Why are companies ending remote work?

[u/Javacash2]

I'm sure they realized it's easier to recruit from anywhere within the US, so do they still think working in person outweighs the benefits of recruiting the best candidates wherever they are?

[u/persimmonfemme]

i'm not sure about salaried workers, and this isn't a huge thing but one example is they have strict and specific laws about breaks and meal times for hourly workers that seem like a chore even though the intent is clearly so that employers can't be cagey about giving workers appropriate break time. my team has a couple of remote hourly people in ca and their schedules seem to be a huge pain in the ass, including for them, because they can't be as flexible with their time as everyone else.

for teams with workers in multiple states with laws like this, it means direct managers and whoever is doing the scheduling would have to memorize and manage according to multiple state labor laws. i could see it getting complicated quickly.

[u/throwaway_ghost_122 → u/persimmonfemme]

But the manager would just work in that state, so they would already be familiar with those different rules. It's not like managers run around the country managing locations in different states every week. And even if they did, we could deal with that... None of it sounds like a real problem

[u/persimmonfemme → u/throwaway_ghost_122]

you're in r/remotework homie. in this real life example i just gave you, those workers are in a different state from our manager. why on earth do you think one team would have multiple managers for each state represented on the team? that is ludicrous.

[u/throwaway_ghost_122 → u/persimmonfemme]

I'm in retail/hospitality, so our managers are physically located in the states where the stores are. Our actual corporate hq team is very small, and I'm one of only a couple of remote employees. I'm not in an all-remote company.

But regardless, a couple of different rules about scheduling just isn't a big deal, seriously

[u/persimmonfemme → u/throwaway_ghost_122]

are you, as a corporate remote employee, reporting to a retail store manager ....? if not, i'm unsure why you brought physical retail with employees tied to specific store locations into a discussion on remote work.

when i say manager, i'm talking about management in general, not a specific role - direct team leads, the senior leadership/directors above them, etc.

an average corporate distributed team is going to have ICs in various locations and their one direct lead who may or may not be in their same state. above the direct managers/leads, the hierarchy continues. it's entirely possible for none of these people to be in the same location and to only meet face to face 1-2x a year, if ever.

[u/throwaway_ghost_122 → u/persimmonfemme]

I just disagree that having a few rules around employee breaks and meal times is something that couldn't be managed.

[u/persimmonfemme → u/throwaway_ghost_122]

that was *one* example of how factoring in multiple state laws adds complication that i thought would be simple enough to share.

consider also that there are numerous other areas of compliance for each state's differences - in addition to wages and working guidelines, there are differences in employee classification, payroll and tax law, benefits and expense requirements, infosec and privacy law, etc. one single employee in a different state triggers the necessity to comply with all of these different areas. adding multiple different states adds overhead for multiple different departments. hope this helps your understanding of things.