I graduated college into the start of widespread remote work. The lockdowns and pandemic made the company I worked for 'proud of our productivity as we all isolate' or whatever it was at the time. CEOs would literally brag on our monthly emails about how we had kept revenue streams even with the closing of offices and how they were hiring massive amounts of people back in 2020-2022. Fast forward to now and I'm now working for a sister company/subsidiary and we've been going in to the office for 4 days a month. It's interesting and I certainly see some positive aspects to working in person but after the long periods of bragging 2 years ago I still find in quite frustrating.
We spent all this time proving we could be equally if not more productive from home, and companies had opportunities to adjust their costs to 'trim the fat' or whatever it was of office management. And yet, here we are 2 years later and my bosses just ran a poll asking 'What days do you most like coming into the office?'. Yeah... Not 'do you like...?' not 'would you prefer...?' but rather 'what days'.
It's funny because they did make one of the poll options 'fully remote', and that option won 70% of the vote. It is clear that I am not alone in feeling like this weird tech job I have is completely doable at home, as my last 3+ years of experience have shown.
I've heard people say the return to office (RTO) phenomenon is due to long-term building leases that would lose companies money, I've heard them say it's because highly-paid management wouldn't be able to justify their own existence in an all-remote environment long term, and a whole other host of "reasons" for RTO. I frankly do not know which of the explanations I've heard gets closest to 'truth', but I do know that sometimes it does feel like they just want us to commute and look over our shoulder so that management can retain a sense of control over their workers. God forbid my 40 year old single mom coworker steps away for 20mins to change a diaper without telling anyone, right? Management must - for some reason - know about it.
RTO has also truly made work at this company less and less bearable. It has added a full 4 hours to my workday. 3 of those being commuting time and one of those being the fact that now if I'm at my desk at 8:50 instead of 9, my team is already expecting me to get to work even if the workday hasn't officially started. Not to mention they love to keep me at the office with last-minute requests at 5pm.
I also get less sleep, as in order to be presentable for the office I have to wake up at 7am to shower, eat something, and drive my 1-1.5hrs to work, instead of being able to sleep until 30mins before the start of my day. Most in-office days I get home so exhausted I cannot even make dinner, and I have to hope that my girlfriend felt unusually motivated to cook or just have something really simply for dinner. I'm usually the cook of the house, and I can tell you I eat horribly during in-office days, whereas when I work remotely I make time and have time to eat healthy complete meals.
All in all, RTO is a big L for workers, in my opinion. I'm sure it's a marginal win for companies and middle management, though.
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