Youth loneliness is cured by Adults going into the office

Remember how clean the air was when most people were working from home?

But shareholder value is more important.

Good luck to this woman finding good employees. Good employees have a choice.

“Why don’t people want to hang out with me?”

"My only friends are people on my payroll."
- "People don't want to hang out with me unless I pay them"
Unfortunately, there is no shortage of sadistic people like this who bond together just fine.

"Hard truth I learned as a CEO: Sometimes you have to lie to get what you want, regardless of reality and facts"

Anyone who thinks more work gets done in the office is an idiot, or lying.

Eh, it depends. I find that there is a benefit in highly collaborative projects or in an environment where training is a component.
For instance, a lot of data showed that junior staff productivity tanked as they didn't have the mentoring opportunities that they would have had in a full remote environment.
- right now I am hiding in a call booth in my office on our one in person day a week because the rest of the office is singing along to achy breaky heart while two junior employees throw lifesaver mints at each other.
- I am the team lead and architect for my group. We have green engineers and interns. The other day my team was publically acknowledged as being one of the most productive and well oiled teams because of the detail I put in. On a weekly basis I am doing mentoring activities and 1 on 1s with everyone. And I still find time to be writing specs, design documents, code, and hour of meetings.
  It requires very little effort. What I have found is that the vast number of leads and managers just aren't good at teaching or helping others. It's not a face to face issue. It's soft skills, logistics, and actually wanting a good team issue. All I am doing is the opposite of what all my bad managers did.
- Do many people get mentored in the office? I have worked for decades and have never been mentored.
  Edit: I assume random, one off comments don't count as mentoring. "Don't put your feed up on the desk" isn't mentoring right?

Does she think sleepless nights are going to improve mental health?

I could spend 3 hours a day on a train and do teams meetings in the office, or i could not do 3 hours a day on trains and do teams meetings at home.

I was paying £550 a month in train tickets before covid freed me

It amazes me that leaders don't get this. My office is filled with separate one-sided calls and it's unbearable. Furthermore I've not been in a meeting without Silicon Valley listening in in at least 5 years.
- They do get it but they don't care. They want you to be uncomfortable and miserable because it keeps up the value of their commercial real estate portfolio .

I am in general a big proponent for going to go to the office, I am an IT guy, and I find I have more focus when in the office, I also don't want to associate my home with work, I need the physical separation and I find it to be easier to coordinate with others in the office.

That being said, this CEO is stupid, loneliness is not cured by being forced to interact with people that I need to be paid to interact with.

I also realize that just because I find the office beneficial, does not mean I get to dictate how other people should feel about it.

I am in general a big proponent for going to go to the office, I am an IT guy, and I find I have more focus when in the office, I also don't want to associate my home with work, I need the physical separation and I find it to be easier to coordinate with others in the office.
Some people do.
The trick about remote work is not that it lets us all work from home, but that it gives us another location and we can pick our best environment.
I found a job that promises "work from anywhere in the country", and many people min-maxed their location for profit. They only have to match time-zone to ensure they're punched in during 'business hours' (and, for some, starting later in their day to synch with the home office is f'n awesome).
But they still maintain "hotel" spots, two of them permanent. People did find some days or many days in the office each week is their jam. Some come and go as per their current needs and best environment. One of my peers went camping, and did a server update over VPN over starlink over smores, and then put the laptop away for the weekend. He was proving he can camp while on-call.
Sometimes I like my view. Sometimes I need a featureless wall to cut down on distractions. I find what is best and I rock that shit. And that's what it's about: find your best space.
When the only space is Office Space, then there is no freedom to find that environment where you crush it today, and that needs to be seen as an impairment. Let us pick our time and place and - sun tzu - victory is assured.
- I fully agree with you, there are times when I need to work remote, I hate it, but I love having the option to do it.
  During the pandemic, I worked from home in two week periods, it was absolutely terrible, just disconnecting from the RDP session and be in "home mode" never worked for me, normally take the bus to and from the office and have an hour to wind down after work and just empty my mind through Youtube, I don't have that mandatory time when I work from home...
  These days I at least have a car, so I can take a trip after work, but when driving, my brain doesn't really rest, so it is far from the relaxing time heading home on the bus...
A completely sane viewpoint that respects the different needs and preferences of others? Weird.
I completely respect your position. Some people genuinely like the office life and it's totally fine!
Personally, I have never had any boundary issue with home being used for work. I have my own office room that is also my hobby room that I made as I like, so it's a very nice and quiet space, and I love working there.
Besides the obvious aspects of this post which are quite dumb, what that person misses is that by working from home I finish to work at 17 and at 17.01 I am free to go meet people. Cutting commuting time frees quite some time for personal life and not to mention working from home is associated with more flexible work too, like doing some chores during a break etc., which frees up even more time.
- Same here. If I could I'd only WFH, but we only get a few days a week. I don't have an issue disconnecting mentally from work. However, I think a big contributor is I don't exactly hate my current job. I sometimes surprise myself how easily and quickly I switch off.
  My TL on the other hand prefers the office, probably because they have two young kids, who can be quite loud and require lots of attention.
I was a manager at an aerospace company for a bunch of years, just recently retired. One of my takeaways was that, like so many facets of managing people, there's no single right way to do WFH. I had employees who could WFH 100% of the time, with increased productivity and increased morale. I had employees that fit OP's description and were super lonely during the pandemic because their whole social life revolved around work. I had employees who preferred WFH, but were much more productive when they could collaborate in person.
I was frustrated that my company insisted on implementing one-size-fits-all solutions, which eventually became 100% RTO. I thought it would have been most effective to let managers decide what worked best for individuals and teams. For many of my employees, I would have asked for a hybrid arrangement, where they came into the office two days a week, with one of those days being common to the team and one being flexible, and the ability for anyone to come in more than that if desired. But I also had employees who either didn't have a collaborative job, or they collaborated with people at different sites (so had to do virtual meetings anyway), and those people I would have said could 100% WFH.
I couldn't work from home but I really like coworking spaces.
Rather than having to commute all the way to the main office I have an office located 5 min away from home.
This way I do have an office, coworkers but without the long commute.

Or go to a bar and say hi to people who are hanging around. Compliment someone's jacket. Tell someone that their whole aesthetic is cool as fuck. Comment on the weather. Become a part of your local environment and interact with your fellow humans. Join a hiking or hobby group.

Work is actually one of the worst places to get your social enrichment. You're significantly more likely to change jobs than cities and your innie is less likely to feel like your true self. Furthermore there's a baseline mental taxation of being at work that doesn't come with being in a social environment. And nobody's going to come up to you at a social event and tell you to get back to work.

Or go to a bar and say hi to people who are hanging around. Compliment someone’s jacket. Tell someone that their whole aesthetic is cool as fuck. Comment on the weather. Become a part of your local environment and interact with your fellow humans. Join a hiking or hobby group.
Nah, I'm good thanks
- Fair enough, it will help with loneliness though. And I'll acknowledge it's hard and awkward at first, but it's a skill and it's one I think many people would appreciate developing. It's like getting in shape but for the social part of the self.
- lmao. ikr. Extroverts just don't get it. 😔

This person probably goes to the office and sits in her own private room by herself, because she can't focus with the loud plebs on the big open office floor

This person arrives at 10, has a 1.5hour lunch, talks loudly around other people, leaves at 2 because needs to pick up the dog from the dog sitter, complains people are never in the office, only shows up 2 days a week if you're unlucky, 0 days if you're lucky.
- Don't forget all those "networking" trips out of town.

I suspect this is mainly because almost all of the CEOs I’ve met are workaholics, and being “at work” is the only way they can self-validate.

And remember, most of them are dark-personality traits, which explains why they cannot understand why you don’t want to go in

Time to go back to the office and have still all meeting online with extra background noise. Looking for a quiet corner to be able to hear others properly is great for my mental health.

Also the office life improves my soft skills, like:

walking with my laptop open im my hand with a headset on to find an empty meeting room
sharing desks with annoying co-workers from other departments
enjoying other peoples conversations about their lunch plans from the other side of the open plan office
fighting for the thermostat setting and opening/closing the windows
embracing the daily multi-hour commute in rush hours

It really builds character.

Your office windows can be opened ? Luxury!
After writing that I feel I may need to clarify that I mean actual physical windows in an office building, not some self opening Microsoft product.
- Your office has 11 windows?
- This made me chuckle :)
My first job shoved me into a tiny room that's maybe 10 C hotter than the rest of the office. Anyone who wandered in would go "Wow it's really hot in here! You guys should talk to building management!". I swear the damn office nearly gave me heat stroke.

Yeah, when I'm looking for sound mental health advice, I ask a CEO. Doesn't everyone?

What if it's the CEO of mental health
- CEOs almost never have the skills and experience in actually doing the work of their company. I and other techs have had to do IT work for the CEOs of our IT support company. Plus one of them accidentally opened a phishing email.
- Even worse. A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Ah yes. The lament of the middle managers with nothing to do. They feel threatened because it turns out they weren't needed after all.

I work from home, and my manager works from home also. He's not even in the same country as me.
Not all middle management has a thing for insisting people work from the office.
- Middle managers don't have power to insist such things. Daddy CEO makes these calls with a lot of fanfare
Managers of technical people are required, but in an efficient organisation there is no need to have layer to manage those managers.

"Hard truth" she just made up to fit her own narrative without recourse to facts.

"Hi, I'm a shitty person who has an opinion that is self-serving. Let me tell you what I think."

Every single one of my jobs in the last 5 years or so has stated that remote work has undeniably increased productivity and output, as well as general morale.

Many of them have sold all their offices so they couldn't even RTO if they wanted to.

For some reason one of them still keeps the 7 floor office building and even a receptionist and security guard...despite about 5 people working from there on any given day. But hey, whatever.

Lots of leases are for 7-10 years, sometimes more. They're likely contractually obligated to keep it for now. The sunk cost on that is at least part of the reason why RTO was being pushed so hard.
Tons of office leases have expired since lockdown times and weren't renewed. Not a lot of them left, and that's why RTO mandates have waned. Still get a few "the cruelty is the point" people like what's in OP.
- Ah I should have clarified, they own the building. But otherwise yes, you're right.

Yes yes.. RTO is all about restoring the productivity and mental health of the worker. Ignore the declining property value of commercial buildings. Tell me again who stands to gain the most by increasing commercial property value? Ah yeah that's right; Billionaires. Interesting, at the bottom of every social problem we seen to find a billionaire.

Where is this energy during lay off season? No issues witb potentially 90k hours of social bonding gone to provide better executive bonuses.

If my next job is office only. I'm strictly only using a desktop PC. You can give me a travel laptop. But I'm never taking it home.

office only
but bob, it's a corporate retreat, we're all going, grab your laptop
"FUCK YOU TODD, WHEN I WAS HIRED THE POSITION WAS OFFICE ONLY. GO FUCK YOURSELF AND YOUR RETREAT"

Codie A Sanchez does a lot less work WFH, is what I took from this.

I'm in the office right now, and 99% of my meetings are through Teams.

My favorite days to be here are when everyone else is somewhere else.

Same

Rage bait for engagement.

performative rage bait, for sure

Being promoted to the C-suite causes brain damage.

Nah, the brain damage is a prerequisite. It does get worse though.
- Yeah cause CEOs are all fucking Jimmy Wichards in Armani suits.

This person is a disgrace.

Lol, immediately revealing that for her work is only pointless zoom meetings. Real productivity there ms CEO 😑

This person is purposely being controversial for attention, they don't truly think this, nor is there any evidence productivity has gone down due to remote work.

Going into the office every day is a scam.

I worked in the stupid open office space these assholes designed for years. It. Sucked. Distractions everywhere. I couldn't focus on anything. Now I get double the work done in half the time and I don't have a pain in the ass commute. The hubris of assuming what works for you will work for everyone is astounding.

Thank you sooo much for your very presence. We are sooo grateful for your wisdom...

Go fuck yourself with a rusty railroad spike.

Linked in is a cancer.

Honestly to a degree I see the vision but sadly the way most workplaces are organized won't improve your mental health either.

Investing millions in main st businesses

Obviously a commercial real estate investor, weak gaslighting attempt though.

She knows those who schlepped into offices before Covid realize how much better remote is for everyone, so tries to target kids who are fresh out of school and didn’t necessarily experience that dichotomy.

LPT: when you're this incoherent it's time to reassess your meds.

The majority of people I would benefit most from being in person with aren't in the same country as me.

As a naturally introverted person, working remotely has vastly improved my social life, well-being, and productivity.

I used to burn all my social energy at the office, and when nights and weekends came around, I’d go into hermit mode to recover. Work drained me. Now I’m sitting on my social charger all day while I’m working, and I actually have the energy to see my friends after work and have much better balance in my life.

I’m fortunate to work for a company that let everyone decide what works best for them when RTO mandates started going around, and they get better work from me because of it. This CEO can get fucked.

As a naturally ambiverted person I like that WFH lets me attend social events right after work

What an idiot. Yet another example of failing upwards.

Well, if you work hard, sleepless nights and have family connections, you can also be that idiot.

"Hard truth realized as a CEO"

After that I was hoping to see "There's more to life than this. I'm wasting the time I've got left on pointless numbers."

Sleepless nights for whom? My employer? Ahahah

Your productivity is conected to your bosses way to lead. I wfh and my time is not measured in hours but in tasks. I have taks and deadlines. That's it, one person will do a task in 20 min another in an hour. So if you go by task it's more productive and I can choose what time I want to do it. Ifyou count the hours the person is working they can just say "oh that wasn't enough we had problems". I think it's dumb

Ah yes, the mental health crisis is solved at the coffee corner with help from your coworkers.

HR people are truly the great parasites of our time.

if you cant be responsible if not being supervised, dont tell everyone about it

overpaid CEOs are a scam

People can have friends outside of work.

Just more proof most CEO's are damaged mentally.

I'd rather spend my time where I'm most comfortable and with people I'm most comfortable with.

No remote working option in my current job though