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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

#251

Post by rhaway84773 »

deet wrote: post #157
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.

The article is not well argued, yes. But there is direct evidence that politicians are influencing corporations to alter return to office policies: - Mayor of SF asking businesses to pledge to implement RTO policies: https://sfist.com/2022/03/03/mayor-breed-would-like-you-back... - Mayor of NYC basically doing the same: https://archive.is/si6xd

Neither mayor has any power to affect this. Further, the SF link is from March of last year. The WFH push didn’t start until earlier this year, coinciding with the softening job market.

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

#252

Post by FirmwareBurner »

bobthepanda wrote: post #193
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: Y…

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

My point exactly. Unions aren't here to fight for even better working conditions for you like mandatory WFH for everyone, but just to overwatch to make sure the company adheres to existing labor regulations. That's it.

So yeah, unions are relatively toothless and the QoL and the living standards of the working class in Germany has been on the decline for a while.

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

#253

Post by egl2021 »

nathias wrote: post #160

personally I can do about 2x-4x of the work remotely compared to working in office

Can your boss tell? If they can, then you have no problem. If they can't, then you have a problem.

This is the other side of "I'm so much more productive with WFH". Everyone who values WFH should be asking themselves how they will help their company measure productivity. Over time companies will find new ways to manage productivity, possibly by restructuring work to make measurement easier even if the tasks have to change or by reducing labor costs to make unit productivity less important.

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

#254

Post by rsynnott »

DonsDiscountGas wrote: post #206
flappyeagle wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

According to [0], Amazon owns $40B in real estate. Which isn't a lot compared to a $1.4T market cap. OTOH, if the cost of pushing people to RTO is less than $40B it's still worth it. [0] https://azbigmedia.com/real-estate/how-much-land-does-amazon...

Amazon’s an outlier here, though. Most office-oriented employers lease most or all of their space.

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

#255

Post by trzy »

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?

IIRC, prior to the pandemic, Apple implemented a freeze on leasing new office space in the bay area. Big companies are definitely incentivized to cut down on RE expenses.

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

#256

Post by sgt101 »

xyzelement wrote: post #225

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…

YMMV - it's not obvious to me. Almost no team I have worked in has been f2f due to offshoring and geographical distribution of functions in big companies. Only small companies can really do co-location.

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

#257

Post by camgunz »

Kamq wrote: post #223
camgunz wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There are large differences though. The US poverty rate is 2.5x higher than Denmark's (15% to 6%). Denmark's life expectancy is 6 years longer. The kinds of policies you'd need to close that gap in the US would be transformative.

> 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".

There are plenty of capitalist countries that do a lot of subsistence farming.

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

#258

Post by lumost »

missedthecue wrote: post #250
rsynnott wrote: post #238

This is a very popular idea, but it doesn’t make a huge amount of _sense_. Most office-oriented employers don’t own much if any real estate; they lease it. And unless they’re really huge, what _they_ do has very little influence on the price of real estate generally; they’ve no individual incentive here. Arguably a mild counter—incentive; it’s generally to their benefit, as renters of real estate, if future real-esta…

Wouldn't it make more sense for the wall street shareholders of the companies to end the office leases and put the resulting freed-up money into extra dividends? I agree, it sounds like a conspiracy theory. Not a lot of evidence.

The divergence between small and large firms tells the story here. Small firms don't own their real estate and are cutting as fast as they can. Large firms who own are forcing their employees back to the office. We'll see in 20 years which is the better play.

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

#260

Post by raydev »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #240
xyzelement wrote: post #225

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…

I've been working on an app, with a small team, of [mostly] non-tech folks. Most of our interactions are messaging (Slack, IM, etc.), with occasional Zoom calls. I T . I S . V E R Y , V E R Y , S L O W . I have never worked this slowly in my life. I literally cannot rush ahead, at my usual pace, because I make assumptions that are often wrong. A few days ago, we had an in-person meeting, at a local diner, and talked…

> A few days ago, we had an in-person meeting, at a local diner, and talked about the app for a couple of hours.

What is your team doing differently with video calls that you don't end them with a complete list of items for everyone?

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