In a lot of ways RTO has put working conditions in a worse spot than they were pre-pandemic. In the Before Times occasional remoting was informal and casual - if you had a doctor's appointment at an odd time, you'd remote for the day, with no formal approval nor teeth-gnashing.
Now even small everyday things like this are fraught. There are often formal approval chains now for what used to be entirely between you and your boss. Even where there aren't formal approval chains your boss now knows that these arrangement count against the team in some opaque metrics even they don't have access to.
Likewise, hiring remote candidates has become a minefield - pre-pandemic it was often entirely discretionary on the part of the hiring manager. Sure, the default was in-office, but making exceptions to it was entirely between the people who needed to work with the candidate and whether they thought they can make the arrangement work.
Now it has to be run up the flagpole - in some places all the way up the flagpole to the very top of the company. And at every rung along that ladder everyone knows - again - that allowing the exception will count against them in opaque and faceless metrics that are being scrutinized.
A top performer has to move out of town because of family reasons? In the old days you talk to your manager, maybe your skip, they'd tell HR it's fine, and... it just goes. Now? 95% chance the person has to leave the company, because someone in the newly-installed approval chain is going to nix it because - again - it counts against them personally where it didn't before.
Sigh. In so many ways we've regressed on this so much. The level of flexibility and discretion teams have on work locations has narrowed so dramatically, in exchange for yet another spreadsheet-driven bureaucracy.
Wish I could give this more upvotes. I was fully remote for more than a decade before COVID, but now I’m seeing all the same things you’ve written about here. It’s a huge regression.
Depends on the industry. In games you had to fight tooth and nail to be remote. Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft really, really did not want devkits to be in private residences.
Pandemic comes and a lot more of that relaxes. Like the rest of tech, some studios are trying to revert but there's a lot less doctor's notes needed to justify remote now.
It’s a pendulum - management is still traumatized by COVID and are reacting to that. I hope in a few years we’ll start heading back towards more freedom for workers
Now even small everyday things like this are fraught. There are often formal approval chains now for what used to be entirely between you and your boss. Even where there aren't formal approval chains your boss now knows that these arrangement count against the team in some opaque metrics even they don't have access to.
Likewise, hiring remote candidates has become a minefield - pre-pandemic it was often entirely discretionary on the part of the hiring manager. Sure, the default was in-office, but making exceptions to it was entirely between the people who needed to work with the candidate and whether they thought they can make the arrangement work.
Now it has to be run up the flagpole - in some places all the way up the flagpole to the very top of the company. And at every rung along that ladder everyone knows - again - that allowing the exception will count against them in opaque and faceless metrics that are being scrutinized.
A top performer has to move out of town because of family reasons? In the old days you talk to your manager, maybe your skip, they'd tell HR it's fine, and... it just goes. Now? 95% chance the person has to leave the company, because someone in the newly-installed approval chain is going to nix it because - again - it counts against them personally where it didn't before.
Sigh. In so many ways we've regressed on this so much. The level of flexibility and discretion teams have on work locations has narrowed so dramatically, in exchange for yet another spreadsheet-driven bureaucracy.