Why did we squander the chance to change how we work?
With a third of San Francisco employees back in their offices and other US cities following suit, it seems we have wasted the opportunity the pandemic offered to revolutionize labor practices through distributed work, and that only a privileged few will benefit, at least for the time being.
While some companies are proud to continue the working conditions they established during the pandemic, adopting trust-based cultures that allow employees to work from anywhere without being monitored by bossware, more traditional outfits are fighting back with threats of layoffs or pay cuts to staff who do not want to return to the office, while mayors are doing all they can to get their city centers full of workers frequenting restaurants and shops.
For many other people, for whom distributed work was an impossibility, things have gotten worse, and are earning less from tips while their employers try to economize by making fewer people take on an ever-increasing workload.
For many middle managers, a return to the office is the only way to justify their existence, based on something as antiquated and primal as supervising and overseeing their subordinates. In some organizations, management is trying to justify the return to the office to meet their employees’ supposed need for physical contact, claiming this is the…
