I think this is because the reason to get people to get back into office was to protect commercial real estate values.
Now that the third tallest tower in LA sold for 45% its previous selling price, the dominoes have started to fall.
Now, it will be about getting people to work from home and trying to get out of these buildings as they are a failed investment.
So we are going to start seeing companies “offer” to let people work from home. They may even ask you to take a pay cut or something for the privilege.
This is just my prediction and I’m not an expert in these fields. So take this with a grain of salt.
If you are working in an office by force and they offer to let you work from home with a pay cut, I’d hold out a few months as they may start forcing people to work from home at full pay.
So here is some real-world anecdata from this current month: I have been interviewing in UK with smaller companies and one of the first questions has been what compensation I am seeking. I have been upfront about my preference (remote first) and travel costs, which I calculate as approximately the equivalent of £10k/year gross salary for each scheduled day/week on site from my location to nearest major city. I have said that I can do up to 2 x regular day/week onsite.
Nobody has disputed my reckoning or reasoning
Startup company advertised ‘hybrid’. I gave a comp ask saying ‘with 1 day/week on site’. They came back to suggest a 10k lesser figure full remote. I withdrew because I accepted another offer but this would have been acceptable.
Scale-up company- again advertised ‘hybrid’, suggesting 1 day/fortnight onsite. I gave same salary/travel calculation. They came back with offer of my basic figure for remote with quarterly visits at company expense instead, i.e. travel, accommodation etc. I accepted this.
This is a conspiracy theory. For this hypothesis to be true, it would take all companies and and real estate companies to cooperate. This is something people are likely to believe because it is an us vs them theory. But in practice they are incapable of doing it.
The problem is that real estate companies and lending companies have competing interests. Real estate companies want people to go back to office, obviously. But other companies would save loads of money by going full remote. The current lease is irrelevant, because the money is already lost, and it won’t be recovered if people go back to office. The sunk cost fallacy is not a fallacy any decent company will fall for. People though will easily believe they do, especially when they are not protecting themselves from it.
My hypothesis is that management and direction are controle freaks who cannot trust their employees. They are also aroogant. This leads to a situation where they will attribute any productivity benefit during remote work to their skills and decisions, and they will attribute any decrease to employee lazyness when they’re not closely monitored. They want to correct this by bringing people back to office to appease their mind. There is reaction to change too, obviously, but I suppose it simply takes the shape I described, the shape of distrust of employees.
For this hypothesis to be true, it would take all companies and and real estate companies to cooperate.
Not all, just a lot of them. That is not hard to imagine, since the same companies who are the biggest investors in real estate (commercial or residential for that matter) are also the biggest institutional owners of the stock of public companies. The point is, the ownership of all this converges at Wall Street, and that’s where this goes one way or another.
Some companies continued WFH, some were full remote even before the pandemic. They are shown to be very competitive in their markets. OTOH, many RTO companies have been shown to be hurt b their RTO policies, but leadership didn’t care. Insiders usually point to commercial real estate investments as the reason, where the owners decided they themselves will lose less money if their companies tank a bit, but their other investments don’t take a dive.
It’s not even a conspiracy at this point. Sure, there are weird middle manager types and people who hate being at home and all that, but the main driving force behind institutional change at megacorps is not Joe the team lead with 6 rungs above him and one below on the corporate ladder.
I think this is because the reason to get people to get back into office was to protect commercial real estate values.
I keep seeing people make this claim, but I never see any evidence to back it up. Large businesses usually lease their office space, so why should they care how much it is worth? And the ones that do own their buildings, probably aren’t planning to sell any time soon, so why should they care?
I think this is because the reason to get people to get back into office was to protect commercial real estate values.
Now that the third tallest tower in LA sold for 45% its previous selling price, the dominoes have started to fall.
Now, it will be about getting people to work from home and trying to get out of these buildings as they are a failed investment.
So we are going to start seeing companies “offer” to let people work from home. They may even ask you to take a pay cut or something for the privilege.
This is just my prediction and I’m not an expert in these fields. So take this with a grain of salt.
If you are working in an office by force and they offer to let you work from home with a pay cut, I’d hold out a few months as they may start forcing people to work from home at full pay.
So here is some real-world anecdata from this current month: I have been interviewing in UK with smaller companies and one of the first questions has been what compensation I am seeking. I have been upfront about my preference (remote first) and travel costs, which I calculate as approximately the equivalent of £10k/year gross salary for each scheduled day/week on site from my location to nearest major city. I have said that I can do up to 2 x regular day/week onsite.
This is a conspiracy theory. For this hypothesis to be true, it would take all companies and and real estate companies to cooperate. This is something people are likely to believe because it is an us vs them theory. But in practice they are incapable of doing it.
The problem is that real estate companies and lending companies have competing interests. Real estate companies want people to go back to office, obviously. But other companies would save loads of money by going full remote. The current lease is irrelevant, because the money is already lost, and it won’t be recovered if people go back to office. The sunk cost fallacy is not a fallacy any decent company will fall for. People though will easily believe they do, especially when they are not protecting themselves from it.
My hypothesis is that management and direction are controle freaks who cannot trust their employees. They are also aroogant. This leads to a situation where they will attribute any productivity benefit during remote work to their skills and decisions, and they will attribute any decrease to employee lazyness when they’re not closely monitored. They want to correct this by bringing people back to office to appease their mind. There is reaction to change too, obviously, but I suppose it simply takes the shape I described, the shape of distrust of employees.
Not all, just a lot of them. That is not hard to imagine, since the same companies who are the biggest investors in real estate (commercial or residential for that matter) are also the biggest institutional owners of the stock of public companies. The point is, the ownership of all this converges at Wall Street, and that’s where this goes one way or another.
No, because then one company would exploit this. And it would still be a big loss for the companies not owning the real estate.
Exploit higher costs and lower productivity paying for office space?
Some companies continued WFH, some were full remote even before the pandemic. They are shown to be very competitive in their markets. OTOH, many RTO companies have been shown to be hurt b their RTO policies, but leadership didn’t care. Insiders usually point to commercial real estate investments as the reason, where the owners decided they themselves will lose less money if their companies tank a bit, but their other investments don’t take a dive.
It’s not even a conspiracy at this point. Sure, there are weird middle manager types and people who hate being at home and all that, but the main driving force behind institutional change at megacorps is not Joe the team lead with 6 rungs above him and one below on the corporate ladder.
I keep seeing people make this claim, but I never see any evidence to back it up. Large businesses usually lease their office space, so why should they care how much it is worth? And the ones that do own their buildings, probably aren’t planning to sell any time soon, so why should they care?
The whole thing just sounds like nonsense to me.