A simple Microsoft 365 Roadmap update will now generate a raft of unhappy headlines. The idea is simple. “When users connect to their organization’s Wi-Fi, Teams will automatically set their work location to reflect the building they are working in.”
Forget the locational anonymity of a Teams virtual background. Teams will update your location when connected to your company’s WiFi. On video, you may have your usual background complete with company logo. But your boss will know you’re not in work.
Oh, god, I’m sorry to hear that. Yeah, I still don’t understand, especially after Covid, how so many people in management still have such an obsession with in-person work.
I’d get it if we were talking about the Silent Generation or something. But hell, remote work has been possible since when boomers were in their prime working years. I remember seeing my uncle (boomer) having a terminal at his house back in the 80s. Modems were a thing, etc…some work was definitely something that could be done remote. Journalists had machines they’d carry around with them to send in stories, etc. So it definitely got its start long, long ago. Before I entered the workforce.
But often, it’s now Gen Y that are some of these managers that seem excited to get people into the same crowded space with shitty fluorescent lighting and lots of distractions, shitty chairs and desks, public restrooms, long commutes, paying for parking, stupid dress codes, etc…I mean, WTF. By the time Gen Y hit the workforce, remote work was something very well known and solved. Do they have some kind of weird FOMO for 90s work culture?
I think there are two things. There’s definitely a level of brainwashing where mediocre MBAs who have built a career on “failing upwards” project their own lack of scruples onto their workforce i.e. “if I worked from home I’d just play golf all day so I assume this is true for everyone”. They genuinely don’t understand management models beyond micromanagement because they have no frame of reference for “self-motivated” or “autonomous”.
Then the other factor is that many of the c-level execs at these companies or their bosses (the board) have commercial real estate portfolios. Propping up the value of those units is contingent on companies renting office space. The bosses know which side their bread is buttered and even if they don’t have skin in the game directly will happily do favours for ‘friends’ who they want to impress to help them climb that next rung of the ladder.