Steve Schwarzman of the Blackstone group said staff want to work from home so they can save money
The boss of the world’s biggest commercial landlord has accused remote workers of staying away from the office because it means they “don’t work as hard” and can save money.
Steve Schwarzman, the chief executive of investment firm the Blackstone group, made the claims about hybrid staff while speaking on a panel at the Future Investment Initiative summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
In remarks first reported by Bloomberg, he said employees had kept working from home because “they didn’t work as hard, regardless of what they tell you” and also due to the savings they make on their daily commute, lunches and work attire.
Really just needs to be common practice or law to pay workers to commute.
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it, one of the fastest ways to pull cars off the road is to pass strong incentives/taxes on businesses to encourage them to adopt a hybrid or remote work model. I live in a rural area where you frequently need to drive to the next town over for this that or the other thing and my hybrid work schedule has allowed my family to become a single car family in about the most eternally car dependant kind of living situation there is
Obviously, the dude owns commercial real estate. Of course he’s talking shit about people that don’t want to go to the office.
I’m never going back to an office. Started my own business and never looking back. Information workers don’t need offices, period.
Dude probably can’t wait to replace his own office staff with AI. Tell him to eat shit.
Such bullshit.
These old fux just want to control people.
Working smarter, not harder.
You lost Steve at the first word.
Get this asshole a submarine too
A carbon fiber one
Fuck that. Make his out of concrete.
Dumb ass says dumb ass thing. News at 11.
The irony of the hedge fund boss that owns the world’s largest corpo land lord complaining about WFH employees not doing real work
Ah, yes, a man with a vested interest in seeing offices full to capacity can clearly be trusted to tell the truth here.
Steve Schwarzman of the Blackstone group can fuck all the way off.
he said employees had kept working from home because “they didn’t work as hard, regardless of what they tell you” and also due to the savings they make on their daily commute, lunches and work attire.
It’s almost as if people enjoy having extra disposable income!
The boss of the world’s biggest commercial landlord
In other words, they make their money via passive income.
has accused remote workers of staying away from the office because it means they “don’t work as hard”
The world is so full of hypocrisy that…maybe he thought no one would notice (?)
There are no metics to support any drop in productivity. There are lots of metrics to support making people go back to the office is bad for the environment. The traffic were I live is pretty much back to what it was before. It’s gross just watching the haze of fumes knowing it is there so these dickheads can maintain their property portfolio.
Anecdotally, I clock more hours WFH than I ever did going into the office- the matter of having to catch the last train out of town put a hard limit on how long I could crank code.
Without those extra 4 uncompensated hours in my day (plus the overhead time and mental energy monitoring the timeline of my day vs. just doing what I do), I get more done and I have more time to do it. Being autistic, I appreciate having uninterrupted time-blocks I can use to hyperfocus and get things done- and having to be aware of when to tie things up and GTFO in time to catch that train interrupts that.
Schwarzman isn’t really concerned with my well-being or with my productivity at work- he’s concerned with maintaining high demand for commercial real estate like my company’s office. He can pound sand.
I still go in every once in a while just to show my face and get some IRL time with co-workers, but my employers aren’t pushing the ‘get back to work and do real work’ line, they’re aware that working in the office (we’re mostly coders and such) will cost us productivity if anything and they’re just encouraging us to get in a few times a year and do some face to face social stuff.
Yeah, but notice that his whole point was about “working hard” which is not at all the same as “being productive” and about employees “saving money”, which something that’s not up to an employer to decide on.
It’s not at all about the kind of metrics a competent manager would be worrying about.
And, when you notice that he’s one of the biggest commercial landlords, you realize that by “employees working hard,” he means “employees sitting in offices I’ve rented out and thus making companies give me money.”
The more companies that allow employees to work from home, the less his properties are worth. You might as well ask Exxon-Mobil whether electric cars are good or not. Or ask a political candidate whether you should vote for their opponent or not.
I work a job where our metrics are extremely easy to analyse, since switching to 100% remote work instead of 60% max at will remote work our productivity has increased by 15%… How much are companies willing to spend to increase productivity by 15%? Imagine being able to get that boost by saving money instead!
The company I work for experienced significant growth during COVID and has more employees at the corporate office than they have desks. They’re literally saving craploads of money on building a new office by maintaining a hybrid and remote workforce
Well he can go fuck himself.
How dare the common staff attempt to save money?!
That is not their lot in life! They ought to be thankful for the pittance they receive as it is, and they are entirely ungrateful wretches to think of saving and trying to improve their situation!
Entirely ungrateful!!
That’s why when people start making a bit more money suddenly “fake inflation” gets introduced. We are always supposed to be on the edge of death. That’s the only thing that makes the owner class hard, and fucking kids.
This person gets it. This is capitalism working as planned.
The evidence says otherwise. He can go fuck himself. I personally prefer going in but I understand people wanting to work from home or at the very least do hybrid work. Childcare is fucking expensive and if you can work while watching kids, that can really help combat the massive rise in housing costs.
Remote work is not free babysitting time. A competent remote work policy will specify that child care is not a part of remote work.
If you can do it without impacting productivity and not get caught then it’s probably fine though.
I would not recommend it based on my experience. Remote full time since 2020 and a parent
Remote work offers significantly more flexibility especially if both parents work remote. Many are able to work it just fine. It may not work for you but there are a ton of people that are just as productive when given that flexibility.
I have not seen any remote work policy mention childcare at all.
I have not seen any remote work policy mention childcare at all.
Many people don’t read the policies they agree to, but I did and it is in that remote work policy. Specified that remote work is not a substitute for child care.
I have read several remote work policies in the past few jobs I have had. Zero of them mentioned childcare.
Well get ready for it because people in C-level positions that write policy tend to participate in industry collaboration, and it will likely be standard before long. It’s a sensible requirement to make sure your employees are not wasting paid work time on personal tasks. You don’t have to like it but that is the truth.
It’s an idiotic requirement which is unenforceable. They can’t exactly monitor that. Any company pushing for that sounds like they don’t have a clue in how to measure their employees’ performances.
Again, what I said is the truth even if you don’t like it. It’s entirely possible to detect when some employees are watching their kids while at work, and if that was against company policy the employee could be sanctioned. Here’s an example, an employee is on a conference call with their child in the background, and information available indicates that they are the only person home with the child, therefore they are either providing childcare or neglecting their child.
A parent with a small child under school age should not be watching their kid while working, because it takes a lot of attention to supervise those small children, when work should be the focus of their attention. Older kids who are self-sufficient would be a different situation.
