Someone wants to lay people off without the headline “Grand Theft Auto Dev Lays Off 200 Employees”
Return to office is the modern day silent layoff
Although, it seems a lot of places lately are saying the silent part out loud.
You know, I really thought that the pandemic might have been the beginning of a paradigm shift. It was a terrible time, but I think a good majority of people were beginning to realize just how insane our world was and we all slowed down for a second and realized that we don’t need to be in the office 5 days a week. Welp, I guess I shouldn’t have been so damn naive. Employers decided that they couldn’t micromanage as efficiently as they wanted and those millions of dollars of real estate weren’t going to pay for themselves. Now it’s amazing how much our “cOmPaNy CuLtUrE” needs improvement or how collaboration just “iSnT aS gOoD” as face to face. Fuck you all, it’s money and control, plain and simple.
As someone who has been remote for 8+ years, it’s extra disconcerting that now some companies are more in the office than they were even before covid. It’s totally about control as you said. I’m at least hoping that it eventually returns to where it was.
Government of Canada
Some employees had remote work before COVID, after COVID they implemented mandatory 40 to 60% for everyone no matter their previous agreement… Except the departments where they have a hard time hiring… But only temporarily…
I think (at least in tech) we are seeing a brain drain where companies with strong RTO mandates can neither retain nor attract talent. Remote-first companies should be at a big advantage. Time will tell if it matters.
What I find very disconcerting is that some companies don’t own real state, they rent it. A commercial space in NY size of a garage costs like 70K per month! So these companies had the golden opportunity to pocket this money, to make their employees happy, help the environment, improve the traffic in the city and get talent from anywhere in the country, but said “nah thanks, I prefer to spend my time micromanaging my employees”.
What is wrong with these people? Our generation needs to create better, smarter companies and make these dinosaurs irrelevant.
It has been the beginning of a paradigm shift. This is just to lay people off without paying severance.
I’ve been remote for close to 10 years. In that time, I’ve had more personal and professional growth than I ever did the 10 before. There’s no conditions that would compel me back to an office with any regularity. These line goes up sociopaths are a lot more bearable over zoom and I’d like to keep it that way.
IDK, I value in office work for ~2 days/week, in person collaboration just generally works better for certain things. But I also get less of my own work done when in the office, so a mix is usually best.
And that’s what my company’s policy is: soft two-days in office, hard three days remote. We have four remote team members out of 20 or so, and we fly them out every few months for a week at a time for project kickoffs and whatnot.
But five days in office mandatory makes no sense. The only explanation imo is a lack of trust from management of their employees, and that’s not a productive environment to be in. If you don’t trust your employee, why do you keep paying them? Build a team based on trust and let the team decide their office schedule.
You’ll get downvoted here but I agree with you, personally I get value out of 2 days a week in office. Otherwise I become antisocial and a bit of a hermit.
However, that’s just me, and anymore and I wouldn’t be productive. The important thing is that it should be a team level decision (NOT a top down decision) and hopefully a personal one. How people find that they’re most productive should be up to them.
I’ve never understood any arguments against that. It always boils down to “But how do we know they’re working” which means “I am an incapable manager who doesn’t know how to manage”
team level decision
Exactly. The main difference between my office and Rockstar in the article is that ours was a bottom up decision, whereas Rockstar’s was a top down one.
In fact, our company policy is 3 days in office, but our team tried it and decided we’re less productive that way, so our VP overrode company policy to go back to 2 days. We’re not expected to come in if we need to stay for some reason (e.g. waiting on furniture delivery or the car isn’t working). In fact, one coworker hasn’t come to the office for months because her dog is prone to seizures and she needs to be there to intervene so he doesn’t hurt himself. Several of my coworkers are immigrants and work remotely for a month or more at a time when they go back to their home country. I’ve done the same when I visit family out of state. Some coworkers come in every day because they get distracted at home.
It’s a totally nontoxic atmosphere where everyone is treated like adults. Our current policy came from a team vote where most voted for 2 days in office, so that’s what we do. And as long as people don’t abuse the flexibility, there’s no reason for it to change, and in my 3-ish years working here, I’ve only had to have one conversation about the in-office policy (my coworker was working from home due to their car being in the shop, but after a month it was becoming abuse of the policy; a gentle reminder later and it hasn’t been a problem since).
Nail on the head with “abuse the flexibility”. I see so many companies cancel wfh and flexible policies because “we had a person abuse it” or they’re worried about it. So correct them if they abuse it! That’s Management’s job. If the rule is 2 days in office and they don’t do that, then you revoke wfh for them. If they aren’t getting work done on time then talk with them and come up with a corrective plan. If they still don’t then you let them go. You don’t remove the policy company wide and destroy morale because one person abused it. You let them go and codify your rules about it.
Exactly! We expect each team member to be responsible for their own work and not be micromanaged.
I’m a manager, and if I have to micromanage someone, I’d rather just fire them and hire someone more responsible. It’s not fair to the team to keep someone like that around, and fortunately we’ve only had to do it twice in the three years I’ve been here (they had plenty of warning). The rest are incredibly responsible and need practically no oversight, just a confidential reminder once or twice a year (if that) if they’re not following team expectations.
I spend half my time working with my team, and the other half keeping them out of meetings. I personally prefer remote work and try to eliminate useless meetings so in-office time is actually worthwhile. Most of our meetings end early, and I’m trying to get them even shorter.
A great attitude. A manager should micromanage only as a last resort, and only for a set duration to see if the employee improves or not. Micromanagement is not a long term strategy, it’s a waste of everyone’s time. Kudos to you, it sounds like you’re head is right where it should be.
I certainly hope those who work under me see it the same way.
I have no “business” experience or special training, so I just try to be the kind of manager that I wanted earlier in my career. I honestly don’t like managing people, I just do it because I don’t want someone who enjoys that kind of thing to take that job (those are the micro-managing types IMO).
You can value it, but that doesn’t mean it should be mandatory for everyone. When I have to go to the office my day is lost, not just because I’m not productive in the office, but also because I can’t do anything for myself. Also half of my team works 8 timezones away, our manager lives 4 timezones away, unless half the team gets on a transatlantic plane the more tram won’t be in the same office, how is making people go to two different offices in three different timezones twice a week going to help collaboration?
That’s why I said this:
Build a team based on trust and let the team decide their office schedule.
It seems your team was not put together with the intention of working in an office, so it would not make sense to require your team to come to the office.
My team has decided that in-office work is valuable, so we only hire locally or pay to relocate people. We do have four full remote team members, and those exist because of extenuating circumstances (two need to work with customers in their region, and two have legal/family obligations), and we fly them out every few months at company expense (e.g. for project kickoff meetings). But the rest of our 20-ish people live locally.
We have two other teams in two different time zones (one in Europe, one in Asia; we’re in the US) that are part of the overall team, and they meet in their respective regions. We do remote sync calls with them, but otherwise they are independent.
If your work doesn’t benefit from in-office collaboration, there’s no reason to come into an office. Ours does, so we do. But at the end of the day, it should be the team that decides, not management.
I absolutely appreciate that schedule works for you and can see the personal benefits. However, we have such a diversified work force thanks to things like complete remote, I still would like for companies to error on the side of what provides the best performance and quality of life.
I understand that’s a utopian ideal and don’t expect it to ever be reality, just wish that it would be manifested better before I once again see amazing talent lost to middle managements inability to evolve. Especially in markets that this type of action should be entirely voluntary.
The thing is, our office work policy comes from our team, not management. In fact, our company policy is 3 days in office, but we, as a team, decided we’re less productive with that policy (we tried it for a month) and our VP overrode company policy for us.
Some people come in every day, some work full remote (due to extenuating circumstances), but most come in 2 days/week. If we’re sick, need to be home (e.g. having a handyman come fix stuff), or need to be out of town for an extended time, we stay home. In fact, one coworker has been full remote for a few months because her dog is prone to having seizures and she needs to be present to help reduce harm until she can find a treatment that helps. It’s a non-issue.
The expectation is just that, as much as possible, come in on the two days the team has agreed on so collaboration can happen. Most of the team does that most of the time, and when we can’t, we just leave a note. Likewise, if we need to go to an appointment, leave a note that you’ll be out for an hour or two and take care of it.
It’s a super flexible and bottom-up policy, and it works really well. The important thing is that it’s a team decision. I think it has resulted in us liking spending time together, so we periodically do team activities outside of work (funded by the company of course), and nobody is obligated to attend (but most do).
Wrong. Enjoy the downvotes
I don’t get it, how is my personal opinion wrong? I’m talking about my preferences…
Your opinion is wrong
I’m waiting for a headline that’s “game dev asks workers to return to office 7 days a week”.
“Cracking the whip is no fun if we can’t see the fear in our wage slaves’ eyes as we do it, and besides, we want you to experience
workplace culturecrunch directly and fully, in a crowded office and not a comfort of your own home.” - Rockstar executives, probably.All of a sudden I’m a little less interested in giving Rockstar my money…
Feels safe to assume as we get closer to GTA6 the more people they’ll cut to maximize profits on it. Everyone knows it’s highly likely to be up there with 5 on sales however they know not to just do a massive layoff as it would effect sales. With online being a key money maker the devs in that department are probably the only ones that are “safe”.
Not sure which cynical take to go with here. Either they want to get people to quit without the bad press of laying people off or they know the industry is turbulent enough that no one would actually push back against going back into the office for work that could be done remotely.
Yay I love paywalled articles /s
I was going to say 12 foot ladder, but that doesnt work. Does anyone have a similar site that would do the job?
Oh God. The humanity…
