CNN examines tech companies’ efforts to limit remote work. “Salesforce is trying to lure employees into offices by offering to donate $10 to a local charity for every day an employee comes in from June 12-23, according to an internal Slack message , reported by Fortune.”
CNN points to a recent strike at Amazon protesting (in part) new return-to-office policies, as well as Meta’s forthcoming three-day-a-week office duty. But CNN adds that it’s Google that “has long been a pioneer in workplace policies in the tech industry and beyond” — and that Google recently announced plans to include in-person attendance in its performance reviews. “Overnight, worker professionalism was disregarded and ambiguous attendance tracking practices linked to our performance reviews were instituted,” Chris Schmidt, a software engineer at Google and a member of the Grassroots Alphabet Workers Union, said in a statement to CNN. “The practical implementation of this new policy will lead to needless confusion among workers and a disregard for our various circumstances…”
Schmidt said even if you go into the office, there’s no guarantee you’ll have people on your team to work with, or even a desk to sit at. “A lot of teams are distributed, and for some of us there might not be anyone to work with in our physical office locations,” Schmidt said. “Currently, New York workers don’t even have enough desks and conference rooms that they could comfortably use.”
A Google spokesperson countered that the policy of working in the office three days a week “is going well and we want Google employees to connect and collaborate face-to-face, so we’re limiting remote work to exceptions… “