Leaked Zoom all-hands: CEO says employees must return to offices because they can’t be as innovative or get to know each other on Zoom::Zoom CEO Eric Yuan discussed the benefits of in-person work in a leaked meeting.
I don’t want to ‘get to know’ my coworkers. I’m not there for friendships, or a pseudo family. I’m there to do a job and be paid for it.
But, this might just be my introvert side.
It makes me wonder if there’s a deeper reason besides the real estate thing, that compels CEOs to try to bring workers back to the office.
Consider: If you’re at the office, you form stronger attachments to your coworkers. You’re more likely to make friends with them and so on. You create bonds. Another way to say this is: you create ties that bind you to your job.
Now, you could use all those extra commute hours to make friends with non-coworkers, and then you don’t lose much in terms of social life. But if you did that, you’d want more time with those friends. You’d have bonds that pull you away from your job instead of into it. There’s a reason employee satisfaction surveys always ask if you have any friends at work.
If you have the time and motivation to form friendships outside of work, you’re going to want more time outside of work. And things like 4-day work weeks. And unions will help you get more time away from work, too.
CEOs don’t want you to form bonds outside of work. Only inside of work. Marry your job, they say. Come worship here, as it is a church.
You have totaly a point there.
I am working in cultural heritage, so creating bounds that last over jobs is crucial. Who are you on good terms with? Who has a strong opinion on topic x? Who could help you with that non profit project? Who can you take seriosly and who is a scammer?
Working with these kind of people can be so amazing.
But cultural heritage is passion driven, a lot of ways to burn out in that feld or do unpaid work. The silent war against big companies is hard.
It seems like the vast majority of people are coming at this from the standpoint of “I know how to do my job, why do I need to be an office”. This may be unpopular but you do it for the new people who need a Lot of company support to get on their feet. I remember starting out and how much easier it was to ask people questions in person over lunch etc. It’s intimidating for a new person to sit in front of a computer and ask random people they’ve never met questions, really amps that imposter syndrome.
Yes I worked the last two years at University and the offices were empty almost constantly. I just didn’t get any connections to anyone and didn’t even know if the people could help my cause, since everyone had different projects and you just didn’t know what they are actually working on
Something something dogfooding
