this is purely and simply about boss power
The war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity
111–120 of 301 posts
Re: The war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity
#112Earlier 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…
> 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.
Wouldn't Leadership's financial incentive be stronger to increase the value of the company rather than "the whole commercial real estate market" that a single company only has a small effect on?
WeWork seems like an obvious exception - but Adam Newmann was self-dealing by renting his own real estate out to his own company. It was a hugely perverse incentive, and I suspect most boards aren't so captured by things like that.
Re: The war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity
#113Ok, 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…
I can't answer this definitively; I doubt anyone can, but I can suggest at least two possible mechanisms that don't require a shadowy cabal of elite conspirators. These don't require anything other than people acting in accordance with incentives that they already have. I'm sure it's not hard to find more.
Mechanism 1: Those S&P 500 shares that you own through Vanguard and BlackRock index funds, you don't actually control the voting rights to them. Vanguard and BlackRock do. They have coordinated voting power and a big voice in the C-suite of many large corporations. I do think that execs will listen when they make a suggestion, and it's in their interests that the value of assets under management stays high, because that's what determines their pay.
Mechanism 2: C-suite comp is tied to stock price, often through options. Well, as it happens, asset markets are tightly interrelated, and high valuations are a result of leverage. Strangely enough, a dollar invested in real estate can also be a dollar invested in Amazon (even if it's not Amazon's real estate). When asset valuations are high, their owners can borrow against those assets and use that money to bid for other assets, raising the price of everything together. In this process new money is essentially created ex nihilo and increases the price of assets. Conversely, when asset prices start deflating, that can trigger a sell-off of other assets, and this money doesn't simply change hands, it disappears along with the leverage that created it. A pop in commercial real estate valuations can mean that many investment funds which own Amazon will have to sell them off at fire-sale prices to cover a margin call. If you're an exec, this wouldn't be a good thing to happen before your equity compensation package vests.
Re: The war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity
#114I’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…
That's too obvious of an explanation and probably the likeliest one. It is common knowledge that almost every big corp is trying to downsize now, and RTO announcement does force a lot of employees to reevaluate their situation.
Re: The war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity
#115I just don't see a compelling argument here. So either a) The company that is ordering workers back to office owns the property - then they get absolutely no financial gains from it, because they need to pay for the office space in any case. or b) They rent the office. In this case, they get financial gains from renting less space and keeping workers at home.
I’m not sure how the accounting works, but I witness the head of facilities get short with a guy who was coming to the office, but was listed as a remote worker. She said he was costing them a desk in the office, while also the expense of being remote.
This all sounded like nonsense to me. The office had dozens, if not hundreds of empty desks. He wasn’t taking anyone’s spot, the desk would otherwise sit empty. When someone first goes remote they are sent a bunch of stuff they don’t really need, but it’s a one time cost, not recurring. The laptop, the VPN, these are all things the employee has regardless of their remote status.
I don’t know if she was making stuff up just to cause trouble, or if companies like to count per-seat expense in the office and at home.
Re: The war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don’t think the world is so coordinated. The "think tanks" that are pre staffed and fully capable of churning out and placing 3x major long form articles per week that are pro or con {Subject X} (and an additional few that fence sit and are "just asking questions") already exist and have been about since at least Nine out of Ten Doctors Recommend Smoking . You know, 5+ decades ago. The "elites" that are losing mo…
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 subject) and look for authors, their bio's, whether these are staff writer pieces (and if so whether they heavily quote "research shows" vague sources), opinion pieces, etc.
The hardest to spot and most common is staff writers who cover all manner of things (no obvious bias) who are 90% copy pasta'ing unacknowledged "press releases" "media statements" handed to them on a plate by the Institute for Lazy Reporting.
US work from home isn't an area of any interest to me and I have no particular awareness of any of the US writing on the subject.
I'm an Australian that's largely worked remote (but not always from home) since the mid 1980s, largely for transnational resource companies.
Part of my professional career did involve tracing and sourcing released information intended to sway opinion, but that was all related to mineral and energy resources.
Re: The war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity
#117The borderline conspiracy theories on this are odd. If you're a manager, having a remote team is just harder. It can still work well with a certain type of people, people who are self directed and take pride in their work, but let's not fool ourselves into believing that's the only kind.
What I typically saw were people in the office doing a lot of nothing, because if they were in the office it was “working” just being there. Those working from home worked extra hard to try and prove they were actually working and making sure they were getting noticed.
Re: The war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity
#118It’s kinda…interesting…to see the sort of people that think that this topic, and point of view, haven’t both been talked about to death.
As with all things like this, the closer we get to the end of the line with this WFH discussion, the more utterly delusional (as to the originality of one’s POV) one has to be to choose to write yet another ‘think piece’ about it. As an effect of that, the more utterly braindead the opinions become.
It also says a lot about modern online society. Instead of just being grumpy that something didn’t go your way, you need to form a worldview that makes The Other Guys out to be a cartoonishly villainous cabal, set to attack everything you hold dear.
I’m a manager that prefers an in-person team. My reasons are related to productivity. Any commercial real estate that happens to be in my portfolio is separated from me by enough intermediate aggregators that I don’t spend an iota thinking about it. I actually work for an organisation whose senior leadership prefer remote work, so I’m not just a kiss-ass or anything. What does OP’s POV say about me? Do I not exist? Am I a paid shill?
Honestly, and I say this as one, developers can be so bloody petulant.
Re: The war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity
#119[flagged]
Re: The war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
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%" d…
> Your friend was probably not thinking "fair" or "unfair", rather, what is the employment market bringing him.
In a relatively free labor market (like e.g. California’s) that perspective is fine with me, because you probably have to pay more for the conscientious “75%” developers you need. But Sweden has a heavily regulated and unionized labor market where differences in pay are typically motivated by the collectively agreed “fairness”.
I can assure you that your argument would have been just as foreign for my acquaintance.