- cross-posted to:
- workreform@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- workreform@lemmy.world
This is the real reason for companies wanting people back to the office.
All this talk about collaboration and team spirit is just the publicly given reason for wanting people back to the office.
The real reason is that now the owners of the buildings are losing money.
Cry me a river.
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Let those banks burn. I could not care less. Let the commercial real estate market burn with em.
We don’t need them.
Yep, been saying this for years now, the vicious and irrational hatred against work from home employees is driven by two main factors:
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At a systemic level, despite work from home being obviously less costly in the long run than maintaining an office space, if work from home were allowed to proliferate it basically pop the commercial real estate bubble and then basically every corrupt mayor and idiots in upper management would be shown to be corrupt idiots.
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At a more personal level, upper and middle management people essentially get their kicks from seeing busy little worker bees near them, and they would personally have existential crisis when they realize that 90% of what they do is negging and then ommitting or misrepresenting that in actual meetings. Actual meetings which can easily take place in zoom, or often replaced with just an email.
Another part of #2 is they can no longer be toxic and verbally abusive, like they could in person. Anything virtual might be recorded and every email is a record.
Thats a key element as well, the insane corpo manipulation that only exists if you can prove it even though everyone who doesnt up their head up either their own ass or someone elses knows is absurdly rampant… but youre too busy to record it all!
And you can’t sleep with employees who work from home.
I count my wife as my secretary every now and then, does that count? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
She’s already signed an agreement that supersedes HR policy on the pen in company ink: A marriage license
Except family business in alabama
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If only there was some solution to unused corporate office space and the housing crisis that has tents in every city?!?
Oh well. Better give the bank a bailout and stop thinking about it.
Wait…are you suggesting we solve a problem? Or even two problems simultaneously? That’s absurd! We need tax cuts, deregulation, and corporate bailouts…I may not know the problem, but I know the solution. /s
That doesn’t make sense. The companies that want people to come back to the office are the ones paying rent. That rent doesn’t get better or worse if people come back to the office.
Yes, thank you! I hate this constant narrative that back-to-office is always tied to commercial real-estate investments, or that there’s some magical tax incentive.
Usually what you have is: bank lends money to a commercial real estate company that owns the building. Commercial real estate company leases out office space to one or many companies. When those companies reduce or terminate their leases, the commercial real estate company struggles to pay their mortgage and defaults. Commercial real estate loses. Bank loses. And if commercial real estate had pooled investments to fund the building (along with bank loan), then those investors lose as well.
There are some large companies that own their own buildings, but that’s more of an exception.
But those rent paying companies have very wealthy boards who are invested in commercial real estate.
And the companies are controlled by venture capitalists, who are smart and distribute their investments. So they have interests in various companies, including the real estate companies.
It’s sad that problems for banks are never problems only for banks. They always turn into problems for everybody else
Oh won’t somebody think of the shareholders.
Oh wait, I’m doing it right now. Mua ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Apparently literally everything is technology according to lemmy
RTO/WFH definitely impacts tech workers the most, I think that’s just obvious.
The pandemic triggering a cultural shift to WFH is a big part of the problems in the commercial real estate market. Basically, America becoming 10% more technologically sophisticated may have unhinged the financial system. Story about the impact of tech on society, I guess?
The logic seems to be, “if it impacts tech workers or people interested in tech in any way, it’s technology”.
All I can think about is that Ali G skit about how his friend “ain’t got no techmology” and the expert asks “does your friend live in a house? A house is technology.”
In a way it is. Modern office buildings are only possible due to technological advancement.
I just ate ravioli. I’m sure they were packaged in an automated fashion. I’m gonna now post about ravioli in c/technology since it’s all the same. For now here’s some recipes https://www.tasteofhome.com/collection/ravioli-recipes-thatll-fill-you-with-joy/
Where’s the meandering SEO-optimisation backstory-rambling before the recipe/link?
Please write it with writing quill technology and send it to me using homing pigeon technology.
Damn, squatting on real estate is backfiring. I’m heartbroken
I will never have sympathy for landlords.
Easiest ‘job’ on the planet.
Fuck em
For sure. Business investments go up and down all the time. That’s business
I’m more concerned about trains/transit. After all these years, we (US) are finally investing in improving transportation within and between cities, just as commutes have been cut and many cities may be depopulating.
I live in New York. The Wall Street area has been turning older buildings into living spaces for a while. One old office building became an NYU dorm, and the Woolworth Building [once the tallest in the world] is now luxury condos.
And you know what’s nice about doing that? It’s people present 24/7 and that means stores and restaurants that can be open even past office hours!
It’s funny because back in the day, you could go down to Wall Street on a Sunday and have the whole place to yourself. Today, there are lots of bars and restaurants and groceries.
The only time I went was about 8 years ago on a Thursday evening and the place was dead, a few people that worked late and were going home, a few tourists here and there and that’s it…
I was visiting a friend down there and walked back to my hotel at 2am. Literally the only people out were a bunch of cops standing around empty street corners.
So, you’re surprised that people with nice apartments full of goodies aren’t hanging out on street corners?
This is simply sunk cost fallacy. Companies signed leases. Now they regret it but can’t back out so they’ve got to try to pretend it’s worth it even if it costs their employees money out of pocket.
It’s not really about owners it’s more about leases and the company leasing the property “not getting their money’s worth”
Often they have signed leases with themselves. With original owners, holding companies etc.
This is a way of extracting value from a corporation without paying it as a dividend or salary. Dividends go to all shareholders. Lease payments go to one specific one.
So obviously if there’s no reason to pay these leases anymore, somebody powerful is going to be very upset.
I had to start going back to the office today. I’ll eventually split time between two buildings, but my main office is practically empty. Been here 3 days in a row, and I’m the only one in my area that stayed the entire day. The first day 4 of 5 other people left at lunch. The last person left about 4:15pm.
Yestersay I was by myself until about 10am and that person left at 4. I’m here by myself today and I don’t suspect anyone will show up late.
On the other side of the floor where the breakroom is, there’s maybe been 7 people total across the 3 days I’ve been here lol.
Yeah it’s like that now. People come in late and leave early. I do that too since it’s fine. Only one office day is required and I make sure to come in late and leave early to beat traffic. Everyone does. :)
I use it as a day of socializing with the team. Just talking. Not much work.
Same for me. I’m more productive at home and the occasional office visit is primarily for socializing with coworkers. There’s only one other person in my team in my office location and we just schedule 2 or 3 days a month where we meet up in the office to catch up.
Yeah, I get the socializing aspect and it hasn’t been bad coming in. I’ve been wfh for the past like 4 years so it’s nice to put on actual clothes instead of wearing joggers and t-shirts every day lol. You’re lucky you’re only required to come in one day a week. We have to come in 3 days (eventually we’ll be monitored to make sure we come in 3 days) but at least we can pick the 3 days every week.
On the plus side, we have assigned cubes (no hotel cubes thankfully!) and since I was part of the first small group to come in, I was able to change cubes.
However, I still think it’s BS that companies are forcing the back to work crap with such strict boundaries.
I know, I got very lucky with just one day in the office. And that is so important to me that I don’t even consider looking at other jobs right now. I will stay here for at least another year, probably even longer. Just because of that super nice single office day per week.
Every other job ad I see have “50% in office”.
For me, it’s important as a mental health thing. Working from home, I tend not to see other humans and not go anywhere I don’t need to. I’m also poor at establishing work-life boundaries.
Meanwhile, going into work means getting presentable, interacting with people, not forgetting a lunch break, and I tend to stop working when the place empties out.
It’s also important for career advancement. I’m poor at self-promotion, so working from home is “out of sight, out of mind” no matter how much I do. It’s easy to say that management needs to figure that out, but it’s in my self-interest to make sure they realize when I get shit done
Well yes, sounds like the office is better for you with your personality traits. The issue is when they want all of us to sit there and try to work in an environment that is horrible for work (for the ones of us who needs focus and silence).
Also i agree about career advancement being better in offices, which is why I’m a consultant so I don’t have to care.
lol I wrote this over a year ago
Meanwhile my company wants to double or even triple the amount of office space we lease in the next 2-3 years, but building management is quoting us prices that are even slightly higher than they were in 2020.
Prices only go up. If a price is allowed to fall then the gravy train stops and the owner class gets really salty.
Kinda sounds like the board of your company is full of real estate developers who still win if you guys go tits up.
No not really. We’re already hybrid remote, our business is just growing. We’re already hot desking but that will only get you so far. We currently rent 1 floor of a skyscraper, we want to also lease the completely empty floor above us but the prices are what they were when we signed our current lease a few years ago.
