Our workplace newsletter is back again. We returned to your inboxes after the long weekend. If your company didn’t designate the holiday as a day off, it’s never too early to start planning. A generation of tech workers might never know what it is like to work from an office. Law firms that fight tech unions are leaving huge messes behind, and research shows that although women are more likely to be considered for roles than they were in the past, they still are less likely than men to be interviewed for them.

I never worked in an office full time. Unless you count my summer internship in 2019. The hustle and bustle of a newsroom is what I learned from these abbreviated experiences. It was an incredible feeling for a young person just starting to fall in love with journalism to be surrounded by over-caffeinated reporters and no-nonsense editors.

I have come to accept that those days are past. Protocol has offices where my colleagues and I can work when we want. Nowadays, working from home is so convenient that we don’t commute to the office five days a week. I like taking calls without worrying about disturbing my desk neighbors, and I am grateful to spend less money and energy on commute. I am able to avoid exposure during COVID peaks.

I wish I’d never discovered how good working from home really is.

The benefits of working remotely are well documented. They have played out in real time over the past two years.

  • For the most part, workers can live wherever they want. For tech workers fed up with San Francisco’s sky-high rent, cities in Texas or Colorado have looked more appealing.
  • Companies’ applicant pools grow immensely when positions aren’t limited to specific cities.
  • Parents can more easily juggle childcare, pets are less lonely and hybrid work might be better for the planet.

We are missing out on that face to face connection. It’s not possible to replicate the casual absorption of knowledge that comes from being around your coworkers all day.

  • Gen Z in particular feels left behind. According to a study from the National Society of High School Scholars, 63% of Gen Z students want in-person training from their employers. Mentorship is harder over computer screens. You have to be more enterprising, reaching out to coworkers explicitly to get advice rather than walking over and casually starting a conversation.

We all thought hybrid would be the perfect compromise. The victory in the return-to-office has been hampered by the PAIN.

  • Bosses want workers back in-person, full-time. Leaders like Elon Musk and Lux Capital Co-founder Josh Wolfe vehemently oppose remote work. “They should pretend to work somewhere else,” Musk tweeted about remote Tesla employees.
  • But now that workers have tasted the ease of remote work, why would they want to go back? At this point, our work setups and schedules are configured for WFH. Due to the work-home boundary blurring, some workers are even working more than they would in an office.
  • Now that going into the office is a special occasion and not the norm, socializing can get in the way of deep focus. And then you have to catch up on your work at home anyway.

The workplace was destroyed by the Pandemic. I miss the colorful clamor of a real-life office that I will never know.

— Lizzy Lawrence, reporter (email | twitter)

Most tech companies do not want a unionized workforce. That is no longer an option for most of the industry, which has been facing increasing union interest over the last two years. When tech workers decide to fight back, I dug into what happens.

Union busting and union avoidance will often be successful in squashing the organizing effort. In the months and even years that follow, companies will have to battle both reputational damage and a loss of trust between workers and management, both of which can cause a major talent drain and make new hiring more difficult.

Mapbox, which defeated a union effort in the summer of 2021, is a great case study. The company’s culture of openness and trust seemed to fade after the union effort failed, according to current and former employees.

Anna Kramer is a reporter

Read the entire story.

Money can be left on the table if executives don’t align their ambitions with accounts receivable.

Better communication with customers is seen by less than half of executives as a benefit. It’s implied that executives don’t know that they can close the gap between customer-oriented AR departments and the ones they don’t because they aren’t aware of it.

Click here to read more.

There is still a wage disparity between genders within the tech industry. According to Hired, the State of Wage Inequality in the Tech Industry report is based on data from 819,000 interview requests and job offers.

  • Across race and gender, the wage gap is narrowing, but still persistent. In 2021, the wage gap narrowed by race and gender across all races, except for Black women.
  • There’s also an “expectation gap” (the difference in what a candidate lists as their preferred salary between various groups): Latinx and Black women only expected $0.91 to every dollar salary of their White male counterparts.
  • Another issue? Interview discrimination, with 36.7% of interview requests being sent only to men in 2021. Things are getting better though, as that’s a 5.7% decrease from 2020.

Money can be left on the table if executives don’t align their ambitions with accounts receivable.

The overwhelming majority of respondents claimed that there is work to be done in their departments, yet many said that their departments haven’t been prioritized as much as other departments. At a time when securing cash flow is more important than ever, many businesses aren’t putting enough focus on it.

Click here to read more.

Do you have thoughts, questions, and tips? Send them to workplace@protocol.