We need to talk about where we work
Why the current debate about working from home is harmful and how we can do better
There’s a lot of debate about working from home and the efforts of various companies to get their employees to return to the office. Or RTO for those looking for a snazzy acronym to make it sound well thought out. The reality is that this discussion has become ideological to the point where it’s difficult to have a rational discussion. The way things are happening is also indicative of a wider trend in tech where the execs seems to want to follow the Elon Musk school of leadership and has become a symbol of how the billionaires running these companies are increasingly out of touch.
I should also say up front that I consider a sure sign that leadership bullshit is happening is when an unpopular or harmful decision is reduced to a three letter acronym. RTO makes the execs in these companies feel like they’re doing leadership. It’s official sounding and makes it come across as something they’ve put a lot of thought into. The same thing happened with RIF (Reduction In Force) otherwise known as firing a bunch of people to inflate your stock price. And, it turns out that the root problem behind both of these things is the same but we’ll get to that. Let’s first consider how we got here.
