I have posted this on Reddit (askeconomics) a while back but got no good replies. Copying it here because I don’t want to send traffic to Reddit.
What do you think?
I see a big push to take employees back to the office. I personally don’t mind either working remote or in the office, but I think big companies tend to think rationally in terms of cost/benefit and I haven’t seen a convincing explanation yet of why they are so keen to have everyone back.
If remote work was just as productive as in-person, a remote-only company could use it to be more efficient than their work-in-office competitors, so I assume there’s no conclusive evidence that this is the case. But I haven’t seen conclusive evidence of the contrary either, and I think employers would have good reason to trumpet any findings at least internally to their employees (“we’ve seen KPI so-and-so drop with everyone working from home” or “project X was severely delayed by lack of in-person coordination” wouldn’t make everyone happy to return in presence, but at least it would make a good argument for a manager to explain to their team)
Instead, all I keep hearing is inspirational wish-wash like “we value the power of working together”. Which is fine, but why are we valuing it more than the cost of office space?
On the side of employees, I often see arguments like “these companies made a big investment in offices and now they don’t want to look stupid by leaving them empty”. But all these large companies have spent billions to acquire smaller companies/products and dropped them without a second thought. I can’t believe the same companies would now be so sentimentally attached to office buildings if it made any economic sense to close them.
It’s easy, a lot of companies have board members who are also board members in office space companies.
My theory is they’re attempting to keep real estate values high.
This is the truth. Or someone is and those someone’s are putting pressure on bosses who are amenable to it anyway because they like control/lack empathy for employees/etc
Or someone is and those someone’s are putting pressure on
bossesmediaBosses are convinced by articles in mass media that this needs to happen. For real estate.
There are a bunch of new buildings in my city that have apartments with retail space on the ground level. All the retail spaces are empty, never used. I live in one. Someone is taking a bath on all the losses on these investments.
I think the “someone” putting pressure on them isn’t really individual people but just a general sense of class solidarity. Upper middle class and upper class people will do anything to keep their avenues of profit healthy, and their avenues are the status quo. Giving lower level workers more autonomy, flexibility, and the power to shape what the workplace looks like is NOT the status quo. Add the effect that WFH would have on the real estate market to the mix and now they REALLY aren’t going to be interested. Real Estate is a huge money maker AND has strong influence in many other industries. None of this should really matter to us regular folks though. We need to stop thinking that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. If workers want to work from home, we should continue to push for it. Our metrics for what is beneficial to workplaces should be very different from theirs because their goals are very different from ours.
I am on a hybrid schedule and I love it. If they allowed it, I’d probably be at 80% remote because my job, experience, and skillset allows it. It’s beneficial to me, opens up space in our building, reduces my travel cost, reduces traffic at rush hour, and I GET MORE DONE! No losers as far as I am concerned. :)
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Same reason they all had layoffs at the same time; activist investors want them to. Probably because these investors own a lot of commercial real estate as well.
Also, it’s probably a good way for them to reduce their workforce without publicly announcing layoffs.
There are apparently some industries where there’s less production at home, I work in an industry where this isn’t the case though and it seems to be extrovert admin people pushing it, I think they think we’re all sad and lonely at home?
“It’s nice to come in and have people to talk to!”
Is it? Or are we all just being dragged in because you want chats?
If you’re going in to talk to people it means you’re not working. Unless… the company pays you just to talk to people. 🤷♂️
And how does that make you feel?
On a serious note though people who I didn’t like and didn’t want to talk to would come by my desk daily and spend a minimum of 20 minutes just talking about shit I didn’t care about. How they got any work at all done is beyond me because obviously they were doing the rounds and talking to everyone else too. And how I got any work done between the million visits? I hated being in an office. I was so miserable.
Same… it’s not my current company, but the company before this one got me interested in noise cancelling headphones. People bullshitting and talking loud all day may as well have been nails on a chalkboard.
Don’t forget all the people that hate their kids (and “family”) too. That was one of the biggest driving forces at the immediate end of the pandemic lockdowns. Then they changed course and said it was about productivity because hating your kids sounds bad.
Talking to people isn’t really boosting my productivity. I need peace and time to think. The office is the last of all places where I can find that.
Absolutely, we have whatsapp groups now so if I have a question I can fire it over to anyone or everyone if needed, it’s so much easier and I can ignore it until convenient.
Talking to others may not boost your productivity working, but it can give you a better understanding of what to do when you are productive.
Sure, clearing and refining tasks is important. But we’re talking about your colleague or boss talking for talking’s sake.
Not all talking needs to be work related only.
I’ve seen a lot better productivity between staff that will talk to each other about non-work tasks than those that don’t. People aren’t robots.
And I’m not one of them. People are different.
I kind of agree that remote working every single day gets very socially deprived very quickly. Although the office isn’t a place for socialising, not having anyone to talk to day in day out at work drives me a bit mad.
But I also think 90% of the time, working from home is better. Maybe a hybrid model where you only go to the office once or maximum twice a week or something could work for most people. The introverts and the extroverts reaching a compromise.
Or, just make it free choice? If you miss socialising then go in, if you don’t then stay home?
Also helps those of us unable to drive for various reasons (in my case, physical tourettes triggered by stress. Liable to start having pseudoseizures [like seizures but I’m concious during them] when driving which is… Really not good)
That doesn’t sound like a fun time
It is not, no. Being concious as you lose control of your body is… Very unpleasant
I am on team work from home personally, but the reality is we will have to compromise a bit, and I think a hybrid environment is where the sweet spot is. I still work remote about 90% of the time, but realistically I think 60-80% remote, 20-40% in office is ideal and tenable for just about every work type where remote work is feasible.
There is benefit to being in person with your colleagues, there is benefit to having a centralized area for congregating, meeting with outside stakeholders, etc. However, there is absolutely no reason to be in the office all day every day. It makes no sense. The bulk of employees spend AT LEAST 50% (rank and file probably closer to 85-90%?) of their time working alone, by themselves. Let them do that wherever the fuck they want. If the work is getting done, leave them the fuck alone and let them work in their PJs or on their couch or whatever.
A hybrid environment also keeps your work force local and prevents us all from being outsourced. If we all insist on working remote full time then there is absolutely no reason for employers not to offer our jobs to someone living somewhere that’s cheaper to live. Sure, we could correct over time and move to a lower cost of living place to compete, but is that really what you want? Do you want to leave your home, friends, family, etc just to chase the job you already have solely because they won’t pay you what they already do to stay where you are? If you own a home do you want the value to tank as demand plummets? If your rent is cheap do you want it to skyrocket because displaced remote workers are flooding your town in a rush to capitalize?
I would agree with most of what you said.
There are also a not-insignifigant number of people that struggle when at home 100%. Some people are rock stars and able to just get stuff done. But a lot of people are not, sadly, organized enough to handle such an unstructured environment and able to still be effective.
This isnt a new thing due to covid or the move, but a LOT of folks just do better with a hard separation of work/life and a lot of folks arent self aware enough to know they need it.
As someone that can and has worked remote, and chooses to come back, it can be frustrating working with people that struggle with these things, and I definitely see differences between home work and office work in some. I actually work in an office because its much easier to maintain balance. I tend to work too much from home and it causes burnout but I also have kids/family that come home early and dont really understand that just because im home doesnt mean i can sit down and talk at their convenience. What I mean is that work/life balanace is harder. So i choose to commute 99% of the time and can WFH when needed.
But i have one guy that had had this issue chronically for years where he often struggles to communicate, is easily distracted, often needed to be micro managed or have his tasks organized, prioritized and in some cases, even steps spelled out. He does well enough to mostly be of help (so hes not gonna get fired), but he complains about lack of upward mobility or lack of raises, but when the SHTF, hes always got excuses locked and loaded about why hes behind or cant complete a project/task.
Conversely I have a guy thats AMAZING from wherever. Never has issues and is always way ahead of the curve. Hes also full time remote but excels at it.
It just depends on the person in a lot of cases and frankly, in my very small use cases, many/most arent the type that are capable of the self discipline needed for the task. Now that said Im not at google or one of those places that hires rockstars in buckets, so they reasons they are RTO are likely different from my orgs.
Of my team, i would say at least a cool 60% are just much less…themselves from home and easily distracted. Either because they segment their life (which is fine and awesome, i do that too), or because they dont have a good setup at home, or because they are just too easily distracted at home.
A comment I’ve seen a few times is that remote work highlights the minimal value that middle-managers provide to companies.
If you’re employees work from home with little interaction with their managers and they do it well/better, then why have those managers? Like you said, companies want to be cost effective. So the push back to the office could be coming from managers who don’t want a light shined on their lack of value.
Ironically that probably ousts out their minimal value harder. Not a good look forcing your “underlings” if productivity was good prior, and subsequently falls flat.
Middle management has gotten absolutely out of control in America
Imo (and this is largely conjecture) it’s an end result of stagnant wages. It used to be that you might stay in the same position but get actual pay increases 50 years ago. Now you don’t get the pay increases really, maybe a 3% annual bump if you’re lucky. They need something to retain talent so a lot of places end up creating bullshit management positions out of thin air to retain staff that come with a slightly more modest pay bump.
So instead of the 3% bump you get a 5% bump and now you’re “director of clinical programming” or “associate manager of marketing and sales for eastern iowa division” and have 10 employees “report” to you but in reality you’re neutered and have no actual power to do anything to them but tattle to the actual boss. But then the company doesn’t have to give you a 7-10% bump that outpaces inflation and feels like an actual raise. They save the real promotions for nepotism.
But this happens constantly and now industries are jam packed with employees that just bother other employees all day and/or create systems that slow down employees en masse to “increase accountability” that are constantly updated and replaced without removing old ones.
Whenever someone goes on about fixing healthcare this comes to mind. I’ve worked in healthcare for years and it is absolutely full of this. Pharma, insurance, hospital admin, all of them are loaded up with tons of these kinds of staff. I can’t tell you how many useless staff I’ve seen get promoted to positions that were literally created for them to supervise a handful of people. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to fill out 7 sets of paperwork that takes 2 hours and is all redundant copies of each other because 9 middle managers from the hospital, insurance, and state administration are all constantly convinced I’m a fraudulent liar despite being a licensed professional with a decade and a half of clinical experience and absolutely no investigations or citations on my record whatsoever.
Single payer healthcare is definitely a great idea that should be pursued but this is a huge problem that also needs to be addressed regardless of who’s paying the bill if you want to see changes with actual costs, wait times, clinician burn out, etc.
I’d imagine it’s similar for other industries too. How much wasted resources are in middle management at tech companies, at food production, at basically anything? How much of rising costs are basically going to pay the glut of middle managers that being nothing to the table but resource drain? Who do nothing in terms of bringing in money, who do nothing in terms of providing value? How much cheaper could my cellphone, bread, wood, etc be without these parasites sucking up resources
But then the societal impact comes up. If you addressed this problem tonight that would mean millions of people go from comfortably middle class to jobless overnight. America isn’t known for great social supports as is, what happens when you throw a 7-8 figure number into the mix (with the reduced tax income from the loss of their job income).
Fwiw I genuinely think that point is a huge factor in why our government resists proper single payer healthcare; a true program would displace millions of workers overnight as it would make companies like Aetna, Cigna, etc largely redundant and reliant on their much less lucrative life/home/auto/renters insurance divisions. They would slash workers left and right. If we ever get one it will be a two lane system where the private insurers stay alongside it as a “boutique” option for the rich to receive better service, guaranteed. Plus you know, those companies literally own politicians lol and that’s the other much larger problem
I think big companies tend to think rationally in terms of cost/benefit
Yeah…well no. Companies are run by managers who aren’t necessarily rational about human resources.
There is a tangible benefit in certain jobs from being in the same space. I work in a place where we are constantly training new employees with OJT. Continuous improvement and learning new things from peers is important for our future capabilities. Knowledge sharing is a big part of my job.
We rotate in-office and work-from-home weeks and there is a considerable reduction in questions asked and just general training-type or knowledge sharing interactions. Being able to ask a question or provide guidance directly, in-person, and off the cuff is easier than messaging or calling. I definitely get more work done at home, but sacrifice future efficiency of myself, my peers, and the department as a whole because of the reduction of knowledge sharing interactions.
I think we have struck a good balance with the rotation in the time being. We could certainly try to figure out ways to make knowledge sharing and training easier and more effective to do remotely, but as our culture is now, working from home makes it less effective.
People need to learn to post in public (in the Corp) channels and then be able to search for answers.
In office you can just go walk over and ask someone and it’s often never documented anywhere. In chat programs you can search and find information instead of asking your go to.
While this is a nice idea, adoption of this kind of knowledge sharing is known to be extremely difficult to accomplish without a massive cultural shift in a company or department. Not to mention it requires those who are knowledgeable (typically older workers with less social media or computer experience) to be tech savvy enough to be active in a space dominated by younger employees asking questions.
I am a proponent of trying to bring knowledge capture software and methods into my department and company but the struggle is real. Getting people on board with this idea will basically require those who aren’t interested to leave by attrition for the culture to change enough to accept this idea. But those people who retire are exactly the people we want to capture knowledge from! It’s really a difficult situation.
Power over employee, since their life is empty without it. This is all they found as a purpose in life.
There’s a thing that cult leaders often do where they make increasingly stricter demands on their followers, it reduces the number of members, but the one who remain are much more easily controlled (because they self selected for that trait. I think something similar is part of the picture for these companies. The people who simply do as they are told and come back (as opposed to looking for new jobs) are more easily controlled by the company.
Also you can’t always assume that just because a company is really big it’s always making the most best, always correct choices. Like GE managed with “vitality curves.”
There are a few reasons.
- The people who own the buildings are going bankrupt and so to help out their rich friends CEOs are trying to force people into using office buildings.
- Companies don’t want to let go of their power over an employee.
- They don’t trust their employees.
- They can’t watch their employees.
2,3,4 sure but I don’t think 1 is plausible
1 is plausible.
Remember the super rich have bank friends.
Ever heard of “If you owe the bank $100 it’s your problem. If you owe them $1mil it’s their problem”
A giant building that’s empty that nobody pays rent on is a huge bill to settle somehow with the bank.
1 is not plausible, you can’t believe that all rich companies are money hungry capitalists that only care about their bottom line, then also say that they are going to spend more money they are greedily hoarding to help out their rich friends. That’s the only way that 1 would be plausible, so you have to have that dichotomy of a thought process to believe it.
Go high up enough and everything is in the same hands. Boards of directors are full of people that own business real estate. Even if they might not own that one building, they have vested interested in that market going up, and that means RTO. People still need a house so it’s not like it devalues the personal housing market either.
It’s not necessarily about being a money hungry capitalist though – it’s not even necessarily about rich friends. Many of these buildings are owned/leased by the company. Problem is, that land value is on a company’s books as an asset. People don’t RTO, the value of that asset drops, company has to post a loss, stock value plummets as shitty traders take advantage of the numbers to turn a profit. In a good number of cases, it’s survival.
Oh sweet summer child.
In an ideal world you’d be correct and I want you to be correct. But there are a lot of people who want to live on both sides of the grass here. They want to say they have no money to pay anybody to certain people and have all the money at the same time.
So, maybe not all, but definitely a lot. There is a reason why economies tank. Wall Street has no morals. Recessions, depressions, inflation, and the like happen. It’s because people get greedy and corrupt.
1 is not just plausible, it’s happening all the time.
The real answer is that people are more productive in the office with more oversight and build relationships with their coworkers that help them to do their jobs better. Companies invest thousands of dollars in “teambuilding” events that benefit the company and employees in no way other than to foster these environments. It costs their employees more time and money for transportation, which means they have to pay them more. They are not stupid. They are not trying to upset their employees just to cost themselves more money.
There is no other rational explanation. Any other explanation is illogical, as it costs the company more money to have and maintain an office building. It’s just based on people angry about the fact that they have to leave home.
people are more productive in the office with more oversight and build relationships with their coworkers that help them to do their jobs better.
Not true for all types of employees. There are job functions that work great or even better remote. Your scenario also depends on if the employer has a good office environment and truth be told a lot don’t (many embraced the “open-concept” which does increase communication but also the noise-to-signal ratio).
The war on remote work likely has nothing to do with productivity but all about preserving the commercial real-estate market (and the auxillary businesses) and stop them from crashing. A lot of influential people invested in that industry.
The war on remote work likely has nothing to do with productivity but all about preserving the commercial real-estate market
I mean…maybe if you work for a real estate company?
I mean…maybe if you work for a real estate company?
That’s not the only real-estate game in the business… Think owners and landlords of the building who used to make a killing leasing these commercial spaces out. If remote work continues, there is no incentive for companies / tenants to renew their lease, meaning less income for landlords and increasing risk that they will default on their loans. A lot of people are invested in that space and would love to see the gravy train continue, or at least not crash and burn. Hence the propaganda push about how crappy remote work is, an attempt to drive people back.
That’s not the only real-estate game in the business… Think owners and landlords of the building who used to make a killing leasing these commercial spaces out
So…real estate companies? You realize there are other businesses with employees right?
Yes? I’m not understanding your point. What I’m saying is the anti-remote work push is likely due to the influence of the investors in said properties and companies.
My point is the overwhelming majority of businesses in existence are not in the business of real estate so why would they give a shit if it’s impacted?
You wildly overestimate the influence of these companies.
What does the absolute number of businesses in an industry have to do with anything? Most companies in the world are not tech or even oil and gas either and you can’t deny the impact of these industries.
What matters is the amount of money and influence in the industry, and in the case of commercial real estate in the US, the market size is in the trillions.
And like another poster said it’s not just real estate either. Sectors like retail, services, transportation are also impacted by remote work culture, not to mention government revenue streams like property taxes.
Also research over COVID showed productivity didn’t decline at all, and in many cases increased while working remote. Turns out a lot of people work better when they aren’t wasting half their day getting in a small box, trekking to a dofferent small box inside a bigger box for absolutely no reason.
If you’re spending half your day doing that, it’s no surprise that you’d be less productive. Most people aren’t doing that. You’re projecting.
Is it actually that bad at your company? I must be pretty lucky then.
Also I don’t want to work in the same room I sleep in and I also don’t want to have my family around all day
Remote work doesn’t work for everyone and that’s always been the case. But it’s nowhere near the boogeyman that the media is currently making it out to be.
Found the Blackstone bot.
Imaginary feeling of loss of control.
I absolutely cannot find the article I read now, but it was about an employee tracking suite of tools that companies often use in workplaces. It allows them to gauge the productivity of employees using a combination of hardware and software. It’s apparently insanely expensive but useful for predatory companies that strive to squeeze every last remaining drop of hope from employees as long as it increases productivity. That’s the reason some companies want people back in office. So they can keep tabs on them.
