Featured in this episode of Tech News of the Week
This time it’s IBM mandating that their Software division require employees within 50 miles of an office to return in person at least three days a week. Despite there being little to no evidence that this is an effective strategy, tech vendors across the country have begun to institute mandatory office face time. Dell, Amazon, Meta, and ironically Zoom, all have a back-to-office policy in effect.
You would think over the last three years we would have adopted to remote work and changed the way we assess productivity, but you would be wrong. So very wrong. Indulging in what Microsoft has deemed productivity paranoia, IBM’s CEO said that remote workers could be overlooked for promotion. While Salesforce claims that remote workers are less productive. Useful data for either claim was not forthcoming.
Ultimately, there are two driving forces here. The first is the simple business consideration that big companies bought or leased real estate, and leaving them as cubicle ghost-towns seems like a waste of money. The old sunk cost fallacy.
The other force is the need of higher-ups to be seen. After all, the upper echelon of management is mostly filled with solipsists who require an audience of extras and on-lookers to play bit parts in the movie of themselves.
So I guess while SAG is on-strike, they might as well go work for some high-power C-suite jackoff, acting like they’re doing something important for 40 hours a week. Think of it as improv without the imagination or creativity, so you know, like most actual improv.