51–60 of 212 posts
Seems more nuanced than this discussion is making it out. We have had attrition and recruiting challenges with RTO, but also noticeable improvements in morale and productivity - especially when it comes to onboarding new folks.
"Unispace found that nearly half (42%) of companies with return-to-office mandates witnessed a higher level of employee attrition than they had anticipated" No severance payouts. No bumps to your unemployment insurance payments. Everything is working to plan.
Commercial real estate value is a bubble that's gonna pop soon. There's just way more office space than anyone needs.
Is there a way to short CRE other than investing in non-commercial RE? I'd think you can probably directly short CRE-focused REITs but I'd be worried about them rebalancing or diversifying even as CRE starts to pop.
"Unispace found that nearly half (42%) of companies with return-to-office mandates witnessed a higher level of employee attrition than they had anticipated" No severance payouts. No bumps to your unemployment insurance payments. Everything is working to plan.
Yep! This is it. Managers associate willingness to RTO with loyalty, so the idea is very much to induce voluntary, mostly non-regrettable attrition. They're playing with fire.
> The survey equates the displeasure of shifting from a flexible work model to a traditional one to that of experiencing a 2-3% pay cut. I think they forgot a 0.
Yes, this doesn't add up. The typical 2x20 mins daily commute is effectively an 8% unpaid increase in working hours, not counting transportation costs.
Hybrid work is an unstable point. An office where half people are missing / zooming is useless. remote vs fully present are the only two stable attractors
It is unclear who wants RTO, at least within tech and other leaders whom I know within tech.
Those who are entering the workforce, remote working is fun for greybeards and terrible for fresh grads, interns and apprentices.
- Companies just aren't interested in training people if they can hire someone trained somewhere else.
- Project-based time accounting doesn't account for time spent mentoring and transferring knowledge.
- Some older workers withhold knowledge and aren't punished for it. Some older workers share knowledge and aren't rewarded for it.
All this existed prior to COVID and expansion of work from home.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those who are entering the workforce, remote working is fun for greybeards and terrible for fresh grads, interns and apprentices.
Fresh grads, interns, and apprentices typically uproot their lives to move to tech hubs, as do older populations. That is the terrible effect - getting dropped in a strange new location with minimal network. Of course letting "locals" work remotely would make that situation worse, agreed. So completely do away with tech hubs. People can continue to grow organically, they are free to stay or move as makes sense to the…
New employees, at the bottom of the pay scale, are competing with employees making far more (with vesting) for homes.
Democratizing this across a larger number of cities (and towns!) seems healthy.
Disclaimer: Biased, as have to move regularly for spouse's job, so RTO wouldn't work for me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those who are entering the workforce, remote working is fun for greybeards and terrible for fresh grads, interns and apprentices.
Some like this, some like that. I know enough fresh grads who thrived working from home. And also enough who didn't.
This anecdote to say that I'd probably been terrible at a remote job while in the old structures. Now I'm married with a child, but I get to call the shots on daily routine, so to speak. I can even work late nights without mom coming to admonish.
> “staggering 76% of employees stand ready to jump ship if their companies decide to pull the plug on flexible work schedules” People always say this, but I’d bet that the vast majority of those 76% would begrudgingly go in if it was demanded. Talk is cheap, as they say.
In other words if your company is paying way too much money as compared to the market, people would think they want to leave, but won’t. But if you’re a company that is at market or slightly above market, and you’re enforcing mandatory RTO, you are in trouble, you just don’t know it yet.