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

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

#191

Post by gbacon »

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?

Anecdotes about "trust fund kids," asserting a "misguided war on inflation," and a vague conspiracy of unidentified landlords make the post seem more like a rant than serious economic analysis.

Perhaps the author missed "US inflation means families are spending $709 more per month than two years ago" here at HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37112604

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

#192

Post by FrustratedMonky »

flappyeagle wrote: post #179
lamontcg wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big fortune 100 tech companies are also commercial real estate owners and landlords. Look at all the buildings that Amazon owns and subleases in Seattle. Those executives absolutely have an incentive to be pushing RTO because of their commercial real estate risk. They also have an outsized bullhorn and the industry tends to watch what they do and report over what they do, and they have PR budgets which can get ar…

[flagged]

>"Stop repeating this meme."

LOL.

It's literally the subject of the article. Empty Corporate Real-estate, offices, is driving a Return to Work effort by those corporations. So many people here are saying it is a 'conspiracy theory' hence not true. Many financial news outlets have reported on this, the properties are public knowledge.

Even Amazon does check its bottom line from time to time. It is possible they do care about hits to it. They aren't so profitable that they don't care about expenses.

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

#193

Post by bobthepanda »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #159
kelnos wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many industries (in the US at least) are dominated by union labor. Some jobs even require union membership, even if you don't want to join the union. So these companies simply can't avoid union workers if they actually want staff.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but to my knowledge, unions in the US function very differently than unions in Germany/Europe. In Germany, the unions function more as partners of the business owners and collaborate together on finding the general compromise that won't disturb company profits or the way the business operates, while in the US it seems like unions must treat the business like antagonists even at the sake of co…

Generally speaking one major reason is that union representatives are also on company boards in the Europe. This gives them skin in the game and also the same knowledge that gets shared to the rest of the board. And they generally err on the side of employment; American unions have threatened, and successfully, brought down companies that ceased to be a going concern due to demanding unreasonable concessions. (See: Yellow Trucking)

But German unions are also very subservient given their tacit approvals of things like Agenda 2010.

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

#195

Post by DonsDiscountGas »

warning26 wrote: post #133
ben_w wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In principle it could be straight up targeted propaganda "making" the bosses do that. I have no idea if the reality is more that, or more the banal "nobody is organising anything like this and suggestions to the contrary are just conspiracy theories, the bosses genuinely believe what they're saying". I currently have a boss who appears to sincerely want people back in the office; he doesn't want to be the CEO of a 10…

I feel like often article-writers miss the fact of people like your boss: some people just legitimately like being in an office and there's no conspiracy to speak of. As someone who likes being in an office, I personally feel that everyone becoming permanent WFH basement gremlins is a bad thing overall. Human contact is a good thing , and my observations of people who are 100% WFH is that they almost never interact w…

Being forced to interact with people one doesn't like, and having to perform work theater to maintain ones livelihood, is not a good thing for many people.

Besides which, WFH means more time with the family (also human contact) and skipping the commute means more time around people whose presence one actually enjoys.

All that said, I tend to agree with your point that people pushing RTO more due to their personal ideology (which clearly I do not share) rather than some grand conspiracy around real-estate.

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

#197

Post by Jcowell »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #74
brentm wrote: post #32

Bad take. There are plenty of dumb reasons people are wanted back at the office but the most predominant one is probably that it just "feels like" it will make your company better. I'd think people would be happy that at least some remote work will never go away at this point. To argue that you should never ever even have to consider going back into an office for any amount of time is just silly. But to also argue yo…

our lab just got dinged by an employee who was trying to hold got another full time job on the down low....something that would have been caught if the work was in person.

Your problem isn’t that this employee got another job, it’s if their performance and work suffers for it. if they somehow are able to do both then your company is lucky they have an incredible employee and should be liking for means to retain them

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

#198

Post by ip26 »

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.

I theorize the prevalence depends on factors like how competitive the market is. In a highly competitive market, the organization can’t tolerate gross failure for very long without failing, so it either manages this kind of person out or does not survive.

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

#199

Post by lost_tourist »

itronitron wrote: post #38

As for myself, I'd prefer to not bail out commercial real estate in order to prop up the economies of major metropolitan areas that will be inundated with sea water in the next decade. I think we can do better.

They said they be inundated 10 years ago and 10 years before that, especially Miami. Make of that what you will.

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

#200

Post by FrustratedMonky »

stanleydrew wrote: post #23

This isn't particularly well-argued. Just a lot of handwavy grievance about "elites" as though there's some kind of coordinated conspiracy.

This isn't the first article on this.

A lot of financial news outlets have been pointing out the risk of corporate real estate risks.

Making the connection to back-to-office doesn't have to be a coordinated conspiracy.

It just has to be a few middle managers being like "Hey Bob in Dev, this is Steve from Operations, I'm in a real bind with the empty office on 5th, can you see about filling it. Sure Man."

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