A lot of times, when people discuss the phenomenon of employers ending work-from-home and try to make their employees come back to the office, people say that the motivation is to raise real estate prices.
I don’t follow the logic at all. How would doing this benefit an employer in any way?
I’m responding to your assertion that people historically always worked from home until relatively recently.
And people didn’t have cars to commute to work either. What point are you trying to bring into the WFH or WFO debate?
What do cars have to do with whether you should meet your coworkers in person?
I can ask whether meeting with your co workers has anything to with how it’s “always been done”. We can go on and on forever. And this will not make any meaningful contribution to the topic whatsoever. Ok, so I’ll backup a few steps and try to answer all questions asked in this thread.
The original commentor mentioned that working at your employer’s place (mind you this is the original context of ths post) has always been how it’s done amd people advocating for WFH are just a bunch of whiners. My response was that it’s factually untrue and therefore has no bearing in the topic.
Then you argued that physical presence has always been the norm. That’s true (mostly) but it’s also very close to the WFH model. For example you meet the blacksmith and state your requirements, then the blacksmith toils away and does not have contact with the buyer until the work is done and the contract is to be fulfilled. Therefore you asking if they were able to meet other than physically is moot. They didn’t meet at all during the contract. If we were to follow this model for an accountant for example, they would get a task to prepare some financial reports along with raw data, they would work from home until the task is done and then meet the employer with the final report? I said that physical meeting was MOSTLY true because there was instances of contracts being made via mail, especially between kings. The messengers would deliver the message(internet/chat in the modern context?).
Finally you ask what’s cars have anything to do with the discussion. That’s how a lot of people get to their workplace. This is also a modern invention and a lot of people would loose their jobs if they didn’t have access to them. I raised this point to raise that a lot of these problems are modern problems. Cowering behind “that’s how it’s always being done” is not good enough. There were no software engineering jobs, social marketing jobs in the past. How is past norms relevant here? If we are so keen to cling on to the past you’d observe that whatever got the job done was the preferred method. In this current context of inflation, climate change, air pollution and twiddling middle class buying power, why are we forcing people to give up WFH who have that option? Therefore I’m advocating for WFH and believe who force people to come to the office are either ignorant of cold facts or have an ulterior motive.
So I’m asking again, are you for or against WFH and why?