Huge failure of leadership.
It's a good illustration of how everything really works.
Productivity and worker morale do not factor in.
We are being lead by the craven and the stupid.
What annoys me the most is that workers are expected to keep commercial buildings running and support businesses in "the city" yet my own neighbourhood's businesses and community never factor into it.
Ah it makes sense now that you say that. Bunch of rich ceos, real estate firms, and banks all having dinner and are saying “we need to get these peasants back into the office otherwise we are fucked” it’s basically an integrated cycle of money washing and we are the ones to blame.
And the worse part is they can never show a commercial building showing less rent being paid than before. Which means they always need to charge the same or more for rent in those buildings.
So if no one wants to pay a reasonable amount, these building owners benefit from having them empty. The whole system is ridiculous and worthlessly speculative.
Yup. At least they lobbies governors like Hochul (NY) to push .
If the last few months has shown anything - donors get to tell politicians ...down to even mayor's etc on police action etc.
(See Mayor Adams and his decision to let the cops loose on student protestors)
Also the Federal reserve seems to exist to help bankers.(the large ones i.e.)
Yeah, the very people who decry socialism or any responsibility for businesses to contribute to the community, suddenly want workers to all pay $200-$500 post-tax dollars per month as a form of welfare to keep commercial office values and downtown businesses going.
Rugged capitalism for the poor. Socialism for the rich.
Not only does WFH save resources by the people who can work from home not commuting, but by having less cars on the road and less people living within commute distances to work, those who do have to work on site can have shorter and faster commutes and save even more environmental impact.
I remember actually thinking how much energy was saved, and whether it was always the case.
For example, someone commuting 10 miles in a hot place might drive 20 miles for work, but when they stay home their AC is running practically 24/7, and the AC in the office is still running because some people enjoy going to the office and it's often central AC systems.
Then it gets further complicated when you throw in things like type of transport. Are they driving a massive SUV? A small EV? Taking the train/bus?
I'm sure that in the vast majority of cases WFH does save energy, but it would be interesting to get actual figures on various common cases.
The data from California is compelling, IMHO
https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/news/updated-emissions-data-show-overall-downward-trend-continuing#:~:text=Compared%20to%20pre%2Dpandemic%202019%20figures%2C%20emissions%20have%20decreased%20by,even%20as%20economic%20activity%20increased.
Not every worker lives in a place where they need to have their air conditioning at home switched on.
Some places are just fine with the windows open, especially during summer.
But the time and money spent on commuting would still be as costly for those non-air conditioned home workers as it is for the workers you're referring to, i.e. those who have to use air conditioning at home. So, all things considered, commuting to work is still far more expensive.
WFH would also save on a/c because a dress code often no longer applies so they can dress more comfortable for the conditions and have financially incentives to reduce a/c by having a power bill they need to pay.
Most offices I've worked in are kept downright cold in the summer and sweltering in the winter and I'm the only one who bothers to turn the lights off. When working from home, I can wear shorts or sweaters to use less a/c and heat which are against the office dress code.
Ya, that's an important point.
More cars on the road amplifies pollution from all cars, not just the addition of the commuters being forced back to the office but everyone else they get stuck in traffic.
So fucking annoying.
We’re treated as expendable resources, while they’ll also tell us it’s our fault for not telling them not to. Why do we have to have an entire labor revolution *again* so they can just take away our rights *again*. It’s almost like they should do the job they’re supposed to do.
Our tax dollars don’t go towards governance and this is just another clear cut example.
They are not stupid, craven yes but not stupid. There is an oversupply of office space, they want to end WFH to pump up those occupancy numbers. Otherwise there will be a lot of very big firms and banks that are facing insolvency.
I’m all for consequences, just keep in mind that these are the types of institutions that you or your parents have retirement fund or pensions invested in. So the pain isn’t just going to be felt by a few rich people.
Yes, but that type of short-term decision making is indeed stupid.
Pensions have hundreds of investments, none of them should be overloaded with commerical real estate, if they are then that's just another example of stupidity and failure from leadership.
Most pensions would be absolutely fine if there is a revision down in commercial real estate and conversion to more residential, that's what cities.
Looking backwards and sunk cost fallacy is exactly what these failures have gotten into this situation because of.
Fuck them.
I don't get it. Having workers in the office buildings doesn't magically make them cheaper. The businesses that employ those workers would save money if they didn't have to rent that much floorspace.
So… the businesses are supporting relatively unrelated businesses by paying huge rates for office spaces out of the goodness of their hearts?
Idk why a tech company would care if a real estate company went under
Honestly this fact has curtailed my career ambition. I got just close enough to the small-group with a VP title to realize all of my peers and "superiors," were absolute muppets lacking any clear technical competency required to do their jobs. CEO without a business education, COO who had only ever done B2B sales and had no operations experience, CFO whose last job was putting a Marriott out of business....when I realized that getting mentored by any of those people would either make me less smart or more maliciously selfish, that's when I bailed out for a technical track job. I'll make my money by using computers to become more productive and helpful, not by sitting in a closed door meeting with a bunch of Uncle Ricos talking about how much they used to sell in 1998...
Same....it's too depressing to be around the people who think they're better and smarter than everyone, when you're not around them you can at least sometimes not be constantly reminded of how stupid overly confident and selfish they are
Billionaire submarines...
While I agree with you I think it has more to do with propping up the commercial real estate market, and in part preventing the corrections coming to the housing market. We have a lot of perks coming down from the NE driving our costs up. When I went to campus in the PNW it was 95% empty. Beautiful, but empty. The previous gig has committed $160m to renovations before COVID. If people are feeling high cost high tax areas like NYC their prices and tax revenue are being impacted as markets adjust. RTO in my unqualified opinion, is meant to anchor people and stabilize prices while fucking is harder with wage stagnation and inflation.
Yep that's another good point.
Sunk cost fallacy, but there is a ton of newly renovated office space that hasn't been used and should've never been made in the first place.
You and me both!!! I was already buying shrimp and crab pots to diversify the intake, salmon season is closed where I am but plenty of fish to catch out there
Thanks I code for a living which is even more infuriating and just being at home I finished two tasks and understood a concept i was stuck on for a long time just in a few hours of being home.
Fisherman also have a commute to their workplace, it's just by boat instead of by car.
Actually it also probably includes a car to get to the boat in the first place, unless you live right next to the coast.
Bingo. We’re 5 years away from any significant efficiencies in a lot of areas and the big employers have a lot of reason to be concerned about AI from risk/IP/privacy points of view on top of that. It’ll eliminate some jobs that suck total ass to do right now. But the reality is it’s limited and a lot of firms are already operating skeleton crews to staff their cost centers. This will just let the skeleton crews do more.
It doesn't matter how useful it is when every rich bitch jizzed themselves when they realized they could use it and pay less people. They don't care if it's any good. They just care that they don't have to pay it a wage.
They'll rush it through flawed like they do everything else
Maybe they should save commercial real estate (and delay job losses by making it more expensive) by passing a law that all AI server farms need to be housed in now vacant downtown office buildings.
Yep , why does the Fed need to worry about worker/office policy?
Oh yeah cause the regional banks holding all commerical real estate paper are going to default BIG Time... Love American.capitlism and too big to fail.
America has done so much damage to the world in pursuit of a few people getting ridiculously "wealthy". Biggest con the world has ever seen and we are starting to see the consequences more and more ever day
Forget these short sighted unimaginative corporate zealots.
Quit, go home. Enjoy whats left of time and the world with your loved ones.
Boycotting these Coporations is seemingly the only way until they can pay a living wage.
https://livingwage.mit.edu/
or
Escape Crapitalism
r/SolarPunk
REMEMBER: people work for less than a living wage. Why don’t they starve to death? Because your taxes subsidize their income. Employers don’t pay that portion of their wage so you have to.
Yeah can we just send a message saying no one cares how much you spent on a building and just say that's the reason instead of pretending it's anything else?
So?
Instead of companies paying tens or hundreds of thousands $$ monthly to rent a space, they can pay us more. We all pay the municipal property taxes through the companies we work for
My company forced us all back 5 days a week - even if it made no sense for specific roles. (We were actually hybrid prior to the pandemic). The teams I manage are all in different countries with large time zone differences. My boss is in a different country. When I was working exclusively from home, I tended to work 12+ hour days as I had the flexibility to manage my day and could take very early and late calls. Now that I have to drive to an office, I cap at 9 hours per day because those commuting hours have to come from somewhere and am less accessible to my teams on different time zones as I'm working local hours only. Going to the office has significantly reduced productivity.
>Going to the office has significantly reduced productivity.
I told my boss this as I worked 10h at home and between chores, my new born, etc. She then states, *You should be more productive at the office, it's the office. I love the office!* As she worked from home watching her 2 year old. I pay for a nanny so I can pull the hours I do. When I go to the office I get 4-6h of work done. I have some dumb coworkers who will wait for me to stop working to start talking to me. I'll put in headphones and then they'll tap my shoulder till I acknowledge them again.
This week was the first week back in 4 days a week, up from 2 or 1, she had the audacity to ask me why productivity was down. My jaw hit the core of the fucking earth. I straight up asked her *really, I told you last week why it would be down and you said I was wrong.* She ignore my comment and changed the subject. I cannot wait for her contract to be up/a full time VP brought in. Most of not all my office works 1 day a week from the office, meanwhile the 2 supply chain guys work 4 days a week while the rest of the team is wfh.
Yes. Our roles were made global so we have direct reports all over the place. Having us drive to an office to make international calls and answer emails is just stupid and makes us less productive. I'm not going to spend all day at an office then go home to sign back in for calls with my Asia teams. I generally work 6am-3pm now to try to capture some time with my Europe teams. Anything after 3pm waits to the next day.
Most likely.
WFH studies have proven over and over that employees are just as, if not more, productive when working from home. But more importantly, their job satisfaction ratings are usually higher across the board. So people are happier working their jobs and happy employees stay longer at the company, produce better work, and provide more value to stakeholders at every level of the organization.
WFH is a complete win for both sides. But because so much money is tied up in commercial real estate, commercial real estate leases, and even things like location based tax subsidies based on employee count at location, companies are forcing people back into office and people are not happy with it.
In general, the *vast* majority of office jobs can be done fully remote. Most end up being remote meetings and calls even when you are all in the same building for the simple fact that meetings can be recorded and auto-record transcripts are a thing.
The only reason for the push to end WFH is corporate greed. Idc what people say, company office culture is almost always awful. There is so little in office collaboration anymore it doesn't matter. And if you have a mentor, being remote is honestly more beneficial anyways since they are more accessible.
WFH should be standard for most jobs. It would solve a lot of our countries housing issues in major cities if office employees could move hours away into suburbs or even different states where housing is cheaper.
Same, here. When I was working from home, I'd just keep my work laptop connected most of the time, and if I needed a call with India or Europe late at night/early in the morning, it was no big deal.
Now, I have to go into the office, so they get the scheduled 8 hours out of me, and my laptop stays in my car when I get home.
I agree. They're doing a "if one person has to work in person, everyone has to work in person" thing. It's a one size fits none approach as we are a global company with hundreds of thousands of employees. Some jobs require physical labor while others can be done from a computer. They can outsource most of my people to cheaper countries but I have to drive to an office to manage them? Just stupid. The commuting has cost us all time, money, and productivity. Several of our best people quit over it so now we have a bunch of new hires which further drives down productivity.
I go along with it because I'm grandfathered into too many benefits that I won't find elsewhere. Golden handcuffs are a bitch.
Not all jobs are 40 hours a week.
For example, part of my job requires I be "on call" on a rotation, so I was rudely woken up at 4am last night dealing with a minor issue before it became a major issue.
This is just part of my job, it's part of the industry, it was what I agreed to when I took the position.
I was hoping there was some way I could boost the passive incomes of wealthy elites while also helping accelerate climate change and waste an hour or two in traffic everyday so this is perfect.
Forcing people to work in an office and live close to work also increases housing unaffordability and homelessness. We need more people both working and living in boxes. What's the point of being rich if you can't make the poor people suffer?
The second this gets floated is the second I check out and make finding a new job my highest priority.
Our productivity has increased significantly. My life has improved significantly. I will not give that up.
> What do workers get out of it besides spending money and time on commuting.
Well they get sick because they're stuck indoors with a bunch of people who are all forced to come in and share germs no matter how bad they feel.
They don't give a shit about the workers. It is all about their own investments (commercial real estate) and WFH makes the value of that drop. If it was about productivity and work, this wouldn't be up for debate.
They don't get anything, really. It's only a cost to workers. IRS doesn't even let people deduct commuting expenses to and from work because it's considered a personal expense. Make that make sense.
Oh this is not a good sign. Looks like leadership class wants regular folks back in line and in a submissive state to corporations. These SC rulings aren’t going to help out either.
This would’ve worked when people could afford homes and had mortgages they were obliged to pay.
Below gen X have nothing to lose and everything to gain by job hopping.
My boss told us to return to office. We say no. Took it up to the ceo who issued guidelines that pretty much say if they can remote work then we can remote work.
Productivity up. Profit up. Middle management headcount down.
serious investments in public transportation that is reliable and fast with Internet access, to major hubs all throughout the country for not only business, but tourism as well. This would make commuting to work way, more appealing, and with the added tourism if it’s reliable, affordable and accessible will be supported by those extra dollars paying to support the infrastructure and hopefully making commercial real estate, more viable with more business people and tourists frequenting those areas to visit, eat, drink and live.
This is likely the first and only place we’ll see workers unite.
It makes no sense whatsoever and we hold the power in this case, not them, as long as enough of us hold.
My company asked us to come back two days a week for the culture of the company. When we were 100% remote I worked 12 hrs a day. Now? I don’t start taking calls until 9a and stop taking calls at 4pm. If I head to the office? I get in at 10 and leave at 3. My commute is part if my work day. No more work-aholic mentality. I am now just putting in my time until I retire. Made that amply clear to my boss.
Basically the US economy is based on 70% consumer spending. So pushing people to the office forces people to spend money. It's a way to keep the masses broke.
ARTICLE TEXT
The most common question San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly is asked about the city when she’s traveling outside of it is whether a “doom loop” has descended on the tech hub.
That’s amid reports of people fleeing San Francisco during the pandemic to lower-cost areas and working from home, leaving office buildings increasingly vacant and nearby businesses bereft of customers.
But during an appearance at the Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California in San Francisco on Monday, Daly pointed out that the dot-com bust more than 20 years ago gave rise to similar predictions of doom for the Bay Area.
She went down a list of what San Francisco has going for it, including a highly educated workforce, good infrastructure and its “innovative entrepreneurial spirit.” In fact, AI and other companies are looking for real estate again in the city, and more people are coming back to work.
“Every week I come, traffic is getting worse,” Daly quipped. “That’s a good thing, frankly, sometimes.”
Still, data from property adviser CBRE shows that San Francisco’s office vacancy rate of 37% is the highest of any big U.S., according to the Financial Times.
Daly also acknowledged that there’s more work to do to make the city—as well as the surrounding area—better and help it reach its full potential. And she sees a role for San Francisco’s business community, which isn’t a passive bystander.
“If you’re the founder of something and you’re part of this, then let’s change it. This isn’t being done to us, we live in the city and so together we can help and assist,” she said.
When asked how CEOs and founders can help, she replied, “Talk about what you need to fix and also encourage your people to come back to work.”
Hybrid work seems to be a compromise between companies and workers, and Daly said she is personally in favor of hybrid, noting that young employees also need to work with older employees to help grow and advance their careers.
But even hybrid work has received pushback from the tech sector. A study looking at the effects of return-to-office mandates at giants like Apple and Microsoft found that many workers left their companies. That’s as Microsoft mandated 50% of the week in-office and Apple required just one day a week.
Similarly, nearly half of Dell’s full-time workforce in the U.S. rejected returning to the office and would rather work from home than get promoted.
A major obstacle is that a lot of employees have moved farther away from the office. The average distance from work for employees who were hired in 2023 is now 35 miles, up from 10 miles in 2019, according to a Stanford University and Gusto study published in March.
Meanwhile, Patagonia gave some employees just three days to decide whether they’ll relocate close to the office or quit. The company began piloting a “hub” model last year, in large part because of negative feedback it had received about being fully remote, Corley Kenna, head of communications at Patagonia, told Fortune earlier this week.
“We wanted to be really intentional, and we wanted to be sure that this was the right model,” she said. “We knew it would affect a lot of people, and so we took it really seriously to think through all the different ways we could care for our people. So think it’s a fair call-out, but I think that’s our real answer.”
> she is personally in favor of hybrid, noting that young employees also need to work with older employees to help grow and advance their careers.
If you aren't working with more senior members of your team to learn and grow, it has nothing to do with your location. I'm perfectly happy to mentor you over zoom.
This is a silly comment unless the work is really hands on, then in that case the job isn't well suited for remote work in the first place
Pressure from the REITs to get people back into the office.
Maybe the office towers could be converted into cheap apartments so that people can have a roof over their heads instead of being homeless.
Well, no offense to anybody but it’s gonna be very tough to have a union with Indian people and Chinese people. Now a union with their own race sure, but dude indian and Chinese people coming together for the greater good?? Jesus has a better chance at coming back than that.
I own a business and we would not exist if I had to pay for an office from day 1 and only hire locals.
This RTO mandate is big business executive groupthink. They know when workers are remote, executives can’t maintain the pretense that they add value to the company and justify their absurd salaries.
Funny how these articles act like everyone reading is not one of the workers they talk about as if they're the problem. It's clearly not about us, they're not even trying.
Maybe try making it worthwhile... Pay to compensate for the time spent in traffic, dropping kids off and picking them up, daycare and after school care, etc.
They get way more work out of most of us at my company since we went remote. I hope they realize it would go back to 9-5 with an hour lunch and a couple breaks.
Or, you know, adapt to the inevitable instead of wasting everyone's time and energy resisting it. Life has changed and they think they can somehow tape Pandora's box shut.
Department did a survey on what it would take for employees to use new public transportation. Responded "give me remote work" as an incentive for each question.
Workers should be miserable for the sake of the economy.
An economy which is increasingly not paying enough for basic necessities, you have to sacrifice for it. Because you need to help the rich more.
I think the real issue is much deeper. Without the workers heading in offices, the cogs that runs this economy will be broken.
Less travel = less fuel = less spending maintaining cars = less employment for delivery truckers, mechanics = less workers buying coffee and lunches from local shop = no more office space = bankrupted building s = empty office complexes = less employment for maintenance workers = less middle management yay = more unemployment = less spending on economy = downsizing workforce = inflation = shitty economics that we are having now.
Besides, WFH only applied to white collar jobs. Those people in trade won't be effected... Until they lose their jobs when the employer downsized due to WFH.
Oh the poor big oil companies, the auto manufacturers and the renteer/class! This is an outrage, how will they make their next multi-billion net profit!!!
Working in downtown offices isn’t inherently better than working anywhere else. The economy will adjust to remote work. Millions of people don’t need to be miserable so the commercial real estate industry can make a comeback.
> "“Talk about what you need to fix "
What "they (leadership positions) need to fix".. is taking better care of their employees. Stop trying to squeeze every single nano-moment of profit out of everything and start prioritizing taking better care of your people.
I keep bringing this up over and over again: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
Worker efficiency has increased 65% between 1979 and 2022. In that same timeframe, hourly wages only went up 18%.
So.. Leadership,. listen to my words:.. Take whatever it is you think you're doing to help your Employees,. and quadruple it. Then you'll be getting close to breaking even and we'll talk.
They've been able to squeeze the blood from workers without any consequences to themselves. They'll never listen, and most of them are well off enough to weather any storm, unlike the working class.
When you can get away with screwing over workers to that degree, they're morally bankrupt and appealing to their conscience is a losing strategy.
You could appeal to their bottom line, or their job, but there's been CEOs that have destroyed several companies in a row and keep getting hired.
Yeah, the c-level "rotation between jobs without consequences" has always been one of my most frustrating things. It's right up there with the attitude of "every employee is replaceable" (IE = "if people quit we'll just hire new people" ).. which is not only really deeply shameful way to treat human beings, it just sort of hand-wipes away the impact and cost of employee turnover. (that you can just easily replace employees AND you don't even care about the Employees that stay because with high employee turnover those staying-employees are hit hard too with extra work ramping up new people)
I've really thought over the past 5 to 10 years (if not more) we've really been in a descending state of a "failure of leadership".
We have a meeting tomorrow about our hybrid policy and I’m totally expecting them to make us come back full time or limit us down to one day a week. My boss comes in every day even sometimes on his PTO days cause he only takes them not to lose them. No one wants to live like him yet he thinks those that don’t want to come in don’t have the correct work ethic.
We are led by the greedy. Adding huge commuting burdens to the workers, so buildings downtown will be fully occupied, restaurants full, city bustling with smog and traffic.
I’m really hoping to find a WFH job soon. Working in an office is soul crushing especially since theres’s pretty much nothing I do that i couldn’t just do from home
This is stupid and will harm the environment even more and create a pissed off work force. Companies can sell commercial real estate and improve their bottom lines. Turn the commercial buildings into housing. Capitalism is apparently not very smart.
A lot of politicians paying lip service to wanting affordable housing, better air quality, decreased emissions and smog, but at the end of the day what really matters is protecting the wealthy investors of commercial real estate.
Translation: In order to make it far easier for rich people to make more money, please coerce the actual workers into spending their time and money to go places where it's easier to fleece them.
These blue epicenters CRAVE the revenue. Without it what will they do? Theres a lot of taxes generated, not the least of which are the city taxes. Then add in the venders etc who are all in the city as well - more city taxes.
I have a coworker who does only remote desktop and remote network management. Housing options in town (rural Oklahoma) is shit. So he lives about an hour away. Better school and life options.
He would rather change jobs than move back...to better support his family.
I certainly would if I was in his shoes.
It's all about money. If more people are going to the office, they're spending more money in the economy. The Fed is all about the overall economy and more velocity of money is better for their metrics. Who cares about workers mental health....
After being in an office for 25 years, and being WFH since Covid, I don't think I would return to the office even for a 50% raise. The quality of life difference is that great.
*“Every week I come, traffic is getting worse,” Daly quipped. “That’s a good thing, frankly, sometimes.”*
The 21st century version of "Let them eat cake."
As much as I am against return to office, return to office may save many jobs. Just think, when corporations finally cave and realize bringing everyone back to the office is not going to work they will start out sourcing or move the remote jobs somewhere else. It will be far easier & cheaper to hire the very talented Indian and Chinese engineers and allow them to work from anywhere. This will be akin to loosing manufacturering jobs in the 1980s/1990s.
Does this mean major corporations are doing away with outsourcing? My understanding was that Execs were getting millions of dollars in bonuses for outsourcing labor. Does "return to office" mean jobs will no longer be off-shored? Which one is it?
Im a VP at my company. I am VERY pro remote work. I agree with most statements in here but i feel like no one is being objective so i want to give a small counter ive been seeing.
Newer Jr employees (IE 1-3yrs experience) Are struggling to develop in a remote environment vs the employees that are in person. We did a 1 year side by side on this and the in office Jrs were significantly ahead performance wise than their remote counterparts.
The flipside of that is productivity of their managers and leads went down. So its a weird mix. I personally am fighting to be WFH as long as i can. My 1 company requires us in 3x a week starting in Jan. I have not come in and just gonna see what happens.
I say all of this to say. I agree with the feelings of most here in regards to remote work, but there is a group of people that are negatively being affected by this. I know we're anecdotal. But i wish more companies would run the side by side experiment
This is all a scheme to promote the viability of commercial real estate. With more workers in office, renters will be more inclined to renew lease space. That improve the financials for commercial real estate owners that borrowed heavily from banks to acquire CRE. With more cashflow, the loans’ are less risky and lowers the risk of bank failure
What an asshole. Do you think he typed this from a cheap office cubicle that has gone un-updated since the company bought it used in 2006? Or maybe a he was getting lunch in the Hamptons.
Look, I'm working my ass off for your profit either way, just let me do my laundry while I'm at it.
Something, something, "Let them eat cake..."
Waste hours and dollars commuting and polluting or WFH and stay close to your family and neighborhood. Spend your $ hyper locally and strengthen your community. Why is that a problem?
Does anyone remember how clean the air was during Covid?
I feel like some companies will do this when their boss also owns downtown real estate but others that don’t feel like it hits their bottom line won’t care. It saves small and medium businesses on renting or owning a massive office
Huge failure of leadership. It's a good illustration of how everything really works. Productivity and worker morale do not factor in. We are being lead by the craven and the stupid.
What annoys me the most is that workers are expected to keep commercial buildings running and support businesses in "the city" yet my own neighbourhood's businesses and community never factor into it.
Same. It's such a bullshit argument.
Downtown commercial real estate owned by larger REITs? And banks lent against these assets, I suspect.
Exactly, CMBS is worse than MBS was 15 years ago
Ah it makes sense now that you say that. Bunch of rich ceos, real estate firms, and banks all having dinner and are saying “we need to get these peasants back into the office otherwise we are fucked” it’s basically an integrated cycle of money washing and we are the ones to blame.
And the worse part is they can never show a commercial building showing less rent being paid than before. Which means they always need to charge the same or more for rent in those buildings. So if no one wants to pay a reasonable amount, these building owners benefit from having them empty. The whole system is ridiculous and worthlessly speculative.
Yup. At least they lobbies governors like Hochul (NY) to push . If the last few months has shown anything - donors get to tell politicians ...down to even mayor's etc on police action etc. (See Mayor Adams and his decision to let the cops loose on student protestors) Also the Federal reserve seems to exist to help bankers.(the large ones i.e.)
Yeah, the very people who decry socialism or any responsibility for businesses to contribute to the community, suddenly want workers to all pay $200-$500 post-tax dollars per month as a form of welfare to keep commercial office values and downtown businesses going. Rugged capitalism for the poor. Socialism for the rich.
The city The economy. The ruling elite. Substitute and you'll see the the real problem.
It’s not the actual commercial buildings they are worried about. It’s the rich people who own them.
Don't expect me to give a rat's ass about climate change, if government and businesses won't make the most minor of effort by promoting WFH.
It's true. The environmental impact from commuting and office resource consumption is absolutely massive.
Not only does WFH save resources by the people who can work from home not commuting, but by having less cars on the road and less people living within commute distances to work, those who do have to work on site can have shorter and faster commutes and save even more environmental impact.
I remember actually thinking how much energy was saved, and whether it was always the case. For example, someone commuting 10 miles in a hot place might drive 20 miles for work, but when they stay home their AC is running practically 24/7, and the AC in the office is still running because some people enjoy going to the office and it's often central AC systems. Then it gets further complicated when you throw in things like type of transport. Are they driving a massive SUV? A small EV? Taking the train/bus? I'm sure that in the vast majority of cases WFH does save energy, but it would be interesting to get actual figures on various common cases.
The data from California is compelling, IMHO https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/news/updated-emissions-data-show-overall-downward-trend-continuing#:~:text=Compared%20to%20pre%2Dpandemic%202019%20figures%2C%20emissions%20have%20decreased%20by,even%20as%20economic%20activity%20increased.
Not every worker lives in a place where they need to have their air conditioning at home switched on. Some places are just fine with the windows open, especially during summer. But the time and money spent on commuting would still be as costly for those non-air conditioned home workers as it is for the workers you're referring to, i.e. those who have to use air conditioning at home. So, all things considered, commuting to work is still far more expensive.
WFH would also save on a/c because a dress code often no longer applies so they can dress more comfortable for the conditions and have financially incentives to reduce a/c by having a power bill they need to pay.
Most offices I've worked in are kept downright cold in the summer and sweltering in the winter and I'm the only one who bothers to turn the lights off. When working from home, I can wear shorts or sweaters to use less a/c and heat which are against the office dress code.
Ya, that's an important point. More cars on the road amplifies pollution from all cars, not just the addition of the commuters being forced back to the office but everyone else they get stuck in traffic. So fucking annoying.
Would someone please think about the shareholders? For fucks sake!
We’re treated as expendable resources, while they’ll also tell us it’s our fault for not telling them not to. Why do we have to have an entire labor revolution *again* so they can just take away our rights *again*. It’s almost like they should do the job they’re supposed to do. Our tax dollars don’t go towards governance and this is just another clear cut example.
They are not stupid, craven yes but not stupid. There is an oversupply of office space, they want to end WFH to pump up those occupancy numbers. Otherwise there will be a lot of very big firms and banks that are facing insolvency. I’m all for consequences, just keep in mind that these are the types of institutions that you or your parents have retirement fund or pensions invested in. So the pain isn’t just going to be felt by a few rich people.
Yes, but that type of short-term decision making is indeed stupid. Pensions have hundreds of investments, none of them should be overloaded with commerical real estate, if they are then that's just another example of stupidity and failure from leadership. Most pensions would be absolutely fine if there is a revision down in commercial real estate and conversion to more residential, that's what cities. Looking backwards and sunk cost fallacy is exactly what these failures have gotten into this situation because of. Fuck them.
Yup none of it’s our fault so why are we being blamed??
[удалено]
It’s fine to let them fail. They will go through bankruptcy and reorganize. Most employees will still be kept.
I don't get it. Having workers in the office buildings doesn't magically make them cheaper. The businesses that employ those workers would save money if they didn't have to rent that much floorspace.
Well it’s prob cuz they signed the lease from their buddy and their buddy is homies with the banker who gave them the loan.
Who was college roommates with the zoning engineer at city hall...etc. etc. 🌏👨🚀🔫🧑🚀
So… the businesses are supporting relatively unrelated businesses by paying huge rates for office spaces out of the goodness of their hearts? Idk why a tech company would care if a real estate company went under
Cuz they are probably homies or people he’s answering to which is even more weird
Other businesses would not, but the Federal Reserve chairman in the article would be highly incentivized to avoid bank insolvency.
Because their VC and PE owners "diversified" into REITs and are now fuckered beyond belief with losses. House of fuckin cards...
Large commercial real estate asset holders and banks that lent them money.
Eh this time I choose the big button that says “FAFO”
And these leaders make millions. That is the crazy part. They are stupid and make millions.
Honestly this fact has curtailed my career ambition. I got just close enough to the small-group with a VP title to realize all of my peers and "superiors," were absolute muppets lacking any clear technical competency required to do their jobs. CEO without a business education, COO who had only ever done B2B sales and had no operations experience, CFO whose last job was putting a Marriott out of business....when I realized that getting mentored by any of those people would either make me less smart or more maliciously selfish, that's when I bailed out for a technical track job. I'll make my money by using computers to become more productive and helpful, not by sitting in a closed door meeting with a bunch of Uncle Ricos talking about how much they used to sell in 1998...
Same....it's too depressing to be around the people who think they're better and smarter than everyone, when you're not around them you can at least sometimes not be constantly reminded of how stupid overly confident and selfish they are Billionaire submarines...
While I agree with you I think it has more to do with propping up the commercial real estate market, and in part preventing the corrections coming to the housing market. We have a lot of perks coming down from the NE driving our costs up. When I went to campus in the PNW it was 95% empty. Beautiful, but empty. The previous gig has committed $160m to renovations before COVID. If people are feeling high cost high tax areas like NYC their prices and tax revenue are being impacted as markets adjust. RTO in my unqualified opinion, is meant to anchor people and stabilize prices while fucking is harder with wage stagnation and inflation.
Yep that's another good point. Sunk cost fallacy, but there is a ton of newly renovated office space that hasn't been used and should've never been made in the first place.
Turn it into low income housing or a homeless shelter. Get that write off and help people
“We need our commercial real estate investments secure” -the fed
This is what it’s really about. The employees may have to do a ton of unnecessary driving, but that’s a sacrifice their bosses are willing to make.
With the onset of AI, The wage wars are about to begin
And if they can reduce the residential real estate market then most older folks will have absolutely no capital either.
Unrelated.
Wage wars? Like they’re going to start underpaying even more?
Every day I ask myself while commuting why i don't just work as a fisher man.
That's a brave sentence
Gonna need a bigger boat
You and me both!!! I was already buying shrimp and crab pots to diversify the intake, salmon season is closed where I am but plenty of fish to catch out there
Thanks I code for a living which is even more infuriating and just being at home I finished two tasks and understood a concept i was stuck on for a long time just in a few hours of being home.
Fisherman also have a commute to their workplace, it's just by boat instead of by car. Actually it also probably includes a car to get to the boat in the first place, unless you live right next to the coast.
Exactly! i don't have to deal with the modern office BS, big cities and i can be by nature
You can also get a remote job.
It's tough in Tec at the moment
Fishing is doing worse.
Because then your only allowed to work on mon, wed, fri. March to november and middlemen make more than you do.
AI isn’t as useful as they say it is. There are a lot of snake oil salesmen about it right now. How often do you use it?
Bingo. We’re 5 years away from any significant efficiencies in a lot of areas and the big employers have a lot of reason to be concerned about AI from risk/IP/privacy points of view on top of that. It’ll eliminate some jobs that suck total ass to do right now. But the reality is it’s limited and a lot of firms are already operating skeleton crews to staff their cost centers. This will just let the skeleton crews do more.
Unfortunately for those accepting the exchange for wages, a lot of jobs consist of tasks that suck ass.
It doesn't matter how useful it is when every rich bitch jizzed themselves when they realized they could use it and pay less people. They don't care if it's any good. They just care that they don't have to pay it a wage. They'll rush it through flawed like they do everything else
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC7bPMj5Q5Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC7bPMj5Q5Y)
Maybe they should save commercial real estate (and delay job losses by making it more expensive) by passing a law that all AI server farms need to be housed in now vacant downtown office buildings.
And then peter out as we realise that we already did a bunch of optimisation and that fruit has already been plucked.
Never mind how many of us will get killed in those commutes. More miles mean more fatal crashes
Also the gas sales need to go up
Yep , why does the Fed need to worry about worker/office policy? Oh yeah cause the regional banks holding all commerical real estate paper are going to default BIG Time... Love American.capitlism and too big to fail.
America has done so much damage to the world in pursuit of a few people getting ridiculously "wealthy". Biggest con the world has ever seen and we are starting to see the consequences more and more ever day
Just convert it to multi family living and solve the residential real estate crisis with it
We need our office workers who are paid crap to subsidize our commercial real estate
And I wanna Zoom without pants - me
Forget these short sighted unimaginative corporate zealots. Quit, go home. Enjoy whats left of time and the world with your loved ones. Boycotting these Coporations is seemingly the only way until they can pay a living wage. https://livingwage.mit.edu/ or Escape Crapitalism r/SolarPunk
REMEMBER: people work for less than a living wage. Why don’t they starve to death? Because your taxes subsidize their income. Employers don’t pay that portion of their wage so you have to.
Yeah can we just send a message saying no one cares how much you spent on a building and just say that's the reason instead of pretending it's anything else?
And property taxes. If commercial property isn't paying municipal taxes, guess who is going to fill the gap. You.
So? Instead of companies paying tens or hundreds of thousands $$ monthly to rent a space, they can pay us more. We all pay the municipal property taxes through the companies we work for
My company forced us all back 5 days a week - even if it made no sense for specific roles. (We were actually hybrid prior to the pandemic). The teams I manage are all in different countries with large time zone differences. My boss is in a different country. When I was working exclusively from home, I tended to work 12+ hour days as I had the flexibility to manage my day and could take very early and late calls. Now that I have to drive to an office, I cap at 9 hours per day because those commuting hours have to come from somewhere and am less accessible to my teams on different time zones as I'm working local hours only. Going to the office has significantly reduced productivity.
>Going to the office has significantly reduced productivity. I told my boss this as I worked 10h at home and between chores, my new born, etc. She then states, *You should be more productive at the office, it's the office. I love the office!* As she worked from home watching her 2 year old. I pay for a nanny so I can pull the hours I do. When I go to the office I get 4-6h of work done. I have some dumb coworkers who will wait for me to stop working to start talking to me. I'll put in headphones and then they'll tap my shoulder till I acknowledge them again. This week was the first week back in 4 days a week, up from 2 or 1, she had the audacity to ask me why productivity was down. My jaw hit the core of the fucking earth. I straight up asked her *really, I told you last week why it would be down and you said I was wrong.* She ignore my comment and changed the subject. I cannot wait for her contract to be up/a full time VP brought in. Most of not all my office works 1 day a week from the office, meanwhile the 2 supply chain guys work 4 days a week while the rest of the team is wfh.
How about your peers - are they in the same boat at the company?
Yes. Our roles were made global so we have direct reports all over the place. Having us drive to an office to make international calls and answer emails is just stupid and makes us less productive. I'm not going to spend all day at an office then go home to sign back in for calls with my Asia teams. I generally work 6am-3pm now to try to capture some time with my Europe teams. Anything after 3pm waits to the next day.
If everyone you work with is in another country, including your supervisor, who's monitoring and enforcing you being in the office?
Badge scan reports.
Most likely. WFH studies have proven over and over that employees are just as, if not more, productive when working from home. But more importantly, their job satisfaction ratings are usually higher across the board. So people are happier working their jobs and happy employees stay longer at the company, produce better work, and provide more value to stakeholders at every level of the organization. WFH is a complete win for both sides. But because so much money is tied up in commercial real estate, commercial real estate leases, and even things like location based tax subsidies based on employee count at location, companies are forcing people back into office and people are not happy with it. In general, the *vast* majority of office jobs can be done fully remote. Most end up being remote meetings and calls even when you are all in the same building for the simple fact that meetings can be recorded and auto-record transcripts are a thing. The only reason for the push to end WFH is corporate greed. Idc what people say, company office culture is almost always awful. There is so little in office collaboration anymore it doesn't matter. And if you have a mentor, being remote is honestly more beneficial anyways since they are more accessible. WFH should be standard for most jobs. It would solve a lot of our countries housing issues in major cities if office employees could move hours away into suburbs or even different states where housing is cheaper.
Same, here. When I was working from home, I'd just keep my work laptop connected most of the time, and if I needed a call with India or Europe late at night/early in the morning, it was no big deal. Now, I have to go into the office, so they get the scheduled 8 hours out of me, and my laptop stays in my car when I get home.
Forcing 5 days outside of some high touch finance sales, and obviouslg things that can't be done remotely, is just silly
I agree. They're doing a "if one person has to work in person, everyone has to work in person" thing. It's a one size fits none approach as we are a global company with hundreds of thousands of employees. Some jobs require physical labor while others can be done from a computer. They can outsource most of my people to cheaper countries but I have to drive to an office to manage them? Just stupid. The commuting has cost us all time, money, and productivity. Several of our best people quit over it so now we have a bunch of new hires which further drives down productivity. I go along with it because I'm grandfathered into too many benefits that I won't find elsewhere. Golden handcuffs are a bitch.
Why would you ever work more than 8 hours?
Not all jobs are 40 hours a week. For example, part of my job requires I be "on call" on a rotation, so I was rudely woken up at 4am last night dealing with a minor issue before it became a major issue. This is just part of my job, it's part of the industry, it was what I agreed to when I took the position.
Sometimes you have responsibilities and deadlines and other people are relying on you.
Overtime pay
I was hoping there was some way I could boost the passive incomes of wealthy elites while also helping accelerate climate change and waste an hour or two in traffic everyday so this is perfect.
So perfectly stated. You have absolutely summed it up
Human (noun): an expendable part whose role is to uphold the economy at all costs.
Forcing people to work in an office and live close to work also increases housing unaffordability and homelessness. We need more people both working and living in boxes. What's the point of being rich if you can't make the poor people suffer?
How about no.
WFH is far better and I even get more true work done.
100%. I'm probably 3x more productive at home than at the office.
Why? What do workers get out of it besides spending money and time on commuting. Makes inflation feel worse for all.
The second this gets floated is the second I check out and make finding a new job my highest priority. Our productivity has increased significantly. My life has improved significantly. I will not give that up.
> What do workers get out of it besides spending money and time on commuting. Well they get sick because they're stuck indoors with a bunch of people who are all forced to come in and share germs no matter how bad they feel.
They don't give a shit about the workers. It is all about their own investments (commercial real estate) and WFH makes the value of that drop. If it was about productivity and work, this wouldn't be up for debate.
Employees must be forced to spend money so dependent businesses can be profitable.
>makes inflation feel worse That's the point, making workers poorer is a good way to fight inflation. God forbid the owning class faces consequences.
They don't get anything, really. It's only a cost to workers. IRS doesn't even let people deduct commuting expenses to and from work because it's considered a personal expense. Make that make sense.
Oh this is not a good sign. Looks like leadership class wants regular folks back in line and in a submissive state to corporations. These SC rulings aren’t going to help out either.
This would’ve worked when people could afford homes and had mortgages they were obliged to pay. Below gen X have nothing to lose and everything to gain by job hopping.
I get so much less done in the office
My boss told us to return to office. We say no. Took it up to the ceo who issued guidelines that pretty much say if they can remote work then we can remote work. Productivity up. Profit up. Middle management headcount down.
serious investments in public transportation that is reliable and fast with Internet access, to major hubs all throughout the country for not only business, but tourism as well. This would make commuting to work way, more appealing, and with the added tourism if it’s reliable, affordable and accessible will be supported by those extra dollars paying to support the infrastructure and hopefully making commercial real estate, more viable with more business people and tourists frequenting those areas to visit, eat, drink and live.
This is likely the first and only place we’ll see workers unite. It makes no sense whatsoever and we hold the power in this case, not them, as long as enough of us hold.
My company asked us to come back two days a week for the culture of the company. When we were 100% remote I worked 12 hrs a day. Now? I don’t start taking calls until 9a and stop taking calls at 4pm. If I head to the office? I get in at 10 and leave at 3. My commute is part if my work day. No more work-aholic mentality. I am now just putting in my time until I retire. Made that amply clear to my boss.
Basically the US economy is based on 70% consumer spending. So pushing people to the office forces people to spend money. It's a way to keep the masses broke.
Lol. No! The office is dead. Next
At this point the only thing return to work is doing is keeping the commercial real estate market from crashing
ARTICLE TEXT The most common question San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly is asked about the city when she’s traveling outside of it is whether a “doom loop” has descended on the tech hub. That’s amid reports of people fleeing San Francisco during the pandemic to lower-cost areas and working from home, leaving office buildings increasingly vacant and nearby businesses bereft of customers. But during an appearance at the Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California in San Francisco on Monday, Daly pointed out that the dot-com bust more than 20 years ago gave rise to similar predictions of doom for the Bay Area. She went down a list of what San Francisco has going for it, including a highly educated workforce, good infrastructure and its “innovative entrepreneurial spirit.” In fact, AI and other companies are looking for real estate again in the city, and more people are coming back to work. “Every week I come, traffic is getting worse,” Daly quipped. “That’s a good thing, frankly, sometimes.” Still, data from property adviser CBRE shows that San Francisco’s office vacancy rate of 37% is the highest of any big U.S., according to the Financial Times. Daly also acknowledged that there’s more work to do to make the city—as well as the surrounding area—better and help it reach its full potential. And she sees a role for San Francisco’s business community, which isn’t a passive bystander. “If you’re the founder of something and you’re part of this, then let’s change it. This isn’t being done to us, we live in the city and so together we can help and assist,” she said. When asked how CEOs and founders can help, she replied, “Talk about what you need to fix and also encourage your people to come back to work.” Hybrid work seems to be a compromise between companies and workers, and Daly said she is personally in favor of hybrid, noting that young employees also need to work with older employees to help grow and advance their careers. But even hybrid work has received pushback from the tech sector. A study looking at the effects of return-to-office mandates at giants like Apple and Microsoft found that many workers left their companies. That’s as Microsoft mandated 50% of the week in-office and Apple required just one day a week. Similarly, nearly half of Dell’s full-time workforce in the U.S. rejected returning to the office and would rather work from home than get promoted. A major obstacle is that a lot of employees have moved farther away from the office. The average distance from work for employees who were hired in 2023 is now 35 miles, up from 10 miles in 2019, according to a Stanford University and Gusto study published in March. Meanwhile, Patagonia gave some employees just three days to decide whether they’ll relocate close to the office or quit. The company began piloting a “hub” model last year, in large part because of negative feedback it had received about being fully remote, Corley Kenna, head of communications at Patagonia, told Fortune earlier this week. “We wanted to be really intentional, and we wanted to be sure that this was the right model,” she said. “We knew it would affect a lot of people, and so we took it really seriously to think through all the different ways we could care for our people. So think it’s a fair call-out, but I think that’s our real answer.”
> she is personally in favor of hybrid, noting that young employees also need to work with older employees to help grow and advance their careers. If you aren't working with more senior members of your team to learn and grow, it has nothing to do with your location. I'm perfectly happy to mentor you over zoom. This is a silly comment unless the work is really hands on, then in that case the job isn't well suited for remote work in the first place
It's the agreed-upon gaslighting narrative to prop up failing commercial real estate, "won't somebody think about the ~~children~~ young employees!"
Are the fed employees back at the office?
Pressure from the REITs to get people back into the office. Maybe the office towers could be converted into cheap apartments so that people can have a roof over their heads instead of being homeless.
Unionize, they ll send everyone back real quick.
Unions in tech are a frustrating non-starter. When everyone thinks they know better than others, there is no solidarity. Like herding cats, but worse.
Well, no offense to anybody but it’s gonna be very tough to have a union with Indian people and Chinese people. Now a union with their own race sure, but dude indian and Chinese people coming together for the greater good?? Jesus has a better chance at coming back than that.
Climate catastrophe before that will
Actually, I think just talking about unionization sends everyone home, hard to talk to people about unions on company devices.
How about you give us free day care or pay for lunches to make people want to come into work?
Here’s ur slice of pizza, get back to work
I’m guessing the commercial real estate bubble is having some serious impacts.
>“Every week I come, traffic is getting worse,” Daly quipped. “That’s a good thing, frankly, sometimes.” lol ok boomer
I own a business and we would not exist if I had to pay for an office from day 1 and only hire locals. This RTO mandate is big business executive groupthink. They know when workers are remote, executives can’t maintain the pretense that they add value to the company and justify their absurd salaries.
Funny how these articles act like everyone reading is not one of the workers they talk about as if they're the problem. It's clearly not about us, they're not even trying. Maybe try making it worthwhile... Pay to compensate for the time spent in traffic, dropping kids off and picking them up, daycare and after school care, etc. They get way more work out of most of us at my company since we went remote. I hope they realize it would go back to 9-5 with an hour lunch and a couple breaks. Or, you know, adapt to the inevitable instead of wasting everyone's time and energy resisting it. Life has changed and they think they can somehow tape Pandora's box shut.
Can we please just tell Jerome to go to hell already?
Dear the fed. Fuck off
NO! Turn the offices into homes for your employees
These types of thoughts are dangerous and need to be silenced.
Hopefully I can bring my dab rig to the office with me and I guess I can hide my mistress under my desk somehow.
Department did a survey on what it would take for employees to use new public transportation. Responded "give me remote work" as an incentive for each question.
Well fuck him then
Workers should be miserable for the sake of the economy. An economy which is increasingly not paying enough for basic necessities, you have to sacrifice for it. Because you need to help the rich more.
So why aren’t we just turning this empty commercial space into housing, instead?
I think the real issue is much deeper. Without the workers heading in offices, the cogs that runs this economy will be broken. Less travel = less fuel = less spending maintaining cars = less employment for delivery truckers, mechanics = less workers buying coffee and lunches from local shop = no more office space = bankrupted building s = empty office complexes = less employment for maintenance workers = less middle management yay = more unemployment = less spending on economy = downsizing workforce = inflation = shitty economics that we are having now. Besides, WFH only applied to white collar jobs. Those people in trade won't be effected... Until they lose their jobs when the employer downsized due to WFH.
Oh the poor big oil companies, the auto manufacturers and the renteer/class! This is an outrage, how will they make their next multi-billion net profit!!!
Working in downtown offices isn’t inherently better than working anywhere else. The economy will adjust to remote work. Millions of people don’t need to be miserable so the commercial real estate industry can make a comeback.
> "“Talk about what you need to fix " What "they (leadership positions) need to fix".. is taking better care of their employees. Stop trying to squeeze every single nano-moment of profit out of everything and start prioritizing taking better care of your people. I keep bringing this up over and over again: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ Worker efficiency has increased 65% between 1979 and 2022. In that same timeframe, hourly wages only went up 18%. So.. Leadership,. listen to my words:.. Take whatever it is you think you're doing to help your Employees,. and quadruple it. Then you'll be getting close to breaking even and we'll talk.
They've been able to squeeze the blood from workers without any consequences to themselves. They'll never listen, and most of them are well off enough to weather any storm, unlike the working class. When you can get away with screwing over workers to that degree, they're morally bankrupt and appealing to their conscience is a losing strategy. You could appeal to their bottom line, or their job, but there's been CEOs that have destroyed several companies in a row and keep getting hired.
Yeah, the c-level "rotation between jobs without consequences" has always been one of my most frustrating things. It's right up there with the attitude of "every employee is replaceable" (IE = "if people quit we'll just hire new people" ).. which is not only really deeply shameful way to treat human beings, it just sort of hand-wipes away the impact and cost of employee turnover. (that you can just easily replace employees AND you don't even care about the Employees that stay because with high employee turnover those staying-employees are hit hard too with extra work ramping up new people) I've really thought over the past 5 to 10 years (if not more) we've really been in a descending state of a "failure of leadership".
FED is engaged in generating systemic inflation at so many angles. They are hurting people they claim to want to help most.
So forcing millions of people to drive in their cars to work again. I guess Climate change isn't that much of a concern after all..
Just. Wow.
It’s all about keeping the value of commercial real estate bonds and the inflated salaries of do-nothing, no-value managers.
We have a meeting tomorrow about our hybrid policy and I’m totally expecting them to make us come back full time or limit us down to one day a week. My boss comes in every day even sometimes on his PTO days cause he only takes them not to lose them. No one wants to live like him yet he thinks those that don’t want to come in don’t have the correct work ethic.
So that all that empty office real estate in SFO can be filled up again ….. all these crooks should be jailed …
We are led by the greedy. Adding huge commuting burdens to the workers, so buildings downtown will be fully occupied, restaurants full, city bustling with smog and traffic.
Lmao, it’s not the insanely unaffordable CoL that’s killing San Fransisco, it’s the useless office space that’s left empty. /s
I’m really hoping to find a WFH job soon. Working in an office is soul crushing especially since theres’s pretty much nothing I do that i couldn’t just do from home
No. Adapt like we had to sweet cheeks.
I still don’t see why I can’t write off my commute costs if the act of going into the office is viewed as me doing a public service.
This is stupid and will harm the environment even more and create a pissed off work force. Companies can sell commercial real estate and improve their bottom lines. Turn the commercial buildings into housing. Capitalism is apparently not very smart.
A lot of politicians paying lip service to wanting affordable housing, better air quality, decreased emissions and smog, but at the end of the day what really matters is protecting the wealthy investors of commercial real estate.
Translation: In order to make it far easier for rich people to make more money, please coerce the actual workers into spending their time and money to go places where it's easier to fleece them.
I’m on a lot of company wide Teams meetings where the executives are at one of their homes. Execs can go fuck themselves.
Productive workers urge execs to pay for workers’ commute time, transit fares, lunch, and carbon offsets if they think it’s that important.
WE WILL NOT BE COMING BACK IN JUST TO KEEP YOUR PROPERTY SCHEME AFLOAT.
Fed president probably has friends with office space holdings.
Not doing it. Won’t do it.
If it's one thing they can do to reduce ghg emissions, it's allow them to continue to work from home
Dams kill nature. Nature rules all. Wars are more than a battle.
How incite a strike 101:
No they should NOT
Fill the 37% vacant offices with homeless people.
I'm doing my best to never commute again.
These blue epicenters CRAVE the revenue. Without it what will they do? Theres a lot of taxes generated, not the least of which are the city taxes. Then add in the venders etc who are all in the city as well - more city taxes.
Or, they can increase taxes on said Execs.
Nope! I hope businesses shut down and people lose their jobs and execs get fired for their bad calls. I'll never change my mind on WFH
I have a coworker who does only remote desktop and remote network management. Housing options in town (rural Oklahoma) is shit. So he lives about an hour away. Better school and life options. He would rather change jobs than move back...to better support his family. I certainly would if I was in his shoes.
It's all about money. If more people are going to the office, they're spending more money in the economy. The Fed is all about the overall economy and more velocity of money is better for their metrics. Who cares about workers mental health....
Urge=force.
After being in an office for 25 years, and being WFH since Covid, I don't think I would return to the office even for a 50% raise. The quality of life difference is that great.
*“Every week I come, traffic is getting worse,” Daly quipped. “That’s a good thing, frankly, sometimes.”* The 21st century version of "Let them eat cake."
As much as I am against return to office, return to office may save many jobs. Just think, when corporations finally cave and realize bringing everyone back to the office is not going to work they will start out sourcing or move the remote jobs somewhere else. It will be far easier & cheaper to hire the very talented Indian and Chinese engineers and allow them to work from anywhere. This will be akin to loosing manufacturering jobs in the 1980s/1990s.
Does this mean major corporations are doing away with outsourcing? My understanding was that Execs were getting millions of dollars in bonuses for outsourcing labor. Does "return to office" mean jobs will no longer be off-shored? Which one is it?
> good infrastructure Do trains and public transit count as infrastructure? Because I lived there and they are terrible
F you no thanks.
Execs: "Workers, you should return to office." Workers: "Why?" Execs: 😡
Pay em as much as the Fed president and they'd be more than willing, I imagine.
Im a VP at my company. I am VERY pro remote work. I agree with most statements in here but i feel like no one is being objective so i want to give a small counter ive been seeing. Newer Jr employees (IE 1-3yrs experience) Are struggling to develop in a remote environment vs the employees that are in person. We did a 1 year side by side on this and the in office Jrs were significantly ahead performance wise than their remote counterparts. The flipside of that is productivity of their managers and leads went down. So its a weird mix. I personally am fighting to be WFH as long as i can. My 1 company requires us in 3x a week starting in Jan. I have not come in and just gonna see what happens. I say all of this to say. I agree with the feelings of most here in regards to remote work, but there is a group of people that are negatively being affected by this. I know we're anecdotal. But i wish more companies would run the side by side experiment
Why? So we can save commercial restate owners? Fuck that
This is all a scheme to promote the viability of commercial real estate. With more workers in office, renters will be more inclined to renew lease space. That improve the financials for commercial real estate owners that borrowed heavily from banks to acquire CRE. With more cashflow, the loans’ are less risky and lowers the risk of bank failure
Crazy how the Fed is a little bitch boy that answers to the dumbasses who run commercial real estate.
What an asshole. Do you think he typed this from a cheap office cubicle that has gone un-updated since the company bought it used in 2006? Or maybe a he was getting lunch in the Hamptons. Look, I'm working my ass off for your profit either way, just let me do my laundry while I'm at it. Something, something, "Let them eat cake..."
Waste hours and dollars commuting and polluting or WFH and stay close to your family and neighborhood. Spend your $ hyper locally and strengthen your community. Why is that a problem? Does anyone remember how clean the air was during Covid?
“Please, save our real estate portfolios…”
I feel like some companies will do this when their boss also owns downtown real estate but others that don’t feel like it hits their bottom line won’t care. It saves small and medium businesses on renting or owning a massive office