When the lockdowns happened due to COVID, it was just incredible at the sheer number of jobs that could have been done at home.
Some people, like Sam Seder from The Majority Report, speculated that people will use this in the future to leverage their power as employees for added privacy and flexibility in working.
The other thing is that businesses could save on massive costs by simply not, as others have mentioned here, leasing/building/renting/whatever large office spaces, and those former office spaces can be made into something else, like more afforable housing.
But everyone just kinda forgot, or seriously underestimated, at the desire for businesses to have control over their employees. This is one major reason why so many businesses want private healthcare. It allows them to fuck over their employees more than they would otherwise, even if it is much more expensive for them to do so than just paying a tax for public healthcare.
I work in commercial real estate. Two years before the start of the pandemic, my company considered downsizing our office to have most employees work from home and just come in when needed. We also discussed how we expected the office building market to struggle in the future. (Thinking in 10 years, not two).
Anyways, we got a deal from the property owners to sign another lease, so we stayed put. And now, big surprise, they forced RTO. Someone asked our president about it in a quarterly call. He basically said “we’re never ever going back to WFH and you can quit if you don’t like it”.
So, naturally, we’re struggling with turn over and our headcount is down about around 10% so far.
For many of us, our teams are split up amongst multiple offices so there is no difference from working in the office and working from home. It’s all about that empty lease.
Also! I should add that for many property owners in commercial real estate, they can be “punished” for tenants that go dark, or stop operating at the location, even if they are still paying rent.
For example, say you own a strip mall with a grocery store and a few restaurants. If the grocery store stops operating in that location, there are less customers at the restaurants, making it more likely that they will stop paying rent also.
Yeah, too bad that a condo refit of a building is super expensive and needs some deep pockets to actually do it. Still worth the consideration if the building is a good candidate.
That’s so, so stupid… They really are the dumbest of morons. They lost money, so they waste even more money and make their best workers flee.
This article misses the real point… they want voluntary turnover, when you layoff there’s severance and unemployment costs…
Bunch of real Einstein’s running these places, huh? Fucking morons, just don’t waste the money leasing large offices.
It’s all about status. Big building = big dick. And more buildings spread all over the place is the equivalent to them having tons of kids.
It’s such a primitive, ape-brain thing to do, but that’s how these psychopaths operate.
Seriously. Every job I had, the C-level were all about flexing the size of the company.
One Fintech company I worked at got a giant skyscraper in front of city hall as a Fuck You to the mayor because they had beef with them a few years back. Another tech company constantly bragged about how much square footage of campus they had, constantly comparing themselves to empires.
All just dick measuring.
In my experience CXX folks were all about being seen and having something tangible to show off to potential partners and customers. It’s one thing to give people a tour of your facility. It’s another to meet up at a co-working space and settle in for a PowerPoint presentation full of abstract numbers and graphs about your "virtual "company. I’m not saying that’s right, and I’m certainly not arguing for RTO, but it helps explain that motivation and total lack of confidence in WFH.
It’s still a “primitive ape-brain” thing to do though.
constantly comparing themselves to empires.
Good thing empires never fall, right?
Sell the desks, save money on the office, utilities, and office supplies?
That would require an admission of fault for the last year of these attacks on WFH. No no we don’t do that here
Or, even WORSE: Give up their hatred of poor people in order to save money.
Why do we have to preface this with “Like Elon Musk…”?
Who cares what that nonce thinks? Surely not anyone who would read this article or be receptive to its content.
Probably (at least in the US perspective) he’s the CEO of 3 companies and is going to be a high ranking government official.
Awww cute, they have an idol like real people.
At least one in three bosses are shitty bosses. If their responsibility is to the company and the shareholders, telecommuting saves a ton of time and money.
Also, for those companies that love to position themselves as “green”, commuting is a horrendous waste of resources and a cause of pollution. My company preaches about how important it is to lower your carbon footprint, then institutes policies that increase carbon footprints by the tens of thousands and don’t even blink.
Unless they signed long leases with “commercial real estate” the company can just you know save a load of money not renting those spaces and just liquidate the office for quick cash.
Or if they own, they can always sell unless “it’s an investment” so we can sell it in the future for more.
A company I worked for got into a long lease for 3 floors in an office building. Never used one of them. Ended up subletting it to another company until they were out of that lease.
But you can only sell if someone is buying, and the moment you list that huge skyscraper on the market and find out that the only offers you’re getting are 1/10 the asking price, suddenly the other massive commercial buildings you have on your balance sheets (and those of all your rich buddies) suddenly drop 90% in value, and it’s revealed the emperor has no clothes
It would take some renovation but I imagine buying even just a couple of floors of space for apartments in the middle of NYC could be extremely desirable.
If you want to open your eyes even more, check out the neat overlap between commercial real estate and large businesses that require an office. Often, it’s one and the same, so it’s easy to see why they wouldn’t want their buildings nearly empty.
So the only people going to the Dunkin’s in the office building are office workers. If we don’t go back, that Dunkin’s could go out of business. Is that something we can really allow on our collective conscience?
Won’t someone think of the
childrenshareholders???
Ah, RTO = return to office. That took me a while …
One of the only aspects of my previous employer that was smart and well-run was the attitude about RTO. Before the pan, the owner was planning to rent a second space in the same building to expand. Post-pan, we did a six week experiment where everyone came back two days per week. The metrics didn’t meaningfully change and we downsized. Everyone became fully remote unless they needed supplies from the office for a client.
They managed everything terribly, but at least got that right.
Empty desks is an opportunity to expand, including shared desks from work sharing or WFH some of the week.
Commercial real estate/rental spaces are also an opportunity to downsize and get out of leases at better per square foot rates. If not getting out of lease, then opportunity to sublet desk areas.
The great reset is coming, it’s nipping at their heals, soaking into the top of their eyelids like exhaustion, the darkness is creeping in from all the edges, making them wonder how close it will get, if it will truly envelope them as they’ve been warned
I used to work 10-15 hours a day, weekends included, in a small lab. I did not mind it, I felt seen, my boss was happy with my efforts, and I thrived in that atmosphere.
I now work completely remote for significantly more money, spending 10-16 hours indoors interacting with nobody. It’s hell. My extra hours are unseen. I barely see the sun. My weight is ballooning.
My point: WFH is great for people with families or partners, or anyone who has essentially a settled home life. But for single people, WFH is torture.
I do 100% agree that it should be a choice, and not a mandate to RTO. I’d take it in a heartbeat if it was an option
You shouldn’t do extra hours and you shouldn’t work more than 8 hours a day.
Depends in how much you view your work as “work”, I guess. In my old job, I used to spring out of bed burning with ideas I wanted to implement, and when you have that freedom to play with your work, the concept of billable work hours quickly falls apart.
In this job, I have less freedoms to play with my work, so I’m with you that 8 hours should be it
Nah. I respect your point but I don’t agree. I sometimes have this urge to do some extra hours because what I do is super fun, challenging and I learn a lot. It feels like gaming or hobby projects at times.
But what I learned after decade and a half in my job is that 6 hours of such work is a hard limit. Later one starts to burn out quickly. It’s like going on turbo boost. Nice fly but fuel is going down pretty quickly.
My brain performance goes also down quickly in such a sprint so the outcome quality goes down as well without even me noticing.
8 hours. Then I go with my life doing something completely different. No matter how much fun I have at work.
Anyone who does not understand the sunk cost fallacy should not be in management.
You’ve spent $x on office space. You can:
A. Use it, and make your employees hate working for you or
B. Let it go unused, and your employees are happier to continue working for you.
The money is spent either way. The only difference is morale, which does in fact directly contribute to your bottom line.
C. Sublet out the property and make back the cost of the lease or even a bit of profit.
They can’t depreciate the assets and use them as a deduction if it doesn’t count as an office expense. That only qualifies if a threshhold minimum number of workers spend a threshhold minimum amount of time in the office.
IMO, it’s worse than that. It’s not like creating a digital product, paying for a Super Bowl ad, etc. Those desks, phones, computers all still exist and can be sold. Not to mention the real estate! The slightest bit of foresight and planning and these companies could easily offset any costs they’re paying, but no; they only focus on the current fiscal quarter…
C. Get rid of what you don’t need so that everyone is happy
When you are locked in to a 3/5/10 year lease for the space, that’s not actually an option. Most leases signed pre covid should be up by now but clueless management probably renewed anyways.
And the really big corporations own their buildings. You think the company locked into leases are mad? The companies who own the building are pissed! Some have a multi million dollar building that’s losing value faster than the speed of light.
What big company owns their building. Most I k ow build it then sell it to a management company then lease the space back. There is some accounting reason for this.
Good. Turn that shit into housing.
No shit. But this is America… You already know that proposition is dead on arrival.
Nihilism is cool and all, but smart thoughtful people are working really hard on this and it’s not easy - unless you create windowless tenements with no plumbing.
First part of finding a solution is admitting to the problem. For the change we need, the wealthy and powerful need to be removed.
Are sublets not an option?
You mean sell it for money and actually make more profit while everyone is happy? Preposterous!
Or c, keep just enough office space to create rolling “layoffs” as people are asked to return to the office.
Step 1: Hire staff
Step 2: Train staff to do job
Step 3: COVID! Oh no! Everyone work from home.
Step 4: ???
Step 5: Fire staff to save money.
Step 6: Profit.
It’s nice to find the rant in your head written out. A previous employer of mine dropped two properties in favor of a store front.
There have to be relationships at play or something like that. Or saving face. Maybe investments?
