> Charter CEO Tom Rutledge last week told employees in a memo to keep coming to the office even if their jobs can be performed from home, because people "are more effective from the office."

1. Bullshit. Show us the data to substantiate your claim.

2. Even if we assume that Rutledge is correct: Is the delta in observable effectiveness worth the cost to employees' lives and their families?

I'm on the side of the engineer who resigned. The CEO's policy is stupid, irresponsible, and/or callous.

I used to work at this office as a consultant for Charter.

When our contract began, we (the consultants) all did our work remotely, we were highly productive, and making real changes in their organization.

Then we were required to come in once a week... fine. The commute is brutal but we're getting paid. The thing was though... we didn't typically interact with anyone there. We had a few consultants that did, but they were in that office anyway. Then they wanted us there every day. No empty seats, WFH discouraged. I quit. They wanted engineers literally to fill extra seats they had to make the office "look busy" for when execs came to town. Productivity dropped, turnover increased (it was already bad), and now this happens.

I hope the companies that enforce these rules face hard challenges ahead with acquiring a solid workforce. Employees are not the enemy, they are the company, let them work as they work best.

I feel his pain. The company I work for, while remarkably practical in many ways, and already possessing systems designed such that every corporate employee can work remotely, still insists on butts-in-seats even while the state we're located in has banned gatherings over 10. It's fucking ridiculous.

May be a function of the way the story is structured, but it sounds like Tom Rutledge started out claiming the kinds of thing you'd expect (but not like):

'people are more effective from the office'

and then later morphed this claim into something with a bit more of a solidarity feel:

'we believe our approach to supporting front-line employees is the right way ...'

Still a crazy position to adopt - unless you think 80,000 of your employees will be sufficiently pissed off that 15,000 of your employees are reducing the spread of COVID-19 to impact your revenue stream.

No job is worth risking your health, or your family's health for. Fullstop.

Companies that don't act swiftly to protect their employees health are going to have a rude awakening.

I'd hire him. I'd like him as a coworker.

I don't think companies are afraid of losing productivity, I think they are afraid of losing their grip of power over the employees.

I'd alert the local health authorities to the situation. They need to be aware of companies blatantly disregarding the health of their workers and their community. Perhaps there's nothing they can do about it - yet. But they can use the data to perhaps escalate the issue over the coming weeks as the situation gets more dire.

CEO's like this only care about themselves and bottom line, people are expendable. That Wheeler guy will never have any regrets and hopefully will find a better employer.

Coronavirus is really going to define what employers think about there people, especially major corporations telling people to take unpaid leave for extended periods of time.

I reckon that things would change only if a mass refusal to come to work happened. Other threads have echoed similar sentiments but this is a time where people and businesses need to be a "good citizen" and not think about business as usual/the bottom line.

I'm trying to figure out what Charter is. Can anyone hep with this? It seems charter.com redirects to spectrum.com, is this the same company?

What’s the point in quitting in that case? Wouldn’t it be more effective to say “I’m working from home whether you like it or not, you can do what you want” and then let them fire you if they want to? You are merely exercising your right to refuse to work in a hazardous environment.

More than a little ironic that it's an ISP doing this.

Makes you wonder how reliable the CEO thinks the service is if he doesn't trust it enough to allow his employees to work remotely.

(This is no indictment of the engineers, who I'm sure are doing the best job they can/are allowed to).

Charter - loved by clients and employees.

We had a mostly remote team at Charter.