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Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

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Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#771

Post by melagonster »

rayiner wrote: post #575
ElFitz wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 150k-250k analyst isn’t upper class. Nor is it really middle-class (although that would depend on the cost of living). It’s that weird in-between, where one still needs to earn a living and make even more money for someone else. A 25M / year CEO is far past "earning a living" and really only works because they want to.

This recent (and self-serving) tendency of reducing “class” to only the extremely wealthy and everyone else is reductive and obscures important economic dynamics. It’s ridiculous to treat a master plumber that owns a plumbing business as “bourgeoise” while treating an Amazon engineer who has tremendous human capital as being a “proletariat.” Even in Marx’s time, there was substantial debate about how to classify the…

you mentioned that extremely wealthy, I don't think any plumber can have extremely wealthy.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#772

Post by jjav »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #30

People who like WFH will never want to return to the office unless perhaps the office is a 5 minute walk from home (they may be forced to, but they won't want to). For many people the time and cost savings of avoiding a daily commute cannot be offset by a nicer office. Those who are happy to return to the office in general are those who do not like WFH and prefer more contacts and a change of scenery. A nicer office…

> A nicer office makes things better but it will not change people's minds on WFH.

Disagree with caveats. A nice private office makes a world of difference. I'll do a lot (in time and/or money) to have a nice private office where I can actually work (which requires silence).

Working remotely is awesome but not literally from home. With a family, that's too distracting. Since the pandemic, I rent a small private office walking distance from home. It's a great arrangement, I'm very close to the house, can walk or bike there, private window office. But the downside is that it costs money (lease, utilities, internet). And for meetings I'm still stuck in a little zoom box.

If the company offered a nice private office, I'd take that. I'd save the costs and I could have a silent private space to work but still be able to step outside and have meetings in person. The tradeoff is a longer commute but as long as it's not too horrible, I'd take it.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#773

Post by cdme »

xyzzy4747 wrote: post #701
cdme wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing an office can provide me that's better than the moments I have during the WFH day with our infant son as he grows.

Same, I have a 2 month old son. Nothing could bring me back to the office (extremely unrealistic compensation figures aside).

Congrats! Ours is 7 months and being there for everything has been a joy.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#774

Post by swishman »

peatmoss wrote: post #505
Analemma_ wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft used to do this. Famously, they had private offices for a long time while all the competition was open-office plans. They've scaled this way back in recent years though (to much complaining, albeit totally ignored, from employees). Whether this means the brainworms got to them too or they actually have the numbers to prove that private offices aren't worth the expense, I don't know.

In my first job after college, I worked at a federal agency where people had cubicles carved out of traditional large offices. It was actually kind of nice, because you worked with people in your office, but had some separation from them as well. The peons all had desktop computers, while middle management had clunky laptops with docking stations. You knew who the executives were by their small laptops that were clea…

Just leave your laptop at work, I’ve done that plenty of times

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#775

Post by sheepscreek »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #461
ElFitz wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 150k-250k analyst isn’t upper class. Nor is it really middle-class (although that would depend on the cost of living). It’s that weird in-between, where one still needs to earn a living and make even more money for someone else. A 25M / year CEO is far past "earning a living" and really only works because they want to.

A junior analyst at Goldman Sachs who's having lunch in the Hamptons, in a restaurant the CEO also goes to, is probably upper class, just very young/recenly graduated though we don't know the details. Social class is not just about your current salary, although 200k soon after graduation isn't exactly 'average'... Some might even say that walking up to the CEO like that indicates upper class self-assurance...

I like to believe the analyst likely came from money. The son of another executive possibly? Which would explain why he was at this restaurant in the Hamptons. And likely why he didn’t flinch to introduce himself.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#776

Post by philwelch »

closeparen wrote: post #572
philwelch wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyway, I'm thinking more about city dwellers who generally live in apartments. That’s a lifestyle that makes significantly less sense for remote workers in the long run though.

If you are content to have your household and neighbors as your entire social world.

I know lots of people with very active social lives who don’t live in city apartments. If anything, I’ve found city folk to be less sociable.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#777

Post by fbdab103 »

supergeek133 wrote: post #488
steveBK123 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My vaguely populist take is that the pandemic, WFH/remote and hybrid gave the mass white collar class a taste of what the C-suite has had for years.. flexibility. Sure, these guys might go into the office but they do so from their pied-a-terre / 3rd home / whatever within a 5 minute chauffeured drive. They do this while maintaining a nearby suburban/exurban estate and maybe a lake/beach/ski houses where they spend th…

This is actually a decent take. Most of our C-Suite doesn't live near an office. Or, to be specific WE MOVED HQ to where they wanted to live. We have other VPs and whatnot who live not near an office, or have winter/summer homes they go back and forth from. Meanwhile our mandatory "3 days a week in the office" starts September.

We installed a helicopter pad so our leadership could literally fly to/from his condo.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#778

Post by rayiner »

ElFitz wrote: post #769
rayiner wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This recent (and self-serving) tendency of reducing “class” to only the extremely wealthy and everyone else is reductive and obscures important economic dynamics. It’s ridiculous to treat a master plumber that owns a plumbing business as “bourgeoise” while treating an Amazon engineer who has tremendous human capital as being a “proletariat.” Even in Marx’s time, there was substantial debate about how to classify the…

If you want to get pedantic, we could more precisely define the upper-class as those who extract value from others, and the lower classes as those from which said value is extracted from. Were we to push that to the extreme, the only upper-class at Goldman Sachs would be retirees, either as direct shareholders or as beneficiaries of some pension fund. Even if they were lower middle-class Americans living in an old ag…

A farmer’s dog may be eating the scraps, but has a fundamentally different role in the farm as an enterprise than the animals the dog is herding.

By your value-extraction definition, Sundar Pichai isn’t upper class. He doesn’t make money from his ownership of the capital—he owns a negligible share of Alphabet. Instead, he helps the shareholders extract more value from Alphabet and is compensated for that work. A definition that excludes CEOs from the upper class isn’t a very workable one.

I think a more useful definition recognizes that, in between shareholders and the workers is a class of people who help the shareholders extract more value from the enterprise, and therefore has interests closely aligned with those of the shareholders. For example in a company like Uber, that’s what the programmers are doing. They’re not creating value, they’re building systems to extract more value from the drivers.

Another way to look at it is that there’s a large class of people whose jobs wouldn’t be nearly as well compensated without monopolistic capitalism. $500,000/year Facebook engineers only exist because Facebook as an enterprise throws off enormous amounts of cash. If you look at more social-democratic societies, the biggest difference isn’t at the very top. Sweden and Norway have more billionaires per capita than the United States. Instead, the biggest difference is in the professional class. Swedish engineers (and bankers and lawyers and other professionals) make a fraction of what their American counterparts make. And that’s because Sweden has far fewer of these insanely high margin businesses.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#779

Post by abenga »

ThunderSizzle wrote: post #745
astockwell wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A recent HN comment on another post highlighted the irony of corporate messaging: “Come back to the office” “We’ll be resuming periodic Active Shooter drills”

Best part is when the employer's advice for an active shooter is hope they don't shoot you while you hide and wait. Most handbooks don't permit weapons. My home's policy is the active shooter gets shot immediately until they are no longer a threat.

Wow. Sounds dystopic over there.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#780

Post by throwaway290 »

mfitton wrote: post #634
throwaway290 wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How horrible are those offices people talk about (I guess in US)? Is it really the norm that people look over your shoulder? I like when it's quiet and private but I also like to come work from an office... Even though it's a basic small shared space and I literally work from my laptop (can't be bothered to hook up the screen etc). I do like not having to do it every day so I am free to come or not but I look forward…

At my place, there are desks (about 4 feet wide, set in rows of 6, with people's backs facing each other and no dividers). There are about 200 desks, and about 250 employees. Desks need to be reserved, keyboard, mouse and charger all need to be brought by the employee to their desk each day. 50 or so people don't get desks and have to sit on couches, stools in the kitchen with no backs, or the floor. The CEO said tha…

Ouch. I see why people would WFH...
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