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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

#261

Post by moonchrome »

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…

I also believe COVID fucked productivity globally and executives thought it was a temporary thing due to measures in place.

But I feel like COVID situation triggered stuff that either accelerated existing trends or introduced new problems, and I don't think there's going back.

People quoting productivity drops from new hires during COVID omit insane hiring in tech - implying that remote work is to blame and not their structure inability to scale to utilize those unprecedented numbers of new hires productively. Especially since most of the hiring was aimless "we need to grow headcount to capture the market growth". People getting paid serious money to literally sit around. That's going to cascade in other ways - I feel like entire industry standard of acceptable delivery sinked

Getting people back to the office sounds like a nice narrative because it's relatively easy to fix and corelate.

It's also, conveniently, entirely not the fault of upper management for insane over hiring and underutilization.

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

#262

Post by camgunz »

rsynnott wrote: post #247
camgunz wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I'm saying: - there are big differences between US capitalism and European social democracy - European social democracies are trending more socialist all the time > European countries are capitalist, not socialist, and got where they are by being so. Ehhhh communist movements, multiple devastating wars, and unions had a hand in it too.

> - European social democracies are trending more socialist all the time Eh? Which ones? As a European this is very much news to be; not much seizing of the means of production going on. If anything, some divesting of the means of production; heavily regulated privatisation of state energy, transport etc monopolies has been going on all over Western Europe for a while. I realise that in the US, the colloquial definit…

There's a recent rightward shift for sure, but long term benefits are increasing, unions are gaining power, and you're seeing people use democracy to force industry to adopt green policies. This is the power dynamic described by socialism: people control companies, not the other way around.

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

#263

Post by rsynnott »

PaulHoule wrote: post #131

The politics of entitlement plays large in cities. The LIRR thinks that commuters exist to fund the LIRR, not that they exist to serve commuters. (Sometimes that seems true about public transit everywhere. Similar changing the psychology of this could be transformational.) I remember a state assemblywomen from Queens who thought that, to protect jobs, NY state should subsidize off track betting , not even the racetra…

> Some people in urban areas who are paying $90 a month for 10x the bandwidth speed I pay $240 a month for think they are paying too much. In principle their "last mile" might be 20 feet as opposed to my 2000 feet. The trouble is that 20 feet will cost as much to cover because of all the palms they have to grease to cover it (landlords, unions, community groups, etc.) Contrast that to a rural area where people will grease the skids for you.

Eh… do you have evidence for this, or is it just what you believe to be true? In general, if it _was_ true, you’d expect competition to provide you with cheaper bandwidth than them.

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

#264

Post by camgunz »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #242
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).

> Eh I would say Socialism as practiced in Western Europe and the Nordics is doing better It is not an easy comparison. They have the luxury of the US taxpayers taking care of their defense while they propped up Russia, which US is also paying the most by a large margin to fix now [1, 2, 3]. Hilariously US socialists are against US defense spending except when it comes to US spending on Europe. They also have the lux…

Arguably the US caused the Russia problem with the aggressive expansion of NATO, and the failure to defend Crimea, so this seems fair. Also the US produces a bonkers amount of oil; dunno what your point is here.

EDIT: how could I forget Trump's undermining of NATO, cozying up to Russia, and withholding aid to Ukraine?

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

#265

Post by rhaway84773 »

camgunz wrote: post #150
chanakya wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, I'm saying: - there are big differences between US capitalism and European social democracy - European social democracies are trending more socialist all the time > European countries are capitalist, not socialist, and got where they are by being so. Ehhhh communist movements, multiple devastating wars, and unions had a hand in it too.

https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking

This is a ranking of economic freedom which strongly aligns with capitalism. The U.S. ranks 25th behind European countries like Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Germany, Iceland, etc.

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

#266

Post by rsynnott »

unnouinceput wrote: post #176
Boxxed wrote: post #128

I'm not sure I can make the mental leap that CEOs are making decisions based on what's best for their landlords.

You can if you understand that the landlords are their friends and part of their network. They have common interests and move in the same circles.

I mean in most cases their landlord is going to be a REIT or similar, owned by pension funds and the like, one of the most faceless corporate entities out there. The REIT doesn’t play much golf. Most truly large landlords aren’t comedy plutocrats holding large sacks of cash (though, interestingly, medium-sized landlords often _are_; it’s a profession that attracts real life cartoon villains).

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

#267

Post by slily »

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…

I've had the same experience at a fully remote company, working for short periods face to face once or twice a year clarified a ton of stuff and made me far more productive than normal during and after the event. I have never felt more productive working remotely, except when I want to concentrate on a task that is already laid out and have to deal with distractions of an open environment.

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

#268

Post by camgunz »

rhaway84773 wrote: post #265
camgunz wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I'm saying: - there are big differences between US capitalism and European social democracy - European social democracies are trending more socialist all the time > European countries are capitalist, not socialist, and got where they are by being so. Ehhhh communist movements, multiple devastating wars, and unions had a hand in it too.

https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking This is a ranking of economic freedom which strongly aligns with capitalism. The U.S. ranks 25th behind European countries like Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Germany, Iceland, etc.

It looks like this ranks things like freedom to invest, trade, etc., none of which are incompatible with socialism.

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

#269

Post by gdubs »

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…

You're missing an obvious real estate incentive: where people live. Often in very nice school districts, which they don't want to see depreciate in value due to an outflow of people to different communities. People moving into rust belt cities and revitalizing them is great for the nation, but may come at the expense of someone who's highly leveraged into a $6m 3 bedroom in the Bay Area.

If productivity were the goal, then open plan offices would have been abandoned a decade ago after the nth study showing how poor they are for worker health, happiness, and productivity.

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

#270

Post by hodgesrm »

hodgesrm wrote: post #245
deet wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> But there is direct evidence that politicians are influencing corporations to alter return to office policies: But no evidence that this is related to property values alone or even in large part. SF is desperate to ensure the downtown does not enter a full-on doom loop which would impact all businesses as well as anyone who lives there or visits regularly. [0] Other knock-on effects include BART facing severe finan…

p.s., Rather than downvoting it would be more productive to supply evidence of contrary views. I'm happy to be proven wrong. It happens constantly.
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