Remote Working News and Discussions

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caltrek
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Elon Musk Trashes Remote Work
by Herb Scribner
June 1, 2022

Introduction:
(Axios) Tesla employees "should pretend to work somewhere else" if they're not willing to return to their offices, CEO Elon Musk tweeted on Wednesday.

Why it matters: Many companies nationwide have embraced remote work policies, while others are pushing for employees to come back into the office.

Driving the news: “Anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla. This is less than we ask of factory workers," Musk wrote in a leaked memo to staff, per Bloomberg.
Read more here: https://www.axios.com/2022/06/01/elon-m ... -employees
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Yelp to close 3 U.S. offices, saying the "future of work" is remote

June 23, 2022 / 5:21 PM / CBS/AP

Yelp is closing three of its U.S. offices after finding most of its employees prefer to work remotely.

In a blog post Thursday, Yelp Cofounder and CEO Jeremy Stoppelman said the company will close its offices in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C., on July 29. The online review and reservation company also plans to downsize its office in Phoenix.

"Combined, the three offices we're closing saw a weekly average utilization of less than 2% of the available workspaces," Stoppelman wrote.

San Francisco-based Yelp announced a remote-first work model in February 2021. Stoppelman said Yelp has proven it can be successful with a remote workforce, noting that the company achieved record revenue of just over $1 billion in 2021.

Yelp is the latest in a wave of companies embracing remote work following the pandemic. Dropbox in March joined a growing number of tech firms to declare themselves "virtual first" employers, for the first time in corporate history.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/yelp-close ... is-remote/
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Remote Work for Companies in San Francisco and its Consequences for the Local Economy
by Connie Loizos
August 12, 2022

Introduction:
(Techcrunch ) Spend any amount of time in New York, and you’ll feel it. Manhattan and Brooklyn are teeming with activity. It’s electrifying to be there after years spent relatively locked down.

The question, and one asked this week by the San Francisco Chronicle, is why San Francisco isn’t bouncing back in the same way.

As reporter Roland Li writes: “There’s always been a disparity — New York has 10 times the population of San Francisco — but the coastal tourism and economic hubs have diverged in striking ways as they recover from the pandemic.”

Consider, writes Li, that while the construction of major commercial property projects in Manhattan were completed during the pandemic — and while much of that new office space is almost fully leased — over in San Francisco, projects have stalled and existing buildings struggle to find tenants because of work-from-home policies.
Read more from the Techcrunch article here: https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/12/it-m ... es-bluff/

You can also read the San Francisco Chronicle article here (although it is more about San Francisco versus New York’s post-pandemic recovery, with remote working as a factor just mentioned in passing): https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article ... 365339.php
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AT&T workers fight return to office push: ‘We can do the same job from home’

Long commutes to and from work, exorbitant childcare costs, ongoing concerns over exposure to Covid cited

Mon 15 Aug 2022 10.00 BST

The Covid-19 pandemic sent millions of workers in the US from working in offices to working remotely. As unemployment benefits ended, vaccines rolled out, and reopenings expanded, employers and commercial real estate groups have been pushing to try to get workers back into offices.

But the pandemic further exposed the issues in returning to office, from long commutes to and from work, exorbitant childcare costs, ongoing concerns over exposure to Covid-19 variants and now monkeypox, workers are pushing to keep working from home as an option as employers force a return to the office.

At AT&T, the world’s largest telecommunication company, workers represented by the Communications Workers of America agreed to a work from home extension until the end of March 2023, but workers say the company is forcing many workers to return to the office much sooner than that, while other departments had already been forced back to the office by their managers.

James Bloch, an AT&T employee in Cleveland, Ohio, for 21 years, said the work from home option has been beneficial for workers’ mental health, protection from Covid-19, productivity, attendance and carbon footprint.

“These are extremely stressful times over the last few years and being at home has allowed us to have less distractions, giving us better one-on-one time with our customers and our clients,” said Bloch. “With AT&T technology, they’re a communication company. We have some of the best stuff out there. Let’s use it. We can do the same job from home anywhere that we could do if we were all sitting there together.”

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... ffice-push
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Apple sets new deadline for corporate employees to return to the office three days a week

Filipe Espósito
- Aug. 15th 2022 3:35 pm PT

After Apple employees began returning to in-person work in April of this year, the company paused the rollout of its plans due to cases of COVID-19 increasing again. On Monday, Apple set a new deadline for its corporate employees to return to the office. Starting September 5, employees will need to work in person at least a few days a week.

The news comes from Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman. According to the report, corporate employees will have to return to the office three days a week. The mandatory days are Tuesdays and Thursdays, plus a third day that can be defined by each team.

Despite the new deadline, it’s unclear whether Apple will stick with its new plan or whether the date set for returning to the office will be changed again. Apple’s corporate employees have been working from home since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. A few employees returned to the office in late 2020, while others have settled on more permanent and flexible remote working arrangements.

At first, Apple required employees to work one day a week in person. Earlier this year, the requirement was increased to two days a week. Part of the reasoning behind this arrangement is that the company still doesn’t feel that it’s time to have all employees working in the office every day, but the problem goes beyond that.

Apple has faced criticism for its insistence on requiring in-person work for employees, particularly since the company’s policies are more restrictive than other Silicon Valley companies. Back in May, Apple’s director of machine learning Ian Goodfellow left the company due to his disagreement with the in-person work policy.

https://9to5mac.com/2022/08/15/apple-de ... he-office/


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Back-to-the-office Moves Leave Tech Uneasy
by Scott Rosenberg
September 7, 2022

Introduction:
(Axios) A lot of CEOs are itching to get workers back to the office, but tech CEOs who want that face an extra uphill battle: After all, theirs is the industry that made remote work possible.

Why it matters: The tech industry was built on "dogfooding" — the idea that companies should use the products they push on the public — and every effort by a tech leader to hound reluctant employees back to the office park seems to betray that ideal.

Driving the news: This week Apple, tech's most valuable company, began requiring its workers to report to the office at least three days a week.

• Many leaders in tech and beyond see this week and coming weeks as their "best hope at getting workers on a more regular office schedule before the fall and winter holidays," per the Wall Street Journal.

• Others are gradually accepting that there's no going "back to 'normal,' the way it was before the pandemic, in most industries," as Jason Bram, a NY Fed economist, told Axios' Emily Peck last month.
Read more here: https://www.axios.com/2022/09/07/remot ... ice-apple
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