KEY POINTS

  • Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, whom President-elect Donald Trump appointed to lead a new government efficiency team, said they intend to call federal employees back to the office five days a week.
  • Companies such as Amazon and The Washington Post are adopting a similar policy in 2025.
  • But many companies will keep remote or hybrid work arrangements, largely because they boost profits, economists said.
  • Some view return-to-office mandates as a stealthy way to reduce employee head count.
      • Nougat@fedia.io
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        5 days ago

        Elon is probably only carrying that child on his shoulders all the time now as a human shield.

        • Billiam@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          Which is how you know he knows fuck-all about America, cause we’re kinda indifferent to both collateral casualties and gun violence being the number one cause of death for children.

        • prole
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          4 days ago

          I unironically believe this to be true.

      • zergtoshi@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        What’s the other one? Saving a ‘t’ in the process?
        Like

        Billionaires need to be taxed out of existance.

        ?

        • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          I was being sarcastic. You can’t have billionaires without exploiting everyone’s basic human needs for food, shelter, safety, healthcare, or freedom, and they’ll figure that out with a proper education.

  • Brkdncr@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    Neither of these assholes have ever had a real job. Not even a high paying real job.

    Billionaires are a problem.

    • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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      5 days ago

      Clearly you’re living a life of luxury and privilege unlike ordinary hard-working folk like… (tries to keep straight face)… Elon Musk.

    • Curious Canid@lemmy.ca
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      5 days ago

      Me too. Musk can’t actually manage people, but he can pretend more convincingly if he can see them in person and yell at them. There are a lot of managers like that and there are far more executives.

      My company looked at the actual business results from the period of COVID remote work. Productivity went up, so they decided to keep things that way. It also allowed them to get rid of all their office space, except for a sparsely populated headquarters building, which is saving them a lot of money.

      Most studies have shown that workers were more efficient when working remotely. Why would any executive want to reduce efficiency and increase infrastructure costs? The Return-To-Office push is not rational. It represents an inability to adapt to changing conditions. If boards were doing their jobs, they would be quietly showing those executives the door and looking for better people to run their companies.

      • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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        5 days ago

        The Return-To-Office push is not rational.

        Like most stupid things in our world, it’s about emotions.

        This topic is funny to me because I worked for a place that was all about data. Data driven decisions. They had tshirts made that said like “Data > Feelings”.

        And yet when people brought up to the CEO stuff like studies showing WFH or 4-day-workweeks were effective, he just said “Nah, we’re not doing that.”. No discussion. No looking at the data. Just no.

        To his credit, that CEO did run a profitable startup with barely any funding, so he wasn’t a total fool. But on that kind of stuff he was a total gutfeel asshole.

        • Curious Canid@lemmy.ca
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          5 days ago

          People who run startups, even the successful ones, tend to be awful to their employees. I should say, especially the successful ones.

      • prole
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        4 days ago

        Commercial real estate. That’s why.

    • undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch
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      5 days ago

      Me too (exact same year)! It weirds me out when people are like “you never went back to the office?” Back? Why would I go in the first place? 🤣

  • synae[he/him]@lemmy.sdf.org
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    5 days ago

    Ok, let’s say it is a covid-era privilege. Why does that mean it has to go away? Why can’t it be a modern day innovation? Isn’t it a curb on vehicle emissions? More spending money in people’s wallets if they’re not paying for gas or coffee or meals on the go due to commuting? What’s the fuckin downside?? We stumbled upon a good thing

    Oh fuck, I forgot the real estate prices. My bad. Yea let’s cancel this whole thing

    • theneverfox@pawb.social
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      5 days ago

      You forgot, it saves people 30 mins - 2 hours every day. What are they going to do with that time? Enjoy themselves? Advocate for their own interests?

      No, clearly this cannot stand

    • evilcultist@sh.itjust.works
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      4 days ago

      It’s also incredibly fucked up that they’re worried about real estate prices falling in an economy where so many are having a problem paying rent or owning a house.

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
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      4 days ago

      Isn’t it a curb on vehicle emissions?

      Welllll, Elon owns a large share of a company that makes vehicles. So the more people drive, the better for him.

  • macniel@feddit.org
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    5 days ago

    stupid control freaks. Because controlling of their employees is what RTO is about, control and paranoia.

    They are stupid paranoid control freaks who fear that their neat buildings stand empty and they cant just throw work at their wage slaves. So this is actually about control, paranoia, and vanity.

      • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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        5 days ago

        One of the benefits of working from home has been that my manager can no longer use standing staring at me as his main means of judging whether I’m doing work. The whole business of needing to see people working just smacks of shitty management.

      • macniel@feddit.org
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        5 days ago

        So their reasons is control, paranoia, vanity, incompetence when it comes to remote management and their undivided devotion to the American Dollar.

        something something spanish inquisition

        • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          Largely also true. In my office, my manager is remote anyway, so it doesn’t matter if I’m in my local office or home office.

    • pezhore@infosec.pub
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      5 days ago

      Don’t forget sweetheart tax breaks from local municipalities on real estate!

      Sure you can have this huge complex company, because we know the 1500 people who work from the office will frequent the local Subway for lunch and that’s sales tax!

    • fluxion@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      They thank us by directly using their endless wealth to fuck us out of our last bit of political/economic power

  • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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    5 days ago

    Can Musk please, please, please, just fucking die already? Preferably burnt to death while trapped in a cybertruck. He’s just so stupid and has too much power, and I’m tired of people treating him like he’s worth more than utter contempt.

    Ramaswamy can go, too. Conspiracy theory peddling sycophant.

  • mint_tamas@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    I’ve been working remotely long before the pandemic and I will continue to do so - I’m far from being alone in that. Also, we are still in the “covid-era”, we just collectively decided to pretend we aren’t.

      • Lodespawn@aussie.zone
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        5 days ago

        Didnt you hear he personally unlocked the Trump hotel bomb for law enforcement and sent them the surveillance footage of it being charged?

  • FundMECFSResearch
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    4 days ago

    Rip Disabled people I guess.

    And this is coming from the same peoppe saying “just get a job”.

    You gotta provide accomodations my guy.

  • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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    4 days ago

    The company I work for is pushing almost all of IT to WFH so they can get rid of all the office space they’re renting. It actually kind of sucks for me because I don’t like working from home.

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    4 days ago

    You mean the “privilege” of working from home so tech CEOs could make billions of dollars?

    Obviously billions of dollars is just the result of hard work and not a privilege at all.