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The war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

the-sentinel-intelligence.com

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

#91

Post by Ekaros »

jaggederest wrote: post #44
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, these articles always just make me face palm because the authors never manage a cogent argument about who is making the actual RTO decisions and who cares about commercial real estate values. It's much easier just to chalk it up to the nebulous and scary "elites" and then the authors don't have to do any actual research. For one, look at the expenses of some of the large tech companies that often make the fr…

If you're a C-level at a Fortune 50 company, some massive percentage of your personal assets, if they're invested in the stock market or private equity, are in commercial real estate. There's no mystery here. People with assets want those assets to remain valuable, and act directly to reinforce it. This is why we don't let athletes bet on their own games. > Point being, no sane CEO would demand RTO to "prop up commer…

For CEOs their compensation is based on their company's stock performance and probably also most significant part of their holdings is also same company stock. So optimising for price of that stock either in short or long term is much more important than any other investment.

So most decisions are taken to increase that stock value, if RTO negatively affects it, but props up other investments it is probably sub-optimal for them.

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

#92

Post by chii »

maratc wrote: post #85
cyclonereef wrote: post #38

The idea that there's a global cabal of ultra-wealthy real-estate owners who have globally conspired to control people to go back to the office holds about as much weight in my mind as the idea that there's a global cabal of ultra-wealthy who have globally conspired to create a virus to control the population. Covid was an outlier event, and the outcomes that occurred as a result of it will revert to the mean over ti…

The conspiracy theories are frequently based on the optimistic idea that the world is under somebody's control. Mind you, it's a bad control, but the idea is still optimistic because we can theoretically have a revolution and put it under "good" control. The reality is much more depressing -- nobody is in the control. Not the Illuminati, not the Jewish bankers, and not the C-level executives conspiring to force RTO t…

> put it under "good" control.

which implicitly means "their own" control!

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

#94

Post by jaggederest »

erwald wrote: post #86
jaggederest wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all the people you'd expect, some purpose-built REITs, big investment firms and private equity, Blackrock, Blackstone and other wealth management, the larger investment banks and the commercial mortgage paper owners are also directly invested (double dipping just like we saw in 2008, where banks would buy mortgages and also leverage those mortgages with derivatives) Many of them are some of the companies that wa…

Do you have any evidence to back these claims up? (genuinely curious)

You can look at who owns what in their portfolios, none of this is especially private information. They publish it all online. I literally just googled "who owns the most commercial real estate" and "commercial real estate bond ownership amounts" and things like that. It's not subtle, companies tout their ownership percentages and REITs list their investors.

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

#96

Post by ed_mercer »

dmazzoni wrote: post #51

I don't understand the logic behind this argument. Yes, some people made a bet on office real estate, and they're in a bad position right now. But those aren't the same people who are running businesses that use those offices. Why would most businesses care if real estate is propped up or not? How would increasing utilization of their buildings actually help them?

I guess the argument is that business leaders feel that their unused office space is a waste and/or they want to exercise more control as mentioned in other comments.

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

#97

Post by jaggederest »

chii wrote: post #87
jaggederest wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a C-level at a Fortune 50 company, some massive percentage of your personal assets, if they're invested in the stock market or private equity, are in commercial real estate. There's no mystery here. People with assets want those assets to remain valuable, and act directly to reinforce it. This is why we don't let athletes bet on their own games. > Point being, no sane CEO would demand RTO to "prop up commer…

> act directly to reinforce it. any real evidence of this will be easily evidence for a breach in fiduciary duty of the ceo towards the shareholders. RTO can be seen as costing more money, and likely reduce productivity, force attrition (of the best employees), etc.

> RTO can be seen as costing more money, and likely reduce productivity, force attrition (of the best employees), etc.

Or they can say "We think it will be mildly accretive for the investors and create synergies in collaboration and creativity" and if the board agrees, who will gainsay them? We're not talking about drastic shifts in policy for most of these companies, it doesn't take much more than a little bias one way or the other to tip the decision.

It doesn't even have to be deliberate and conscious, if their wealth managers say "Boy the commercial real estate market is tanking, remote work is a disaster" that's enough to mildly influence behavior.

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

#99

Post by mgh95 »

bjornsing wrote: post #89
klodolph wrote: post #10

I’ve heard this argument before and I don’t buy it. By that, I mean it may be true (that people want to prop up real estate prices), but I don’t think that this is enough of an explanation. If it were just about real estate, then Amazon would not be calling for 5 days a week return-to-office. I don’t think real estate interests are powerful enough to push Amazon around and I don’t think they’re entrenched enough in A…

I talked to an acquaintance who ran a startup that went remote during the pandemic. His view was that the self-motivated conscientious employees were just as productive remote as they were in the office, if not more. The problem was that when they left the office the people in the office became less productive. To me that makes a lot of sense and aligns well with my experience of office life. Some people depend on se…

I think a lot of this comes down to perception of ROI for management. If the employment market is giving you qualified candidates at the price you seek in-office, why would you expose yourself to risk? I'm in this situation now where I'm hiring early employees and looking to grow, and about 90% of the decisions is how well can I derisk this hire.

I don't need elite developers; I need competent, conscientious "75%" developers. It doesn't make sense to spend time interviewing, onboarding, and hiring, just to expose myself to another risk factor.

Your friend was probably not thinking "fair" or "unfair", rather, what is the employment market bringing him.

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

#100

Post by jaggederest »

Ekaros wrote: post #91
jaggederest wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a C-level at a Fortune 50 company, some massive percentage of your personal assets, if they're invested in the stock market or private equity, are in commercial real estate. There's no mystery here. People with assets want those assets to remain valuable, and act directly to reinforce it. This is why we don't let athletes bet on their own games. > Point being, no sane CEO would demand RTO to "prop up commer…

For CEOs their compensation is based on their company's stock performance and probably also most significant part of their holdings is also same company stock. So optimising for price of that stock either in short or long term is much more important than any other investment. So most decisions are taken to increase that stock value, if RTO negatively affects it, but props up other investments it is probably sub-optim…

> if RTO negatively affects it, but props up other investments it is probably sub-optimal for them.

What if it doesn't? What if they believe it's neutral, or the effects are unknown?

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