WeWork CEO Says Least Engaged Employees Enjoy Working From Home (wsj.com) 199
The CEO of WeWork thinks there is an easy way for companies to spot their most engaged employees: They're the ones who want to come back to the office. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Sandeep Mathrani said, "Those who are uberly engaged with the company want to go to the office two-thirds of the time, at least. Those who are least engaged are very comfortable working from home. [...] People are happier when they come to work. The bigger issue is do you come to work five days a week or do you come to work three days a week? That's the bigger issue. There's no issue of not coming to a common place."
Barber (Score:5, Insightful)
The barber says I need a haircut. Must be true.
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The barber says I need a haircut. Must be true.
You said this better than I ever could.
Re:Barber (Score:4, Insightful)
Depends.
Is your barber enough of a raging shithead to say you "uberly need a haircut".
If he is, could you do us all a favour and murder the motherfucker and put his head on a pike as an example to the others?
Re: Barber (Score:2)
I'm sensing some hostility.
Re: Barber (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sensing some hostility.
Let me tell you how I REALLY feel...
I mean come on, the guy said "uberly engaged". How can you not hate that?
Re: Barber (Score:4, Insightful)
c e os.
they make over 300 percent more than the rest of the staff.
and they do not understand why the rest of the staff are not engaged
Re: Barber (Score:4, Insightful)
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The barber says I need a haircut. Must be true.
What's peculiar is that I'm bold. My head hurts from thinking, here take my money.
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Re:Barber (Score:4, Funny)
What's peculiar is that I'm bold.
Let me misquote something for you:
"To baldly go where no man has gone before".
Re:Barber (Score:4, Funny)
"To baldly go where no man has gone before"
-- Patrick Stewart (as captain Jean-Luc Picard)
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Yep.
That's the thing, you can only trust a company to look out for it's own interests.
Just like a dozen companies bidding on a project will want to appeal to their client for various reasons.
In actuality, the most engaged employees will be the ones that know their job is not in peril. So the only logical reason for forcing people to sit in a stuffy office with no privacy is because the management doesn't trust their staff, or their staff need excess babysitting (eg a customer support call center can be done
Probably true (Score:4, Insightful)
and i wanna stay at home, where things get done efficiently
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Sure, as long as you have a dedicated space to work in where you can have guaranteed privacy.
How many people are down in the basement with you?
Re:Probably true (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, as long as you have a dedicated space to work in where you can have guaranteed privacy.
Have you ever been in a "modern" open plan office? How much privacy do you think people have there?
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You don't need the same sort of privacy in a work environment, because people are *expected* to conduct themselves professionally while at work. Those who are demonstrably incapable of doing so can be subjected to appropriate disciplinary action.
If you share an apartment with other people, you can't just go and tell them that they aren't allowed to use the TV in a common area during the day... and your only productive days working from home are those whene everybody else happens to be at work.
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you can't just go and tell them that they aren't allowed to use the TV in a common area during the day
Why not? People who live together need to accommodate each others' needs.
... and your only productive days working from home are those whene everybody else happens to be at work.
Good point. I'll be careful not to share an apartment with a trust-fund heiress.
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Sure, as long as you have a dedicated space to work in where you can have guaranteed privacy.
Well sure that rules out the office for me. At the (horribly overcrowded) corporate hq, I had a desk (not even a cubicle) that put my chair literally in a highly-trafficked hallway. There wasn't even the hint of privacy, and no shortage of people walking by.
My productivity has improved easily 10x since COVID made it impossible for my employer to require me to be in the office. I am much more engaged here than I ever was "at work".
This WeWorkWanker is dead wrong.
Re:Probably true (Score:4, Insightful)
He's just another control freak who's projecting. Likely if he were a minion and working from home he'd be watching porn and working on his side gig all day, and he thinks everyone else is the same. It's a good sign of a manager who has no clue what his employees actually do and has no useful metrics to know if shit's getting done or not. In other words he's a great match for the rest of the WeWork management team.
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Or I could just be an employee who's describing their own experiences over the past year.
I never suggested that working from home doesn't work well for a lot of people, only that it doesn't work well for *EVERYBODY*.
You've invoked a false dilemma, and your generalization is entirely inaccurate.
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Sure, as long as you have a dedicated space to work in where you can have guaranteed privacy.
Why does the space need to be "dedicated"? I use my home office for work. I also use it for other things.
Why does privacy need to be guaranteed? What bad thing will happen if someone sees me writing code?
Re: Probably true (Score:2)
even a 5 bedroom house doesn't guarantee privacy or uninterrupted work time when you have young children.
Re: Probably true (Score:4, Insightful)
No worse than the yammering coworkers who want to "engage" with you in the workplace.
In fact, after four years of WFH experience, I'll take my preteen over most of my vapid coworkers.
Re: Probably true (Score:5, Funny)
I'll take my preteen
ew
Re: Probably true (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep. And it's all that "collaboration" we're missing. Frankly, there's only so much of that you can put up with if you're to get your work done and Mr. WeWork simply doesn't understand that with his "butts in chairs" attitude toward his employees. You know them: co-workers from three aisles who over decide to "collaborate" right next to your desk. Or the folks with wireless headsets that walk around "collaborating" with people over the phone and disturbing everyone in their path. Oh, yeah... I can't wait to move back into that environment.
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My wife and I share an office (spare bedroom). My company is pushing harder to have people use their video cameras, but my wife doesn't exactly want the back of her head in every shot. And additionally, showing my coworker's what is on her screen may be problematic, and vice versa. Sometimes CEOs forget we don't all have nice mansions and vacation condos to work from. I go into an office partly because I have a nice working space, even if it is one of those open floorplan situations. For the mandatory stuf
...guy who sells subleased office space (Score:5, Insightful)
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Everyone has bias.
At my job, productivity fell tremendously by over 90% of the staff when they were allowed to work from home.
It's a damn shame. When I work from home, I see it is a privilege and get more done so that it can be shown that working from home doesn't decrease my performance.
Most people need supervision and rules. (On the same token, I am more likely to try to run a yellow/just turned red light when there are no stop-light cameras or police around.)
Re:...guy who sells subleased office space (Score:4, Insightful)
Everyone has bias.
At my job, productivity fell tremendously by over 90% of the staff when they were allowed to work from home.
It's a damn shame. When I work from home, I see it is a privilege and get more done so that it can be shown that working from home doesn't decrease my performance.
Most people need supervision and rules. (On the same token, I am more likely to try to run a yellow/just turned red light when there are no stop-light cameras or police around.)
Then you guys have some shit management that doesn't know their ass from a hole in the ground. If the problem is really this widespread it's 100% management's fault.
Psychology point of view (Score:5, Insightful)
Then you guys have some shit management that doesn't know their ass from a hole in the ground. If the problem is really this widespread it's 100% management's fault.
Let's add some science to that comment.
Psychometric studies of work engagement show that there are two types of work, repetitive and creative, and two types of motivation, internal and external.
Repetitive work is where you are told exactly what to do and how to do it. Piecework at a mill qualifies as this, along with most craftsman (weave this style basket over and over), rote text editing (eliminate all adverbs), much basic engineering (lathe operator), and so on. It's mentally easy, because you don't have to think a lot - memorize a bunch of procedures and best practices and you can work all day without supervision.
Repetitive work responds well to external motivation, which is anything external to the person that has value: money, threats, perks, necessity, and so on. More money leads to more motivation.
Creative work is where you have to make decisions as part of the job: how to structure, how to satisfy requirements, how to refine requirements, and so on. Much of software coding appeals to this type of creativity, along with artistic pursuits (writing, painting), higher levels of engineering: design the bridge, or circuit, or costume.
Creative work responds to the three aspects of internal motivation, which are autonomy, mastery, and relevance. "Autonomy" is exactly what it seems: you get a voice in how it's designed. "Mastery" is the ability to get better (this is why many people practice a musical instrument in their spare time - they enjoy getting better, even though doing so has no monetary value), and "relevance" is value in a larger context: useful to yourself, but also value to others in the community or world.
People code all day long, and still go home to spend their free time making free software precisely because it gives them autonomy, mastery, and relevance to the community.
There's a baseline need to survive in the real world, so some amount of external motivation (ie - money) is needed for creative work, but studies have shown that, for creative work, once there is *enough* money, offering more money actually decreases motivation. This has been repeatedly tested and the results are statistically strong and not culturally related.
To the parent post:
Management is very much responsible, by assuming that more money or perks produce better engagement, while at the same time micromanaging, separating the people who design ("senior software engineer") from the ones doing implementation, and not letting people move to different areas to learn new tools/skills.
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To make matters worse, too many managers like to turn engaging creative work into repetitive work. The lathe operator would be more engaged if he was a general machinist following the work piece from billet to completed part, for example. Or at least apprenticed and learning the rest of the machining. In the end it would provide a more flexible workforce and workplace, but it would require management to use more complex metrics than widgets/hour so they don't do it.
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I work for Red Hat on Ceph. We already had a distributed team that mostly works from home before covid and the pandemic basically didn't change anything. The difference is that most of us actually like what we do. We work hard because we care about the project and want to see it succeed. If the productivity at your company is completely falling apart when you don't have task masters enforcing the rules there are probably some deeper issues at play.
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This. My company had its best and most productive year ever during the pandemic, and continued hiring new staff to keep up with the demand. We were kicking butt in development, in sales, in support, with everyone working from home. While the offices are opening back up, nobody is in a rush to force people back in - there's no evidence to suggest it's needed or even desirable. I know there are lots of situations that need common location, but pegs and holes are not all shaped alike.
Why does it work for us? B
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I was already working from our cottage whenever I wanted to, with Starlink now going into production I'm looking at working part of every year from my wife's family home in Peru. Our department changed floors a few months ago, our new space has half the number of desks. No one is complaining because only three of us have actually been in the office in the last year, and that's because we needed to use the hardware in the lab for testing.
Re:...guy who sells subleased office space (Score:4, Insightful)
You're just pointing out the problem with your office's work culture.
You do have to trade-off some productivity because not everyone has a "home office" space that is free from interruption.
There will be some staff that have families that demand attention and that will drive down productivity.
However the assertion that most staff slack off, is fundamentally wrong. The reason productivity is higher in the office is generally a result of staff not being interrupted needlessly. You can equally destroy an employees productivity in an office by burdening them with meetings for pointless things.
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"At my job, productivity fell tremendously by over 90% of the staff when they were allowed to work from home."
Do you work in a coffee shop or similar by any chance ?
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I'd personally rather the office came in than deal with the over the shoulder approach of judging who and who cannot. Neither is a magic bullet.
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At my job, productivity fell tremendously by over 90% of the staff when they were allowed to work from home.
When I read this I assume your management looked at the shop floor and only saw 10% of their employees still in the office, and proclaimed productivity dropped by 90%.
I think it's incredibly unlikely you are being sincere with this statement. If productivity really dropped that much, it would have to be because of some specialized equipment in the office they didn't have access to anymore, or some similar reason. Not a lack of accountability or engagement. If that was really the case, it would be the worst
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Children (Score:2)
Just saying...
Of course he says that (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sounds more like he's describing what us peasants call a workaholic - highly "engaged" and likes to spend lots of time at the office.
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His observation is probably correct. The unwritten assumption seems to be that "most engaged with the company" is a good thing.
The Chattering Classes (Score:2)
This kind of thinking completely devalues the deep-focus-work of true innovation.
odd metric (Score:5, Interesting)
Hahahahaha (Score:3)
Extroverted moron (Score:4, Insightful)
People are different. Some people like interpersonal interaction and don't function well without it. Others do not. I, personally, like being able to chat, but not when I need to get work done.
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He sat on the shelf just above my left staring at the door (or cubicle opening).
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My perhaps less polite summary is 'Extrovert sociopath thinks everybody else are cunts too'.
Who cares about engagement? (Score:5, Insightful)
In my experience the people that are most 'engaged' indeed love going to the office to socialize with their colleagues. The best performing employees don't seem all that bothered with the workplace itself. I think as a company you have to ask yourself if you'd rather pay employees to chat at the office or if you are paying them to get a job done. If it's the former then definitely working from home is the better option. If you want productivity you better get them some time to themselves to actually do the work.
I read a Reuters AP article this week (Score:5, Insightful)
it was talking about the Fed, the unemployed and other pandemic changes that they think are just starting.
One of the things it said which stood out to me was that Americans went from working 4.something hours of unpaid overtime to 9.something hours (I believe it was per week) - in other words, it greatly benefits employers for you to be at home as you're working for free way more often.
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...but then, 9 hours of "unpaid overtime" isn't that big of a deal when you have an extra ten to fifteen hours of "not really working because you did all of your work for the day and don't have to look busy for the boss." I've been doing a lot of work from home, and I'm massively more productive than if I was in an office somewhere.
Not to mention that a helluva lot of workers are getting ten hours or more of "not commuting" each week.
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Seeing what you want to see (Score:2)
Somebody had a conclusion and then didn't even find the evidence, they just saw what they wanted to see, and explained it with a bunch of vague bullshit.
Some people are happier able to socialize with others. Maybe even most. Others can put their head down and work without needing that. And this is also affected by the type of work they're doing - though a solution like MS Teams can make the physical proximity issue mostly irrelevant for cooperative meetings.
"Engagement" thought? Bullshit vague metric so
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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A question I ask myself every damned day, sir.
Well it is now. (Score:2)
No see, now that some one has complained about it not being a proper slashdot post it has now become a proper slashdot post.
A post really isn't really a post on slashdot without somebody whining about how the given topic doesn't belong. Your whining has successfully legitimized this post!
Have You Met People? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Meanwhile (in Reality), my coworkers are just desparate to get away from their kids. ;)
Reasons I don't want to be in the office (Score:4, Insightful)
2. It's a disgusting place that is never cleaned properly, I don't know what the cleaners do.
3. Coworkers who lack hygiene, we have 1 guy who only showers once a week and won't wear antiperspirant.
4. Air Quality, I use to bring my own Air Purifier to the office.
5. Noise pollution, even though I wear noise cancelling headphones, it's still loud AF.
6. Annoyance, my mechanical keyboard is not annoying to hear click (happens several time a week)
7. Distraction, I don't need to see every thing else going on all day.
8. Meetings, people love to have POINTLESS meeting when you're in the office, all the F'ing time.
9. Cramped working conditions, we don't have enough space, it's to tight for my liking.
10. Equipment, I want my chair, my desk and my setup. The office won't invest in standing desks, good chairs, etc...
Do I have to keep going? Maybe some people like the office and that's great, but I know many people who don't. I can see the advantage of spending one or two days a week in the office, providing my issues get resolved, but the rest of the time it's just waste of time and productivity. I would estimate that I lose 30 - 40% of my productivity being tin the office, and if you stack other loses on top, such as using bad Operating Systems (Windows), and tools, add another 30%, so you could literally be costing the company 60 - 70% of useful productivity, at least in my case, thanks to the office.
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Re:Reasons I don't want to be in the office (Score:4, Insightful)
On top of all of your very valid points, driving into the office is a hefty paycut for many:
1) Fuel. At one point in my career my commute distance required that I refuled the vehicle every third day. ( $300+ / month in fuel costs to and from work alone )
2) Many people are forced to pay for parking in the building they work at ( usually in the $200 - $400 / month range for downtown locations )
Then there is:
The stress of the commute itself. Two hours per day in perfect conditions. Usually much, MUCH worse due to accidents, construction, weather, etc.
Your coworkers who refuse to use a sick day ( if they have them ) and come in sick to the office. Usually getting everyone else sick.
The only reason to work in an office is if you are a customer facing type job or because you physically need hands on equipment that can't be done remotely.
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Or you'd rather segregate work and home.
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sounds like you need a new job, jeeez.
This is the dying screams (Score:2)
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I have to admit (Score:2)
I ould usually find 100 things better to do at home than work.
The times I did work from home (sick kid, emergencies) I would rather be sipping some tea, or tending to my kid rather than "working".
I was in a conference call with people from about 3 other countries when my kid wandered into my office and puked...
I found my focus was probably better at work, just because there really wasn't anything better to do there.
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I know this phenomena. You can replicate the effects at home. But is it worth the effort, when the company is paying for a perfectly good office? I suppose that depends on the length of your commute.
Lost more money (Score:5, Insightful)
So do I give a damn about what vapid air comes out of his mouth? I don't.
I'm confused Sandeep. (Score:2)
Does this mean that if I run my own business from my home, to be "uberly engaged" with my own company, I'll have to leave and then come back, then be uncomfortable working there? At least 2/3 thirds of the time? What if I also live in my car and work for Lyft?
Office time doesn't mean productive time (Score:2)
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For most management, engagement is more about how much you chit-chat with the office gossips, how much you brag about yourself to your coworkers, and how much smoke you can blow when the higher ups are around. Job engagement, doing what you're actually paid to do, doesn't even register to them unless you're at such a negative place that somebody above your manager complains about your lack of output.
WeWork's babblelator here is reinforcing an already held belief and giving management types a nice warm reas
Missing Tidbit (Score:2)
From the article:
--- .."
Sandeep Mathrani said, "Those who are uberly engaged with the company want to go to the office two-thirds of the time, at least.
---
What I read there is this: You should probably be working from home a couple of days a week, even if you're "uberly engaged" with the company.
Introverted Computer Geek (Score:2)
While I enjoy working from home where I can switch to my HomeLab to test stuff vs having to engage 3 or 4 departments and wait weeks, I do miss the interactions with my technical peers on work and non-work related subjects. Slack (for example) and Zoom isn't a great replacement for face to face technical discussions.
And being heavily introverted, I find the alone time to be extremely productive. I'm old enough that I'm only bothered by the cats and dog during the workday. Kids are all off on their own and h
Uberly? (Score:4, Funny)
Right... (Score:2)
Right, so people with young kids are just being lazy when they say they'd rather work from home.
Same with people with long commutes or any one of dozens of other reasons they might say why they prefer working from home.
While it is quite likely a lazy person would prefer to work at home using that as a metric for determining who is a committed employee is ridiculous.
WeWork $47B to broke in 6 weeks (Score:5, Informative)
This is coming from the guy who built a pyramid scheme that went from $47B to broke in 6 weeks - https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
In that time it disclosed multiple conflicts of interest and mismanagement by its cofounder, Adam Neumann.
And we should listen to a company that sells business real estate about how workers want to commute to an office daily and only the lazy ones want to work from home?
Clearly biased, but not totally wrong.... (Score:2)
Most studies that really examined all the options showed that the optimal setup was one where a person worked from home several days a week but came into the office the rest of the time.
That "hybrid" solution is a nice mix, so you still get "face time" with co-workers and access to office resources like printers/copiers/scanners or a fast Internet connection they might have, or maybe a whole "test environment" of computers you can work with there. But you save a lot of money and time on a daily commute and
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I really
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That hybrid was what I was doing before the pandemic, and probably where I'll end up again, although I envision a little more home and a little less office. I miss seeing my people at work, because I like them, but in terms of work and productivity, we're doing as well or better with everyone at home. More than half of my co-workers are in different time zones anyway, so very little has changed in that regard.
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Probably more underlying motive than not. So many people believe the myth of multitasking they probably see that example as multitasking.
Patently False (Score:2)
Engaged vs productive (Score:5, Insightful)
"Engaged" is one of those terms that come from MBA school, and has no bearing whatsoever on how much an employee contributes to your company. The most "engaged" employees are the ones who play the politics game the most, and say everything the higher ups want to hear, regardless of if it's right or not. They're the "yes men/women". And of course they want to be there in person, because their whole existence is based around being seen by the right people, talking to as many people as possible, etc.
Productive is what you actually should want in an organization, not necessarily "engaged". And productive employees are the ones who spend the least time socializing in the office, and who want the least distractions. They are the ones who want to just get the work done. These people are better off at home, assuming they still have access to all the tools they need for their job.
Note that I'm using engaged in quotes, because real engagement is often the opposite of what is measured when people with management degrees talk about "engagement". The employees with real engagement are the ones who tell the boss no when it's appropriate, are the ones who get frustrated with broken processes, and won't tolerate idiots on their team. They're the ones who truly want what's best for the company, but because they point out the flaws in the company, don't want to waste time gossiping in the break room, and are rarely seen because they're too busy doing the actual work, they are labelled by the MBA types as not being "engaged".
Living in the past (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm often struck by how these 'new tech' companies are so firmly stuck in the past. Take away the ping pong tables, snack food, and he rest and a Google has much, much more in common with IBM thank they are different. Corporate structure, office buildings, titles, middle management, company politics. It's all the freakin' same.
For this WeWork dufus, his idea of innovation is commuting to an office 5 days a week. That might as well be a 1950's boss talking. The places that can really figure out how to make WFH/remote work be successful will be the future. And that includes tapping talent from around the world
For the past many years at different firms I've worked with teams in Asia, South America, Eastern Europe, it's all been fine, but not super great. We could never capture potential advantages on time zone differences, collaborating wasn't ideal, it's always been 'meh'. but places that can make a truly global, remote workforce happen, in a way that doesn't burn out employees like the covid wfh situation has...I think they can rule the roost.
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This is a supposed .COM company which rents physical offices and claims virtual work isn't productive.
"Engaged" in kissing his ass... (Score:2)
Guy who sells office space says office space good (Score:2)
Film at 11!
CEO Offices (Score:3)
Let's look at what it means (Score:2)
Employee engagement is the emotional commitment the employee has to the organization and its goals.
OK. My engagement will always be low because the company doesn't have an "emotional commitment" the employees and their goals.
Companies, executives, and managers want employees to be emotionally invested in the company because it allows the managers to pay employees less while treating the employees badly. Companies will lay off, also known as firing, employees so the executives and managers can get a slightly bigger bonus and will think nothing of the effect on the employees and ex-employees. Knowing thi
This is news? (Score:2)
CEO hot take (Score:3)
CEOs always have the most hysterical hot-takes on things. Maybe we should hold a seance and find out what Ayn Rand thinks of the whole thing.
Posting this from a WeWork office in New York (Score:3)
Probably at under 10% capacity on the floor that I am on. Many of the offices are completely empty.
Uberly (Score:3)
If a person used 'uberly' in a sentence, with a straight face, in front of me, I'd immediately pretend he doesn't exist and walk away.