When COVID hit and the company I was with at the time went 100% remote, upper management discovered our productivity went up. That same company started forcing people back into the office as soon as they could. Watching a team of executives intentionally harm their company and try to justify it was wild. It wasn't about being profitable, it was about control for controls sake.
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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And real estate. Don't forget real estate.
To be honest, it is also a bit about productivity. Doing full remote will in time become less efficient, at least I notice an uptick in how smooth interactions go after we have been physically together a bit more. There is no reason why it has to happen all the time, though.
But the task for management should really be to make people want to come to the office. I.e. make it a better place to be than at home, and ensure commutes are short and flexible. In my team, the typical commute is about 10 minutes, and most of us will go to the office to meet, have lunch, and get a break from home. We are social creatures, and meeting people is good for us.
During an interview, a high-tech company insisted on being at the office 4 days/week, said no-thanks to my application when I asked to come on average 2 days/week in the office due to the commute.
I understand the need to have regular in-person meetings, but insisting on coming 3-4 days/week in the office when then work can be done remotely seems more about control than productivity. It's also extra unpaid hours spent commuting.
I tell you one way they could do that - offer extra money to people for every day they're in the office, to offset the expenditures on gas, maintenance, and incidentals, as well as the opportunity cost of time lost on commute and preparing meals. I did the math, with the thirty minute commute one way, I save about $2.5K a year on gas alone.
As someone who has the option to go full remote but does not do well with it, I'd be happy to at least get extra stuff covered. My public transportation is not cheap, and the food situation is a mess.
It probably wouldn't work, but I've been wondering whether it would be possible to use the shareholders of publicly traded companies against them in these situations.
I've seen people mention that companies are obligated to maximize profits for their shareholders (might not be true everywhere, and my knowledge on the subject is extremely limited).
If there was data available for a given company that showed that profits were increased during a period where a substantial part (or all) of the employees worked from home, and then the company starts forcing the employees back to the office, could the board not be called upon to force the company to keep people in work-from-home-mode? Would the company not be obliged to do that, to maximize the profits? It seems to me that this would be in the best interest of the shareholders.
Nope, because the biggest shareholders in the vast majority of companies are financial institutions like Blackrock, that coincidentally have large commercial real estate portfolios as well.
Individual shareholders are a drop in the ocean next to that immense amount of centralized wealth. When you think of shareholders, it's not even the 1%, it's a couple hundred people who own everything.
Thanks, that makes perfect sense, and gels perfectly with my knowledge on the subject being ridiculously limited 😅
Are there any really big companies that don't have shareholders? Just curious if it's even possible to get really big without selling stock. Guess it's probably a thing that even if there are any that don't, they probably still have investors. Would be fun to know if there are companies out there that managed everything just on their product, growing organically I guess.
edit: to partially answer my own question, here is Wikipedia's list of the largest private non-governmental companies by revenue.
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A company I worked for went full on into a corporate workspace refresh to open concept during COVID. Writing was on the wall and they tried to recall people 3 months into COVID-which failed spectacularly. I found a remote job shortly after and while I do go in from time to time on my own account, I don't really miss traffic or open office plans.
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Easy layoffs without having to pay severance, can just claim they refused to move.
Amazon built up half the property in south lake union and Bellevue and now they're trying to justify why they did that. God knows they could have saved a ton of money if they hadn't.
Now's the perfect time for competitors to arise that haven't wasted enormous amounts of resources on that kind of thing, and who can draw on a nice big pool of talent looking to leave Amazon.
If I were predisposed toward conspiracies I would definitely be convinced by now that every medium-to-large business owner in the country was part of a secret cabal who made a pact to demand return to office for whatever terrible reason sounded good to them.
My own workplace is mandating a hybrid model for any employees within 30 miles of an office after "much research, discussion, and debate with employees." They've typically been very reasonable and generous to their workforce, and I just don't understand what they're thinking, honestly.
As to conspiracies, it's not really the businesses, it's the property.
My company leased their office & remote work has lead to a increase in production so we're getting a smaller office & staying remote.
Hilariously, the data don't back them up, my wife does research on this very topic for a company. The dollar signs do though, they have to justify the property expenditures.
Hilariously, the data don't back them up, my wife does research on this very topic for a company. The dollar signs do though, they have to justify the property expenditures.
No. That's sunk cost fallacy.
If they've already bought and paid for the buildings, they are not losing more money by not using them.
In fact, they probably save money on things like maintenance, overhead, security on physical sites when they're not being used. They could also be renting those spaces out, or straight up selling.
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Smart company would be selling the property before the prices crash
Don't most companies have Blackrock on their board, who had been buying real estate for the better part of the last 5 years.
whatever terrible reason sounded good to them
Commercial property values. They want the offices full so their investment retains value. Dassit.
I don't get this argument. Most business don't own any property. The office buildings are rented.
From my (very limited) understanding, the underlying reason is the health of the national economy.
A bunch of businesses giving up their office space would destroy the commercial real estate market, and that could trigger another economic recession/depression. It could take the economy years to recover, costing companies billions, and bankrupting some of them. Even fierce competitors will work together in order to prevent that from happening. (I’m not sure how realistic that fear is; I’m just explaining their reasoning.)
So, while an individual corporation would benefit in the short term by moving to a building that’s only one third as big, the long term risks to the economy scare them off. In fact, the only reason working from home is still being discussed is because there’s a shortage of skilled workers. Companies can’t dictate terms quite as strongly as they could a few years ago. Employees see working from home as a major perk, or even a necessity. Inflexible companies invariably lose some of their best people, so they have to allow at least a few work from home options.
Personally, I like seeing corporations being forced to compromise.
It's amazing how for a culture that fetishizes "freedom" we're willing to accept a reality where you have to give it up for half your waking life just to live and provide for your family.
I wish we would stop.
What really amazes me as a european is that while I still think we have to work too much for our modern times we only do a fraction of your average work hours and that cases no issues whatsoever.
It's almost as if working more is not necessarily more productive
"Disagree and commit" = do what I say or quit. Worker exploitation has many douchey buzz phrases.
It's funny, because the original purpose of that phrase was "There is a period during which you can voice your concerns about new or changed ops and procedures, and once the dust has settled, you'll feel better about what comes out of the oven because you had a hand in making it." Instead, the new age Jack Welch management types saw the phrase and decided it means "You don't have to like what we say but you have to obey it."
Surprisingly, the latter interpretation does not lead to a happier healthier workplace with high retention rates. Who would've thought?
Thanks for the history, I am not surprised it evolved like that. Reminds me of Agile. It was a great concept that morphed into 'micromanagement with extra steps' in many shops.
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Dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in action in the land of the free
Notably, Jassy said employees are free to leave if they do not want to comply with the hybrid work requirement.
This sort of statement always makes me raise an eyebrow. There are very few situations where employees are not "free to leave" and most of them are not good.
Amazon and several other companies hired like crazy during pandemic. Now they're trying to shrink the workforce via a combination of outright layoffs and tight policies to make anyone on the verge of quitting go ahead and do it so they don't have to pay severance.
Bonus points for shedding older, more experienced, more expensive employees vs. cheaper early in career employees.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1324557/quarterly-number-of-amazon-employees/
Maybe it's time to consider alternative cloud providers at work. AWS is pretty good but they're going to alienate a ton of talented engineers by doing this.
This is an important point. What cloud providers are flexible on engineer working conditions? I’d imagine they’d all be smaller scale providers?
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The mentality of these people are exactly like slave owners.
Time for unionized office work
Hilarious that the company that pioneered cloud solutions and made working from home for a ton of people ridiculously easier decides that their employees don’t deserve to work from home. Something something corporate office real estate crisis.
If we've learned anything from recent real estate crises, it's that once again, the losses will be socialized, with golden parachutes aplenty.
Reminds me of how I read awhile back that commercial mortgage-backed securities are pretty prevalent in today's major investment portfolios. This more recent article reads to me like, "don't panic, everything is fine, nothing to worry about here"
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guys come work for my company we have embraced the work remote life style.
Alright I'm in. What do we do for the world?
Honestly as long as it's not "Accrue money for bezos so he can shoot his phallic rockets into space" it's probably better for the world.
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"You're coming into the office too, right?"
. . .
"You'll be in the office too?"
If somebody told me it's past time to commit I'd commit to calling them a cunt. What a horrible horriblw cunt
Startups wringing their hands in anticipation
Am I glad I got out of that toxic place.
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