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.
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
Bosses 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. :)
Who is trying to keep Real-estate values high? The companies renting space? Why would they?
Managers tend to be people people. One of my better bosses believed in “Management by Walking Around”. He’d show up a couple times a day to see “if we needed anything” and to keep track of what going on.
When workers are remote, managers don’t get the frequent imformal reassurance that work is going smoothly. They feel out of touch and uneasy. Some workplaces have a culture amenable to remote work & some don’t. My current job is hybrid. Some come in 1 or 2 days a week. I come in 3 or 4 days. My family can be distracting.