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.

  • @andallthatOP
    2•1 year ago

    Thanks. I can see this happening for very large companies that do active lobbying and have to be closer to the government. This might explain Amazon, for instance. I read they are pushing hard for workers to be in office although as a business they should not be otherwise impacted negatively if everyone else was WFH.

    Some companies might also fear the impact of this knock on effect you’re describing. Either directly, like travel agencies who specialize in business travel or indirectly because of the general turbulence in the economy.

    I think you are right. I had originally underestimated this because I couldn’t imagine a company looking at the cost of their big office in a premium location in London and going “nah, I can’t close it, it’s for the greater good!”.

    But the knock on effect could be a more existential threat for a company.