Mostly what I saw, was they'd spend a few months in the role buddied up with the person they were replacing, they then try to reinvent the wheel with a new metric or initiative that they borrowed from a previous employer and then eventually after 18 months alienating everyone, they'd leave for another job likely with a new line on the resume. We actually had one guy touring around signing up team to a now defunct social media platform. As we all had company emails, they could gauge who was on it and who was not. His pitch was " I just need you to sign up, you don't have to ever use, or download it.. we can do it on my laptop. " That was his initiative - to improve our digital team engagement. Another guy spent 12 months trialling and removing doors from stock cages - to save the approx. 7 seconds it takes to open and close one... it all adds up I guess.

Elon having trouble understanding Sweden. He refuses to allow Tesla to enter into a collective bargaining agreement. 90% of Swiss workers have one. As a result a total strike is on now. No one in the country will do any work on Teslas, their charging network or their showcases. This ranges from unloading their cars at the docks, to repairing the cars, to cleaning the showrooms. As chargers break they stay offline. It is expected that no company or their employees do any work with Tesla. Failing to do so, will see themselves boycotted along with Tesla.

The moment really has hit where Musk needs to decide if he wants to be able to do business in Sweden or not, as he cannot break the strike and almost no Swiss workers will take jobs without collective bargaining arrangements.

Out of pure curiosity, what levels and industries are you gents in?

Business quote of the week:

Weight Watchers CEO on weight loss: 'We got it wrong.' In response to the company investing heavily into weight loss medication now and planning to phase out the rest of the company when the transition is complete.

So much demand for big box retail that many Bed Bath and Beyond stores are being turned into pickleball ball courts.  People will cry that clearly the age of mom and pop retail is dead but let's face it, there has not been mom and pop retail in most of America since the 70's.  Your mom and pop stores were franchised multimillion dollar stores slowly failing against multibillion dollar ones that now are falling to trillion dollar online stores.

Looks like in many places the workers have now won. Major corporate real estate holders are starting to give up their holdings and just defaulting on them since they cannot find people to force back into the office to fill them. Almost certainly investors will repurpose them for some other use.

This type of behavior was seen in the housing market bubble, no clue if this will follow the same path for commercial real estate, but very likely most of these holdings have more debt than they are worth.

www.yahoo.com/news/offices-sitting-empty-landlords-handing-150748386.html

Behold, the ravages of age!

Terrifying AI prediction of what WFH employees will look like in 25 years.



www.news.com.au/finance/work/at-work/terrifying-ai-prediction-of-what-wfh-employees-will-look-like-in-25-years/news-story/f51cbba0359fa08c52fa3765c98e7831

This is what they said when peasants started to work in factories, then when people started to work at desks, then when people started to work at computers. Just because you add created by AI, and leave out the prompt you use, does not make it true. You are not going to magically get morbidly obese sitting a computer at home versus a sitting at a computer at work. I feel like this does not need to be said and people should be able to realize this is a BS article, but here we are.

I think the girls on Twitch have given us an unrealistic expectation of what sitting in front of a computer for 12 hours a day drinking Slurpees looks like.

If you're able to wfh for the next 25 yrs... you won.

Believed in coming years that it will be hard to justify hybrid work anymore and work from home will expand. While there is concrete data on the savings from giving up office costs, the data for increasing productivity of workers is basically trust me bro. Trust me bro does not cut costs and relies on expensive infrastructure costs, and layers of management that is not needed without the office.

With AI management coming, gut feelings from management will no longer be needed either as AI needs hard data. Production based data will be used, and suddenly another few layers of supervisors are no longer needed. And this type of production can be measured anywhere, so personal supervision is not needed.

But sure some will argue this will not happen, but they also tend to be the ones without skills and experience to enter a field that uses work from home and assume things work the same way in all fields as the field they work in.

Dec 4, 2023 3:55:52 GMT NATH45 said:

Behold, the ravages of age!

Terrifying AI prediction of what WFH employees will look like in 25 years.



www.news.com.au/finance/work/at-work/terrifying-ai-prediction-of-what-wfh-employees-will-look-like-in-25-years/news-story/f51cbba0359fa08c52fa3765c98e7831

I look like that now (different hair, less bushy eyebrows). 

Announced today that Kiss will be the first large band to work from home, moving to virtual concerts from here on out. Small bands started to do virtual concerts during the pandemic. Cannot wait for people to claim they need to be on a stage to play properly and cannot grind as hard in a home studio <.<

Their virtual events will use digital avatars instead of live shots of the band to maintain their stage presence.  

I toured Paisley Park in September and Prince had 3 studios and 2 performance stages. He would apparently often Jam/play for people on the stages. One was quite large (could probably hold a few hundred) and the other like an intimate lounge holding maybe 50 people. I know this is a step above that, but honestly other people are often the worst part of a concert so I'm up for virtual concerts especially if the ticket costs are lower since we don't have to pay all those fees.

During lockdown I bought tickets to online standup shows and at least one concert. I guess "concert" is kinda strong since it was just Anya Marina and her BF playing songs in their basement, but it was nice. For a rock concert I think you'd want to have a live crowd for the atmosphere.

Dec 4, 2023 17:23:08 GMT c said:

Believed in coming years that it will be hard to justify hybrid work anymore and work from home will expand. While there is concrete data on the savings from giving up office costs, the data for increasing productivity of workers is basically trust me bro. Trust me bro does not cut costs and relies on expensive infrastructure costs, and layers of management that is not needed without the office.

With AI management coming, gut feelings from management will no longer be needed either as AI needs hard data. Production based data will be used, and suddenly another few layers of supervisors are no longer needed. And this type of production can be measured anywhere, so personal supervision is not needed.

But sure some will argue this will not happen, but they also tend to be the ones without skills and experience to enter a field that uses work from home and assume things work the same way in all fields as the field they work in.

Who is saying “management” will no longer be needed because of AI? Why just “management”?

AI will replace the worker drones who are essentially ticking boxes and compiling data sitting at home in their PJs.

There's a reason why there's an entire industry around leadership, EQ, wellness, vision and strategy, mentoring and relationship building - as these are where the big ticket value is to a progressive organisation.

Your " skills and experience " formulating a spreadsheet will be easily replaced by a machine.

Dec 5, 2023 3:37:42 GMT KJ said:

Dec 4, 2023 17:23:08 GMT c said:

Believed in coming years that it will be hard to justify hybrid work anymore and work from home will expand. While there is concrete data on the savings from giving up office costs, the data for increasing productivity of workers is basically trust me bro. Trust me bro does not cut costs and relies on expensive infrastructure costs, and layers of management that is not needed without the office.

With AI management coming, gut feelings from management will no longer be needed either as AI needs hard data. Production based data will be used, and suddenly another few layers of supervisors are no longer needed. And this type of production can be measured anywhere, so personal supervision is not needed.

But sure some will argue this will not happen, but they also tend to be the ones without skills and experience to enter a field that uses work from home and assume things work the same way in all fields as the field they work in.

Who is saying “management” will no longer be needed because of AI? Why just “management”?

Middle management is already being cut.  And it is not they will not be needed, but their gut feelings on workers will not be needed as AI can gather performance metrics and calc actual value, rather than a managers perception of the value of an employee.

Dec 5, 2023 3:57:03 GMT NATH45 said:

AI will replace the worker drones who are essentially ticking boxes and compiling data sitting at home in their PJs.

There's a reason why there's an entire industry around leadership, EQ, wellness, vision and strategy, mentoring and relationship building - as these are where the big ticket value is to a progressive organisation.

Your " skills and experience " formulating a spreadsheet will be easily replaced by a machine.

All of those buzzwords for leadership are the people getting fired right now.  Most call that administrative bloat.  Once people move to work from home it was made clear that millions are wasted here with no additional value added.  Some of it can add value but most is pseudoscience bullshit that does nothing for productivity.  

Dec 5, 2023 4:43:39 GMT c said:

Dec 5, 2023 3:57:03 GMT NATH45 said:

AI will replace the worker drones who are essentially ticking boxes and compiling data sitting at home in their PJs.

There's a reason why there's an entire industry around leadership, EQ, wellness, vision and strategy, mentoring and relationship building - as these are where the big ticket value is to a progressive organisation.

Your " skills and experience " formulating a spreadsheet will be easily replaced by a machine.

All of those buzzwords for leadership are the people getting fired right now.  Most call that administrative bloat.  Once people move to work from home it was made clear that millions are wasted here with no additional value added.  Some of it can add value but most is pseudoscience bullshit that does nothing for productivity.  

I agree that a lot of what you read and see on especially LinkedIn and from podcasters is snake oil. Daily self-affirmations, daily gratitude, journaling, etc. All of that is complete horseshit. A sane person wakes up a strong coffee, not a 4am mind and body alignment.

And agreed, middle management and human resources can be a bloated mess of bureaucracy and policy making and the old 'checking the checkers' type stuff, but everything I've stated above has its place in modern management and leadership.

The lack of productivity, and this is supported by the data, is stemming from the WFH arrangements. We've had this debate and denial of the data before and we don't need to revisit it to stroke any of our egos. Part of it is the management of it all, the other is the lack of engagement.

Work from home increased productivity in America. Maybe Australians are just not equipped with the right skills for management to perceive them as working harder when working from home.

I'm getting a strong sense of deja vu...

Stanford study shows that the curve for return to the office now is now flat. Employers are regretting forcing employees back to the office as 42% lost more employees than expected over it.  It is believed that many companies did engage in return to office to cut overhead without having to do layoffs.  They merely let people quit then did not replace them.

Dust settled with 28 percent of Americans workers work from home. The push to return to the office that started in 2021 ultimately only saw those working from home decrease from 37 to 28 percent.

They also lay out that remote strategy for many is to let the high wage workers work from home, but bring the low wage workers into the office. Overall it gives the company a hybrid look as on average workers work a percentage at home, but look in who works where and it is a two body problem, with some working from home all the time, and some never working from home. Not mentioned is when people apply for jobs thinking it is partially remote, and the company then say it is full time in office, they simply decline the job offer and apply somewhere that is not deceptive.

www.theregister.com/2023/12/03/return_to_office

Dec 5, 2023 12:56:16 GMT c said:

Work from home increased productivity in America. Maybe Australians are just not equipped with the right skills for management to perceive them as working harder when working from home.

www.forbes.com/sites/benjaminlaker/2023/08/02/working-from-home-leads-to-decreased-productivity-research-suggests/?sh=1ea3390c2afe

Same source for both articles. No empirical data in that paper that shows production falls, only perception of production. They also talk about patent production, which is not what people are discussing here at all since only a tiny minority of work from home workers are patent producers.

They did however find the opposite.  And this is the justification of the 10% increase to productivity quotes that everyone cites.  They claim the following says that if you go from a prescribed hybrid to a prescribed work from home production drops, which is not at all what is being said.  The treatment was if employees that work from home choose to come to the office one day a week production rises.  

The control group stuck to a traditional arrangement that prescribes time and

place of work throughout the week. In the treated group, white-collar employees

chose where and when to work—and blue-collar employees chose when—one day

a week. Productivity rose 10 percent, on average, among the treated relative to the

controls, as measured by self-assessments and by supervisors. The treated group

also reported higher levels of well-being and work-life balance. Greater flexibility

for treated workers had no apparent effect on the productivity of coworkers on

the same team.

Going straight to source, no where in Angelici and Profeta (2023) did they at all discuss productivity declines.

deliverypdf.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=904114091001092029069084001067017112085009040087024023014114041016038045042024118107025029104030036022104101067080066089126079006123002083120102090070080004089022067104004071120021&EXT=pdf&INDEX=TRUE

Actual findings:

Second, the observed increase in productivity means that, for the same pay,
smart-workers put more effort into their jobs than do non smart-workers.
Smart-workers are more focused and more active. This may be the result
of different and more effective organization of their time, including a reduction of commuting time and a better use of time within the household. This effect is captured by the work-life balance indicators that show that smart workers spend more time in household and care activities. We also note that the corresponding increase in well-being indicators suggests that the increase in productivity goes beyond different and better time management. The fact
that job satisfaction increases even if workers apply more effort means that
smart-workers have a positive perception of the new form of work organization: they are ready to exchange more effort for more flexibility to maintain or even increase their job satisfaction.

That really does not look like they are claiming a 10 percent decrease when working from home at all. But Forbes reported it that was, based on the citation in the Stanford paper. Instead in the charts it was 10 to 20 increase in productivity in their study for smart workers, which is their term for work from home.

They provide about 70 pages of data on this based on the link above, feel free to read it.  

Amazing how easy it is to manipulate people who do not ever bother to read into the sources being reported on though.

Now know why that working paper never was peer reviewed.  The justification to turn that increase in productivity into a decrease would never fly with peer review.  And then their whole paper falls apart.  Likely would face a desk rejection.

I'll let you ring these experts and publications and tell them they're wrong again. And based on you wealth of experience in the labor market, how dare they challenge you.

This conversation has hit a brick wall like they all do and we're all fools for taking the bait again.

In the future, maybe you all can at least read the stuff you post first. You get so pissy when I point out what is in these studies you all bring up but do not bother reading yourselves.

Look, the data supports it, CEOs, leaders, managers, businesses, organisations want people back in the office. That's the reality of the situation. Productivity is down. Some up, some adapted well.. but mostly down. Cherry pick all the information you need.

And if it's to the contrary, you can pull the same old discredit MO, and laugh and get all jolly because someone's credentials don't sufficiently impress you.

Everytime you claim that, the studies in the article you post yourself, fail to show what you claim. If you read them you would realize that.