> unspecific vibes that it must be bad if employees like it

I read it as the feeling that they know somehow that the employees are not putting in 100% of their attention at home on the work assigned.

And i do believe it to be true - lots of people claim that WFH means they can "do the laundry" and/or go to the post office.

The fact is that there's very few self-starters and intrinsically motivated employees. Most are just there for the pay cheque, and will do the minimum work that is required of them - esp. if not under strict supervision.

Not to mention the fact that it is indeed much harder to have collaborative discussions that are spontaneous and unplanned in a WFH setting, compared to the office.

Those lazy employees need that strict supervision!

Maybe these c suites and other employee hating assholes are projecting their own lazyness. Or maybe they think they are so superior compared to ”common” people that the ”common” people must be lazy trash.

I don’t know, but it is weird to assume most people won’t do their job without ”strict supervision”. Like super weird.

(Btw, anecdotally, most people I know work more efficiently from home with fewer breaks)

> will do the minimum work that is required of them

So... doing their job?

When I read people wanting to have 100% uptime on their human resources I feel like I'm reading "The goal" again and how machines have to be 100% used in the mind of some managers.

And even when doing chore (or posting on HN), people tend to think about other things. Like their current task. Why do you think people find solutions to problems in the shower or just before sleeping? Because you can think about work (and so for most office jobs, working) even when not on your computer.

    > lots of people claim that WFH means they can "do the laundry" and/or go to the post office

It's called performance management.

If middle management can't figure it out for remote or in-office employees, they need a new line of work.

The people that are slackers at home have low output in the office and are probably the annoying gabber distracting the rest of the team in-office.

Collective punishment isn't a solution, and the best will walk.

Daily reminder that if a manager can't tell if their employees are effective working from home, that manager is incompetent. There are a million ways to check if someone is actually working, and butt-in-seat isn't one of them.

You know what's a good way to make people less motivated? Impose useless corporate policies like having to go to the office, for no reason whatsoever.

> Most are just there for the pay cheque, and will do the minimum work that is required of them

That's just capitalism? Every player is supposed to optimise.

> Not to mention the fact that it is indeed much harder to have collaborative discussions that are spontaneous and unplanned in a WFH setting, compared to the office.

This is a culture thing that is easily fixed by mandating cameras on, buying everyone good microphones, and a consensus that you can ping someone with a question, go back and forth, and know that you aren't imposing by throwing a /zoom into the Slack DM and saying "let's just meet about this".

My team is small, sure, but we are cameras on 100%, we know to pause a sec after someone stops talking for latency, and have a spoken agreement "fuck slack just open a room i'll hop in". We have met in person numerous times and each time it feels identical to work in person as we do remote.

When I meet with other teams, people are in their fucking cars driving, cameras off the whole time (but chewing into the mic), can't figure out how to share their screen (still!), like, no shit that isn't productive, you're putting no effort into it!