Earlier in the pandemic many news and magazine organizations would proudly write about how working from home always actually can lead to over working and being too “productive”. I am yet to collect some evidence on it but I think we remember a good amount about this.
Now after a bunch of companies want their remote workers back at the office, every one of those companies are being almost propaganda machines which do not cite sound scientific studies but cite each other and interviews with higher ups in top companies that “remote workers are less productive”. This is further cementing the general public’s opinion on this matter.
And research that shows the opposite is buried deep within any search results.
Have you noticed this? Please share what you have observed. I’m going paranoid about this.
Yup, corporations need to justify owning the big-ass office buildings they bought out, so they’re paying to make their own opinions be reported on over the actual truth. As usual.
I find it real fascinating how many people are blindsided by the fact that the people who own things that focus on making a profit skew the information they put out to benefit themselves. Did they think they were impartial or something? I mean they claim their neutral they don’t ever show that they’re neutral.
It’s not just the corporations renting those offices, it’s the politicians of downtown areas that fear a downturn in tax revenue due to more empty offices and less people getting their daily coffee/lunch/after work drinks.
And of course, if everyone’s working remotely, this means it’s a lot easier to find a better job without even needing to leave the house to interview, which gives employees a better bargaining position (downside is that employers will start looking at employees in lower paying countries as well).
downside is that employers will start looking at employees in lower paying countries as well).
Tale as old as time
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The city of Seattle was literally crumbling before most of the major tech giants RTO.
Im not sure Republicans have had much control there in a few decades.
Eh, all those cities are Democrat run. Economically they’re essentially the same.
Republicans did a shitty job of planning New York City? When did this happen?
All of this is happening with my company as we speak. I actually did a remote interview today while on my lunch hour. And my current company has just rolled out plans for “clerical help” based out of India. I’m in the U.S.
And the proven financial benefit of having people work from home must not be as profitable as corporate real estate, or companies wouldn’t be requiring in-office work again!
It’s because a huge amount of business is centered around made up things for going to work.
Things you need to work in an office: suits, dry cleaning for the suits, dress shoes, a car (because public transportation is woefully inadequate for this reason), gas for the car, maintenance for the car, lunch, daycare, a dog walker, you have less time so you are more likely to eat out for dinner, also more likely to hire maids, you are stuck in a commute and radio is awful, so a music subscription, maybe a new phone, and might have to go out for drinks with the coworkers on the way home.
Staying at home, and much of the country on highly limited income, taught us how much we spend on the “privilege” of work. Everyone is still shocked at the emotional and opportunity cost work had, we’re just starting to realize that most of what it sold to us either isn’t real or isn’t needed.
If people don’t go back to work a sea of businesses will fail.
You missed the most important thing. Real estate investments that aren’t allowed to go down in value, which they would if offices became superfluous. Just imagine how many buildings would become “worthless”/could be used for something else.
A forward-thinking wealthy person would start buying these buildings at fire-sale prices and converting them to residential buildings.
You have to be very choosey, because most office buildings aren’t easily convertable
Yeah, this is BY FAR the biggest reason. Pretty much all the rich people and most big companies have huge investment in portfolios that contain a lot of commercial office spaces. If we were all allowed to work from home those investments would plummet and all the rich people and big companies would take MASSIVE losses on those investments. Which is why all the media and even companies like Zoom are trying to pull a 180 on working from home.
Zoom forcing employees back to offices still baffles me
I feel like we need to talk about this more. Their whole model is promoting remote experiences and yet they are also forcing folk back to the office. I can’t think of a reason outside of external pressures that would happen.
The video conferencing software that saved the world during covid and made all the companies survive the lockdown.
In the Wall Street area of Manhattan, some of the biggest buildings are already being converted to apartments. It’s been a trend for a while, because the older buildings are too expensive to rewire for computers/HVAC.
That is a huge pressure, but it’s less obvious why a company in a business unrelated to real estate would want real estate prices high.
The secret is that companies aren’t in the business of making a good or providing a service, they actually are just giant schemes for raising money for “investments”. For example, airlines don’t make their money off of selling tickets, but through prospecting jet fuel. Most companies aren’t as direct and clear about what their business actually is.
Also the link between real estate and all of jobs isn’t very clear and is very abstract. It’s easy to see the costs and interactions with companies forced by working in an office, it’s difficult to see how a building losing value effects anyone.
This is why it costs a lot less than people think, to retire. A lot of the costs of working go away.
I love the “might HAVE to go out for drinks with the coworkers on the way home”. This is my most dreaded fear.
Edit: and clothes/getting ‘ready’ (hair, makeup, underwear, etc.) is double time for women.
Pre-pandemic. Maybe 2005 [?] one of the big American news companies assembles a team of financial experts to study various big companies. Then they deicde to apply all that brain power to an average American family. Husband and wife with three kids, two jobs and two cars. Both have middle class jobs. After running the numbers, the experts told the wife to quit her job. The savings on childcare, running the second car, no fast food dinners, etc. more than made up for the second salary.
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If you read what I wrote, the experts looked at all aspects of the couple’s situation. The experts decided that the wife’s job was the one to go.
If you’re having a problem finding dates, maybe you should look at what common factor all your relationships have.
I don’t have a problem finding dates. I don’t want to date. Men aren’t worth the cost, in my experience. But nice attempt, trying to attack me personally to cover up your misogyny and the misogyny of the “experts”" you quote. Such a “surprising” tactic. Too bad for you that I’m quite comfortable in my choice to live relatively male-free.
Tacking the words “expert” and “study” onto misogynistic propaganda doesn’t make it scientifically rigorous. And even though there is still truth in women making less in general, that’s changing. Women need men less and less every year. Thankfully.
You funny.
If you look up the actual article you’ll see it went as I wrote. In that particular case, the wife was earning less, so it made sense for her to give up her job.
Anything you’ve added is on you.
If you’re not dating because ‘men aren’t worth it’ that says more about you than it does about the men.
My manager wanted me to come to the office daily because the laptop I had couldn’t handle the company VPN (which we need to access some systems, the alternative is of course being physically in the office and connecting to the office WIFI).
He gave me some crap about it and reminded me of the ‘office first’ policy at my workplace.
I looked him dead in the face and said, “You can’t force anyone back to the office. You know that it’s not going to fly with the employees. You can try but it won’t work”.
He didn’t look too happy about that, but he knows it’s reality.
Ended up finally getting an new old laptop for the VPN issue, which some other employee left behind, because the budget was “too tight” even though I couldn’t do my work efficiently. And a few days ago I was told I’d be laid off. Also because of the budget.
So hooray!
Yes and here is some irony I found.
My company requires us to take various learning course throughout the year. Some assigned - some pick your own. A lot of it is the usual B.S. that everyone has to do.
I was browsing thru the managerial list and picked one of the ones that sounded interesting the other day about ‘How to be a better Manager’ and smack in the middle of the first chapter was this big video with this woman giving this speech about being accepting of people who wanted/needed to work from home or telecommute.
My ears instantly perked up.
The video went on to throw up all this data showing how more and more people were doing this and it had this graph from 2012 on and how this was the natural progression in the workplace and how we as managers needed to be accepting of peoples position and feelings toward this and learn to be accommodating as we would see more of it.
I was like WTF??!
When the course ended I scrolled through it looking for a date and I believe it was 2017.
Amazing how the tune has changed but the data hasn’t.
Mega corporations have been running dictating government policy and controlling news narratives for quite some time.
A lot of these companies are locked in to 5,10 or 20 year leases. If they were sensible they’d just eat the loss and take the extra productivity and happier staff, but that’s not how the corporate hivemind works. They’re paying rent so they have to justify it by having bums on seats, or they’re bleeding money for what looks like no reason.
Most of them get tax breaks from the city, but only if they maintain a minimum occupancy. So they’ve lost their tax breaks and they want them back. As always, it comes down to money.
My whole job revolves around cloud computing platforms, why do I need to be in an office? Yet it’s looking like I’m going to be forced to make the choice of returning to an office I’ve never been to, or holding out until I find a new remote gig, while hurting my family financially.
The stupidest thing about the whole return to work things is that I’ve seen a lot of jobs and people who were remote prior to COVID are also being forced back into the office as well, creating financial hardships for those people. This is all just a shadow layoff, just a means to trimming the “fat”, and I’m betting they’re going to overcorrect and become even harsher with anyone that wants to not be in the office constantly.
Refuse the RTO and start looking for another job. Don’t quit. They won’t fire you right away, it will take a while. They might even cave if they need you.
At my last job my entire team was spread across the country. So when they started making me go back into the office I would have to drive an hour to get to work, just so I could sit at a desk alone and telecommute with my teammates. It was basically a huge waste of time and money for me. So I found a new job and quit. They begged me to stay after I gave notice, despite the fact that I told them ahead of time that I was going to leave if they insisted I go to the office. I guess they thought I was bluffing. They agreed to let me stay WFH after I gave notice and I just laughed.
This how they operate. Even though I work from home, I was being completely overworked and stressed out at the end of last year. As soon as my 401k match went through at the beginning of January, I turned in my notice without a new job lined up. I did do one video interview, but didn’t get the gig.
On my very last day of employment I was contacted by a zone vp and asked to stay. He offered a new position for a pilot they were rolling out and about a $10k increase. I took it. It’s been a lot better, but still sucks so I interviewed with someone else today. Point is, that these big corporations don’t really give a shit about there employees. Regardless of what they say or the BS they plaster all over their websites and social media. You are disposable and they will take advantage of you at every opportunity.
It’s a shitty way to do business, but it’s up to the individual to look out for themselves and be willing to take some risks. Work hard and learn as much as possible. Make yourself invaluable and you’ll be in a lot better position to make it
In my observation it has been industry and sector dependent.
Corporate tech and finance are calling for remote work to end. Most of the articles I see where going back to the office is touted are all “silicon valley” type companies and finance/investment firms writing opinion peices.
PR, marketing, and news media, comms fields - which I am in - are doing the opposite. I work in digital media with government clients and my office just had a building contractor come in and walled off 2/3 of our empty cube space that was full pre-pandemic but is now vacant because all those employees remained remote. The positions in that area of the office were mostly copy editors, graphic design, and technical writers. The building owner turned that area into a new office but hasn’t rented it to anyone new yet.
Many of my colleagues are active duty military and government civilians. They all telework as much as 3-4 days a week currently. All of their jobs are administrative in nature and almost all of the military people are officers.
It is important to note that the military has loosely instructed liberal telework at unit level discretion because of record low retention rates. I’ve been working in/for government for a long time and even before 2020, federal contractors and DoD civilians have usually had telework of some kind provided what they did was something that could be taken home.
When I worked in DC in the mid-00s it was common to see offices engage rotating flex schedules because of the insane traffic and hours long commutes in the DMV corridor.
But, I suppose it’s all anecdotal. Where you live and what you do for work are going to impact reality more than anything. Watching the MSM speculate and reading nonsense opinion articles in the Atlantic or Times aren’t going to give you any real information.
All I can say for sure is my office has fully remote and hybrid only. We are guaranteed two days WFH a week but all salaried employees have optional flex schedules and can work non-concurrent hours as long as deadlines are being met. But again, I work for a massive international fed contractor that does largely administrative and PR consulting. So all things that have a history of WFH schedules already.
not only industry and sector dependent, also dependent on the country. at least in my personal bubble (in Germany), remote work is still very common. I also heard from companies who openly advertise remote work and get much more job applications because of it.
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The best is this article using AI to show what a remote worker would look like after 70 years working from home. So ridiculous it’s laugable. The propaganda is strong. Lol
They also made another article about what the worker looks like after 20 years w life-size model too https://news.sky.com/story/life-sized-model-shows-what-office-workers-might-look-like-in-20-years-11843868
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The content was made by office furniture companies… which probably took a hit w wfh… but … like you noted. You bought better. Same here. My place had chairs from the 60s
I’ve actually still been seeing positive news
It’s about money and control. Money invested in and harvested from owning commercial properties. Control from making employees do things they don’t want to, just to beat them down and “keep them in line”. A lot of bosses exercise power for its own sake, unfortunately.
I have empathy for folks who want to collaborate, and/or be mentored, and/or socialize at work. I no longer want or need those things from my job, but…I came up that way so it would be hypocritical of me to say that others shouldn’t want them.
On the other hand, cars are destroying everything and commuting in 2023 (if you don’t truly need to) is just dumb. Progress always comes with some amount of pain and adjustment.
Yes, I have observed this and it is very frustrating. In many cases, these “articles” are opinion pieces being circulated by those with a financial interest in commercial real estate (or someone carrying the water of someone who has such an interest). Those who have any sort of financial interest in commercial real estate are going to be against remote work for obvious reasons.
Cities and real estate moguls arguing that people have to engage in an absolutely fruitless, draining, exhausting, expensive commute to keep a handful of people rich. They want to punish you to keep some elite people rich.
What needs to happen is workers need to fight back as much as possible. If your job can be done remotely, make it a priority to work for a company that allows you to do your job remotely. There’s NOTHING about my job that requires me to go into an office. I have worked successfully at home for many years and if my organization required me to come in, I would do everything I could to leave and find something else that allowed me to telework. If you’re looking for a job and have the luxury of being a little bit choosy, let recruiters know you will ONLY consider remote options.
Anecdotally, I think these opinion pieces are way overblown. My spouse was recently contacted by a recruiter about a job. The job was not remote and my spouse told the recruiter they would only consider remote-only options. The recruiter sighed and said, “That is what I keep getting told.”
Working from home is legitimately amazing. My bud oes not need to sit at your desk with your lame chair and keyboard. He has a much faster pc at home with the big clicky-clackies. Ten hour work day? He will bring that shizz down to 6-8 with the same productivity and can play games on the side.
I get that it doesn’t work for everyone, especially those with task management issues, but out of the 40 people I know, 2 do better in an office.
That easy, beginning of the pandemic: Companies panic that all their employees would call in sick. Or some even die (not that they’d care, but a lot of companies have a bus factor of one). So remote work gets tolerated or praised, everything works great.
Now the pandemic is “over”, it’s safe to go back into the office. Companies have massive real estate costs, so they want to put their employees back into the office. Besides middle managers being afraid of their jobs as they seem to have become useless if they can’t look over your shoulder and micromanage you.
It’s never about facts, it’s always what the companies and managers want in the moment.
I agree with this the most.
Me too, what I have learned is to avoid all media promoting going back to office, since they are just PR tool and can not br trusted.
Search Bloomberg and remote lol
I will not, but I’m guessing they’re all opinion pieces by people who own massive business real estate holdings (directly or through a hedge fund they run) and think “getting back to work” is good for the American spirit, or something.
It’s much more ghoulish than you can ever imagine.
Here’s what one said with his real human mouth:
Ross said. “The employees will recognize as we go into a recession, or as things get a little tighter, that you have to do what it takes to keep your job and to earn a living.”
You have to do what it takes to earn a living. Spend 40m risking your life in a car every day to come back to my 8bln portfolio so it doesn’t lose value. Or you won’t be able to feed yourself.
Wonder what they taste like? 🤔
