Ironic that a company whose marketing claims that they are so concerned about their own environmental impact is unnecessarily requiring the most environmentally damaging activity we collectively do as a society.
Spring 2020 saw a 20% reduction in nitrogen dioxide in the atmosphere, in large part due to the reduction in automobile exhaust. Prior to 2020, every weekday millions of people unnecessarily burned fossil fuels to drive themselves to the building where their computer lives to do the exact same work they could have been doing from home. The COVID-19 response proved this out as a real-life case study. We invested in the infrastructure to make it possible for millions of people to work from home with access to cloud-based resources, new VPN infrastructure for legacy and on-prem resources, and internet infrastructure upgrades at nearly every major ISP. That investment still exists and can continue to serve us well.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, space- and ground-based observations have shown that Earth’s atmosphere has seen significant reductions in some air
www.nasa.gov
Obviously physical labor jobs, rack-and-stack in datacenters, and retail/service roles can't be done from home. But we could be doing so much more by promoting and continuing this positive trend of keeping jobs in positions such as programming and marketing, which can be done from home, at home. Rather than packing more people like sardines into cramped office space to the degree that it requires "hot desking" or "hoteling" where multiple people get to share and touch the same mouse, keyboard, and desk on different days of the week -- which is inarguably the most baffling outcome of this worldwide pandemic -- we could and should be freeing up that office space for people who truly have work that must be done on-site somewhere. Instead of packing 8 people into a 20x20 foot half-height cubicle with no noise isolation, let the few people who need to be at the office have a
real office with walls and a door, and their own chair and desk that isn't covered in bacteria and Cheeto dust from the last person who was forced to come in.
The improvement in overall employee satisfaction with work/life balance and other cost savings aside; it's a true shame and tragedy that we squandered this rare opportunity to actually make a meaningful impact toward curbing climate change by avoiding the unnecessary use of countless barrels of oil and non-renewable fossil fuels while simultaneously reducing unnecessary fuel costs for employees and wear-and-tear on our already poorly maintained roads.
It's even more sad that none of this forced "return to office" is happening out of any necessity, but merely to appease overzealous executives (who often spend 60-80% of their "work week," not in the office, but out on the golf course, anyway) and middle managers who only feel in control when they know butts are in their company's assigned chairs. The tools exist to collaborate and work remotely -- it has been proven for the past 3+ years. The tools exist to assess and monitor productivity -- even if it might be viewed as invasive, it can be done.
There are no excuses for this societal regression. It's wasteful and selfish. It's deteriorating quality of life for workers, costing us untold expenses in unnecessary wear-and-tear on our roads (that we then get to pay for with higher taxes), and destroying the environment just so that a small minority of business owners can feel placated with the unhealthy control that they desire, even when work-from-home would save them money and help them retain good talent.
