Work from home

Wife was hired in 2014 for a position that was designed to be remote. They changed things in 2017 and tried to make her come into an office 2.5 hours away, 5 days a week. She's legally blind and doesn't drive, a fact they were fully aware of and had no issues with when they hired her. She tried to argue multiple times, and it just ended up going in circles with several managers getting pretty insulting to her. So, she quit, and eventually decided to contact a disability lawyer to inform the ex-employer she would be suing for discrimination, and ADA violations. Because they said some pretty stupid things in emails and voicemails. They ended up offering a nice sized settlement. She found another WFH job that paid 3x what she was making at the old place, with a higher level position and more closely fits her education. She's much happier with how things turned out for her. The position has been on various job sites for over 3 years and doesn't look like it's been filled since she quit, though I can't say that for sure.

They think we're cattle, but cattle won't eat the rich.

I have always told folks that I managed, that I'm nothing without them. Yea, I have a MBA as well, but man, are alot of those business folks short sighted to a fault. Like lack of empathy and foresight.

If your KPI's are based around having a knowledge worker in a chair in a room, your business should die.

Plain and simple.
- Cattle will stampede if you piss them off enough.
- My boss is awesome. He realizes that his job is mostly to make sure we're able to do our jobs effectively. It really feels like I'm working with him, not for him, which is how it should be.
- All these "nobody wants to work anymore" people are the ones that think they don't have to take care of their employees because they can always hire someone else.
Good

You should absolutely sue when your rights are violated. It is not ok for an employer to discriminate based on disability.
- I'm sure they don't even understand that it was a discrimination, judging by the fact that they went on and left a lot of evidence of their stupidity
My sister in law is blind in one eye, but because she has one working eye she has no disability protection as far as I know. She still can't drive because she has no depth perception and it's very dangerous. It's made navigating going to work difficult over the years, often working the same place my brother did so he could drive her. Luckily her current employer works with her and lets her work from home. But a decade ago no one would have dreamed of letting her work from home.
- In Canada that would be labelled a legit disability without blinking an eye.
- According to the EEOC, it’s a disability:
  
  A vision impairment does not need to “prevent, or significantly or severely restrict,” an individual’s ability to see in order to be a disability, as long as the individual’s vision is substantially limited when compared to the vision of most people in the general population.
  
  And it sounds like her employer is doing the right thing. But if ever she feels she is not being treated fairly, she should talk to a lawyer to be sure. Don’t just let it slide because she has one good eye. Hell it might be good to talk to a lawyer anyway, so she knows what to look out for in the future if things happen to change.
That's a triple win. Love hearing these types of stories.

It's sad that this is considered malicious at all. Seriously, either working from home is a risk for your company or it isn't, there's nothing in between.

Well u see your employer reserves the right to always be right!

That's the benefit of being "leadership"
- What I need right now supercedes anything I've ever said or anything on paper

Yup, they started to force me to drive to an office where none of the people I work with are, now that’s the only place I do work for them.

Used to think about and work on projects after hours if I found them interesting or realized a solution I hadn’t thought of. They’ve shown me they don’t care about my comfort, so I don’t feel the need to care about their problems either. The work will be there tomorrow.

They’re so divorced from reality that they think we’d just give up extra hours of our lives for commuting and keep up the same work output. Fuckin nope, going switch to doing the bare minimum it takes to keep you signing checks.

Yup, my work pulled the same Bullshit. I can work from home and we all worked from home through COVID... But now suddenly I can't

So, there's been a few times where the power's gone out or something has happened that needs us at a remote location. They send the team home. The rest of the guys willingly go. I stay back and remind them that "gee, sorry. You guys have made it abundantly clear that I can't work from home. All those times I had to take personal time... So yeah, no. I'll just hang out here I guess until everything comes back up 🤷‍♂️"

Fuck yeah!
Makes me think that with the hybrid they expect to have the best of both worlds, while in fact it will likely be the opposite.

Besides, with a mandatory fixed amount of days per quarter it gets soooo bullshit, it's not hybrid it's just barely glorified office work
- Especially when the "hybrid" model involves more days in office than at home.
  
  I guess execs don't work when they're at home and can't handle not getting distracted, so they just assume the same for everyone.

My SO was told to travel to office every day of the week, only to sit in zoom meetings because all of their team is elsewhere.

Reaaaal good use of everyone’s time and our non-renewable resources.

Don't forget that it's also effectively a pay cut due to the added expenses and time lost in commuting. They should ask if the company is going to at least pay for the maintenance of the car if they aren't going to pay for the time spent commuting.
- Also the time spent getting ready for office appearances and prepping lunches (or the cost of buying lunches away from home).
- “Here’s the invoice for the rental!”
- You know the answer, so why even ask? Just makes you look foolish. Brush off the resume and start looking. They won’t learn.
- Paying for commute time for regular workers is not going to happen, for many many decades you getting to work is your own issue...thus why we find a place near highway access or near transit. asking a company to pay travel means they will just hire somebody that lives close by

It really saddens to me see how many managers out there treat their subordinates terribly, and then act surprised when their subordinates do the same - as though employees are meant to greatful for their terrible treatment

https://files.catbox.moe/odekq1.jpg
- Does ring true dunnit?
  
  Sometimes people use "respect" to mean "treating someone like a person" and sometimes they use "respect" to mean "treating someone like an authority"
  
  and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say "if you won't respect me I won't respect you" and they mean "if you won't treat me like an authority I won't treat you like a person"
  
  and they think they're being fair but they aren't, and it's not okay.
I recently was recently reprimanded for using the term "subordinates". I was informed that term has fallen out of favor. Direct Reports is the proper way to say it these days.
- Sounds good to me, I've never gotten in trouble for indirectreportination.
- What about indirect reports?
- Honestly calling someone a "direct report" sounds even more dehumanising. At least calling someone a "subordinate" acknowledges that you're belittling their existence. A "direct report" sounds like a piece of paper.
- Fair enough. Subordinate is the term I've always heard used. Direct reports just sounds like the sugar coated version to me.

I work night shifts. My manager one time called me around 2pm to ask me something menial and waking me up (as I was still sleeping for my next shift at 7pm).

So naturally, I called him at 2AM when I was at work... because I had an "urgent" question about a work policy lol. He got the picture, and that shit never happened again

I refuse to install any work related software on my phone. Not only because I don’t want to be contacted after hours, but companies often “require” full read/write access on your device, so they can remotely wipe their data if you quit or get fired.

Fuck that.

No modern MDM solution allows a company to access your personal data on BYOD. That's why containerization of work profiles exist. Anything else would be a massive privacy scandal.

Company-owned devices, though, do have that level of access when MDM enrolled.
- Intune installs as a device adminstration. I'm not sure how much I'd trust that on my personal device period.
- I'd love to honestly believe that. But I still wouldn't risk ever doing a BYOD with a company that forced me to install anything on my personal devices.
- Regardless, times I've tried to get access to work stuff on my phone I stopped because I had to agree to let my entire device be remotely wiped if they chose to. I had absolutely zero faith that they wouldn't accidentally do it as a matter of procedure if/when I left the company so I didn't do it.
- It honestly doesn't matter to me.
  
  Even if it's an absolute certainty that there's no possible way they can do harm, I'm unconditionally not willing to install anything on my personal device that isn't for my personal use.
I'm with you there. My previous employer wanted a bunch of their shit on my phone. I asked if they were supplying me with a work a phone, and they said no, you already have one. I said I do, and it's mine, and I'm not putting anything on it for work because work and home are going to be two different things. They gave me a work phone and then wanted to know why I turned it off in the parking lot before I even got into my car. I'm done working for the day sir.
- wanted to know why I turned it off in the parking lot before I even got into my car. I'm done working for the day sir.
  
  My co-worker locked his in his desk drawer when he went home for the night.
This is absolutely correct. Heck, you're free to deny that based on any reasoning, maybe the shoddy icon of the work app doesn't match your phone wallpaper.

The phone is your private property, if an employer requires an app to be installed to do your job, they can provide a phone.

I would also never let corporate IT manage a device, e. g. a laptop connected to my private network at home.
- I would also never let corporate IT manage a device, e. g. a laptop connected to my private network at home.
  
  If you ever must, buy a new laptop. And use it on a guest wifi network. Use it as you would a work laptop, nothing personal on it
- I would also never let corporate IT manage a device, e. g. a laptop connected to my private network at home.
  
  That's pretty standard for working from home. I'm expected to use the company provided, managed laptop with my internet connection.
  
  I figured so long as I made sure of things like there weren't any open file shares and things like routers and IP cameras were password protected there wasn't a whole they could see.
  
  If I was really paranoid I could set up a VLAN or something.
Can't you demand a company-provided device then? It's their fault that you need those apps.
Yeah and they want to install some profile that gives them access and puts your internet connection through their VPN. My coworkers look at me like I’m crazy because I carry a work device and a personal device. Like, why would I give my employer access to all of my web traffic on my phone? You’re crazy if you don’t carry two devices.
- That’s a no for me dawg.
The two consessions I've made are Teams, and the MFA software.

I am often running around to various sites and being able to use a quick chat is better than pulling out my laptop, and I turn it off when I'm off the clock.
Yeah that's beyond fucked. That's a major privacy issue.
Permanently Deleted
Yup same. It's crazy how many people willing installed Intune and shit on their personal phone. If my company wants me to have that level of portability, then they'll be buying a work phone for me and paying me overtime any time I'm forced to use it out of regular hours

My guess is that some businesses get tax breaks from municipalities in exchange for filling office spaces with warm bodies. The idea is that people in office buildings support local businesses by buying lunch, and sometimes grabbing a pint after work.

I’m not trying to excuse this trend, in fact as an IT person myself I 100% agree with the sentiment, I’m just trying to share what I’ve been told.

This is the excuse my employer gave. So I'm to take a pay cut (gas, wear and tear on my vehicle, loss of time to commute) so I can spend more money to prop up other businesses for a tax break that is likely to go into some rich ass C-levels bonus or shareholders pocket for cut costs?

Fuuuck that. Its just another way of picking the labor class clean to the bone.
- Yes. That's exactly what is happening.
Commercial realestste makes up a significant amount of rich people's investment portfolios. And if people stopped needing office space the property would devalue and those rich people would lose easy money.

So they have all collectively agreed to force their workers back to the office I order to keep the real estate values up and keep their investments positive.
- Also rich can afford to have a investment in busy city areas while regular folk can get a house in urban areas at best. And work from home is leading people to the urban areas where rents are less.
It's even simpler than that: they leased the office space and have to continue to pay that lease or else pay an early termination fee. This is basically the sunk cost fallacy. But you are right that sometimes additionally they get tax breaks for certain office space, for instance the San Francisco mid-market tax break (AKA the Twitter tax break)

It's astonishing.

The capitalists know full well we're more productive working remotely, but their need for control has proven to be stronger than their insatiable greed anyway.

Just more proof that cruelty is the point. They've known since the 70s that they'd be richer than they are if they would pay thriving wages and eliminate poverty. They want the suffering more than the money.
- They would be richer, but by "allowing" working class people to have a thriving life means the power gap between us and them wouldn't be as big. People could organize and overthrow them, so they have to keep us fighting amongst ourselves for scraps.
  
  The cruelty is the point.
- It's still greed. They want to justify the mobey they've wasted in useless office spaces.
- Fair point
Board rooms have a lot of people who are heavily invested in commercial real estate.
- Also a fair point.

I can’t believe people have work apps on their personal devices. Delete that shit!

No matter what app it is, if employers require one to be used on a smartphone, they are legally obligated to provide you with a work phone. If they refuse, they are legally obligated to provide reimbursement for your personal mobile plan. This can be as simple as $5 or $10 added monthly to a paycheck, or as detailed as actual usage down to the kilobyte.

Even if it's as simple as clocking in and out. If they won't provide a phone or reimburse, they must have some other method to complete the task. Whether it be a computer or paper. Failing that, they are not upholding the law of providing you tools necessary to complete your job. Which means if they terminate you for any of the above under "not able to do your job", it is retaliation for you requiring them to do their job. You could potentially win a suit against them.
- My employer provides us with a "tech allowance" as a bonus every month
  
  It's not enough to buy a barely functional work laptop, but you can "buy a laptop" through them, and then forfeit the bonus until it's "paid off"
  
  I'm kinda awful with money, so I pretty much need every cent I can get. That bonus goes towards keeping my head above water in the debt trap I'm in.
  
  So my "work computer" which requires their ~~spyware~~ antivirus to be installed is a virtual machine. It's been two years and no complaints so far. Great antivirus.
- Wow I didn't even know this.ty
- Reimbursement for a mobile plan? If I need to use a special authenticator app to login to my work computer, and the app is fully offline (and I only need to use it at the office where I have Wi-fi anyway, if I needed it, but I don't), then what does a mobile plan have to do with anything? I could use it on a phone without a SIM card, or a tablet that can't have one.
I have slack in it, because I don't like walking around with two phones, but I have it configured to stop notifying after hours. Also worth noting that I do have a phone from the company, it's just that I find it cumbersome to walk around with two phones.
- This is me, too. I run a dual Sim on my phone for this reason. I've always been good at ignoring things after hours unless motivated by self interest.
- Same here. O365 and ticketing app.
  O365 is shut up during off-time and the ticketing system doesnt have notifications.
  I would probably take a 2nd phone but the hassle of keeping track of and charging both is too inconvenient for me.
Right now I am on vacation, my work phone stays at home with an empty battery.

They still have my private number if it is an absolute disaster at work and they need my help, but untill sunday evening I won't even charge my work phone, let alone check it for messages/calls.

Work apps stay on the work phone, the ONLY exception to that rule I will ever make is work MFA apps.

But I'd sooner get a new separate phone for that if I don't get a company phone.
- Re MFA, I've been using a hardware key and it's so much better. I don't need my phone for a single work related thing anymore, so I can just ignore it until breaks.
I have two phones. A personal one and one provided by my company. I like being able to turn off my work phone when on holiday, etc and keep my personal life separate.

I do know a lot of people who sold their personal phones when given a work phone and use it for both. Saves some money I guess but no thanks.

I also know people who have two phones but install all the work apps on their personal phones to make it easier for them. No thanks!
- I'm one of the "company-provided-phone-only" folks. Thankfully, I work for a pretty decent employer who has never abused that in the nearly 10 years I've worked there. But I realize that's a pretty rare privilege.
It is wild to me, even as I have one work app on my phone. It's only there because it allows me to clock in and out, and my personal phone is significantly higher spec'd than the work provided phone.

Even so, I cannot be contacted via this app and cannot perform work with it outside of the geo-restricted area.
That goes into the work profile of my android phone and that profile of switched off after clocking out. Simple as that, I don't have to carry two phones and get my peace after hours. And my company respects my free time which also helps s lot.
- my company respects my free time
  
  Well that doesn't sound like a recipe for anyone becoming a billionaire from your labour
For me it is a convenience thing -- I spend a lot of time working from home and sometimes it's nice to just be able to grab my phone and join a meeting while I'm sitting on the couch or w/e without needing to go over to my home office room. My team almost never does anything outside of work hours, so it's not like I'm getting pinged or anything. In the rare situation where I get some notifications from a chat channel outside of working hours (usually someone in a different time zone) then I can just turn off work apps in Android and it goes away.

We have to call their bluff from time to time and remind the management that without us, none of their shit works. When we down tools its not like they can pick them up and get the show back on the road.

Kinda sad this is what it comes down to that they can't be reasoned with like humans. I'd be looking for a new place to work.
"I can grab any piece of shit off the street and replace you in 20 seconds." Is what most of them think when it comes to meat machine labor like myself. :(
- Individually? Maybe. That's why worker solidarity is important. Let the bastard replace the whole team while you're out front protesting shit pay and long hours.
- That works for menial labor in a down job market or a city without much opportunity. It doesn't work for most career oriented positions, or in a strong job market. It costs a company considerably more to replace someone than to compensate them better.
I'm with you brother. I actually enjoy my job and my bosses are decent, they never micromanage or get in my way. Ill still take 'sick' mental health days off every 2 months or so just so they're reminded how much of a pain in the ass it is without me here. I also take all my vacation time but it's usually in one go for extended vacations. Gotta make sure they're reminded every couple months though.
- I presume you're from the US but at first I was surprised you can even not take all vacation days. Cause in my country it is actually illegal to not use all vacation days and the employer pays a fine for that. Which leads to a bunch of people having days or even weeks free in February/March as they're using their vacation days (the law necessitates them to be used by Q1 or so of following year).

in my country you're not obligated to answer to anything work related after your work hours unless you're manager or superior or it is exliciptly said in work contract that you be on call.

In my country you are on call and not paid for it, thats the workaround there.
- well that sucks
- I get comp time when I'm on call.

My previous workplace was like this. It didn't get to this point, I left before it got to the point of being told you're not allowed to wfh under any circumstances, but I was very confused why I needed to go to the office, to do my IT job, helping people with their computers remotely. I go to the office, to work remotely. Which doesn't make any sense at all.

What is special about the office that allows me to work better/faster/more effectively/whatever? Nobody could give me an answer. I can easily run the tools at home and work fine from there, but I'm not allowed.

My specialty is in network operations, if they want my work to 100% go through their equipment and firewalls and stuff, I can make that happen. With little effort, I can setup a system on a VLAN, and VPN that VLAN to work, blocking it from all other traffic apart from the VPN. It would be the only system on that VLAN (apart from the firewall/VPN device), ensuring no possibility of cross contamination between my equipment and theirs. They even had an openVPN host already configured, which they would only need to generate a connection file for, in order for me to get it working. I can then proxy 100% of my traffic through an office system and it would be identical to being present in the office, apart from me being physically there.

At home I have a dedicated room for my computer activities, where I can close the door and lock it if required, so I can remain undisturbed.

I made sure they understood all of this but they still wanted me in the office at least 4 days a week. I'm still not sure why.

I left that job, and my new job doesn't even have a physical office, so I'm permanently working from home.

They probably wanted to get rid of you. So instead of firing you, they imposed stupid rules to makes you leave on your own.
- Oh probably. From everything I saw it was impossible for me to meet their demands.
  
  Partway through my employment I moved to a new home, after a few months my SO got a job. She doesn't have a license but needed to travel about 15 minutes to work (30m round trip). I was basically the only person who could, or would, help her get to work. I worked 9-5, her shift was 2:30 to 10:30.
  
  For a while, my brother would drive her to work and I would drive her home, even that was stressful, because I'd wake up at 6:30 to shower and get ready to leave by 8AM so I can be at work for 9, then I had to stay up to bring her home, which she wasn't out at 10:30 promptly every day, so I'd frequently get home after 11:30. Going to bed at, or after midnight, to wake up by 6:30 AM, five days a week isn't fun, even at four days in the office per week, it was not great.
  
  Thought-out this time I was asking for more wfh, since then I can at least sleep from midnight to 8 AM or so. They wouldn't budge.
  
  My brother ended up having a medical issue that caused him to be unable to drive her to work, so I told my employer I had to work from home, since I have to take care of getting her both to, and from work, and that, at most, the situation would last around 10-12 months (she was working on her driver's license, and that's the minimum waiting/learning time for new drivers, before they can drive without a chaperone); I also informed them that I could attend the office once per week, since she had one weekday off per week as part of her shift rotation. They "compromised" by basically telling me to follow their schedule or be laid off. Their schedule was: in office every day from 9-1. Travel home between 1 and 2pm, and do what's needed to get my SO to work. Once I'm done that, I can work from home when I return from dropping her off (usually 2:30 or 3 PM to 5 PM or so... Whatever our quitting time was), with one day (her day off) fully in office, and one day fully from home. So 3 of 5 days was this insane in-office then drive home and finish at home thing, one day was fully remote, and one day was fully in office.
  
  Needless to say, I burned out fast. Got a note from my doctor saying I was disabled (he didn't specify why, but if push came to shove it would be something mental health related, he never needed to AFAIK), and I wasn't able to work right now, and currently the recovery time needed was unknown. So I went on disability.
  
  I also want to mention that through all the half day nonsense, they expected me to log 6.5 hours in their time tracking software, which is something I struggle with at the best of times. When I'm stressed, the first thing that suffers is my ability to correctly log and account for my time in any system. So I had 4 hours in the morning to work from the office on my "split days" (as I called them), plus, maybe 2.5 hours at most during my work from home time. Totalling 6.5 hours. I couldn't so much as take a shit or I would fall behind on my time tracking. Normally over an 8 hour shift, the 1.5 hours of missing time in the day would be for breaks/lunch. It's hard to take lunch when I'm barely able to make it home in an hour, and barely able to get to/from her work in 30 minutes. I usually work through lunch because I tend to have time where I have no idea what I was doing, so I can't really account for it in the time tracker. With the 1.5 hour block of driving in the middle of my day, plus all the distractions and unaccounted time I know I'll accrue from co-workers pulling me away from my work to ask asinine questions about things that don't have a presence in the time tracking system (all ticket based, and they would ask me about prospective projects that wouldn't have a ticket for months), I knew that what they were asking as an impossible task.
  
  After I felt up to the task of returning to that insanity, instead of keeping my seat warm for me, they laid me off before I was set to return to work. I only felt up to it because it would have only been a matter of a few months before my SO was able to take her driver's test to be able to drive solo, and after 6 months of being off I wasn't suicidal from the stress anymore, but the bills were starting to pile up.
  
  I was able to determine that they hired a new person in the same role I had, who was on probation at the time when I wanted to return.
  
  I'll let you conclude what you want from that. I'll legally bound not to speak poorly of the company, or what happened after my layoff. Everything I've said here is simply the facts of the matter.
  
  In any case, after some thought, I'm glad I don't work with people who would force me into that kind of position for a paycheque. I have a new job now and I'm slowly paying off any accumulated bills from my time disabled and/or laid off. The new company, as I believe I've mentioned, is entirely wfh, and I'm certain if I ended up in a similar spot, they would be vastly more empathetic to my plight. I'm even earning a small amount more per year, not enough to write home about, but it's still a bigger number than I was given at the last place. I'm happy where I am, and I'm largely not stressed, apart from the normal stresses of my job. I no longer need to pay for gas to get to the office, nor parking, since the previous job was located in a nearby city in the downtown area, with no free parking for employees, so I had to get paid public parking out of my own pocket. I estimate the change will save me around $6000/yr or more. On top of my small bump in pay, I should have a bit less than $10k/yr more money to myself. Right now all of that is sunk into repayments, but long term, its basically free money.
- Or a "constructive dismissal".
I've worked for numerous enterprises since the 90's.

None of them have been this idiotic. All of them implemented secure channels. Remember SecurID cards for dial up connections?
- Sorry no. I was not a part of the workforce when working remotely involved dial up connections.
  
  I was in highschool when DSL and cable internet became the norm. From then on out, it was all VPN.

This is such an odd restriction for IT staff. Normally HR gives you a form to sign agreeing to working remotely sometimes and having company data on your phone because you know, servers are meant to stay on all the time? It must be nice living in a world where nothing bad happens after hours.

On the other extreme, 24/7 operations have redundancy.

A friend of mine explained that being an Emergency Medicine physician is a great job for work life balance, despite the fact that he often has to work ridiculous shifts, because he never has to take any work home with him. An Emergency Room is a 24/7 operation, so whenever he's at home, some other doctor is responsible for whatever happens. So he gets to relax and never think about work when he's not at work and not on call.
In a sane world, they give you a company phone when you are on reserve duty and they agree to pay compensation for being on reserve. Why would you agree to work for free?
not. the. point. listen carefully and you can hear the whoosh of the argument which is being made in the attached screenshot.

working from home for this tech, is the same as having to schlep into the office, all their work is done remotely, as in not in front of the client computers or servers, but from their workstation. doesn't matter where their workstation is, either in down the hall in an office building, in their home, or timbuktu

having requested to work from home, and having been denied, this tech is now arguing that "working from home" isn't considered as good as working from the office, so, if it's not considered as good, the employer shouldn't ever be asking them to do it

it's not going to work out for the tech, obviously, but that's the argument they are making

Malicious Compliance! The only way to go.

"You are not allowed to work from home unless we want you working from home" is basically their slogan. It's so funny how these companies are ok with upper management working from home, or having remote locations in India where they work from home, or when it comes to working overtime/after hours from home. But, can't do it on a day to day basis. Horrible companies.

As some in IT. If my company ever does this. I'm doing the same thing. Genius play.

Well done mate! 👏👏👏

Nicely done.

Weird that you'd have to be available outside of work hours

Work from library.

Fucking based

BAM! God I need to start doing shit like this.

We went back to the office, I don't care because my commute is immaterial BUT now I leave my laptop there, I disassembled the workstation at home and packed it away, I will not work at home now. Teams is on my phone because I don't put the work email on my phone and needed a way to tell my team if I will be unexpectedly delayed. I don't open it ever though, and now we have a group text might take it off too.

ETA: I did also delete MS Teams, we have each other's phone numbers now.

If it's outlook you can access it from "webmail.your companydomain.com/edu/org" from any browser. That way you don't need teams on your phone either.
- You can just login at office.com on your mobile browser.
- They have the ability to turn off the web access now. My company recently did just that - if I try to access office.com on a personal device, my log in is blocked. Works fine on a company controlled device.
  
  I'm not sure how they tell the difference since it's through the browser. But my guess would be something to do with the lack of all their security software they load onto company controlled computers that have hooks into everything.

Veronica!...is that you?!

Here they're pushing the "must be within 60 miles from the office" trope; I bet they'd say to drive in if it's after hours.

Good for you. I refuse to put work related stuff on my phone. Especially since they want permission to remotely wipe my device if it's lost. I paid for this phone, it is mine, not theirs. Bye.

I don't think it's this "all rich jerks own commercial real estate" thing that everyone going on about. I get the feeling it's more about the managerial/director types. The ones who are maybe well off but maybe not quite rich. My director owns a 150,000 tesla, but I don't think he's near well off enough to own an office building.

Anyway, at a certain level and upwards, all you do is meet and talk to people all day. They value face to face communication because that's a more effective meeting, and builds more rapport with the members.

They value face to face communication because that's a more effective meeting, and builds more rapport with the members.

More effective... At what? Are you the one who schedules meetings that could have been avoided with a 3 sentence email?
- No actually, I hate meetings as they prevent me from getting my actual work done. I do think some vast conspiracy where all the execs own office space and cabaled together keep office real estate high is a bit silly though, so it's good to think for a moment and ask what real value there is to be in the classic work environment, because there is some tradeoff, and think who mostly benefits that and why.
  
  Some people seem to have reactionary responses to not going with the narrative of the problem weaved by this thread though. Internet is going to internet I guess
That's okay with me, but is there at least one meeting that requires me? Only having managers in the office could allow one to have an office ten times smaller, and no other people are needed there anyway (or live in a thousand miles radius from the office, since all the managers live in the costly city in the costly state, and the most of others are not even in the States)
I think it's more about manager capability. A person who manages IT, for example, but has little idea what that entails will want people in the office. They have no idea if a given ticket should take 3 hours or 3 days to resolve, so it's easier to just have their people in the office where they can look at them and verify that they are, in fact, sitting at a computer.

The ideal work environment for me, and I think most people, is one where you're judged based on what you do and how well you do it, while details like when you do it and where you are when you do it get left to your discretion. Managing someone like that requires skill and knowledge in what they're doing though.

As funny as this is, I’m quite certain if somebody actually tried this in the real world they’d get fired. At will employment means they don’t even have to tell you why you got fired. They’ll just wait a couple of weeks or a month and tell you goodbye.

That's not true at all in many countries. You can't just fire someone for no reason. It doesn't have to be a good reason but you need a reason. Also if someone is fired because of something that is protected under law like pregnancy they can come back and sue.
- True. Sorry should have specified in the US they can just say we are letting you go and you’re done. Which as far as I’m concerned is basically a catch all statement of “we aren’t going to tell you why, we are just firing you”.
The employee can still sue. There's a reason why others say to keep documentation of everything in situations like this. While they don't have to tell you why you're fired, if you sue, they still have to provide adaquate reasoning. Can't really say "I just don't like the guy anymore' and have that be sufficient.

There's no way for us to know who's really in the right here since we don't know what the specifics of his employment agreement are. We can just agree that the employer is wrong, and stupid. Why piss off employees that actually do the work?

Me who likes working in a office:

People who are having a great time at work are the reason I like WFH
- I personally don't have an issue with WFH as long as you are getting work done. If you can manage yourself go for it. It is nice to see people face to face once in a while but that doesn't mean 3 days a week.
Then go to the office, don't be angry if others don't go

Good way to get fired and have nothing for it. Pyrrhic victory. You better have an escape plan when you get fired.

Some workplaces are so poorly run they dont even fire people clearly collecting paychecks.

Ive literally seen management prevent someone from being fired for telling off a customer and swearing at them, because "we need them!".
- You go ahead and make that bet.
  
  IMO this is just employer revenge porn and would be almost overwhelmingly bad for the employees. Quit properly.
Those companies aren't worth staying at anyway.

Plenty of good companies that don't mistreat their employees.

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