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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

#221

Post by FrustratedMonky »

flappyeagle wrote: post #218
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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 car…

40B out of 1.4T is 2.8% Their market cap has swung by 20x that this year. It’s fun to theorize about creepy ulterior motives but doing some basic arithmetic blows the whole thing up.

A lot of people get fired, or get promotions, based on a swing of 2.8%.

That is definitely a large enough percentage to take seriously and not call this 'Pizza Gate'.

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

#222

Post by AlbertCory »

who remembers this?

https://money.cnn.com/2013/02/25/technology/yahoo-work-from-...

pre-pandemic.

Her "reasoning" if we can call it that, was that a lot of WFH people were not at all committed to Yahoo's success (for good reason, it turns out). No one knew what they were doing.

I suspect that a really good company can manage with WFH, but a marginal one with unmotivated employees really can't. Maybe that's a good thing.

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

#223

Post by Kamq »

camgunz wrote: post #144
davidw wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who thinks that, say, Denmark is not a mixed economy with a strong bit of capitalism as well as a strong social safety net has never dealt with a kid who wants to buy lots of Lego.

There are important differences between Denmark and the US though. Aren't we saying the same thing?

> There are important differences between Denmark and the US though.

On the human level, sure. On the level of "fundamental economic system" (which is, I believe, the line of discussion), there really aren't.

They're both WEIRD countries with market based-economies and a social safety net. They both end up at the top of the lists on economic power (adjusted for population).

The differences between them are political fine-tuning of the system to target an extra 5-10% of the population with the safety net, or to target those people in different ways. That's incredibly minor in terms of economic systems.

When comparing two different economic systems, you tend to see differences on the order of "mass-famines" and "percentage of the population involved in subsistence farming".

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

#224

Post by egoregorov »

ebiester wrote: post #100
jpollock wrote: post #7

If your job can be done remote, it can be done offshore for 1/10 the cost.

The office already doesn't matter when it comes to offshoring. Companies are rarely in the same office already, and are spread across the US. Even if a team is co-located, their stakeholders aren't. Further, timezone-friendly offshoring is about 70-80% of the cost and comes with larger organizational complexity. Good (not mythical 10x, mind you - I mean good by standard definitions) developers are expensive no matter…

70-80% is incorrect, it's more like 40%. I made 22kUSD last year in Kiev. I think my colleague on same team in USA was making 65kUSD. Not SWE, just comparing numbers. I was also paid more than the average for my position/geography. I was a contractor, as was all of the UA team....don't know what coworkers arrangement was...

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

#225

Post by xyzelement »

The "article" rehashes the well repeated meme about propping up commercial real estate, with the only callout to productivity being the authors own self admitted "bullshit job".

My counter would be as someone who is loving WFH as a new dad, it is obvious to me that as a group, teams are less productive when not face to face even though individuals may think they are crushing it.

This is obvious to many people I talk to who have seen it the other way and are seeing it now from the elevated perspective.

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

#226

Post by dv_dt »

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?

Have you traced the networks of company boards where execs often sit on other boards. Or have you traced what entities actually invest in VC funds. Have you looked at relation of investment to massive private equity funds also invested strongly into real estate.

If venture funded companies actually wanted to run efficiently to maximize their investment, the the last thing many should do is setup offices in posh downtown areas, yet before all of this they often signed leases in high rent spaces. Why did you think that happened so often before this wave of remote work?

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

#227

Post by sangnoir »

gbacon wrote: post #191
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

The "misguided war on inflation" stood out to me too, because I felt the author is uninformed on economics, or some strain of radical belonging to an economic school of thought I'm not familiar with.

I must say, the past few months have been weird with employment numbers stubbornly staying high regardless of the Fed's efforts as fewer jobs are usually a second-order effect when rates are hiked. I am glad fewer people than expected are currently unemployed.

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

#228

Post by scj »

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…

Most WFH experiences at the moment are during the height of the pandemic. When people were told to limit contact with others outside their household.

That's not really representative of what it could be.

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

#229

Post by Kamq »

chanakya wrote: post #142
camgunz wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh I would say Socialism as practiced in Western Europe and the Nordics is doing better. They're out doing the US in most important metrics, and they're trending more Socialist (though we'll see what intensifying climate migration and other climate change consequences bring).

A core element of socialism is that all industries and natural resources are state-owned. European countries are capitalist, not socialist, and got where they are by being so.

Minor quibble. The industries generally need to only be "socially-owned" rather than state-owned. Though I will admit that state-ownership is the most common in practice.

More of an academic point though, as Europe, as a whole, is still basically completely capitalist under this definition as well.

Edit: An example of a socially-owned company that is not state-owned would be an employee owned company.

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

#230

Post by ip26 »

wredue wrote: post #90
kristjansson wrote: post #58

This seems needlessly class-war-monegring. People slack off at home, people slack off in the office. Everyone’s situation is not your situation. Everyone’s work does not look like your work. Some people like/want/need office space to work, some people don’t. Some people find themselves in different camps on different days. In any case, companies driving RTO are acting in their own perceived best interests, not their…

The elites are actively engaging in class war with you. I don’t understand why so many people are so quick to be little foot soldiers for the people that despise their existence.

When class war is invoked too frequently, it’s reasonable to grow suspicious about any one particular invocation without disbelieving the existence of a class war.

Prejudice exists, but if every time a protected class was not hired they shouted “prejudice!” you would not be wrong to question them.

Many of the elements of the claimed class war often struggle to pass basic sniff tests, as well. I like to think critical thinkers are naturally suspicious of grand conspiracy claims, requiring strong evidence and compelling argument.

None of this is to deny your basic premise- perhaps this truly is a manifestation of the class war- but instead to address your question.

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