i also didnt see it at first.

look at the person in the brown coat on the right. their glasses and eyes melted together. the text above them is garbled nonsense. and the person sitting to their left is wearing shoes that dont fit into their background and slightly overlap with the other ones’ shoes. the person on the left holding their glasses seems to still be wearing glasses, and their ear is an unusual shape.

thats about all i noticed tho. pretty scary indeed.

What “discussion” lol

“Does this look like (specific policy) is good?” [AI generated frowny faces]

Just wow man. The only thing trash like this accomplishes is making the movement look like it has nothing, hence the need to try and pass off slop. Enjoy your moralizing corporation worship though I’m sure next year’s perfect AI will do really great things for the world

I think this is all really subjective and depends on how your team does work. Getting people to work with you or understand things is a communication problem, and in my own experience, being in the office didn’t eliminate those issues.

I agree there are times to be in the office, but it damn sure doesn’t need to be every day all the time. IMO people need to adapt, be smart and figure out what works for their teams and themselves, not hold themselves to tradition for its own sake.

Managers should be empowered to make these decisions to do the research and figure out the best strategy for their situation, and I think many would like that responsibility.

Online meetings are largely useless

Oh! Oh! This is where people say “skill issue”, isn’t it?

If you can’t run a productive meeting over zoom you probably can’t do one in person, either.

This will depend on your work. All my work is on the computer. Showing someone something is as easy as sharing my screen (and this might even be better, as I can draw on it).

And I don’t agree online meetings are useless. All of my team work from home most of the time, and we work out how to make that work.

Having half the group in the office and half joining remotely I think is the worst of both worlds.

I think most people acknowledge that some things do gain efficiency in physical proximity. Most dont. We aren’t talking about you.

Though sending a solidworks file shoukd be easier than it presently ie.

Now, in fairness, if I was driving 90-120m, I’d kill myself. But at least I’d do so listening to the Wheel of Time audiobook.

I’ve never had trouble listening to audiobooks on the train (assuming I knew the route well enough).

And on those rare occasions I get dragged out of my home wearing a suit, I do so belligerently. I’m done showing up 20-30m early, I get there when I get there. And I gotta leave early now too.

Which is fine.

But I’ve found a lot of merit in the personal collaborations with coworkers that only really happen in an office setting. I’m in office hybrid - three days a week - and I mentor new hires, grab lunch with senior managers, get tipped off on problems from people I pass in the hallway, and occasionally just shoot the shit with people I’d never otherwise know existed if I wasn’t in the building.

I value my Work from Home, but also get a lot of mileage from a communal office.

Skyscrapers and large office spaces are on paper horrible investments and have an awful time filling enough vacancies to offset their upkeep. The only thing that makes them a “safe” investment is that every company uses them as a way to bank equity. If those same companies pulled the rug from under themselves they would all lose that safe equity piggy bank.

This is just the sunk cost fallacy though. You can inflate the paper value of assets by playing games like this, but the bill always comes due in the end. Yes, companies that do this can juice their books a bit in the short term, but they’re harming themselves in the long term. They retain a bit higher book value for their real estate, but they make whatever goods or services they provide noncompetitive in the marketplace. They have competitors who aren’t bogged down by past bad real estate decisions. Those competitors can outcompete them on price and can attract better talent. Meanwhile, they’re stuck in their ways, fruitlessly trying to inflate their real estate holdings, all while their revenue is plummeting because they can’t attract good people and have to charge higher for their services than their competitors.

It’s just the sunk cost fallacy. You could inflate the book value of real estate by doing all sorts of foolish things. You could create a subsidiary and have that company rent out some of your floor space for absurdly high rates. But you’re ultimately just robbing Peter to pay Paul. Those commercial real estate properties have already lost their value. The value was lost the minute it was proven that work from home was a superior work model.

These companies are going to go bankrupt at a mass scale when the next recession rolls around.

Fuck, these companies might actually be violating the law. Deliberately choosing unproductive business practices just to cook your real estate books is something Enron would do.