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The war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

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

#191
Definitely soft layoffs when it comes to Amazon.

In their last earnings call, their AWS operating income increased $4billion to $9.3 billion, they said it's driven by "our continued focus on cost control, including a measured pace of hiring."

That is a dramatic jump in returns, they will squeeze that until the gains from doing so are minimal, implying that specific cost base is then efficient.

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

#192
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, maybe not. However, management bought 8 hours of your time and not 4 when they hired you.

Tech jobs, especially in California, usually hire you for all your time. If your work requires overtime, you work overtime without getting paid overtime. This is called an “exempt” job. So the times you’re off on the weekends doing no work is valuable to the company because you’re recharging your mind and possibly also thinking about problems subconsciously. I went to check my job offer, and it doesn’t mention anythi…

Your "usually" is untrue, most countries have 40 hours per week enshrined into their labor laws.

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

#193

Yes, commercial real estate is hurting but that is only one component of the bigger picture. Everyone in the surrounding area finds it desperately hard to make ends meet. The restaurants and cafes, the minimarts, the cleaners, janitors, security, various stores: clothing, bookshops, bakeries etc. All these people lose their jobs and for the small independent Stores where the owners have poured in their savings they l…

Yes, this is undoubtedly also a factor. Cities offer incentives to these large companies to open offices because they have an impact on their surroundings (see [1]). Workers support surrounding businesses; with the workers at home, these businesses must surely struggle. I can't imagine that the cities are not putting pressure on the large companies to bring workers back to the offices.

[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/making-sense/heres-what...

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

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no conspiracy theory here. Most people will work 4 hour work days when working remotely. (And if they're working an 8 hour work day it's because they're working two remote jobs at the same time.) "No loss of productivity" is a flat out lie.

How much of your 8 hours at the office is productive work? In my experience, half the day is spent on coffee breaks and lunch anyway.

> How much of your 8 hours at the office is productive work?

That's your management's problem, not yours. Your labor contract says that you owe the company your time, how they use it is not your business.

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

#195
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you link some think tank pieces arguing against remote work? I tried looking but couldn't find any. I found a few things but clearly none of these are part of an anti remote work effort: an AEI interview https://www.aei.org/workforce-development/the-future-of-remo... which seems pretty balanced overall (and doesn't take a prescriptive position) an AEI piece https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/the-trade-o…

> Can you link some think tank pieces arguing against remote work? That's not the argument I made in my comment. I simply noted that if anyone wanted to hire a group to argue for (or against) remote work then such groups already exist and have done for decades. If there's a coordinated press placing of "back to work" articles then the starting point would be all the articles that make that case (or talk about that su…

You were responding to a comment saying the world is not so coordinated by giving some examples of how coordination might happen. I gave some evidence that coordination of the type you mentioned does not seem to happen, at least for the topic being discussed, suggesting that the world is indeed not so coordinated (at least in this instance).

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

#196

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…

There is no conspiracy theory here. Most people will work 4 hour work days when working remotely. (And if they're working an 8 hour work day it's because they're working two remote jobs at the same time.) "No loss of productivity" is a flat out lie.

How do you know this "most" stat?

And if there are people working 4 hours a day remotely, how productive do you think those same people are just because they're sat in an office?

Nutshell: I think this is a nonsense argument.

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

#197

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…

You miss a part: it's not just real estate. If we WFH, we own homes, not in dense cities. If we own homes we start having maybe a shed with p.v. and storage, a homelab, which with modern FTTH connections could be a small machine room alike datacenter, which with modern tech could be a part of a decentralized network so the SME/startup instead of buying someone else resources in the cloud buy their employees resources in their home at similar rates and equal reliability but with much more balance of power and much less private censorship possible (like arbitrary PayPal and co blocking of payments for Wikileaks or porn-producers). In such setup who will rent a Waymo? Who wont a more shiny macrobug aka smartphone? Who want JustEat or Uber?

We will came back quickly in a real modern "StrongTown" economy, of many SMEs fighting with their dynamism, instead of creating slaves with taxes and rents to keep people moving. We will really implement the Green New Deal because we can't in a modern dense city without rebuild it from the ground, but we can for small buildings. We re-create the middle class society instead of the neofeudal society of giants and neoproletarian poor.

Real estate is the most immediate threat for the giants, but not the only.

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

#198
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I meant evidence of them campaigning, or financing/instigating campaigns, against remote work, thereby influencing decisions of companies to implement "back to work" policies. ETA: I agree that you did not say this was happening in your original comment, but it seems to me your comment implied that these companies were actually influencing major decisions (since that's the topic of the OP).

https://nypost.com/2022/09/07/blackrocks-larry-fink-vows-har...

Blackrock is a major institutional investor in just about every company, so they have press and backchannel effects. I assume similar things happen with e.g. vanguard and big ibanks. I know Jamie Dimon has been railing about RTO for a while.

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

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no conspiracy theory here. Most people will work 4 hour work days when working remotely. (And if they're working an 8 hour work day it's because they're working two remote jobs at the same time.) "No loss of productivity" is a flat out lie.

How do you know this "most" stat? And if there are people working 4 hours a day remotely, how productive do you think those same people are just because they're sat in an office? Nutshell: I think this is a nonsense argument.

It's not a nonsense argument.

If you're sitting in an office twiddling your thumbs for 4 hours a day you're not defrauding your employer.

If you're at home working a second job (or mowing your lawn) for 4 hours a day then you're committing fraud and violating your contract with your employer.

Fundamentally it's a legal issue about fraud.

If you want remote work then you need a very different kind of employment contract. (One that specifies concrete deliverables, not time owed.)

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

#200

Ok, so which “elites” are holding real estate portfolios and creating these stories in the media bashing remote work? Who are they? I don’t think the world is so coordinated. Some people made a bad bet on real estate. Some other people want to write click bait pieces about lazy workers. Some other corporate leaders are scared that employees are goofing off outside the office (because productivity can’t be measured fo…

Well here in the UK Lord Sugar has vocally complained about people working from home (whilst doing so himself).

He's well know to have made most of his money in commercial property and has said he wants to protect that.

If a billionaire, lord of the realm, TV celebrity doesn't count as "elite" I don't know who does. I can't really think of a bigger hypocrite that that.

https://fortune.com/europe/2024/02/05/british-billionaire-lo...

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