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JPMorgan Chase Requires All Workers To Return To Office Five Days a Week (theguardian.com) 66

Posted by BeauHD from the pre-pandemic-life dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: JPMorgan Chase is summoning all staff back to the office, becoming the latest corporate giant to call time on era of remote and hybrid working sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic. The US's largest bank, which has some 316,000 employees worldwide, announced on Friday that all workers on hybrid work schedules will be required to return to the office five days a week from March. [...] Few top executives have been more vocal in making the case for working from the office than Jamie Dimon, the veteran CEO of JPMorgan, who -- as early as 2021 -- sought to restore pre-pandemic working habits. "And everyone is going to be happy with it," he told a Wall Street Journal event that year. "And yes, the commute -- you know, people don't like commuting. But so what?"

Even before Friday's announcement, more than half of employees at JPMorgan had already been required to work from the office full-time. In an internal memo to staff, seen by the Guardian, Dimon and other executives acknowledged that "some of you prefer a hybrid schedule" and said they "respectfully understand that not everyone will agree with this decision." "We are now a few years out of the pandemic and have had the time to evaluate the benefits and challenges of remote and hybrid working," they wrote. "We feel that now is the right time to solidify our full-time in-office approach. "We think it is the best way to run the company. As we've discussed before, the benefits of working together in person are substantial and irreplaceable, and as we spend more time together, the more advantages we gain."
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JPMorgan Chase Requires All Workers To Return To Office Five Days a Week More

JPMorgan Chase Requires All Workers To Return To Office Five Days a Week

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  • RTO is always just a... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pseudonymous Powers ( 4097097 ) on Friday January 10, 2025 @04:42PM (#65079105)

    STEEEAAAAAAAAAAALLLTTHHHH!

    [deep breath]

    LAYOFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF!

    • Re:RTO is always just a... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Friday January 10, 2025 @05:37PM (#65079277) Journal

      LAYOFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF!

      Exactly.

      But which employees chose the self-layoff option: likely the highest performers who have other employment opportunities.

      This is a way to get rid of the best employees, while protecting the boss' commercial property portfolio.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by iAmWaySmarterThanYou ( 10095012 )

        2 things:

        1) no one is special at any large company. Every single person from the mail room to the Chair of the Board can be replaced and the company will keep ticking along. Anyone who think they are special, provides special value, should operate under special rules is delusional, no one is important
        2) this ridiculous thing about real estate comes up every time and gets shot down in flames every time. It makes no sense at all, none of you blurting this nonsense have a shred of evidence about this and in

        • Re:RTO is always just a... (Score:4, Funny)

          by jbengt ( 874751 ) on Friday January 10, 2025 @08:15PM (#65079635)
          1) Quite true.
          2) Not so for every company going RTO, but for some companies, keeping their real estate values up is important to the CEO. I'm guessing it is for an investment company like JP Morgan.

        • 2) this ridiculous thing about real estate comes up every time and gets shot down in flames every time. It makes no sense at all, none of you blurting this nonsense have a shred of evidence

          Specific links have clearly been shown between the Duke of Westminster(*) and people like Reece Mogg who were pushing return to the office very hard and loud in London long before it became a thing in other locations. Elsewhere we know that real estate held by offshore companies is one the standard ways for lead / early shareholders to extract money from companies that they owned but no longer have controlling interests in. The fact that these links are hidden just makes things worse.

          (*) the guy who owns mo

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          1) That is actually not true. You typically find a handful of key-people and if they leave, everything starts to slowly turn to shit. These people are generally hard or impossible to replace. And no, it is generally not the C-levels.

        • 1) no one is special at any large company. Every single person from the mail room to the Chair of the Board can be replaced and the company will keep ticking along. Anyone who think they are special, provides special value, should operate under special rules is delusional, no one is important

          Maybe on the micro level. I agree that, almost by necessity, any large, successful enterprise is resilient to the loss of a cog in the machine. Individual corporate employees aren't going to get very far if they start throwing down ultimatums (ultimata?).

          On the macro level? If you systematically push out the most effective cogs, how can that not degrade the overall performance of the machine? That can only be true if employees are fully interchangeable. I think that anyone who's worked in a corporate e

        • Proof? Not possible given that companies are not going to openly state, "huge losses in our real estate portfolio are the reason we are requiring workers to return"

          But Pattern? Sure...

          Goldman Sachs: The investment bank has pushed for a full return to the office, emphasizing the importance of collaboration and office culture. Given their significant investment in office real estate, this push has been seen as related to maximizing the value of their physical spaces.

          CBRE Group: As one of the largest commerc

      • After all if you can't get qualified Americans you can always get more people here on work visas. And the incoming administration loves them.

    • Re:RTO is always just a... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by DesScorp ( 410532 ) on Friday January 10, 2025 @05:50PM (#65079315) Journal

      STEEEAAAAAAAAAAALLLTTHHHH!

      [deep breath]

      LAYOFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF!

      There's nothing stealthy about it. Implied in the order to return is "If you can't take orders, get the fuck out of our company". Companies aren't hiding this. This isn't a conspiracy. They're telling employees, quite openly: either get back to business as usual, or find someplace else to work.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Dan667 ( 564390 )
        If jp morgan value control more than results (and RTO is only about control) I will take my business elsewhere.

        • I've long suspected that lots of companies only make a product to have a mechanism to control others.

          RTO is a waste for everyone:
          * Commuting sucks ass and creates a bunch of unnecessary pollution and traffic thus fucking it up for people who don't need to get to work but do want to drive. It's hours of lost productivity and worse, you arrive feeling less fresh than when you left home - this isn't conducive to getting the best out of your staff.

          * Having your staff eat shitty meals hunched over their

      • The "stealth" part of "stealth layoffs" isn't to be stealthy from the employee's or the public's perspective, but from the perspective of the WARN act.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        This is not about following orders. This is about working conditions. They will run into serious problems unless some key people get really well compensated for the additional hassle. Let's see, for example, whether they still have a working IT in a few years.

    • They are shooting themselves in the foot, because during boom years people will remember and belt off to friendlier co's. even if the co. does return to telework.

      (Unless JP doesn't expect to survive until boom years.)

    • Clever way to separate weak from strong. Any of those ABLE to find a job elsewhere will. I was WFH for my second 12 years, and last 3 working in premises was earful, that cut my productivity at least in half.

    • It's entirely up to the employees if they want to stamp their feet and quit. A lot of people are overestimating their value to their company. Employees fantasizing about a company falling apart without them, is a very, very, old dream.

      • You say that but if they all leave and NOONE wants to work onsite, then what? Clone the CEO's ego and get the clones to work as interns?

        • if they all leave and NOONE wants to work onsite, then what?

          That's just another part of the aforementioned fantasy. You know it won't happen.

          • People are waking up. Corporation's will have to do better than forcing Stockholm Syndrome on their staff and keeping their wages so low they can't afford to leave.

            • Argh Greengrocer'''''sss Apostrophe from autocorrect

            • People are waking up, but not in the way you think or want. Employees are waking up to the fact that they aren't as valuable and irreplaceable as they think they are. They're waking up to the fact that the people that pay their salaries make the rules....not the other way around. But really...it's the minority of workers that are waking up to this. Most employees already understand how the employee/employer relationship works.

    • Did you mean "stealth layoff" or "self layoff"? https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages7.memedroid.com%2F... [memedroid.com]

  • I wonder... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by alispguru ( 72689 ) <bob.bane@NOSpAm.me.com> on Friday January 10, 2025 @04:44PM (#65079107) Journal

    ... if they have any data to support those claims, or if it is the usual:

    * Upper and middle management is uncomfortable with remote work
    * Our large investment in real estate and office space leases has to be justified somehow

    ?

    • Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Austerity Empowers ( 669817 ) on Friday January 10, 2025 @04:59PM (#65079157)

      JP Morgan may be the largest single-entity bag holder for upside down CRE debt in the US. In addition to wanting the stealth layoff benefit, they want to set a trend.

      Of course only absolute fools would be investing in CRE right now, forcing compliance is not the same as convincing potential investors that the investment is good. It's definitely not. Once the billionaires can no longer collude to suppress the stock market, newer, more nimble companies are definitely going to be skipping the office building bit.

    • * Upper and middle management is uncomfortable with remote work

      These RTO mandates say more about the [lack of] skills of the upper and middle management. Their skills are best at social interactions, not actually promoting the businesses' interests.

    • Well, there's this recent study [slashdot.org].

  • C-suite goon translator activate (Score:3, Insightful)

    by zeeky boogy doog ( 8381659 ) on Friday January 10, 2025 @04:50PM (#65079125)
    Goon #1: "Shit, guys, if you don't force these schmucks to drive downtown every day we're going to get screwed on all that commercial real estate we're currently upside down on!"

    Goon #2: "Shit, guys, the plebs are starting to get notions that wasting two hours of their lives a day driving in order to do the same administrivia they could do from home isn't a win for them!"

    Goon #3: "Shit, the bad middle managers are frothing at the mouth because they can't stare over the remote peoples' shoulders every five minutes and I don't want to hire better ones."

    • administrivia
      good scrabble word.
      oh shoot time to fill out timesheets. one for finance and one in a completely different system for HR.

  • Don't put up with this bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 10, 2025 @05:01PM (#65079165)
    Companies don't want you to spend more time with your families.
    Companies will not shed a tear for you when you're gone.

    Companies exist so you can trade hours of your life for money to buy things. That's it. The kind of people who derive their self-worth from their employment baffle me. I worked hard my entire life and have an incredibly comfortable lifestyle now and I would trade all of it to go back and spend more time with friends and family. It feels good in the moment to be the best at your job and to feel like you're ahead but don't let employers consume your humanity to the point where work is your entire personality and value. There's better things in life I promise you.

    • Companies don't want you to spend more time with your families.

      Companies don't care who you spend your time with off-work, so long as you show up at your next shift ready and able to work

      Companies will not shed a tear for you when you're gone.

      Companies will not shed a tear for you when you're gone, so long as you can be easily replaced or what you did doesn't matter all that much.

      Companies exist so you can trade hours of your life for money to buy things. That's it.

      Companies exist to make things and provide services that other people and companies want to pay them in order to receive. That's it.
      A company will employ you only because you help them make the things and provide the services that they make and p

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Your response added exactly nothing to this discussion.
    • A handful of us can start a business but most of them will fail or more likely be run out of business by large players. It's extremely hard bordering on impossible to compete with established companies that have large cash reserves.

      I think we need the work together better against the mega corporations for they're the really be a better life and I don't think we're ready to do that. We basically just let the king of the corporations buy an election. A lot of us are pissed off about it but there's fuck al
      • Things do change over a period of time. If you live long enough you begin to see larger cycles. You're talking in wistful philosophical terms though . Steering through the chaos is a better idea , because good ideas are always hijacked by the profit motive, politics , and the worst motives of humanity . For example, Open AI. If I was writing policy for a better future , I'd want a vibrant supported open source ecosystem. There are alot of good open source software and ideas coming out of Germany lately. We

  • Most large companies are presently run by the remainder of boomers (born up until 1965) and Gen X, neither of whom tend to have school-age children at home any more.

    I hope that the millennials have more empathy and wisdom when they take power. I apologize on behalf of my fellow GenXers.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Most large companies are presently run by the remainder of boomers (born up until 1965) and Gen X, neither of whom tend to have school-age children at home any more.

      I hope that the millennials have more empathy and wisdom when they take power. I apologize on behalf of my fellow GenXers.

      More boomer, less GenX. Boomers controlled the working environment through the 80s and 90s, and thanks to Jack Welsh and friends, screwed it up for GenX. GenX was taught loyalty to companies by boomers, and Jack Welsh took e

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ndykman ( 659315 )

      I am also getting more unhappy with the GenX generation (which I am a part of). We are giving the yuppie scumbags a pass which is the worst.

      Sure, as I get older, it's hard to change things, but somebody wants to disrupt the status quo, I'm in.

  • Funny to me (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aaarrrgggh ( 9205 ) on Friday January 10, 2025 @05:21PM (#65079229)

    I did a bunch of work for JPM back around 2012-2016. I was truly amazed at just how lean and efficient their project management team was, and they were all remote all but two days a month. It was a big factor in our company switching our business to them, and actually trying to use some of the tools they did for effective remote work.

    I get the whole bowing to DJT thing and the need to shore up corporate real-estate, but from an HR and business effectiveness perspective it is idiotic.

  • Of two minds about it (Score:4, Interesting)

    by spaceyhackerlady ( 462530 ) on Friday January 10, 2025 @05:32PM (#65079265)

    I've worked from home for nearly a decade. When the company imploded in 2001 we went from 1000-odd people to around 30, then down to two. The final two worked from a smaller office until one of them was laid off and it was just me.

    We tried a shared office space. This worked, for a while. It gave me somewhere to go, got me out of the house. In the end we decided the cost wasn't worth the benefit, I packed up my company computer systems and took them home. I've worked from home ever since.

    Not everybody can work from home. It takes a certain discipline. It can be liberating. It can be bloody lonely. I make sure I have reasons to get out. Lunch at my favourite restaurant once a week, work out at the local gym three nights a week, and so on. I do what I can. I visit head office once a year. The Powers That Be have decided face time with us remote types is a good thing. I agree.

    Would I want to work from an office again? I'm not sure. But I'd love to try and find out.

    ...laura

    • I visit head office once a year.

      I am slightly lost: is this the same company that went from 1000 people down to just you?

      Anyway, I can't really hack WFH, personally for various reasons, I lack the discipline and get lonely. These days I work at a job where WFH isn't practical either, so that suits me fine.

      • I visit head office once a year.

        I am slightly lost: is this the same company that went from 1000 people down to just you?

        Our biggest customer bought what was left post-implosion. Mainly for the intellectual property that went with their core business, plus a select few to keep things working. Eventually that meant just me.

        ...laura

  • I think they call that quiet firing..

  • I don't really get the hate for the commutes (Score:4, Funny)

    by ebunga ( 95613 ) on Friday January 10, 2025 @06:22PM (#65079407)

    I take the home helicopter to the local airport, the private jet to the city, and then the corp helicopter to the office. This is why those low-level employees will never make it to the c-suite. They just don't know how to manage their time and they keep eating avocado toast.

  • LEADERSHIP? Let them eat cake. (Score:3)

    by mileshigh ( 963980 ) on Friday January 10, 2025 @06:30PM (#65079423)
    "commuting -- but so what?"
    Dimon and senior leadership could show some actual leadership by example: start making a 2x/day 1-hour+ everyday commute himself -- and not by helicopter, limo, apartment in town, other unaffordable means.

    I understand his time is super-valuable, but a above all a CEO's first job is leadership. That is why they pay you the big bucks, Jamie. Leadership by example well might be worthy of your time and effort. 'Coz if commuting's not worth your while...
    Something for other hard-ass CEOs to consider too.

  • Do you work for JP Morgan and are negatively affected by this business decision? Do you want to earn some extra cash on the side to make up for this hardship? Please head over to breach forums and speak with arcid about this amazing opportunity. You'll receive a weekly crypto payout for installing software on your work computer.

  • After they built that massive fugly building in mid-town Manhattan, it would be embarrassing not to have anyone in it.

  • JPMorgan Chase WANTS All Workers To Return To Office Five Days a Week

    Fixed.

  • Can still WFH... (Score:3)

    by jroysdon ( 201893 ) on Saturday January 11, 2025 @01:16AM (#65080185)

    ... the other two days.

  • Cry, complain, and belly ache. You want, working from home is dying. If you actually want to earn money, you have two options: one: start your own business. .two: get your butt back in the office. You can spout any studies you want, cry and complain all you want. But the trends are going back to the office. That is just fact, and it really doesn't matter if you don't like it. The goal of a business is to make money, not make you happy

  • One more eviidence showing how some people just can lot learn, can not evolve.
    Unfortunately many decision makers are such people.

  • Otherwise, how are all those managers and executives going to be able to pretend, at least somewhat convincingly, that they are doing any useful work?
  • I'll say that any CEO of a company with more than, say, 20 employees, who cares about where his employees work from, is seriously incompetent and in the wrong position. That's a ridiculous degree of micromanagement, which is always counterproductive. The CEO's job is long-term strategy of the company. Instead, here this dude is, worrying about office logistics, as if he had any clue what the people actually keeping the company running are doing.

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