Damaging results of mandated return to the office: it’s worse than we thought
finance.yahoo.comI reclaim 1.5 hours a day from work from home, so a mandated back to work would actually represent a 6 point pay cut on the day assuming I thought that through properly.
I don’t even have an egregious commute compared to others.
Never mind that all of a sudden I no longer need before and after daycare. I have a home gym and can acceptably exercise at lunch. I don’t have peer pressures to go out for lunch all the time to eat. Etc.
The amount of money changes just from working from home is huge.
Never mind that I get more done, and have way fewer interruptions. This whole “get back to the office” is transparently a middle management “I’m still relevant!” Move.
Ed Zitron wrote about it a lot in his newsletter a while back and I think had some really excellent insights about it. Especially these three factors:
- Executives work in a way that genuinely does probably reward or even require in person interaction. A lot of their job is "intangible" human connection-building stuff with other executives, shareholders, investors, manufacturers, etc. And because of the way executives are selected, a lot of these people haven't worked a "normal" job in decades or sometimes ever. They mistakenly think everyone else's work is, or should be, more like theirs is.
- Ego shit: from executive down to middle management a significant amount of the "reward" of the job is prestige, in the form of authority and control over other workers. Seeing "their" workers all lined up in the office is a visceral experience of this prestige and they don't want to give it up.
- Some significant fraction of middle management is genuinely not necessary or beneficial, but is essentially skimmed off the productivity of the lower workers and presented upwards as managerial competence. And especially, this isn't evenly distributed: maybe all managers do it a little, inadvertently or through bureaucratic structure, but some managers are almost exclusively this. Their actual career is at stake because it makes clear who is doing the work, and prevents them from intercepting it to take credit.
And then finally my own view on it is exposed in the disgusting euphemism "labor discipline." White collar pay went up during the pandemic. WFH is incredibly better for the quality of life of many workers, with few or no downsides. We are realizing we don't have to live and work the way we have been, things can be better for us at no one's expense. We are getting uppity and need to be reminded who is really in control of our lives.
> a significant amount of the "reward" of the job is prestige, in the form of authority and control over other workers
This is definitely a real phenomenon. "Subordination", the product of having subordinates, is a sort of hidden compensation to some people.
> And then finally my own view on it is exposed in the disgusting euphemism "labor discipline." White collar pay went up during the pandemic. WFH is incredibly better for the quality of life of many workers, with few or no downsides. We are realizing we don't have to live and work the way we have been, things can be better for us at no one's expense. We are getting uppity and need to be reminded who is really in control of our lives.
Amen. There's a certain type of boss who thinks that employee happiness is a sign they're not being whipped enough, and that whipping them will increase productivity; these people also treat it as an axiom, and are immune to evidence about productivity.
There are also other jobs which truly benefit from in-person interactions, for example sales people basically are basically fueled by it.
And in my experience there is a minority of people, also developers, who really enjoy working at the office, or don't do well at home.
Good managers would be busy figuring out what their people actually need to thrive and know that it is not the same for everybody.
In this case, I really hope forward thinking companies will destroy the competition and scoop up all the displeased talent that is forced to return to the office. Insofar as we have a free market, the problem will then sort itself out anyway, even though the road to get there might be ugly.
> sales people basically are basically fueled by it.
The best sales people I've ever worked with basically never showed up at the office other than to print off contracts and drop off signed ones. Most of their day was spent meeting with people in person. Rarely they were on phone calls.
I guess if you're trying to land clients in other states or other countries, you're probably at the office but you're not socializing with your coworkers..
> A lot of their job is "intangible"
I think for many executives it's so "intangible" as to be worthless bordering on detrimental ;)
I agree but that's a stronger claim that's more difficult to defend. In terms of "why are they pushing return to office" it's not that relevant.
Assuming they are doing anything by doing this, they need to be in person to do it. I'm with you though I don't think very much of value is taking place up there.
Well the fact that they do nothing becomes a lot more obvious when they aren't breathing down people's necks in the office.
>and prevents them from intercepting it to take credit.
Ah the old "middle manager man in the middle" attack.
> transparently a middle management “I’m still relevant!”
Which makes one wonder who the people who kept posting on here how much they missed the office and wished we'd go back to the office during the pandemic actually were.
I had a hand-full of friends and coworkers who felt this way. Talking to them about it broke them into three broad categories:
Enthusiastic extroverts who needed face to face interaction to stay happy. The pandemic limited their social options and they longed for the amount of in person interactions they had when working from the office.
Easily distractable people unable to set up a distraction free environment at home who got stressed because their productivity suffered. I thought I was going to be one of these people because I had a pre-school aged child who was also stuck at home but it didn't end up being that much of a problem for me thanks to my wife being very proactive and able to juggle her school schedule to when I was available to parent. Some of my co-workers privately admitted that they couldn't focus on work when their hobbies and house-chores were so close at hand.
Those who had issues in their home environment that caused them grief and they relied on the office as an escape rather than fixing their problem. These were the people who got divorced or broke leases at the beginning of the pandemic as they were unable to live 24/7 with the people they had been able to deal with as long as they had 40+ hours of break from them every week previously.
I forgot to add, I was suspicious at first that people were larping their jobs or it was managers who were trying to psyche everyone up to come back but at least in my experience it didn't go that way. They did make us come back when numbers were dropping (but before the vaccine was available to the general public) although the actual date they picked ended up being a major spike in my state related to a holiday weekend and they didn't back down from it. In the next month 80% of the office got Covid and they sent us back, I've been working from home since then. Like this article suggests, I would look for another job if they mandated return at this point. My math says it would be affectively a 10% pay cut to start commuting again, I'll never consider the commute as outside of work time again, it is either unpaid work or I'm considering it part of the time covered by my salary.
Its easy to believe RTO would be a bandaid to a degraded social life or non-optimal at home situation. And for some it might even be true. But by large your social life can and should thrive outside your job. You just have to work for it.
Honestly, I don’t even really have much of a social life outside of work, aside from talking to the other parents at my kids rec activities.
For me, WFH has made giving my kids a great childhood just substantially easier. We’re not constantly in a rush to get the mandatory stuff for the day out of the way, so we can spend more time with rec activities or just having fun.
We’re also not beholden to terrible schedules. As an example, the range of swimming lessons times we can handle basically opened up drastically. The range of afterschool activities we can manage as equally opened up. Where previously it was soccer, now we’ve been able to try a bunch of things and let them land on what they like.
I think this is a large part of it. For me certainly I realized during the pandemic that I was starting to feel really isolated and needed to make a conscious effort on my social life, but I also think this was a net win. True friendships are formed and strengthened by putting in effort. Ephemeral office connections are fleeting. I think if your social life dies when working remote it's a sign of a problem the office was papering over.
I also believe there are those for whom this is not enough and they really do need more time around people than can be obtained outside of work, but there are solutions for these people as well (ex co-working spaces)
There's a non-zero number of HNers who arguably make their job a core part of their personality that experienced significant distress when they discovered that people were fine working from home. It's the only way I can rationale people who cannot fathom that others have hobbies / friendships outside of work.
>There's a non-zero number of HNers
The world of employees is more than just HN userbase. Don't take the narative here as being universal. In my groups of people, most prefer working in the office the majority of the time than at home. They are not on HN.
I will say that, personally, I miss the office sometimes. If I had a 45 minute (per direction) or shorter commute I'd say my perfect world would be getting together in an office with my immediate team 1-2 times a week. It's just so much easier to have thoughtful discussion in person than via teleconferencing; I also, selfishly, enjoy the social aspect.
The other side of the coin is that solo work - e.g. slinging code - is a lot easier to get done at home with fewer distractions.
All that said, if my choice is between the extremes of mandatory RTA and full-time WFH, I pick full-time WFH ten times out of ten.
I've worked remote now for 8 years, I do sometimes miss being in the office with the people I'm collaborating with, but it's not something I would want to do 5 days a week. I'd be totally fine with 1-2 days mandated in the office per week if I was within a reasonable commute distance to my team, but my current team is geographically dispersed anyway (think co-workers who've never met face to face in 15 years) so it makes no sense to require any of us into an office. I'll choose WFH every time because I know I'm far more productive that way - if I was forced to go back to commuting work, I would effectively restrict my office time to no more than 8 hours per day and refuse to ever work outside of the office, where as today I'm effectively available to do work about 11 hours per day even though I seldom do.
That's pretty condescending all around.
Of my current direct reports, I have 2 folks who couldn't wait to get back to the office full time, a number of folks (including me) who go to the office maybe 1-2 days of the week, and the rest never come to an office. My office folks go in because they like a firm separation between work and home and like seeing their friends in person. Same with us casual office types; I go in because there's conversations that move faster to better outcomes when had face to face. Exactly how are we wrong? Why do you care?
And while I know you won't believe this, but the middle managers job hasn't changed: all the bullshit they had to deal with so you don't is still there.
Yes, it seems weird so many HN folks seemed to pine for the office when the statistics show a different picture.
My guess is that there are a lot of founders (or aspiring founders) on here who have dreamed of having a team to lord over and look at everyday and now they feel that dream slipping away.
It's very common for neophyte founders to get and office (and business cards) as their first order of business, because in their mind the artifice of being "in-charge" is the actual motivation behind moving into leadership.
It's so weird. I don't know anyone in real life who pines for the office.
When I meet someone new around my neighborhood, I usually don't offer information about my employment, but if they ask, I tell them I work in computers from home. 100% of the responses I get are approximately "Wow, that's amazing," "you are so blessed/lucky," "our boss dragged us all back in," and "are you guys hiring?" and exactly 0% say "Aww, sorry to hear that... you must really miss the office/your commute."
Speaking only for myself, I don't know that I actually like working from home, its just that all the stupid stuff I have to do to get into the office makes it so much better to just not go in.
I actually enjoy interacting with my coworkers, but the time I would enjoy spending with them outside of work, I instead have to spend on the road.
A lot of opinions on here would make more sense if we could look at titles and salary of posters. So much motivated reasoning going on.
I have talked with HR and I am told the younger generation entering the workforce wants to be in the office.
I guess this might be true, but I do not have any numbers to validate this.
HR works for the corp, strictly in the corporations interests. Even if the narrative you’re describing is true (I don’t know either), it’s only a coincidental[0] point, not The Reason for BtO policies.
> I have talked with HR
HR, in general, is not a reliable source on anything other than what the company for whom they work wants you, as a potentially unreliable production input, to believe in order to keep you maximally aligned with the interests of the corporate owners as relayed through management.
I heard the same. I also asked someone who is in management. They said that they were getting a lot of feedback from exit interviews from employees with > one year of tenure who left. Many complain of feeling disconnected from their team or not know what to do.
I don't like working from home, but I hate mandated RTO because of all the antisocial behavior people bring into the office from their WFH days (loud meetings at their desks, brushing their teeth at their desks, Das keyboards, etc.).
Those have nothing to do with WFH, they're regular office behavior and one well known reason for why many people hate going to the office.
Those definitely existed in the past, but there's been a dramatic uptick of terrible office etiquette in my current situation relative to pre-pandemic times, even though I'm in the same building working for the same company. I now expect any rando who sits next to me to enter a meeting.
I say this on here every time this topic comes up and get downvoted to hell because no one likes to hear it, but I don’t care because people need to hear it and I m gonna preach it. Everyone who complains about RTO always focuses on how it affects them. If you want to argue from a position of strength with your company on why WFH is better, stop focusing on it’s benefits to you and more on its benefits to your company.
Your arguments about “me” will always fall on deaf ears at your company. They don’t care about “me”, they care about “us”.
Mostly because it is a thing that affects them (the employees). The only problems a company faces from RTO is employee dissatisfaction.
Same as saying that you need to argue why a pay raise is good for your company. I mean, it mostly doesn't. All it does is that it makes the employees happier.
Sure, but unlike a requested comp change which is understood to be a employer/employee individual negotiation, RTO tends to be decided on an employer/employees basis. The company doesn’t view it on an individual employee level so individual employee arguments are the wrong approach when selling WFH over a RTO directive.
"Unispace found that nearly half (42%) of companies with return-to-office mandates witnessed a higher level of employee attrition than they had anticipated"
No severance payouts. No bumps to your unemployment insurance payments. Everything is working to plan.
This seems to be the real reason that AT&T is pushing RTO, including telling people that have worked remote for their entire careers and never seen an office in 20+ years that they must relocate to a designated location either by the end of 2023 or 2024 depending on their wave. If they reject immediately they will get severance, but if they accept and don't relocate later they will be terminated without severance.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/at-t-tells-60000-m...
Although the story says that "managers" (e.g. non union individual contributors) get to choose from the 9 locations, that's not the reality, your work stream is assigned a designated location, there may be an alternate location you can petition to go to instead but it must be approved first.
Yep! This is it. Managers associate willingness to RTO with loyalty, so the idea is very much to induce voluntary, mostly non-regrettable attrition.
They're playing with fire.
Good. Let these dinosaurs burn their houses down while the smart companies allow flexibility. I’m tired of these psychological tactics of lying to employees about RTO decision making and making people feel like they’re not team players all of a sudden.
Anecdotally my org is on a hiring tear lately and we're completely remote, and the quality of candidates has steeply risen as of late. I mean really good candidates I'd rarely see before are pouring into my inbox. I've never talked to so many folks currently at Google, Meta, Amazon, but also big banks and other F500s.
Many candidates are coy about their reasons for leaving, especially given all the layoffs, but, still anecdotally, the trend I've seen is for folks to be sending out a lot of feelers during RTO and many folks have even told me straight up that's why they're looking. They want flexible hours and work locations.
I talked to a director last week who spends 1/3 the year in ski country, 1/3 the year in the Midwest and 1/3 the year on the coast. He's not going back, and practically anyone would be lucky to have him.
It's going to be a bloodbath.
> I talked to a director last week who spends 1/3 the year in ski country, 1/3 the year in the Midwest and 1/3 the year on the coast. He's not going back, and practically anyone would be lucky to have him.
Does he actually spend any time working?
> Does he actually spend any time working?
This seems the exact thought process of management wanting people to RTO.
They forget there's time, and life, after working hours. And the less you need to commute, the more free time you have to actually live and enjoy life.
I grew up in a mountain town, and the mountain started doing 8 am openings for season pass holders. Some colleagues and I would hit the slopes, ski for an hour, and be in the office at 930. My actual productivity after that kind of fresh air and exercise every morning was much higher.
We also had an employee with a 'powder clause' in her contract. Any day with over a certain amount of snowfall meant a day off.
> We also had an employee with a 'powder clause' in her contract. Any day with over a certain amount of snowfall meant a day off.
This person is my new hero.
I wonder how common this is, though. I mean, I've mostly worked for medium-to-huge sized companies, and as WorkerBee number 56612, I have zero ability to get anything non-standard or cute into my actual employment contract. I get the same standard boilerplate as all 50K other WorkerBees, and if I don't like it, I can go pound pavement.
This is a lie they tell you. In reality there is no "standard employment contract." It's a living document. There's a non-zero chance that every colleague you work with has a slightly different contract than yours.
The world is messy and The System is designed to accommodate the mess. In my experience, you get maybe one or two free negotiation points to spend without any consequences. Worst case, they say no. You can't typically change everything, but getting more salary or time off or flexible hours or signing bonus or a powder clause are not crazy in the grand scheme of things.
Once you sign, though, the game is over. Unless you're a keystone it's unlikely you'll be able to renegotiate.
Protestant work ethic needs constant surveillance from above or else all humans do is sinning and slothing. Completely opposed to the self-employed employee model that gets stuff done out of intrinsic motivation.
I can't imagine essentially "moving" to a new place 3 times a year.
I have pets and would need to take at least 3-4 days off to pack and move everything, so unless this dude owns 3 properties, it seems like a massive time expenditure to do this. Not to mention being incredibly stressful (which would make me less productive).
Unless they are a digital nomad with a laptop and a pair of flip-flops.
I make no assumptions about their actual work day. Maybe they are incredibly productive.
What?
You're not moving. You don't need to pack your microwave, sofa and stamp collection and organise 3 trucks to move all your stuff. You pack 1 or 2 suitcases with the things you need for the climate for 4 months (which goes by faster than you think).> I can't imagine essentially "moving" to a new place 3 times a year.
Ok, others don't so I don't see how that's relevant> I have pets
As I said, it's only 1-2 suitcases. You can pack them in a couple hours. If you need an entire day then you do it on a Saturday. Not sure why packing requires extra time off work. You make everything sound so stressful. Do you tend to stress about many normal life things?> would need to take at least 3-4 days off to pack and move everything
Perhaps they do, but truthfully you don't need to own a place to spend somewhere 4 months. I've been to places for a few months and most rentals have fully fitted kitchens and basic things such as hair dryers, etc.> so unless this dude owns 3 properties
Being stressed over nothing sounds like a subjective you problem, not a general problem. People also pack suitcases to go on holiday and going somewhere nice is for most people associated with happy hormones and not stress hormones.> Not to mention being incredibly stressful (which would make me less productive).
Exactly, they are incredibly productive because nothing was said that would even remotely suggest the opposite.> I make no assumptions about their actual work day. Maybe they are incredibly productive.
The folks I've known to do this have been hard workers, so I would guess yes.
I used to work with an incredible engineer who went skiing from 6-9am every day and then again at 6pm, weather permitting. Slopes were 5 minutes from his front door.
If you tried to fit this sort of thing in while working in an office, then no you probably wouldn't spend much time working, and that's the whole point.
FWIW we had an engineer who basically did this, and he was definitely a top performer. Depending on where he was and what the activity he was there for he might work nonstandard hours, but he definitely got shit done.
Director level non-standard hours might be a non-starter, but nothing about the lifestyle demanded it, it was really just about maximizing the time spent skiing or whatever. One could always knock of at 5 and get a few hours in.
Also much easier to ski or hike on the weekend if it's right next door rather than a four hour drive (looking at you I80). Add in potentially having kids growing up around nature and even working standard hours M-F can make the work remote from your preferred environment much more worth it.
How does location determine how much someone works?
The old think is that you're only supposed to have fun on the weekends. Weeks are for WORKING.
People recoil when you tell them you go to the gym in the middle of the work day and maybe walk the dog in the afternoon.
Every time this topic comes up on HN, I see many anecdotes on why WFO is bad.
My anecdote: I work from the office everyday (unforced). 20-30 minutes commute. I come in at 6am/7am and leave at 2pm/3pm. I do a 30 minutes calisthenics session and then head home and usually leave my laptop in the office (as a forcing function to disconnect).
The result: I have built strong bonds with colleagues outside my team. A few of them have become close friends.
I'm also generally as productive and sometimes even more than my colleagues that WFH.
I feel the ideal environment is *contextual* and it’s probably a hybrid work environment where people who want to work remote can but have to touch base in-person a few times every month. I wish both sides on the debate can see this.
Edit: The point of my comment is neither option is bad or good. Certain people benefit from each option and it’s unfair to paint either one as bad.
E.g: As an immigrant, the office has been useful in seeding my social circle and learning useful things about Berlin that I probably wouldn’t have know. Just the other day a colleague outside my team informed me how I can get an extra 10 days off .
Someone in a different situation probably have different priorities.
> I feel the ideal environment is contextual and it’s probably a hybrid work environment where people who want to work remote can but have to touch base in-person a few times every month
This necessitates living near the office/only hiring people that live near the office. I will not let my employer dictate where I live and I will not live in some of the most expensive real-estate markets in the world
That’s why I said it’s contextual :) There is always a good enough balance (I think).
Some of my colleagues live outside Berlin and I think they are only required to come to the office a few times a month and they haven’t complained so far.
I would never work somewhere that required me to be in office a few times a month. You still have to live within driving distance to the office (or take a plane a few times a month which is even worse).
I think over time we'll see that the "balance" is actually 100% WFH unless physical presence is absolutely required (like you're making and selling sandwiches). It's just going to take a while for the new fully remote companies to replace those who refuse to adapt.
I didn’t see the option to reply to your last response, so posting this here.
Just curious, Do you live in a cycling friendly city? And how is the public transport?
Also, your response confirms what I said earlier. Not factoring in people that prefer an office will mean you replace the office with another form of an office.
> I've managed around a dozen teams in my career and 100% of the time the fully remote teams have produced better results than the in-office teams.
The worst performers in my career has usually been the remote folks. But we can post all the anecdotes we have, but guess time will tell.
> Just curious, Do you live in a cycling friendly city? And how is the public transport?
I do, but I work remote and I honestly don't even think there are any tech companies in my city even if I wanted to work locally (which I don't).
> Also, your response confirms what I said earlier. Not factoring in people that prefer an office will mean you replace the office with another form of an office.
If you count zoom/discord/slack/github... as "another form of an office", then sure. I really do mean that successful companies in the future will not have a physical presence if they don't need to.
> The worst performers in my career has usually been the remote folks. But we can post all the anecdotes we have, but guess time will tell.
I think it's pretty easy to see how being pure remote is superior from a talent market perspective. How can "people who live within commuting distance to the office" ever compete with "the best people on the planet I can hire"?
> The worst performers in my career has usually been the remote folks.
On what KPI? Did they also suffer less burnout? Did the company lose money hiring these folks? Did anyone care? Who? Why?
> I would never work somewhere that required me to be in office a few times a month.
It’s great that we have that option of companies that are full remote.
———
However, your last paragraph seems to not appreciate the fact that there are folks like myself that prefer going to an office often.
My prediction is that we might get rid of the office and replace it with the office in another form — most likely better.
>My prediction is that we might get rid of the office and replace it with the office in another form — most likely better.
You'll have to explain what you mean by "most likely better" and then make the case that your "better" is enough to draw workers to an office that a bunch of them don't want to be in for all of the reasons HN has listed.
> You'll have to explain what you mean by "most likely better"
If I knew, I would have started a startup with the idea :).
My high-level point is that there are some pros to periodic physical meetups with colleagues (in an office?). And my prediction is predicated on two things: 1. Those needs still need to be solved 2. There are folks that prefer working from something like an office.
In no way do I want to draw “workers to an office that a bunch of them don't want to be in for all of the reasons HN has listed.”. Tho I think there is some balance for most folks.
I’m pro options. I’m anti black and white. What HN lists on this topic are usually one sided takes.
Actually my last paragraph is about efficiency, talent access and cost savings. As a leader, I have no reason to incur the massive cost of having an office because it's only going to limit the talent pool I have access too, cost the company a bunch of money and increase team friction.
I've managed around a dozen teams in my career and 100% of the time the fully remote teams have produced better results than the in-office teams. You're literally paying for worse performance and over time it's not going to be sustainable.
>E.g: As an immigrant, the office has been useful in seeding my social circle and learning useful things about Berlin that I probably wouldn’t have know.
HN will tell you that you should make friends outside of work and that they shouldn't be forced to come to the office just to socialize with you. /s
How long is your commute?
I'm in the middle on this: I have a very good office at the moment, and am content to be there and chat with my coworkers, but that doesn't make the commuting any less of a deadweight loss.
It also makes it far easier to organize e.g. work on the house or dental appointments.
20-30 minutes. This includes a little cycling I need to do, else the time is 35+ minutes.
I understand why businesses want us to return to office, and cannot disagree that I would likely react the same way. However returning to the office has numerous additional costs that are very much avoidable. I have to go to the office once a week. That’s a week do gas, time, money, pollution, and using resources and space that is duplicative.
Here’s the thing with commercial leases. They go on for years at a time and cost a very large amount.
So some companies are locked into their office leases and stupidly think not having people there is a waste of that money when it’s a sunk cost and has already been wasted.
But for companies without an office, it’s a massive saving.
So in the long run, cubicle-minded managers will go out of business, and get outcompeted by their younger and more modern replacements.
Leases ? You didn't understand how it works. Boss has a company. Boss buys some big office. Boss rents its office to its company. Some systemic tax rebates apply. Boss gets even more rich.
RTO is a nightmare for these people.
“Younger” replacements? I am 46 and I’m the opposite of cubical minded. At lot of us old guys remember when remote was a thing long before Covid. The only time I worked in an office was 3 of my 5 years at Apple. And it wasn’t by choice.
Plenty of “younger” workers often equate “work life” with “life” and love the ping-pong and beer culture of “tech” offices. I despise it. A lot of younger workers coming out of college see the office as a place to get their lattes and socialize.
So while I agree with the “cubicle-minded” aspect, the “younger” aspect isn’t quit accurate or fair. Many of us that have a life outside of work hate that cubicle-minded attitude regardless of our age. It’s often the older and more experienced people that have less tolerance for office culture, especially those of us that were doing remote long before it was a widespread “thing.” Unless I have to work with physical stuff, there is zero need to be in an office.
Younger as in next wave of owners and CEO’s. Economically speaking, the average person is just getting started at 46. I didn’t use the term to refer to 21 yo’s.
Commercial real estate value is a bubble that's gonna pop soon.
There's just way more office space than anyone needs.
Is there a way to short CRE other than investing in non-commercial RE? I'd think you can probably directly short CRE-focused REITs but I'd be worried about them rebalancing or diversifying even as CRE starts to pop.
> other than investing in non-commercial RE?
Does that help if you believe CRE is on the outs? CRE typically carries a much higher property tax burden, which means that if CRE starts to meaningly go by the wayside: That burden will shift to other property classes, making them much less attractive and/or cuts to services will be made, making the municipality much less attractive overall.
Everybody and their uncle has seen this coming for a while. I think it’s mostly priced in. I wouldn’t short it.
Probably fine if they own their buildings? I can't imagine how they would adapt that quickly, but if it still concerned you you could hedge with brownfield developers or even REITs that don't own (whose costs would presumably plummet)? Not at all an expert.
If you can find intelligence about which CRE will crater to zero and which will just be half of what it's now, you can arrange some in-kind swaps. But the ethics of this feels wrong.
There are like a half dozen levered short CRE ETF's.
At this point this would be quite the opposite of the Michael Burry “nobody saw this coming” inspired short if real estate. I wouldn’t bother.
Our office building management is giving half a month free for new referrals; meanwhile they are refusing to rent us more floor space.
Why would they do that? Would it not make more sense to focus on existing customers instead of chasing new leads? I mean, sure, don't put all your eggs in one basket. But when an existing customer is asking you to take their money, why turn them down?
Speculating:
One company occupying the extra: company goes bust, you lose their business, probably spend months/years fighting with a bankruptcy holding company to get paid and maybe lose.
Two companies occupying the same space: same risk, but you still get paid for the extra space while dealing with it.
Copy and paste of a previous article discussed here a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36500448
EDIT: And copied and pasted here too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36956799
I kind of prefer going in to the office. I like talking to people around the water cooler and whatnot. BUT, remote work has definitely allowed me more opportunity than I would have otherwise based on where I live.
I can see how the choice thing would sway people. Maybe if going into the office, you still had the flexibility to go run errands or whatever.
My take on remote work as a manager for a company with significant name recognition:
I think it's clear some people prefer working remotely (and the online hacker news crowd leans heavily that way). It's also clear that some people feel real benefits from being in the office.
I think it's inevitable that the culture of a company mirrors the values of it's leaders.
Companies with leaders that value in person communication, place a high premium on random collaboration will prefer their teams to be in office, and hire people based on this. This could involve companies with large amounts of more junior people that need training or experience (and whose leaders feel that training is easier done in person).
Companies with leaders that feel like collaboration is less important, are more willing to set metrics and not be as directly as involved, and hire experienced employees with less oversight, lean towards remote work.
This means you'll see a decline in hybrid teams. Teams want to be made up of people who share values, and this is something that will polarize teams. Companies that prioritize growing talent will prefer to be in person, companies that prefer to hire for specific roles with clear expectations will be OK being remote.
This polarization will be painful and shouldn't happen quickly. I see many companies putting their finger on the scale when hiring, preferring in office roles (and selecting people that want or can't get remote roles). Over time, natural attrition will mean less and less remote workers, and that eventual makes it easier to push others out.
I don't think this is a good or bad thing, but it does mean that if you want to be fully remote, you need to remain very competitive in terms of skills. You're competing against a wider talent pool. I do expect 3 days a week (Tues/Wed/Thurs) to become standard for many companies, and that broadens the "recruiting" radius for in office companies. 1 hour commute 5 days a week is the same time commitment as 1.5 hours commute 3 days a week.
> It's also clear that some people feel real benefits from being in the office.
I'm so tired of this equivocation. These aren't two neatly swapable things like some sort of cute little "preference" that each company can decide for itself without receiving any judgement.
The costs behind in-office work are GARGANTUAN, both in terms of the literal cost of renting + heating + cooling a huge office space that is vacant every weekend and every night, and the environmental impact of this flagrant waste, combined with the costs of requiring everyone to commute (and typically do so without compensation), the brain drain of only allowing "local" applicants, etc, etc...
This isn't some cute little preference where you can be like oh well Johnny prefers in-office. Johnny better come up with some really huge world-changing justifications or better yet we can stop renting such spaces and save money and the environment across the board.
As an employee the cost of working from home is GARGANTUAN. I already life where I want to, don't force me to move to a more expensive place so that I have space for an office at home. I don't need to move for any office, as all offices in my local city (1+ mil) are easily reachable by bike or subway within 30 minutes.
> As an employee the cost of working from home is GARGANTUAN
You don't have a desk, chair, and wifi at home?
Or a kitchen table or anything?
I mean I guess it's unfair to assume everyone has any kind of office space set up at their homes but I'm kinda shocked you don't already just have a flat surface and a chair.
90% of the people I do video calls with are either calling from a literal closet or do an animated/replacement background anyway. Like you I spent a lot of time and effort preparing my (real life) background behind me, and most people are surprised when they find out it isn't fake.
Point being, no one cares, and you do not need a "home office" to WFH. You can WFH from a bus
> It's also clear that some people feel real benefits from being in the office.
If I could instantly teleport in the office and if the office had quiet private spaces, yes sure, but the terrible housing market, long commutes and shit offices, are bigger downer that prevent me from prioritizing going to the office even though I like working and socializing with my coworkers.
> Companies with leaders that feel like collaboration is less important, are more willing to set metrics and not be as directly as involved, and hire experienced employees with less oversight, lean towards remote work.
I feel like collaboration is very important which is why I only run teams WFH and never in the office. There's no collaboration happening when people are crammed together in a building, just posturing.
Collaboration for remote employees is amazing though. You can even look at large open source projects where people who have never even spoken to each other successfully develop software together.
I kinda agree here, especially with modern tools.
Screen sharing on a call is a 10000x better experience than "just come over to my desk and look over my shoulder"
Screen sharing is better for pair programming, mentoring, demoing, everything. It's awesome.
The only real downside to calls is that whiteboarding is a challenge, but tbh Whiteboards are anti-productive, they are where communication goes to die imo.
> The survey equates the displeasure of shifting from a flexible work model to a traditional one to that of experiencing a 2-3% pay cut.
I think they forgot a 0.
Yes, this doesn't add up. The typical 2x20 mins daily commute is effectively an 8% unpaid increase in working hours, not counting transportation costs.
I don't know anyone with a 20 minute commute- I'd be in the office every day if I had that. Actually I think the commute pain is the best single predictor of how people feel about going back to the office.
While people driving cars solo is surely a pitiable waste of time and resources, and my current commute is about 20ft from bedroom to living room, I would say that a happy medium has been my public transit-based commutes.
As long as there's at least one leg with a long-haul distance (30+ minutes), I am usually able to enter a calm and meditative state, lower my blood pressure, and set aside the cares of home and work alike. This is not always the case, because there may be stressors from other passengers, but most of the time, my situational awareness does not require rapt attention, and I can soften my gaze, stare out the window, or poke my nose into my phone.
It is often difficult to describe to recruiters how public transit makes my commute different, not just more time. The distance calculations work differently: based on number of transfer points and frequency of service, etc.
You can also sit out on your porch or deck in the morning before work with a cup of coffee and a podcast, and meditate, relax, or whatever you like to do to get ready for work.
I've heard managers try to spin a commute as a good thing, giving you transition time between work and home, but it always comes off to me as corporate BS and nothing you can't also do at home without dealing with traffic or public transit.
> set aside the cares of home and work alike
Part of my imperfect joy in commuting to work in an office is neither being at home, nor at work, for a while. That's my POV. Sit on your porch if you want. I love the train. I have this in common with Iggy Pop and Siouxsie:
I had one. And I'm not willing to RTO.
But well, I'm just a single point.
There isn't anything to add. They surveyed people and found that people dislike switching from having a flexible schedule to a traditional one as much as experiencing a 2-3% pay cut. Through I agree, if most people did do a bit of math they would realize they should be significantly more upset.
They probably averaged a bunch of people that equated it to 30% with a bunch of people that liked being in the office.
It is unclear who wants RTO, at least within tech and other leaders whom I know within tech.
Those who are entering the workforce, remote working is fun for greybeards and terrible for fresh grads, interns and apprentices.
Fresh grads, interns, and apprentices typically uproot their lives to move to tech hubs, as do older populations. That is the terrible effect - getting dropped in a strange new location with minimal network. Of course letting "locals" work remotely would make that situation worse, agreed.
So completely do away with tech hubs. People can continue to grow organically, they are free to stay or move as makes sense to them individually.
As a society, we should be striving to continue decoupling work from our identity.
And critically, housing prices.
New employees, at the bottom of the pay scale, are competing with employees making far more (with vesting) for homes.
Democratizing this across a larger number of cities (and towns!) seems healthy.
Disclaimer: Biased, as have to move regularly for spouse's job, so RTO wouldn't work for me.
I like that workers themselves need to “rebel” against the powers that be to solve this as we are completely incapable of improving the housing crisis otherwise. Nimbys, geriatric government ineptitude, and corporate investment is actively working against new home owners. It’s complete generational theft that seeks to turn everyone into a renter for life.
The thing is, the supposed mentorship and office culture that fresh grads and neophyte employees believe they are missing largely never existed even before COVID.
- Companies just aren't interested in training people if they can hire someone trained somewhere else.
- Project-based time accounting doesn't account for time spent mentoring and transferring knowledge.
- Some older workers withhold knowledge and aren't punished for it. Some older workers share knowledge and aren't rewarded for it.
All this existed prior to COVID and expansion of work from home.
There's nothing precluding people from mentoring others over the net, through chat and video.
I see people mention in these threads that in-person mentoring and networking is somehow "just better", but no source or wide-population evidence is ever provided. It's always "trust me bro" and "it helped me", whereas the reality is a lot closer to what you described.
There are lots of companies with shitty in-office cultures where new employees get hazed and bullied, but never productively mentored. Either way, for the last 15-20 years at least, the burden of learning has been almost entirely on the employee, regardless of whatever corporate PR drones may say.
Some like this, some like that. I know enough fresh grads who thrived working from home. And also enough who didn't.
I lived with my parents like three years into working a full time, decently paid job. We'd always lived in rentals and I wanted to help with the bills. After moving out I realized that, man, I was saving so much money!
This anecdote to say that I'd probably been terrible at a remote job while in the old structures. Now I'm married with a child, but I get to call the shots on daily routine, so to speak. I can even work late nights without mom coming to admonish.
Then, isn't the long duree view of technology about replacing apprenticeship learning (sit with the master welder, clean the shop, watch him work -- this doesn't cut in software)? Sometimes with explicit learning (linear algebra), sometimes just with low-friction entry points into professions.
The people who have investments in commercial real estate want it. All those ginormous office buildings... would be obsolete.
> would be obsolete
I doubt this. Would probably be cheaper, but I doubt the rental market is so inelastic that the new price will break anything.
I wonder if they could be turned into apartments or something else useful.
There are always some discussion about turning them into apartments here on HN. My conclusion from them is that no, they couldn't.
But they could be turned into something else useful. All that space close to each other and at the destination of every transportation structure will find a usage.
FWIW, I think Scott Galloway has an interesting take on this:
https://www.profgalloway.com/work-from-office/
One of his arguments is that for younger employees, in that it provides an opportunity to create social connections. For example, it appears that ~20% of people meet their spouses at work.
Some people do and some people don’t. It seems to me it’s largely a matter of personal preference.
I worked from home before the pandemic, hated it, and vowed to never do it again. Then the pandemic happened.
I worked remote for a year before the pandemic for health reasons and didn't like it much, was looking forward to going back.
The pandemic was a huge rearrangement to so many things though. It forced through a lot of the accommodations that previously I had to beg and fight for. Got everyone used to having to write more, have video option for all meetings, train judgement about what can be async etc.
It also normalized the lunch errand, the early dinner then back at work, the "I might just be away from the computer when you message me" dynamic that makes remote work genuinely fulfilling. I no longer feel like I'm committing a moral transgression against my coworkers by stopping to help a family member with a chore or whatever.
I once said I would never willingly do remote. Now I say I'll never willingly work from an office regularly. I might turn out to be as wrong about this as I was about that, we'll see.
A lot of these things seemed normal to me in Bay Area tech companies pre pandemic (large companies, not even startups). I always left the office in the middle of the day to do errands or go to the gym and never felt bad about it. I can’t tell if I somehow had an unusual experience within those companies, or if it’s just that most people on HN work at more restrictive companies.
Bay area tech companies aren't the norm even for programmers. There are like 4 million software devs in the US, most of us are working at companies you've never heard of, and have office norms much closer to that of the rest of office workers. Often somewhat more prestige and flexibility, but not so dramatic.
So yes I think your experience is probably an outlier. And on HN generally I think that sort of environment is overrepresented still.
I prefer RTO and being in the office with the entire team. That doesn't make me crazy, and I know several others on my team feel the same way.
Your preferences would do a very quick 180 if you had a commute over a certain length in order to get to the office.
Understand that your current preference is a result of being in an advantageous living accommodation next to the office building your company is leasing.
I live in the city center and so by choice. My office is a 12 minute drive away with rarely any traffic. I'm in a medium COL city not known for its tech scene. I don't live "next door" to my office, though that would be awesome if I could.
> Understand that your current preference is a result of being in an advantageous living accommodation next to the office building your company is leasing.
I prefer to go to the beach or the park in my free time, but my preference would certainly change if there was hurricane outside. In that case I'd rather stay indoors.
Obviously my experience would differ if I had a 30+ minute hellish commute. The only teammates that have a commute this long choose to do so as a tradeoff (e.g. more house).
I guess this response and tone surprise me because it seems obvious. There are clearly tradeoffs made when we choose where to live and where we work (including WFH or in-office policy).
I don't think anyone is trying to prevent people who prefer that from forming teams and even companies around the practice.
We're trying to prevent reverting to that being the mandatory norm for all workers though.
I don't mind occasionally being in the office with my entire team. The problem is that my team is split across three offices in different cities.
We have folk who prefer to work from the office, and that's fine. But it makes team meetings more challenging than they are when everyone's at home.
When we were only spread across two offices, we'd occasionally have a team day in one or other of the offices. But the third office is much further away.
Oh certainly: in the case of distributed teams I much prefer WFH.
Aren't distributed teams basically the norm nowadays? It has been a long time since I worked with my whole team in a single office.
Between outsourcing, satellite offices and remote employees, almost no team I see nowadays has everyone in the same office.
It does make you selfish, though. You'd force people who don't want to RTO into the office because you prefer it?
No, it's not selfish. There are enough remote and in office companies, if you're at the wrong kind of company leave.
I really don’t understand what people are gaining from telling others what to do. Flexibility buys freedom for all employees to live the lifestyle they want. As long as it does not impact your goals or your employers goals I don’t really understand what the real issue is here.
If the shoe were on the other foot how would you feel if someone forced you to be remote?
Why do you not see it as symmetrical? A WFH policy is not my preference, yet I don't feel "forced" to put up with it if that is the policy of my team / company.
What am I missing?
Do you enjoy the unpaid commute time?
Yes, yes i do. It gives me some time to physically and mentally detach from work when going home, and it gives me time to read up on news, catch up with friends, family, etc.
"But you could do that from home": yes, but i wouldn't.
...Is this article plagiarized from this article posted June 26: https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/the-damaging... ? It was even submitted to HN and had a few hundred comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36500448
Yahoo often syndicates articles from other sources. I've seen articles from my local paper on Yahoo. The author is the same in both links.
It’s contributed by the same author. Not exactly a duplicate , but sort of?
Seems more nuanced than this discussion is making it out. We have had attrition and recruiting challenges with RTO, but also noticeable improvements in morale and productivity - especially when it comes to onboarding new folks.
> also noticeable improvements in morale and productivity - especially when it comes to onboarding new folks
I am sure you will need it with all the attrition. ;-)
Yea weirdly enough it seems to be pretty balanced right now. For what its worth, the key players are not attrition risks, which is why I can be so blaise about it. I have seem attrition ruin many a team in my career.
Why are squishy subjects like, "morale" and "onboarding" suddenly weighted so highly when middle managers might be laid off? These topics are often ignored, neglected, de-prioritized, or laughed at 90% of the time when the bottom line of the company is at stake.
Morale and onboarding experience most directly affect individual contributors, not management. I'm not sure I really understand your point.
My point is that they affect individual contributors but they are being held up by middle management as the motivator to return to office. This is self serving and largely disingenuous. The real reasons for RTO involve middle management feeling uncomfortable or unable to micro manage in a way that actually impedes productive work.
I onboarded experienced engineer with hybrid approach very well. He’s super productive working from home now. The biggest problem is tutoring absolute greenhorns that need mentoring daily. Big corp I work for has full RTO and I quit, another guy quit and the guy I onboarded is also looking for new job.
RTO morale highs are temporary, attrition morale lows are permanent.
I feel like its the opposite? Our attrition has slowed greatly in the past few months now that there is the expectation that we are in office on the same site (as it was pre-pandemic). There was just a spike post-covid as we were figuring out this policy.
RTO morale isn't really a thing. Morale is high when the team members enjoy the product, the respect of our customer and fellow teammates, and the ability to deliver to the product to the customer. We also have excellent work-life balance in leadership. This kind of morale can be garnered by both remote and in-person teams alike. I genuinely think it's an issue of nuance, personal preference, and specifics of geography.
I will not relocate and I will not commute to some subpar, noisy office where no one around is on my team.
If everything can't be done remotely, then there's a collaborative tech problem.
The other insanity is shared desks. Why even bother having an office if you're going to take away things from your employees? It and pointless penny pinch sends the message that you're no longer a cool place to work and nudging people to quit by stacking up the misery factor as high as possible to alleviate your guilt of doing more layoffs to keep profits high and salaries low.
Business practices evolved but the office space did not. Our open floor plan was still somewhat reasonable pre-2020 with a few quiet software developers around. Now it has been turned into a shared video conference space and thanks to the company growing there are no longer dedicated desks.
As if business practices changing the requirements was not bad enough, half of the floor has been taken over by the provisioning, shipping & tech support team, but that's more of an issue with the building management refusing to rent us more space in this specific case.
The manager class is going to go kicking and screaming into the new world where they can no longer call their otherwise totally capable, productive employees into the office for morning snack like schoolchildren. The faster they accept it, the better off their organizations will be.
I empathized a little with my manager during the pandemic. My job got somewhat easier, his got much, much harder. I guess managers took a little longer to be whacked by the wrecking ball of technology.
I don't think managing got that much harder unless you're managing by gut feel where butts in seats factors in a lot.
My manager called me for short chats on world events (semi-relevant to our larger work, not for current-assignment). Now I realize that was 20% to get my take on whatever (say, 2008 auto companies bailout) and 80% just to look me in the eyes and hear me talk and feel that I'm really here and committed and not silent quitting.
>manager class
What is the manager class? The people who sacrificed their $/hr in favor of power?
If I want to be a manager, I can hire people with my fat income and manage them on my spare time or when I take a few years off work. Then I can come back as a manager with all my new experience.
Sure, but what is it doing to productivity for those who remain?
What is the opportunity cost of maintaining the extra office space vs using that money for other things such as travel so people can actually meet the people they work with?
the author of this article is a PhD who is advertising their services at the end -- it is partially a self-promotion piece. However it has quantitative survey data, and speaks to the regulatory and also practical concerns that real corporate management faces in managing a mid-size work force. Unlike other recent articles, there is little reference to the real-estate value of office property. Instead this article talks about protected minority employees, the role of job security in the minds of both management and job-seekers, and common carrot-and-stick negotiation parts from both sides.
The Internet combined with recent lockdown public policy has definitely changed the constant back-and-forth of corporate hiring and job roles. One thing not mentioned at all is the change in productivity of IT overall.. For example, in farm work is was easy to measure the effects of gasoline-powered machines to replace hand labor. The effects of modern computer systems against clerks and secretaries, not so straightforward. There is no question that the returns for certain individuals has rocketed compared to "ordinary workers" .. Will job negotiations ever be the same? insider tip - the answer is "no"
>> "the author of this article is a PhD who is advertising their services at the end"
That's an author bio. Completely ordinary for articles and has been since the print days.
Nonsense -- it's entirely self-promotion:
> At that point, they called me to help as a hybrid work expert who The New York Times has called “the office whisperer.” We worked on adapting their return-to-office plan, . . .
> In another case, a large financial services company began noticing employee turnover despite offering competitive salaries . . . . After consulting with me, they adjusted their policies to be more competitive in offering flexibility.
He's just trying to sell books and consulting. Nothing wrong with that -- but hardly objective analysis.
You missed this:
>> "at the end"
Whether the stuff elsewhere is promotion is a different discussion. I didn't comment on that. The stuff at the end is a bog standard author bio.
Bad use of statistics.
42% of companies seeing more attrition than expected doesn't really mean "worse than we thought". But the author is in the business of selling pro-WFH consulting, so the facts don't really matter.
There's an editorial in the Washington Post today from Michael Bloomberg pushing for RTO in the federal government, and generally, everywhere else. I wonder who is more influential?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/01/michael-b...
Are we pretending that this is a news or analysis, and not a sales pitch for "the office whisperer"? Article is a joke.
> “staggering 76% of employees stand ready to jump ship if their companies decide to pull the plug on flexible work schedules”
People always say this, but I’d bet that the vast majority of those 76% would begrudgingly go in if it was demanded. Talk is cheap, as they say.
n=1. Out of roughly 8 colleagues (mix of infosec, IT, networking), all sought employment elsewhere when RTOd and were able to find remote jobs at higher pay within 2-3 weeks. Those who left pulled others with in some cases. Agree talk is cheap, so you've gotta let someone find out when they fuck around. If the org hurts or burns due to poor management, that is a management problem. Manage better. It is a choice.
Always be interviewing, always be ready to move on. If an employer wants loyalty, I recommend a dog. To be clear, this is not intended to be adversarial. On the contrary, it is simply recognizing the tenuous employment relationship for what it is.
As always, the people with the most options and who are most in demand will be the ones to leave first. I've seen this firsthand.
Then you're left with the worst people, people who are unhappy but stuck, and people who just can't be bothered to do anything about it.
Sounds like a great recipe for productivity! I love working with my fellow cage-mates.
The least talented people will likely stick around because finding alternative employment is more challenging for them. That's disastrous for morale.
> That's disastrous for morale.
At some point, nobody will care or only the people that won't bother doing anything about it will care.
I don't think morale is the right metric to use here.
Totally anecdotal, but from what I have seen, people are willing to take a 20-30% pay cut if the new opportunity provides remote or better flexibility.
In other words if your company is paying way too much money as compared to the market, people would think they want to leave, but won’t. But if you’re a company that is at market or slightly above market, and you’re enforcing mandatory RTO, you are in trouble, you just don’t know it yet.
I've hired someone who lives 2 hours drive from the office.
When they were hired during the pandemic, it was agreed there would be an eventual return to the office at an unknown time in the future. They'd been planning a move to my (high-salary, high-cost-of-living) area before the pandemic, so that was just fine with them.
Now it's several years later. If I order a full return to the office they'll have a choice: Either move house, or move jobs.
Selling a house and buying a new one costs $$$$$ and is a huge hassle.
Seems to me pretty believable that they'd look at other jobs if a full return to office was ordered.
Maybe, but people have learned to value their lives outside of work more than they once did; spending time with family and living outside of a big city (if that's what you want) is a huge draw for people like me.
Sample size of one, but I've thought about this a lot, and I decided I would hand in my notice if my company unilaterally demanded I physically present myself in a building for several days per week. I've never worked on-site in this job, and been consistently ranked highly in terms of productivity and responsibility.
The younger generations would sabotage us from within if we tried this. We've already had a couple "silent" rebellions from "zoomers" and even "millenials".
It's astounding not worth the risk for my firm except for certain teams.
I'm not sure what "'silent' rebellions" you're referring to. The only one I can think of is "silent quitting" which isn't quitting so much as it is not being willingly taken advantage of by working unpaid hours or doing unpaid work.
"Lazy Girl Tiktok", "Quiet Quitting", there seems to be a new variant every week on various social media.
We've even had outright sabotage because one of clients was disliked by an employee.
It's getting ridiculous to keep track off.
don't forget unpaid interns
You are almost certainly right, but morale would drop and quite a few would jump.
It's not the same thing but...
We've had 2 of 3 engineering role candidates we recently made offers to decline citing our 3 days a week in office policy...
Are you not advertising that it's 60% in-office? It seems surprising that multiple people would see that and go the whole way to an offer without self-selecting out.
We are.
I think in both cases people were selecting between us and another job. One said he was taking another job for 10k LESS (GBP) but full remote.
(As always, the stated reasons might not be accurate)
The cost of maintaining transportation and the unpaid hours from a commute are quite significant. Depending upon their circumstances they could be taking home more money even being paid less.
100% this.
Here in the UK, just not having to live near London will save you enormous amounts on rent/mortgage as well.
I'm in the office full time (I actually need to be) and I pay 700 a month just in rent on a crappy room not too close to central. That alone is the equivalent of about £17k before tax, and I am a single guy who doesn't mind housemates. No thanks.
It seems likely that candidates are comparing offers, which requires them to get a decent amount of the way through the hiring process.
A different job that lets me remote, for the same pay, costs me much less… if they want me to come in, they can offer me to expense transportation and consider travel time as work.
Some will go in, others will quit and then end up finding a different job that also requires them to go in, some will find a crappier job that lets them stay remote, and a few will win the lottery.
Hybrid work is an unstable point. An office where half people are missing / zooming is useless. remote vs fully present are the only two stable attractors
Most hybrid places are a set in-office schedule, e.g. Monday and Tuesday in-office, Wed-Fri WFH, not "be in whatever two days you want."
My experience is more that a hybrid working environment includes people who are in the office all week (because they have to pipette things and look down microscopes) and people who are never in the office (like me, because I'd rather not go into hospital with covid again, and I can do everything on the computer). That means meetings will typically be a zoom/teams thing with a load of people in a meeting room and a load of people joining individually.
Of course it's too early to tell with lots of confounding variables, but labor productivity has been taking a steep dive[0]. So perhaps in the aggregate, WFH is resulting in less work being done.
I say this as someone who's been full-time WFH for over a decade; I'm not taking a position one way or another.
That chart confuses me. Each data point is percentage increase vs the PREVIOUS year?
So the "steep dive" that you talk about is a single year -1.7% decrease vs a decade of constant increase, going as high as 4.6% in a single year?
I feel that chart is almost deceitful. Every year that this is above 0 is a percentage win no matter the delta. So if that chart showed
* 2030 -> 20%
* 2031 -> 1%
It'd feel like a steep dive, but 2031 would still be an _increase_ in productivity over 2030.
It's the rate of change if you draw the variable in a monolog paper. That is, a constant value there leads to an exponential growth (or reduction) of the real value.
It's common to draw economic indicators this way.
Basically, if one year had +3 and the next -3, you would be back at the original value.
The largest ever 4.6 at the peak of WFH in 2020 and the fall to a normal 2.2 in 2021 both represent fast growth in productivity. The only "bad" point there is the -1.7 at the peak of RTO in 2022. So the GP's analysis is indeed bullshit.
(But anyway, there are some much more compelling explanations for 2022 than RTO, do not take it as evidence against mandating office work, it's not strong enough for that.)
Looking at the graph, it seems like productivity skyrocketed in 2020 (when everyone was WFH), returned to the 2019 baseline in 2021, and dived in 2022. To me this indicates that it's somehow hurting productivity for people to have returned to offices.
Productivity can't really be defined, let alone measured. When people start talking about it they have left hard facts behind I'm afraid...
Maybe not for what most of us do but for a lot of jobs, especially blue collar jobs, it absolutely can be measured down to the smallest increment. If you work on an assembly line, or really anything that isn't mostly knowledge work, your productivity can be measured very accurately.
How many people do knowledge work vs assembly work these days? Plus WFH is really not for manual work. And that's without getting into the fact that on an assembly line you can only go as fast as the slowest worker, so everyone's productivity is capped. Or looking at things like error/defect rates that contradict "items per minute" definitions of productivity.
People think you can measure this as a single number. At best, for a very limited number of workers, who don't WFH anyway, you can measure it. But you cannot compare those workers with the workers next to them doing similar but slightly different jobs even.
So it's a huge mess and the idea of a graph of it for the USA is like making a graph of the average number of testicles. Except people take it seriously!?
Here is the same chart showing an absolute value instead of percentage change. Not quite as steep of a dive - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=17uvX - in fact, nothing that could be considered a "dive" by any reasonable person.
It's much more eye opening as well, productivity per hour of labour has doubled from the baseline right before 1990, salaries have definitely not increased at the same rate.
"Labor productivity" is a weird measure. If the worker gets better off, earning higher wages for the same effort, does his productivity go up or down?
It goes down because you now have to pay him more for the same amount of work. But it also goes up because marginal utility of his work has increased.
I think that a tight labor market has more to do with worker productivity than WFH. After all why work so hard if you can find a new job quickly.
Productivity shot up early COVID when people were scared and WFH started?
> So perhaps in the aggregate, WFH is resulting in less work being done
That's a pretty big leap.
Manufacturing and Durable Manufacturing had the biggest decreases and WFH isn't a thing in those sectors. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/prod2.nr0.htm
Have salaries followed that curve for productivity increases?
