Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

okdoomer.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 371 posts

Re: The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#101

Post by CPLX »

solatic wrote: post #49
CPLX wrote: post #15

This article makes no sense. I mean I'm all for a little elite run the world consipiracy theory but really, I'm supposed to think that a diffuse group of corporate leaders are upending companies so they can spend more on real estate going forward, for class solidarity reasons? The reason people running companies want to end or curtail remote work is because it's very fucking challenging to run a group of people remot…

> it's very fucking challenging to run a group of people remotely. It's very fucking hard to take a relatively random group of people who are used to working together in person, throw them behind screens with little more support than Slack and Zoom, and try to manage them remotely. It's much easier to take a group of people used to pro-active written communication, "if it's not monitored then it doesn't exist", async…

Well yeah. That's another way of saying it's hard.

Also everyone has to start somewhere and get their first job, so the idea that you just make sure everyone is really used to remote work seems to be missing some subtlety as a long term plan.

I didn't say I agree with ending remote work, I said it's really easy to understand that there might be quite a few people who sincerely think it's the best way forward.

Re: The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#102

Post by PaulHoule »

dools wrote: post #68
skwirl wrote: post #24

How are "the elite" forcing companies that do not own real estate and who rent their office space to mandate RTO? How are they forcing these companies to renew their leases when they expire?

Yeah I don’t think elon musk is sipping whisky with his landlord and the small business chamber of commerce of downtown palo alto or wherever the “X” office is conspiring to bring the workers back into the office. He’s just a myopic asshole.

The currency of elites is deference. One of the reasons why Musk can get away with so much is that other powerful people don't want to check him because they're afraid that other people will check them. By showing deference you preserve deference for yourself.

When other important people line up with Musk it is not because they are sipping whisky together, instead they are lining up like iron filings in the field of a magnet.

Re: The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#103

Post by dragonwriter »

bperki8 wrote: post #91
dragonwriter wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The “elites”? That’s a funny term for people who own commercial real estate You think commercial real estate isn’t disproportionately owned, directly or indirectly, by the narrow haut bourgeoisie ?

Where did I express any distaste for actually descriptive terms like "bourgeoisie"? Only on the Internet is purposefully misconstruing someone's statement seen as a valid method of communication.

> Where did I express any distaste for actually descriptive terms like “bourgeoisie”?

Who do you think the elite in a capitalist society are? “Elite” is accurate and descriptive, and more common in casual conversation, than, e.g., “haut bourgeoisie”.

(And “bourgeoisie” alone is different, as it includes the petit bourgeoisie, who are both less of an elite, though still one compared to the proletariat, and much less significant in terms of the thing being discussed, control of commercial real-estate.)

Re: The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#104

Post by lazyant »

lagniappe wrote: post #44
kubb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds about right, my manager enjoys tennis, frequent coffee breaks, one or two light meetings, and he activates with out of touch "ideas" in the last hour of the day. It's ridiculous.

I thought this type of stuff only existed in movies. Just curious, can you elaborate at all? I'm wondering if I'm just blind to this stuff assuming everyone else is nose-to-the-grindstone all day too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagull_management

Re: The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#105

Post by aenis »

kolbe wrote: post #76
skwirl wrote: post #24

How are "the elite" forcing companies that do not own real estate and who rent their office space to mandate RTO? How are they forcing these companies to renew their leases when they expire?

This question should have made the author delete this essay, and is why it has no business being promoted on a supposedly legitimate aggregator like hacker news. The author is either a straight up liar working to subvert what little is left of American capitalism. Or they're a conspiracy theory whacko who doesn't know the slightest thing about "the elite," or any of the people/factions that comprise it.

Yeah maybe, but maybe its helpful to think what the holders of commercial real estate debt do to avoid the catastrophe? Surely, they are not just sitting and waiting. The offices are empty. The companies are doing just fine. There need to be external pressures applied to bring people back to the offices, I'd think.

Re: The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#106

Post by downrightmike »

moshun wrote: post #25
jimbob45 wrote: post #4

We’re afraid of the companies who offshored so many jobs that they killed off entire industries in the US? There’s nothing they won’t do for a buck. If remote work doesn’t happen now, it will in the near future when they realize how much they can save on real estate costs.

The problem is that lots of wealth capital (both personal and corporate) is tied up in commercial real estate. It’s the reason everyone from Martha Stewart to Musk to hedge fund managers are screaming about how “unethical” remote work is. They literally can’t afford to have those buildings sit empty, so they will have to force the peons back into them by any means necessary.

Peonage, also called debt slavery or debt servitude, is a system where an employer compels a worker to pay off a debt with work. Legally, peonage was outlawed by Congress in 1867.

Re: The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#107

Post by FirmwareBurner »

bobthepanda wrote: post #99
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Unions. From my recent experience, unions can't help you keep remote work they way they work here today. I work(ed) at a unionized German company and when management call everyone back to the office after the Covid vaccination was done, it wasn't protested by the unions and everyone sowed up at the office without protest, and remote work was kept as "in case of emergency" perk you can get every now and then if you g…

They can if they care; New York City’s municipal employee union negotiated just that. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/17/nyregion/adams-remote-wor...

Municipal and government workers are different, as they can always demand whatever they want because they don't have competition and don't need to turn a profit so you're stuck with them whether you like it or not. What else are you gonna do, get your permit from another country's government? The government's monopoly is the real leverage here.

Re: The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#108

Post by adamnemecek »

bperki8 wrote: post #87
adamnemecek wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it goes beyond that. Your average pointy haired boss loves asses in seats.

Not sure how your comment makes it any less strange to call these people "elite".

Elites are fundamentally people who have power over you. Your boss has power over you.

Re: The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#109

Post by d_theorist »

skwirl wrote: post #24

How are "the elite" forcing companies that do not own real estate and who rent their office space to mandate RTO? How are they forcing these companies to renew their leases when they expire?

Let me tell you how all this works: you see, Team America is funded by the corporations, so they fight for the corporations... while they sit in their corporation buildings... and they're all corporation-y... and they make lots of money!

Re: The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#110

Post by camgunz »

skwirl wrote: post #24

How are "the elite" forcing companies that do not own real estate and who rent their office space to mandate RTO? How are they forcing these companies to renew their leases when they expire?

Shareholders, local/state governments that are basically in the grip of developers and real estate investors/landlords, Wall Street, cocktail parties, (bad) middle managers rioting, the feeling that if your underlings have all the freedoms you have they're less like underlings and more like peers, the usual class warfare stuff.
Post reply on HN