Uber Will Ask Employees To Return To Work 50% of the Time

Uber on Tuesday told employees it will roll out a hybrid return-to-work model this fall, allowing for a more flexible approach to location and time spent in the office. CNBC reports: The company is asking employees to be in the office 50% of the time. That time can be split up in whatever way works best for employees and their teams, Uber's chief people officer, Nikki Krishnamurthy, wrote in a blog post. That could mean one week on, one week off, or three days one week and two days the next week, for instance. It's a slightly different model than many companies have been choosing, where they ask employees to come in a set number of days each week. Uber employees will also have more flexibility on their preferred office location, the company said. They'll be able to choose from a list of "dedicated team hubs," instead of being limited to their pre-pandemic location.

The new model will likely start this fall. Employees are allowed to continue to work from home until Sept. 13, barring a worsening of Covid-19. "Before then, our team will be able to apply for remote work or potential office changes. It's our goal to have all remote work/location transfers processed by September," a spokesperson told CNBC. Uber is also telling employees they can apply to become fully remote. "We'll also host periodic in-person meetings once our offices reopen so remote employees have the chance to meet and collaborate with their teammates face to face and benefit from in-person interaction and collaboration," Krishnamurthy said.

50/50 Split

[phalse phace]

Spend the warmer/hot (summer) months working in the office where they have nice cold A/C running.

Spend the cold wet (winter) months working from home so you don't have to deal with rain or snow.

Re:

[stephanruby]

Uber HQ is located in San Francisco. It's natural AC all year around.

Re:

[groobly]

But the employees don't necessarily live in SF.

Re:

[phalse phace]

Uber HQ is located in San Francisco. It's natural AC all year around.

That's not always the case

San Francisco reaches 100 degrees, more than 10 Bay Area cities smash record-high temps [abc7news.com]

Re:

[phalse phace]

The return to work order doesn't just apply to Uber's San Francisco employees. Uber has offices all across the U.S. -- Austin, Dallas, and Houston, TX; Tempe and Phoenix, AZ; Washington, DC; etc.

A lot of these places get very hot and humid.

Ask or mandate

[fermion]

Ask means an employee can opt to be full time home or full time office. If I were Uber I would fire everyone. I would create a task basket along with a suggested compensation. Anyone can complete a task and get paid. Tasks will increase in compensation if there are not taken, to coin a term, surge pricing.

Re:

[daveinaustin990]

There's a reason for the Uber/Lyft shortage currently in a number of cities. Your idea is yet a further degradation of humans.

Re:

[Ayanami_R]

Tell me about it, prices are insane, and actual taxis are cheaper now. Drivers are leaving as they are finding it costs them, even at part time, to work for these services. How in the hell do you only get 3 dollars of a 15 dollar fare? Who would agree to that?

Re: Ask or mandate

[fermion]

In the US there is a lot more free money, so to get people to work you have to pay more than the money we get for free. It has always been clear that Uber and Lyft externalized costs to the driver, which means individuals have to manage those costs instead of highly paid executives

It just has to be enough

[rsilvergun]

To keep the property values of all that commercial real estate up. That's why we're being dragged back into the office. It's not your petty middle manager trying to justify their existence, they don't have any actual power. The people driving this are a handful of billionaires who own a ton of commercial real estate that was poised to drop 30 or 40% in value because the buildings would all be empty.

Re:

[ELCouz]

That would make sense since the majority of the companies that are doing "return to office or get fired" tactics are in Silicon Valley.

Re:

[b0s0z0ku]

Cowards will cower.

Re: It just has to be enough

[Arethan]

Exactly. I always end up thinking that these return-to-office plays really seem very much tied to supporting real estate prices. It is pretty disappointing, but really not that surprising.

Re:

[oblom]

Concerns over sunk costs may have certainly played into this, but let's be honest. A lot of people don't like working remotely all the time. Human interaction is better done face-to-face.

That Sounds About Right...

[Arzaboa]

This sounds about right. My Uber drivers only show up about half the time. If you can't beat em, join 'em?

--
Let thy step be slow and steady, that thou stumble not. - Tokugawa Ieyasu

If companies want people to work

[BrookSmith]

If companies want people to work in the office instead of at home employees need to be paid an allowance to cover their commute time.

Re:

[ELCouz]

I don't understand that logic. I mean before 2020 almost everyone was commuting for free for their employer. Now they want to get paid to commute?!

Uber should hire freelancers as needed instead ...

[MrData]

I don't get why Uber is stuck with the old way of writing code. They should hire developers day to day as needed who supply their own development machines and environment instead of the old, expensive, and outdated way of supplying the tools and equipment. I think there might even be something on the app store they can download an use to help them out.

Re:

[mark-t]

Might not be applicable to Uber, but for some companies doing software development, proprietary code might not be permitted to exist on systems outside of company control, requiring employees to be in the office on company owned computers

Re:

[_merlin]

I think the comment you're replying to is satire - taking the arguments used for the "gig economy" and apps making taxi companies obsolete and applying them to Uber's actual operations.

Re: Uber should hire freelancers as needed instead

[RegistrationIsDumb83]

I know this is satire, but actually it would be kinda cool to just do one day of code a couple times a month at bay area hourly rates (while living elsewhere, of course)

My 50/50 split

[azuroff]

10 years out of the office
10 years back in the office

Hey, I'm DFH today

[AntisocialNetworker]

Driving From Home

Stupid title

[robi5]

"Return to work 50%"? Maybe their employees are working 100% already. "Returning to work 50%" suggests that only officelocked work is work... Does someone read the title before posting?