

23 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Best managers that I've had have never been experts in the field for each of their employees

You don't want them to be.  You want them to understand the overall goal and have the aptitude to put the right people in the right places and stay out of their way.  They need their people to know why the goal is what it is, not tell them what they have to do.  That's the mistake micromanagers make.  If you have to micromanage your people, it's your fault, not theirs.