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The reason CEOs want workers to Return To Office is because they want you to quit
(www.fastcompany.com)
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this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2023
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The main thing I don't get is that the top talent at your company are the ones that can easily find another job instead of putting up with your BS. The people that aren't competent enough to leave on a whim are the ones you're going to be keeping.
I don't think being fickle and being competent are necessarily linked.
Some of the best workers i've met over the years are making way less than some of the worst workers i've met, just because the ones who could talk the talk and play the bullshit made way more money and swap jobs way more often.
The highest paid company hoppers are undoubtably the first ones to go, that doesn't mean they are the most important, talented people though.
If bad people are aware that they're bad, they're strongly incentivized to not risk their livelihoods by voluntarily ending their employment.
If people are clinging to a job tightly even as working condition deteriorates, it's an indicator that they don't think they'll fare well on the job market.
The disconnect has more to do with perception of their own value. Good people who underestimate themselves awill be inclined to stay. Bad people who know they're bad will be more inclined to stay.
Bad people who think they're good, and good people who know they're good will be the most likely to leave.
So, the strategy of intentionally tanking your conditions to prune bad people actually only successfully prunes bad people who think they're good.
On the other hand, you loose good people who know they're good, entrenches the bad people who know they're bad, and demoralized the shit out of good people who don't realize they're good.
How are "bad people who think they are good" likely to leave, wouldn't they find it hard to switch jobs because they are bad? that is, they thought they could easily switch jobs, but find out in interviews that it's not easy, thus they are forced to stay?
They just quit, as a result of some offense, thinking they'll pick up a new better job in no time.
Yeah, but you're thinking about when the company picks people to fire. Forcing people back to the office decreases worker satisfaction across the board, and workers will respond individually. I'd argue that those highest paid will be most willing to suffer the inconvenience of commuting, regardless of their talent, so the "make working here annoying" plan will tend to retain higher paid employees while losing lower paid people through attrition. Likewise, workers are more likely to tolerate the annoyances if they don't have any other options. Good people can more easily job-hop, so this strategy is also likely to retain the lower-performing employees while the top performers go elsewhere, not considering pay rate. Total labor costs will decline, because there's fewer people working, but it's not an efficient selection process.
Long story short: pissing on your employees results in a smaller, lower quality workforce.
I agree on performance, but I'm well paid and would tolerate almost zero unjustified inconvenience. I can afford to take a cut, but in reality would probably earn even more elsewhere.
More experienced folk are also more likely to go freelance, since they have the skills, experience and contacts. Perm roles only make sense when they bring stability and benefits. I expect to see this a lot more, if RTO continues.
I'm not sure this is accurate. Most of the highly paid people I know (myself included), feel quite empowered by the current job market and can basically pick jobs at their leisure.
Yeah, I think I phrased that badly. I just meant that people can be paid to tolerate annoyances. More likely to happen in reverse, like if I'm going to have to do this unpleasant thing, then you're going to have to pay me extra, but the principle's the same.
Quiting when management makes a "fuck you" policy isn't fickleness, it's common sense, for those who can.
Job mobility and talent are strongly measurably connected.
"Fuck you" policies lose top talent.
It's not an interesting discussion. Grab your popcorn and wait for the "find out" phase to come around.
And if you own stock, focus on mid-cap for awhile, beacuse the large-cap players are doubling down on "fuck around".
Yep. One of my friends works in sales and has worked from home for 3 1/2 of her 4 years with her current company. She's in the top 10 performers out of 250-ish people in her division and her company is going to lose her if they stick to the demand that people return to the office. She's waiting to see what happens, but she's already had recruiters put out feelers once the tentative plan got out, and there are other top performers ready to jump ship too.
Buddy of mine straight up laughed at his boss when they told him to return to office, and strangely it has never come up again.
When you know the value you bring, it's hard to muscle you around.
I've seen a lot of people with that attitude still get let go. I've fired people with huge ego's that were extremely valuable to operations that really thought they were untouchable. As good as you think you are, there's someone else just as good or better that will take your place.
That being said, fuck working for someone that doesn't respect you, or makes demands of you purely because they want to flex on you.
There are 1.5-2 jobs for every worker right now, depending on area. Top talent can laugh at most RTO processes.
I do agree on cocky dicks who think they're totally untouchable tho. This wasn't that.
Overall, employers hold almost all the power in their relationships over employees.
Depending on individual and conditions, some may find themselves with the privilege of slightly improved bargaining power, but no assumption is stable or reliable, and ultimately employers have the final word. A company always may find other workers more easily than, in the greater balance, individuals may find other job positions.
Workers have no inherent or intrinsic value in the relationship. Companies value workers only for their labor, and do so under systems of labor commodification captured beneath the whims of the market.
This (emphasis mine, for clarity) is not accurate. There are currently more jobs than people, and people of certain positions have enormous power in job negotiations.
And workers only value companies for the pay. This isn't really an argument about anything
Your quote mining is not honest.
A job opening being posted offers no important information about the situation inside any company, nor about the count of applications that have been received, nor the count that has been ignored or rejected.
For most of us, not having a job represents having a much higher risk of death. The conditions of workers are essentially conditions of work or die.
If you think workers have as much bargaining power as companies, then you are, frankly, deluded. You may personally not notice the depth of the disparity, due to your having certain privileges, but you are still giving a distorted representation of your own conditions.
Workers literally have more bargaining power than employers at the moment, be I'm not deluded about that. I work in retention and partner with recruiting daily.
You have argued that because you have encountered an abundance of job listings, therefore, employers have less bargaining power than employees.
Job listings are not a scarce resource. Any employer may create any number for any reason merely by choosing.
Your argument is fatuous.
The entire structure of the relationship between worker and employer is based on inequitable balance of power. Workers must sell their labor to employers in order to earn the means of their survival, in order to avoid destitution, homelessness, and starvation. Employers, in turn, benefit from a disciplined and stratified working class, and from a reserve army of labor.
The prevailing principle for workers, under the employment system, is work or die.
I'm not talking about seeing lots of job listings. I'm talking about the realities of recruiting personnel and the demographic and structural changes that cause those realities
Sorry you're having trouble, but your experience is not the broad reality. There are more jobs than people and workers haven't been this empowered since post-WW2
There is no system in which this is not the case, and that has nothing to do with your bargaining power.
You are now being dishonest, by insinuating that I have presented an argument from personal experience, and also that you have presented a structural argument.
Both suggestions are false.
You have given no structural argument. I have given one, and have not appealed to personal experience.
As I say, job openings is not relevant. A job opening is not a resource of limited supply.
Any employer may post any number of job openings at any time, and also may eliminate any of them, at any time, and also may eliminate any job, at any time, dismissing whoever is holding it.
Indeed, an employer may also post a job opening, and simply reject every applicant, or even ignore every one.
Yes, there is, obviously. As long as distribution of basic needs is decoupled from the system of organizing labor, everyone may survive even if not providing labor.
It does, completely, for reasons I already explained. Only one side of the bargaining relationship is being subjected to grave threat.
Serious question: are you currently working as an adult in the professional world?
Because this is not what "jobs" are.
A job is a social relationship between a worker and an employer.
A job opening is a declaration by an employer of being willing to receive applications. If any application is accepted, by a job being offered to an applicant, then the applicant may accept the job, and may hold it, as long as the employer remains willing to maintain the employment relationship.
A job opening is only a declaration.
Do you understanding the meaning of bargaining power?
Please think about the substantive meaning of the concept, and then provide a clear explanation, based on your understanding.
Now, do the same for a company declaring a job opening. Explain the meaning, clearly.
Please offer an explanation of how you may arrive, in general, at a sound conclusion, about which side of a negotiation has more bargaining power.
Now, please provide a meaningful argument that job applicants have more bargaining power than employers.
You have so far attempted to poison the well, but have not provided any genuine argument for your stated conclusion.
Job applicants are the girls on tinder. Many options and the choices are mutually exclusive.
Employers are the guys on tinder. More of them than girls and some of them will not get girls (filled positions).
The girl has her choice of guys, and can select for a higher standard. So can employees.
Really not complicated. Basic supply and demand.
No. Sorry.
Either you are trolling, or you are simply extremely thoughtless in forming your beliefs.
You reveal a complete lack of understanding of social structure.
You have rifled through a handful a variations of the same general theme, attempting to argue, or perhaps attempting to avoid arguing, that employers have less bargaining power than employees.
The employment relationship is not a relationship of mutuality or parity between the two participating parties, employer and employee.
A business is a social structure, which is completely different from an individual worker. Meanwhile, the billionaires who own businesses, and through them accumulate private wealth, have no shared interests with their workers.
Each business may expand to employ arbitrarily many workers, but workers have only limited time to sell.
Businesses control the entirety of resources in society that the population requires to survive. They profit from the labor of workers, who sell their labor to earn the right to live.
The number of job openings is not related to the bargaining power of employees.
It cannot be overstated that your comparison to romantic partnership is so utterly absurd.
Oh the invaluable people do get fired. The problem is that the company never replace them, because they can't be replaced.
Their value is not in how smart or skilled they are but in how much they know of their work in the company. Most of this work is not documented and it can take a decade to build this knowledge.
These people are key elements of the functioning of the company. You lose months of productivity each year simply because they're not there, and you might even lose years of work that's now unmaintainable.
I don't know, if companies are too arrogant to see that or if they'd rather have people who obey than a working company. I bet on the second though.
Have you ever had a middle manager above you who constantly has to interfere as if to prove how necessary they are?
This is similar. It's not always about the amount/quality of your work or even about the money; sometimes it's just about control. Those who don't actually do much (again, managers and CEOs, etc) want desperate people they can rule over.
They don't see workers as people, they're a commodity like everything else.
Even better, the competent ones ask for more money
Seriously the actions of all these big companies shows they don't really give a shit about retaining top talent. Unfortunately, for big name companies, they'll always have an inflow of talented new grads who are willing to give up their dignity to get their name on their resumes, and it's cheaper (in the short term, which is all shareholders care about) to churn and burn them then to invest in long term talent
We are all freely interchangeable widgets in their calculations. They don’t have time to consider that some people might be better than the job than others.
Because profit is in the tail.
They're betting that some will leave, most will stay, and even if the some that leave are the best, most of their money is made by the vast majority of people behind them.
They're looking at trends, not individuals. Individuals don't matter to them.
Exactly.
They're going to learn better, but it's going to be an expensive process.
The irony is that the average worker already knows better.
"Name two people at your workplace who, if they quit, everything will go to shit."
We can all do it. Only the CEO can't. And many of us would name differet people at the same workplace, and still be correct. But the CEO rarely knows that, or more likely can only name two, themselves, when their real risk is closer to 200.
I'm way better than the job!
I put up with hellish demands and a nightmare commute because I thought working at Important Company was a privilege. And to so degree it was. But I don’t put up with bullshit anymore and that was a lesson I had to learn on my own, the hard way.
yup - early on in my career, working at a specific FAANG company was my life's greatest ambition, now I don't think there's any amount of money they might feasibly offer me that would make me work there lol - Once you have enough income to be comfortable, work life balance is worth more than anything
Had a convo with my mum last month, where she was concerned that I wasn't looking to supercharge my career as I enter my 40s. She couldn't understand why I'd declined an interview with Meta.
I had to spell it out.. I won't miss that extra money. I don't have an expensive lifestyle, and I don't want one. I'd miss the time lost with my kids, and I'd sure as shit regret the stress and anxiety of additional work pressure.
But then, I also had to explain why staying in an unhappy marriage "for the kids" is infinitely worse than peaceful and happy co-parenting.
Boomers. Sigh.
It's because the people making these decisions aren't incrntivised to think about the long term effect for the company. All they need to worry about is if it makes line go up in the short-term so they can get a fat bonus then use how much line went up to get a job somewhere else before the shit hits the fan. Rinse and repeat.
Because CEOs are dumb
Better yet if the workers unionized they could end up with a strike or no workers at all. If these were the good ol days they may even wake up without their kneecaps.