Zoom asks staff to return to office

[Cotty]

Just amuses me that Zoom of all companies has told staff to come into the office more often.
https://news.sky.com/story/zoom-asks-staff-to-retu...

[markbigears]

Struck me as odd as well … zoom has been my saviour WFH
No way I’m commuting back to that shathole London Town

[Carl_Manchester]

Cotty said:

Just amuses me that Zoom of all companies has told staff to come into the office more often.
https://news.sky.com/story/zoom-asks-staff-to-retu...

ahh, the irony indeed

[pghstochaj]

What has always confused me about Zoom is that it's the name used generically for video conferencing. In the countless thousands of video calls I have suffered over the last few years, >99% have been Teams, a few lifesize, a few Google Hangouts and maybe one or two Zoom calls (I am not sure I could hand on heart say any have actually been on Zoom). Perhaps I am just in a world of my own and Zoom is popular outside of my sector. I would say it might be location dependent but I have calls with pretty much the entire world and it is always Teams, even with Chinese suppliers. We were early into Teams so perhaps I missed out the initial Zoom interest as were already into Teams.

Anyway, I agree with the point, in my opinion, working from home in the longer term can be detrimental to the development of the individuals and therefore company.

[Mr Pointy]

pghstochaj said:

What has always confused me about Zoom is that it's the name used generically for video conferencing. In the countless thousands of video calls I have suffered over the last few years, >99% have been Teams, a few lifesize, a few Google Hangouts and maybe one or two Zoom calls (I am not sure I could hand on heart say any have actually been on Zoom). Perhaps I am just in a world of my own and Zoom is popular outside of my sector. I would say it might be location dependent but I have calls with pretty much the entire world and it is always Teams, even with Chinese suppliers. We were early into Teams so perhaps I missed out the initial Zoom interest as were already into Teams.

Anyway, I agree with the point, in my opinion, working from home in the longer term can be detrimental to the development of the individuals and therefore company.

Teams has been a gamechanger for me over the the last two years, but then we are all self-employed contractors & there is no central office where the project is run from, at least not the technical side. However I agree that if I were younger & working this way it would have been very detrimental; you pick up so much about stuff you don't know when working in a group in the same location.

[aizvara]

I had the same reaction.

The company I work for makes a semi-related bit of software, and I feel like we'd be saying something about that product if we demanded everyone came into the office.

Back on topic/Zoom, personally I think the following makes it too risky to use for anything like design or policy discussion: https://www.computing.co.uk/news/4121687/zoom-quie...
I'm kind of surprised anyone does use it given they can apparently access session data.

[shirt]

i saw it reported as 2 days a week if you live within 50miles of the office. not unreasonable imho, would go for that in a heartbeat if i could.

[Gecko1978]

I have been remote since 2020 but I see for some it doesn't work most large firms like blanket policy it's easier however firms that put in effort often will attract better people so swings an round abouts.

[shirt]

depends what you do. i could not do my job fully remotely, but also half the week [when in the office based design phase at least] could be done anywhere. the hybrid approach would be ideal.

[TonyRPH]

shirt said:

i saw it reported as 2 days a week if you live within 50miles of the office. not unreasonable imho, would go for that in a heartbeat if i could.

You are correct. Link

IMHO a 100 mile round trip twice a week is unreasonable though.

[Murph7355]

shirt said:

depends what you do. i could not do my job fully remotely, but also half the week [when in the office based design phase at least] could be done anywhere. the hybrid approach would be ideal.

This is the right answer.

No blanket edicts. It should be role dependent. And the key metric should be productivity. But that's hard to measure for many, especially older farts, so gets brushed aside.

Zoom isn't a company full of people always on conference/collaboration calls... So there should be no irony in them taking this approach IF they are doing it for the right reasons.

Sadly that's not an angle that computes for our media. And hence big cheeses in big orgs and govt...which is why we get such poor policy and outcomes.

[ScotHill]

At the start of lockdown I think Zoom was the one that everyone independently ran to, as opposed to Teams which is what (probably) most companies had already been using for a while. So e.g. all of the yoga teachers who couldn't do a physical class signed up for Zoom (some of which are still doing them as they are more lucrative than physical classes now, you broaden your base and the participants don't have to schlep out in the rain to some dodgy room above a bagel shop!) and probably smaller companies who didn't have the software infrastructure for Teams already in place.

And then didn't they have a big privacy story, so that cemented it in people's heads as a byword for online meetings, even with people who'd never done an online meeting in their lives.

And they made an ice lolly out of it to get the kids hooked.

[anonymous-user]

I am amazed Zoom is as big as it is. I installed it during lockdown and used it once for someone's work group thing. Other than that, 99% of the time we use Teams or very occasionally the Google equivalent.

[Timothy Bucktu]

Zoom was there at the right time, right place.
We were all sent home, monitors under our arms...but how the hell are we going to continue our pointless meetings. Zoom to the rescue.
Then, we discovered Teams a few months later, and use that pretty much exclusively.
Zoom was definitely better than Teams a few years ago though. Now it's pretty solid.

[Hoofy]

TonyRPH said:

shirt said:

i saw it reported as 2 days a week if you live within 50miles of the office. not unreasonable imho, would go for that in a heartbeat if i could.

You are correct. Link

IMHO a 100 mile round trip twice a week is unreasonable though.

Yeah, that's like me working in Brighton - I live in SW London and wouldn't commute that far! I'd just get a job closer to home, obvs.

[TheJimi]

ScotHill said:

At the start of lockdown I think Zoom was the one that everyone independently ran to, as opposed to Teams which is what (probably) most companies had already been using for a while. So e.g. all of the yoga teachers who couldn't do a physical class signed up for Zoom (some of which are still doing them as they are more lucrative than physical classes now, you broaden your base and the participants don't have to schlep out in the rain to some dodgy room above a bagel shop!) and probably smaller companies who didn't have the software infrastructure for Teams already in place.

And then didn't they have a big privacy story, so that cemented it in people's heads as a byword for online meetings, even with people who'd never done an online meeting in their lives.

And they made an ice lolly out of it to get the kids hooked.

Took me a moment

[andyeds1234]

shirt said:

i saw it reported as 2 days a week if you live within 50miles of the office. not unreasonable imho, would go for that in a heartbeat if i could.

Don’t let the facts get in the way of a deliberately misleading headline

[boxst]

It’s interesting. I’ve noticed in the past couple of months the narrative has completely changed: from being working at home is great, productive etc to being in the office is 20% more productive (was the last survey I heard).

Doesn’t really affect me, I’ve been lucky enough to work from home for the last 15 years or so.

[5 In a Row]

boxst said:

It’s interesting. I’ve noticed in the past couple of months the narrative has completely changed: from being working at home is great, productive etc to being in the office is 20% more productive (was the last survey I heard).

Doesn’t really affect me, I’ve been lucky enough to work from home for the last 15 years or so.

It'd be interesting to see who was surveyed.
At a guess senior managers of organisations that have a big office that's costing a load of money but is fairly quiet!

[neilr]

I know someone who has just handed his notice in after they were told to return to the office fullitme (he's a programmer). Told that they wanted the 'round the watercooler discussions to come back in order to regain efficacy of exchanging ideas etc etc" He was saying that the whole time they have been working remotely and in the office maybe a day a week since the pandemic started have been the most efficient and productive time for his team in the 10+years he's been there.

One of the tings their management used to moan about when they were all mostly office based was...you've guessed it, the 'chatting round the watercooler' situations.

He isn't bothered about being in an office although he prefers the remote working but it was the hypocrisy that pushed him over the edge. I don't blame him.

It's almost like a lot of management now realise they are on the verge of being outed as surplus to requirements now they can't micro-manage everyone.

I'm sure many industries work better when at an actual place of work but many many have shown that isn't a requirement now.

I used to work in IT so I can sympathise with him but I was lucky to have had really good managers in all the places i worked, I wonder how many people have been so lucky though.