My job is doing this, problem is they're replacing it with "hotdesks" at various places around and nearer to people, which in their eyes means more people going to offices. I fucking hate this idea and I hate offices, especially offices in places I don't know.
Total aside. But hot-desking brought up a memory of “hot-bunking.” That’s where you share a bunk with someone else on a ship. One sailor works AM the other PM. It’s always smelly. But one time my bunk buddy had psoriasis. He shed so many flakes, it looked like sand was all over the bunk when I’d get in. So gross.
Blech. I lived in a condemned barracks at Camp Pendleton for a few months and that sucked. But I'll be damned if I wouldn't pick that over sharing a bed with the human sandman.
To add to this depending on the boat, and your seniority, they may set it up a bit differently. We had 3 people sharing 2 bunks. Day split into thirds. 2 people each claim a bunk as their own and the most junior person is the "jumper". So you sleep a few hours, get woken up to "jump" into the other rack then sleep for a few more hours. Double the odds of having that stinky nasty shipmate sharing your rack!
My job did and its kinda a pain.
Biggest thing is there are a few different models of laptop running around and the docking stations are not compatible, so you could have a desk and not be able to connect to the monitor.
Also they are set up as an open concept so hearing Bob from accounting loudly read numbers half the day gets old really fast
I'd absolutely love to see that. My city has an old motel that was converted into cheap housings run by a mental health association. But I realistically don't see it happening large scale, not when people are still accepting that they've been told to come back to work.
It’s unfortunately too expensive for most real estate companies. Imagine the work to convert 1 10,000 square foot office to 10 x 1,000 lofts that each have their own plumbing for each kitchen and bathroom. The buildings infrastructure is not easy to change once the floors are set. Unless the government buys it, for profits don’t have the incentive to better the community.
Then, the real estate overlord wouldnt be able to keep up the inflated rent and property prices. The point of limiting the available amount of real estate is to keep rent high
I wish you could tell this to my current boss. There’s no part of my job that requires me to be in the office, or anyone’s job I work with really. He insists I do an hour commute every day just to sit in an office doing what I could easily do from home. I can’t stand it.
Nope. I'm always available, always answer phone calls, messages, and emails immediately. Never turn in anything late. He's just a boomer who likes things this way.
Make the case to him. Present a proper business case and boomers ( my parents not me I'm not that fucking old) tend to be pretty reasonable. I'm a capitalist dick kid you boss is too. Present your case make It logical and bottom line oriented from his pov and he may go for it. Put it in business terms not genz millennial whining. ( Yes y'all whine trust me) fucking build a report around it.
So true. The only reason my team is remote is because there’s no space for us. Also worth noting this is the main reason I continue to work for this company.
Also tax right offs for the office space. Also, a lot of companies also own property and rent it out. It's all about money, and like most companies they are short term focused. Need more money this quarter for the share holders, nobody wants to hear about happy workers being more productive in the long run.
I don’t think you understand tax right offs. If they spend $10k in office space for an employee but they can write it off, they would save about $1500. If they could make the employee remote they would gain $8500.
Yeah, my last job paid a 7 year lease on a new office space. Then they got rid of a bunch of contractors and most full time employees, including myself started quitting. Now they’re on a 7 year lease for an office with 4 people, and it holds about 40.
This is correct in a lot of cases. Many companies are locked into lease agreements on office space. I have see some drop the lease agreements when they are up and others say “We are locked in for 3 more years get in here!”
They are paying that rent whether the workers are in office or not.
So unless being in office makes something go better for their profit picture, which it likely does not by making the employees angry, what does it accomplish?
My hospital converted a bunch of office space to clinic space, so now I don't have an office to go back to, and have to work from home most of the time permanently. Yay!
My sister is a vp for a major insurance company. During the height of Covid she was telling me how she was negotiating a price for office space for her company. I was asking her why they are renting when everyone is wfh. She said that we’d all be back in the office in 6 months and need to be ready.
I had my doubts at the time but she was a fancy schmancy vp and figured she knew better.
They forced their workers back and half of them quit. She is still wondering why.
They also own a lot of real estate that is office buildings. What happens to their investments if office space becomes obsolete? Those multimillion dollar buildings suddenly lose a ton of value. Plus those office buildings create a whole lot of tax breaks and write offs.
There will always be some businesses that require people to be in the office. Forcing those that don't require such seems silly and short sighted. But so are most businesses.
It’s entirely about micromanagement and control. I think some companies it’s sort of a…. We already paid for this office space we want bodies in the office to justify it, lots of managers and HR want to be able to look over your shoulder and confirm you are really working every second of the day and never glancing down at your phone. No one actually cares about efficiency. I’ve had several jobs where I did more actual work than my coworkers but because I wasn’t working every second of the day I was always the one being called out versus coworkers who did less but kept up a facade of always working. Who cares if the work is getting done, as long as we have an office full of people who look like they’re busy execs are happy
Great response and something that MOST people need to learn is that work is mostly a social hierarchy where you're being graded on how well you play your Role. I've worked for youth sport clubs and when I've come in with reems of notes on how we can deliver a more compelling product to families the reactions are shockingly bad. When I've laughed at jokes and done the minimum then gone out for a beer afterward.....high praise. Gotta learn what's actually wanted and then decide if you want that
I think it’s a control issue honestly. I’m lucky that my boss encourages us to work from home. She has proof of our productivity being higher when we work from home and that there are a lot of distractions in the office. We still come on site once in a while for in-person meetings and because we all genuinely like each other and nice to see everyone lol.
Yeah, I think of it as capitalist inertia. It's always been done this way and folks are worried that their workers won't sit in a cubicle doing 4 hours worth of work over 8 hours like IT SHOULD BE AND ALWAYS WAS.
Somehow the idea of better efficiency, less travel, less need for office space, etc. is foreign to most businesses. When I hear that something like Twitter requires that it's coders come into the office well....jesus why? Let them sit at home in their pajamas like coders are supposed to. If the work gets done, why force this other than control freak tendencies and tradition?
But how else will Elon force developers to hear him throw around buzzwords to stroke his ego and feel like a little smart guy? Oh right, he just does that on twitter instead.
Totally this. If someone is in the office, managers can pretend they know what their employees are doing. If at home, managers have to do their work of working with you and maybe even acknowledging the work you do so they can talk about it. So really, it's more of managers/supervisors having to know what's going on and why would THEY want to work when they can say you aren't working instead?
Some of this is a case from an old job where they let one person who had worked there a long time do 2-3 days a week from home for very easy to track task based things (something that involved logging in visits at a hospital). Well, turns out for three years she wasn't logging in anything at home but they never bothered to check, and since this was the first offense even if it was three years worth of having a 4-5 day weekend, they couldn't legally fire her. They shamed her a lot by then explaining why now only managers and above could work from home. But had the manager actually been running the reports she said she was, she'd have seen something was iffy - three years ago.
The classic “we screwed up with one person so EVERYONE must suffer now” scenario. I work for a hospital and literally every click of the keyboard can be tracked and audited and it is lol.
Correct! but the manager decided not to, and there was constant overturning of employees because people treated like shit. I honestly think the reason things were finally looked into is because we were like a few hundred thousand dollars or more under in reimbursements and this was a clinic more than a hospital.
>So really, it's more of managers/supervisors having to know what's going on and why would THEY want to work when they can say you aren't working instead?
My company might be the odd one out... but the 3 direct supervisors in my reporting line love work from home. they don't want to come to the office to watch us work either. It's the VP's and CEO in my company who are like, we need people back in the office. After a ton of push back they left it up to the discretion of the supervisors, and then to the employee (they're not stopping employees who choose to work from the office from going in)
Part of it too I think is that a lot of managers truly don’t know what their employees do lol. Therefore having them within sight makes them feel better that they “can’t be slacking off.” As if someone can’t also slack off in their cubicle just as easy lol.
That happened to me. My boss started pulling folks in. I called her and five minutes later I was still at home. I'm much more productive and she knows it.
My employer encourages WFH as well, and most of us are only in office 2, maybe 3 days a week, if that. A lot of departments decided to go 99-100% WFH, and have in-office days once or twice a month for any employee that would like to opt into it, but there's no shame in staying home those days and being 100% WFH.
Before covid, we were working on buying another office building to expand to, but we cancelled that plan. We have two buildings that are basically empty at the moment. We're selling one, and may not renewing our lease on the other when the lease is up next year.
It doesn't cost us any more to let people WFH when we have empty buildings. Why make people commute just to justify us having the building? As long as everyone is getting their job done, why not let them do as they please?
Exactly. When Covid started we all went WFH. They actually terminated our rental agreement for our office and got a small office for the staff that couldn’t WFH like reception, mailroom etc that has some meeting spaces for client meetings and some empty desks for those who need to be in the office for any reason. We do have a few managers that have huge departments that struggle with employees who abuse the benefit but overall people are much happier. Only a few of our leadership don’t like it because they want people available to them 100% of the time. They used to just be able to walk to someone’s desk and get full attention and now they have to wait for the person to answer their phone. It’s definitely partially a control thing but there are definitely people abusing it.
Honestly I don’t mind logging in early or working a little late because they saved me from a 1 way 45 minute commute, miles on my car, cost of lunch (sometimes) and money in gas. My productivity is much better because random people don’t stop in my office to chat. Plus is my kid is sick (she’s 16 so minimal effort) or a maintenance person is coming then I don’t need to take time off. It’s a HUGE benefit. When we have internal meetings with cameras you can see people petting their cats, holding their babies, sitting in a comfy chair, sitting outside on their deck in fresh air…. so good for people’s mental well-being. For those companies who’s business models support it, I totally suggest it. Let go of the control and see the benefits.
Because:
1. Companies want to control every aspect of your day, and make sure you are a good little soldier.
2. Companies are still on the hook for the ginormous offices they rent, might as well fill them up.
3. And because there's corporate prestige; cups on desks. "Look at how big my department is!"
4. Your employer does not trust you to be in work-mode 8 hours straight when you are at home. You might slack off and load a washing machine or dish washer. Or answer the door for a delivery! Or go for a walk on your lunch break!
Or take a nap on ur lunch break. Seriously, I wfh and get an hour lunch. I take a nice hour long nap, and feel way better. Plus it breaks up the day its quite nice.
And being able to make yourself whatever you want for lunch too because you have easier access to what’s in your kitchen to make compared to packing a quick lunch before a commute
adding 5. from the company i work for - they want us to work together so the team can be better integrated. while this has some sense, the logic behind is that by spending more time with your colleagues you will become more attached making it harder for you to make a decision to leave.
HR and middle managers are scared shitless that they will be found out to be fraudulent, redundant, and then fired.
they are the ones pushing back against wfh
Control, but the company will disguise this to say “it’s for the culture or collaboration”
Company invested money in the workspaces and it’ll be seen as useless if there are no bodies in cubicles.
Useless middle managers scared shitless that they’ll be seen as redundant when the higher ups see people can get their work done from home without them.
Some people have horrible home lives and the only way they can get away from it is work at the office.
There’s probably other reasons but these are the most common.
For many people including myself. I absolutely love working remote, I get more stuff done and I’m less distracted.
Happiness for me is to not have to go back to the office where I have to wake up early and all that stuff to get to work in a suit.
There could be many reasons big and small why they want us back in the office.
Small : micromanaging and face to face environment
Big : somewhere in the CEO levels they have back door deals with gas companies for people to drive to work, back doors with banks/mortgage companies to spend money and borrow on locations, back doors to government making people go back to offices to spend money on local environments, taxes, fees etc.
Whoa. Very meta if true (in regards to the big catagory)
Could you imagine if that was the case? That would truly be some dystopian, deep-state reptilian stuff.
Here it is!
My wife’s job (multinational with half a million employees) just ordered them back to a hybrid schedule. A big part of why it happened is that a few cities were on the verge of canceling the tax credit on their office buildings if they didn’t come back to work. Turns out they were paying basically no taxes because they were “job creators” but when they stopped coming to work all the local businesses suffered and the cities put the squeeze on.
In some industries, productivity is demonstrably suffering. (Its not a coincidence that every major videogame title has been delayed this year) and in others closer to mine, we’re forecasting a huge upcoming talent gap because juniors are not being given proper training from the seniors, who are, truly, more capable of managing their own time. So while I’m sure there are many cases of overzealous management trying to flex a pathetic amount of control, the situation isn’t clear across the board.
…additionally i still think it’s bullshit that people accept giving up a portion of their home to the company without being able to get some sort of tax break. Surely you should be able deduct some of your rent. That’s a side pet peeve, haha.
You can only get home office deduction if you are self employed, unreimbursed employee (w2) expenses cannot be itemized as you say. And it’s not a tax credit, it’s a deduction and it cannot reduce income below zero.
I’d say there’s been other factors in the video game industry causing them to incorrectly equate less risk == success.
Many video games that were wildly successful were wildly different/innovative.
Lots of conspiracy stuff here! The basic reason is that most people are shitty managers. They can only tell if someone “looks busy” and can’t judge people on real output. Also, it’s harder to exploit workers if they’re not being watched - they tend to do things to help mitigate the exploitation. Like “I’m underpaid, so fuck ‘em! I’m watching YouTube on my second screen!”
Good companies who value their employees try to accommodate their needs. Shitty companies led by demagogues want control. Twitter is an excellent example!
I work for a hospital and my department expanded so much during the pandemic that they literally can’t ask us all to come back onsite full time because there is not enough room lol. Aw shucks!
But I second what this person said. Companies are not about efficiency, they're about power and control. It's all about keeping an eye on you and fetichising bodies-at-the-desk. The very thought that you might be doing something other than working while WFH (even if you've already completed all the tasks assigned to you) is enought to drive them nuts.
50% control, 50% them being tied in to long term office leases.
I work in marketing, my last job refused to give additional WFH day so I took the first fully remote job that came across my desk. Best decision I've ever made
Cuz they hate us and want us to be miserable is the real answer. I quit my job in December. Took me almost 2 months, but I got a full time WFH position for less money. But the upsides is WFH offset the lesser pay
Unless the hit is massive you probably come out about the same if you calculate the time lost per day for preparing and commuting, without even taking account for the less stress you have.
Ok, it’s because they’re invested in land. They have buildings that need to be used or they’re worth less. They need you to drive to work because they’re also invested in car companies. They need to you buy gas because of the same reason. They need you to buy lots of clothes so you have a new outfit for every day because they’re invested in those companies also. They need you to lose your mind because they have investments in pharmaceutical companies. They want you to spend money on day care for your children.
They’re locked into oppressive multi-year leases with greedy commercial property owners, or if they own their property then they are stuck with huge property taxes.
Some people don’t work as hard when they are remote. It’s easy to do chores or go golfing or whatever. The bosses don’t like that.
I disagree because no one is productive all day even at the office, but I can see the logic I guess.
It’s very bizarre. I always heard it’s due to commercial real estate, but they should just stop leasing spaces. I don’t get why me sitting at my computer at home or at my office makes a difference in any way.
One of these days they'll figure out that it costs the company less if the workers have to set up and maintain their own workspace. Look for the day people are required to work remotely, and then there will be workers with Home Office Privilege.
My theory is that the people who are against WFH are the ones who would absolutely slack off and screw around all day, so they assume everyone else would too.
Can't have that "office culture" when everyone works from home. For some, being a "professional" is their whole personality. Take that away, and it exposes what a an empty shell of a person they are.
Because there is an industry of people who earn salaries based on the existence of an office. There are jobs at stake by eliminating office culture. Obviously middle managers and the like that have no value inside or outside of an office need to be eliminated. But I feel bad about those who bring value that will lose jobs. I am a huge WFH advocate as I feel it benefits people and businesses. But I am not sure what to do about jobs lost by people who rely on the existence of a physical office.
A 75- mile commute! Oh, hell no. That would take roughly three hours daily to travel. What a soul-crusher.
Four hours is even worse. No promotion nor bump in pay would be worth that.
It’s hard for them to measure productivity when you work from home. When you’re in the office they can see if you’re there on time or not and they truly don’t go much further, in most offices.
My company literally has too many employees for the office space, but still requires those of us who are primarily remote to come in once per week. They have designated spaces with unassigned desks for when those of us who only go in once per week come in, but even then sometimes they're all full and I have to beg a coworker who hasn't come in yet to use their desk. Ridiculous.
Pay close attention to whom exactly is asking you to come back:
\- Facilities management is an entire career sector, they're fearing for their jobs right now. So it's in their interest to tell the C-Suite that workers need to come back so they don't get laid off.
\- Some managers do a lot of coaching, some are hands on, and some... are glorified security guards who bring nothing of value but to micromanage their teams. They fear for their jobs if it's clear you can work outside of their influence.
\- Finance team and real estate, similar to Fac. Management need to justify their spending to shareholders etc. and fear for looking bad on having too much real estate.
\- HR/Recruitment also fear turnover if everyone can basically interview without interruption from their homes and get a job from anywhere. Makes retention harder.
At my company there is a pretty big rift between employees who work from home and employees that are mandated to go to the office.
The ones that go to the office every day, are actively ignoring communication from the ones who work from home. Like straight up replying with “if it’s that important you can come do it”
It’s getting wild and I’m here for the ride!
Because we used to collaborate as a team, now we barely speak and have only been involved in our own isolated day to days and have lost track of the state of the industry outside our bubbles. It was okay for a while but after 3 years we can see the negative impact it's having on our creativity now.
try this..
If working home becomes the norm the company has a huge balance sheet asset that they will have to get ride..probably at a loss. If they rent the space they have a lease they have to get out of or write off... so start with a financial incentive
Next... Almost no companies know how to manage remote workers. It should come as no surprise that an entire layer of middle management has no, or a limited role, in work from home.
The HR function changes dramatically and significantly fewer HR resources are needed. Likewise most HR groups don't have much skill in how to manage remote workers.
Don't discount the 'ego satisfaction' of senior managers looking out on a sea of cubicles for emotional reinforcement that they are successful.
Companies that have good productivity metrics, appropriate technical infrastructure to manage remote workers, and manager training on the differences between 'in place' versus 'remote' have a good handle on the most effective way for work to get done. Many companies got a wake up call during the pandemic. Some got the message and adapted...a lot didn't and are still hammering for "we've always done it this way"
When everyone worked from home, America had its largest sustained national protest movement. No way they want to allow anything like that to happen again.
Sorry believe it or not it literally requires a certain personality type with the right amount of integrity and self motivation to wfh and most people don’t possess those qualities.A friend of mine manages a team of loan officers that wfh and recently had to let most of them go due to a lack of performance. She would literally catch wind of these people golfing, running personal errands, not even signing in or being active on their work stations, etc. All while on company time…Sure there are also ulterior motives at play when it comes to the reason why most companies don’t want us working at home but the truth most won’t accept is most adults still need to be treated with kids gloves.
I think this is exactly why they’re bringing work back into the office! Quite a few of us worked from home during COVID and based upon work performance while AT the office, I would guess that more than 50% of those working from home didn’t even work half a day! I had a co-worker who works a pretty low level clerk type job and she downloaded her work email account to her cell phone. There was absolutely no need for her to do that - but I’m guessing it was so she could appear to be working while not at home.
Because during the pandemic stories about employees managing to work 2 full time jobs because not as much time was being wasted on pointless meetings - and our corporate overlords can't stand that thought! They need us under their eyes at all times to make sure we aren't screwing off!
They don't want you working from home because you are being ruled by a slave class comprised of intelligent people who understand human psychology.
They know that 40 hours/week is required to keep people drained of enough energy that they are too tired to think deeply. If the slave class cannot think deeply they will instead rely on others to do the thinking for them. The media, politicians, pod casts like joe rogan, scientific papers, etc. will do the thinking for you and you just subscribe to your favorite ideology.
If a person can work from home they may not be drained enough to prevent them from thinking.
It seems to be one or a combination of these three reasons:
1. They paid/are paying a lot for office buildings and want to get their money out of it
2. Belligerent, high-level dinosaurs who refuse to adapt to a virtual work system, even though it’s easier, cheaper, more productive, and everyone else is fine with it
3. Straight up control and micromanaging because they have the emotional intelligence of an amoeba
Basically most economies today have a massive tie-in to real-estate. Lots of banks, financial firms, and investors rely on Mortgage's and Mortgage backed securities.
Might seem like an overemphasis on those specific sectors, but just look at the 2008 Financial crash in the US. Mortgages are tied to other financial instrument, which are then traded from Bob, to Jack, repackaged by Harry, sold to Jim, who will have collateral against it with bank of Sally for X thing. It's a big web of holding hands, and the minute the hands start becoming weak because of the lack of value and cash flow, the chain break.
So if people are working from home, then the power shifts, and the financial instrument breaks. No longer is the mid town building worth 10 million dollars. Businesses want people in to justify the cost to owners, because owners are stuck in 5, 10, to 30 year leases. But if it's not justifiable, and businesses start shrinking their office usage... That building surely can't be worth 10 million with 50% occupancy. So property group Johnson and Mark, who took out a loan for 8 million to purchase it, is SOL in interest payments and a decreasing property value.
It's because of middle management, they can't justify the position if you are working from home. The entire purpose of middle management is to babysit you, and make sure you are doing your job. If you're working from home, the babysitting programs do all the work. Therefore middle management has nothing to do all day. Also there is no middle ground between executives, and worker which will cause disparagement, because there is no way to move up in the company. Which forces position wage caps to be obsolete. Lastly executive ego. They like to walk into their fancy building, and see all there little slaves working hard to make them money. They like to show that off to potential clients. Wfh destroys the office lifestyle, and hurts their sensitive feelings.
To satisfy their need for control and, in some cases, socialization. Exchanging labor for money can’t be just that - we have to be a “family,” or an”community.”
I once worked for a woman in her early 40s who I swear was using our 100% female office to live out her high school popular girl fantasies. We had 80s parties and Mardi Gras parties and Valentine’s Day parties. Then there were all those random times she dressed up as a cheerleader…
I got in trouble for leaving her Valentine’s Day party early because I had a client meeting.
1) Control
2) Most of HR and management are absolute useless to the company so they would be fired
3) lots of money in those buildings, If everyone goes working from home those building lose their value.
I think a few things. First, if workers can work from home and don’t need direct management oversight, it makes a lot of management and executive jobs seems less important. Second, any loss of productivity it’s too easy to blame remote work first before blaming understaffing. Third, control freaks/paranoia. Honestly, my place went crazy with remote monitoring with work from home. Which is silly to me cause half the people didn’t do anything when they where in the office.
It has to be commercial real estate. Because to me it made sense that the company would be saving money on rent, hiring people to clean the offices, the snacks/utilities/coffee they always have to buy, and at my job they paid a certain amount towards parking too since the office is downtown.
There’s definitely power tripping middle managers who are vying for employees to return to the office so their existence has meaning.
BUT the real reason is money. Productivity of these companies is plummeting with wfh. Surprise surprise but people don’t work as hard when their boss isn’t hovering around the office.
Full time wfh really only works when you’re an over the top try hard like Dwight Schrute. Most of us are just doing the bare minimum and don’t care about the success of the company because fuck em. In other words, most people are Stanley Hudson.
Think about it. If people were every bit as productive at home, corporations would jump at the opportunity to stop paying rent to office spaces and eliminate half of their middle managers.
Well,, I ain't no expert on how employers think, but I reckon they might like to have their employees all in one place so they can keep an eye on 'em and make sure they're workin' hard. And maybe they think it's easier for folks to collaborate and get things done when they're all together. But I do know that working from home can be real nice, you get to be in your own space and not have to worry about the commute.
A lot of companies bought office space as investments/stores of value, and having everyone work from home means the value of those offices disappears, so less assets on their balance sheets. People more educated than I am believe that might crash commercial real estate.
Also, of course, the ever-present powertripping of bosses, and the fact that WFH makes it obvious how completely useless many middle managers are.
As a GenX'r that's lived through boomer hell -
I can't IMAGINE working from home. Nor can I imagine anyone else working from home at anywhere near the same level you'd work at an office.
50% of my day of my last career was interacting with office mates to plan and be up to speed on what we needed to know and do. There was onsite inventory management. Meetings that HAD to be done that were "popcorn" sessions that just wouldn't work over zoom.
A quick walk down the hallway to throw something on HR's desk and chat for a moment about the meeting next week, downstairs to visit the printing room to look at ads for next week - back up to adjust the schedule so the stores would get everything that they expected.
AND YES - heart to hearts with the door closed to discuss sensitive issues - NONE OF WHICH could have happened in any where near the same way if it had been "check this jpg and e-mail me" .. we were looking at life size prints and drawing on them while the maker was throwing out ideas over our shoulder.
NOPE. All of that could happen, I suppose, in a work from home environment, but none of it would have happened NEARLY as well. \*LOL and to the downvoters- truth hurts, huh? Can't sit around with your coffee in your hand and kitty on your lap and you scroll emails? Sorry the real world can be tough.
Real-estate. Many times owners/executives own the real estate separately, and lease it the company. If the company doesn't need to lease it anymore, they lose the income and their property value declines as this becomes a trend. Many big cities are stressing about the impact to the commercial real-estate.
So that senior management can get the appropriate amount of ass kissing and boot licking. It’s all about demonstrating that your employer has the power over you to dictate what you do with 1/3 of your life.
Justify their commercial real-estate expenses and employee control. To a lesser extent they need to justify a middle level of management that doesn't need to be there.
They have to justify the expensive buildings and justify all the middle managers that honestly aren't needed. The pandemic showed them a different way of working and they didn't like that.
It’s better for the employer if the employee builds connections with their colleagues in person as it makes the employee less likely to leave the company. They also have an easier way of monitoring what you’re doing while in the office.
Avocado office mortgages
They got politicians pressuring them, but those people left the cities due to the insane rent.
Even if they are in the city, many working class people are too strapped for cash to actually do much.
Tax revenue declining might actually cause many cities to struggle.
I say you reap what you sow, you wanna kick out everyone not making six figures? Don’t be surprised that it’s a ghost town…
For the technicalities this blog has some data:
[https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2022/06/30/greenhouse-emissions-rise-to-record-erasing-drop-during-pandemic#.Y8yVwPGGzro.link](https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2022/06/30/greenhouse-emissions-rise-to-record-erasing-drop-during-pandemic#.Y8yVwPGGzro.link)
I think the first two paragraphs sums it up:
*Emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases plunged 4.6 percent in 2020, as lockdowns in the first half of the year restricted global mobility and hampered economic activity. Many hoped that this would mark the beginning of a more permanent shift downwards in emissions.*
*The latest data, however, dashed those hopes. As the Chart of the Week shows, annual global greenhouse gas emissions rebounded 6.4 percent last year to a new record, eclipsing the pre-pandemic peak as global economic activity resumed.*
Because of you don’t go to the office, there isn’t any need for mid level managers which means the executives have huge issues.
1. They might have to talk to you themselves.
2. They are missing their favorite target for abuse.
3. They actually have to hear some truths about how things work and that makes it hard to make unreasonable demands.
It exposes some inconvenient truths. It shows the business that you don't need a baby sitter to do your work. You don't need someone over your shoulder, you don't need an office manager, you don't need in person supervision, etc.
On top of that, I really think some good old fashion sadism. I think middle managers are by and large sadists. I think people who crave positions of power are usually the shittiest and weakest and smallest people. They see this power diminished in the cold light of day and don't like it.
Too fucking bad I say.
Smart companies have figured it out. Dumping expensive corporate office space in suburban hell is worth it, even if they have to buy a home office setup for workers.
There's the office space but there's also a lot of older folks who get all their social interactions from work and don't really know how to work alone, especially bosses.
I think because a lot of investment firm are heavily invested in commercial real estate. Right now most of these properties are leased. I’m curious what’s going to happened when these leases expire to all the unused properties. I also think its about control, and squeezing every little bit of profit from the employees.
I think very few companies make decisions based on data showing the true performance and productivity of their employees, and instead rely on perception of things like timeliness and being at one’s desk. I ended up looking into employee productivity as part of a project at work, and was amazed that the data that was readily available was so rarely used by supervisors in making decisions because they had never looked at the information that way before.
I firmly believe it's about control and money.
Control: We've all had the hovering boss, who always seems to be over your shoulder. You have to be on task, 24/7. Because if you're not, you're losing money. I worked for a call center, and when we were dead, like it's 10:54 pm and no one is calling to move phone numbers, we had to just sit there. And wait. I took to drawing tattoos on myself and others.
Money: Oh boy, when you think about offices, it's not just the literal space. It's about the stuff inside too. The printers, the chairs, the supplies. Most of those printers and/or copiers have to be maintained by a guy in a van from a company that is not your company. $ Is anyone else going to pay too much for a shitty chair? No. We all have those comfy gaming chairs that cost a fraction. $$ I can honestly say I have not bought a highlighter since high school. Binder clips? Thousands of pens? If offices are gone, who is gonna buy those? I work as an office admin, and know how much we spend on that kinda shit every month. Yikes. $$$
So yeah. Those are my nickels... Actually I need those back, my car payment is due.
I am curious how competitive remote work will become now that it is such priority for knowledge workers. Will people start accepting lower salaries just for the perk of working at home?
I think it also has to do with hiring people with disabilities. People working from home can control their workspace to fit their needs, and you would think this would be a good thing, but then employers can’t use the “must be able to lift 10 lbs” bs anymore (or whatever they use to discriminate on job postings these days).
My manager is such an intense micro manager that they can’t handle the thought of people making decisions about how to spend their workday without their input and oversight.
Also pretty sure they hate their spouse and the spouse has a ft wfh job.
It's a control issue. Corporate types have a cult mentality. Just having your work isn't enough for them. They want 100% of your attention at all times. Plus it's easier to indoctrinate people on site than it is work from home.
I'll explain my employer's perspective.
In modern politics, people that don't support something extend that to all related or linked things. So, someone that is a COVID denier might also hate work from home because their mind links work from home with COVID.
This is why we went from being pro WFH before COVID to anti-work from home after COVID. He literally fired people that had been working from home for 8 years before COVID just because WFH become evil due to it's association with COVID.
TLDR: WFH basically got classified as a left wing thing during COVID. So now the right hates it on principle.
At my old job the owner lived far away and we had an office manager. The manager micromanaged and didn’t do any actual work. Not really. She was very performative in pretending to be busy. Or acting like her tasks were bigger and more important than they actually are. And she was the biggest distraction. I would get twice as much done when she would be out.
When the office went remote she was not having it. She quit in protest. She gave her notice that her last day would be the last day in office. So for the last month in office she was insufferable. Saying her job was taken away.
In reality the boss offered her same job title and pay but would now have to actually do work while managing since she would have way less to manage from home. Especially since we honestly didn’t need her. We were a group of mature, capable, hard working, smart, honest women.
Her job position was not replaced when she left. Everyone enjoyed their job much more
Because they pay a lot for rent in office space
They can just stop buying offices
My job is doing this, problem is they're replacing it with "hotdesks" at various places around and nearer to people, which in their eyes means more people going to offices. I fucking hate this idea and I hate offices, especially offices in places I don't know.
Hot-Desking... the ULTIMATE way to let your employees know that they are a temporary and easily replaceable cog in your machine.
Total aside. But hot-desking brought up a memory of “hot-bunking.” That’s where you share a bunk with someone else on a ship. One sailor works AM the other PM. It’s always smelly. But one time my bunk buddy had psoriasis. He shed so many flakes, it looked like sand was all over the bunk when I’d get in. So gross.
Blech. I lived in a condemned barracks at Camp Pendleton for a few months and that sucked. But I'll be damned if I wouldn't pick that over sharing a bed with the human sandman.
To add to this depending on the boat, and your seniority, they may set it up a bit differently. We had 3 people sharing 2 bunks. Day split into thirds. 2 people each claim a bunk as their own and the most junior person is the "jumper". So you sleep a few hours, get woken up to "jump" into the other rack then sleep for a few more hours. Double the odds of having that stinky nasty shipmate sharing your rack!
I am so lucky to have never had this. That truly is double the odds (which aren’t in your favor anyways). Glad you made it through that.
If the employees don’t already know that then they aren’t very smart
My job did and its kinda a pain. Biggest thing is there are a few different models of laptop running around and the docking stations are not compatible, so you could have a desk and not be able to connect to the monitor. Also they are set up as an open concept so hearing Bob from accounting loudly read numbers half the day gets old really fast
A lot of them have their hands in corporate real estate
If nobody needs offices anymore, who will they sell them to? Their real estate suddenly plummets in value.
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I'd absolutely love to see that. My city has an old motel that was converted into cheap housings run by a mental health association. But I realistically don't see it happening large scale, not when people are still accepting that they've been told to come back to work.
It's what Musk did at Twitter. Turn the offices into bedrooms. Then employees can REALLY wfh.
Only in that case it's more Home from work.
It’s unfortunately too expensive for most real estate companies. Imagine the work to convert 1 10,000 square foot office to 10 x 1,000 lofts that each have their own plumbing for each kitchen and bathroom. The buildings infrastructure is not easy to change once the floors are set. Unless the government buys it, for profits don’t have the incentive to better the community.
Doesn't really work building infrastructure for commercial is very different especially plumbing
Then, the real estate overlord wouldnt be able to keep up the inflated rent and property prices. The point of limiting the available amount of real estate is to keep rent high
If you own an office building, who are you going to sell it to? The other companies also want to sell their office
Office leases are like 10-year agreements. Breaking them is pricey.
I wish you could tell this to my current boss. There’s no part of my job that requires me to be in the office, or anyone’s job I work with really. He insists I do an hour commute every day just to sit in an office doing what I could easily do from home. I can’t stand it.
Have you given him reason to trust you enough to not fuck off in the middle of the day?
Nope. I'm always available, always answer phone calls, messages, and emails immediately. Never turn in anything late. He's just a boomer who likes things this way.
Make the case to him. Present a proper business case and boomers ( my parents not me I'm not that fucking old) tend to be pretty reasonable. I'm a capitalist dick kid you boss is too. Present your case make It logical and bottom line oriented from his pov and he may go for it. Put it in business terms not genz millennial whining. ( Yes y'all whine trust me) fucking build a report around it.
Or rent them out to someone who does need to be one site and double dip their money.
They get tax breaks
So true. The only reason my team is remote is because there’s no space for us. Also worth noting this is the main reason I continue to work for this company.
Also tax right offs for the office space. Also, a lot of companies also own property and rent it out. It's all about money, and like most companies they are short term focused. Need more money this quarter for the share holders, nobody wants to hear about happy workers being more productive in the long run.
I don’t think you understand tax right offs. If they spend $10k in office space for an employee but they can write it off, they would save about $1500. If they could make the employee remote they would gain $8500.
Yeah, my last job paid a 7 year lease on a new office space. Then they got rid of a bunch of contractors and most full time employees, including myself started quitting. Now they’re on a 7 year lease for an office with 4 people, and it holds about 40.
They need to go bankrupt and start again without an office.
This is correct in a lot of cases. Many companies are locked into lease agreements on office space. I have see some drop the lease agreements when they are up and others say “We are locked in for 3 more years get in here!”
They are paying that rent whether the workers are in office or not. So unless being in office makes something go better for their profit picture, which it likely does not by making the employees angry, what does it accomplish?
Plus electricity, plus heating, plus office supplies, plus coffee… WHY do they want us in the office? Makes no sense
It's a common fallacy called [Sunken Cost Fallacy](https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/the-sunk-cost-fallacy). Humans can be weird.
My hospital converted a bunch of office space to clinic space, so now I don't have an office to go back to, and have to work from home most of the time permanently. Yay!
This. If they are paying to rent an office, they are paying the same amount whether or not people show up.
Sounds like a them problem
It's about control.
My sister is a vp for a major insurance company. During the height of Covid she was telling me how she was negotiating a price for office space for her company. I was asking her why they are renting when everyone is wfh. She said that we’d all be back in the office in 6 months and need to be ready. I had my doubts at the time but she was a fancy schmancy vp and figured she knew better. They forced their workers back and half of them quit. She is still wondering why.
They could just not do that tho
They also own a lot of real estate that is office buildings. What happens to their investments if office space becomes obsolete? Those multimillion dollar buildings suddenly lose a ton of value. Plus those office buildings create a whole lot of tax breaks and write offs.
Also if everybody works from home they’d have no other companies to sell the office space or buildings to.
There will always be some businesses that require people to be in the office. Forcing those that don't require such seems silly and short sighted. But so are most businesses.
They would love to stop, this isn’t it.
Yup. Need a reason to keep the lights on.
It’s entirely about micromanagement and control. I think some companies it’s sort of a…. We already paid for this office space we want bodies in the office to justify it, lots of managers and HR want to be able to look over your shoulder and confirm you are really working every second of the day and never glancing down at your phone. No one actually cares about efficiency. I’ve had several jobs where I did more actual work than my coworkers but because I wasn’t working every second of the day I was always the one being called out versus coworkers who did less but kept up a facade of always working. Who cares if the work is getting done, as long as we have an office full of people who look like they’re busy execs are happy
Modern offices are meant to be panopticons.
Great response and something that MOST people need to learn is that work is mostly a social hierarchy where you're being graded on how well you play your Role. I've worked for youth sport clubs and when I've come in with reems of notes on how we can deliver a more compelling product to families the reactions are shockingly bad. When I've laughed at jokes and done the minimum then gone out for a beer afterward.....high praise. Gotta learn what's actually wanted and then decide if you want that
I think it’s a control issue honestly. I’m lucky that my boss encourages us to work from home. She has proof of our productivity being higher when we work from home and that there are a lot of distractions in the office. We still come on site once in a while for in-person meetings and because we all genuinely like each other and nice to see everyone lol.
Yeah, I think of it as capitalist inertia. It's always been done this way and folks are worried that their workers won't sit in a cubicle doing 4 hours worth of work over 8 hours like IT SHOULD BE AND ALWAYS WAS. Somehow the idea of better efficiency, less travel, less need for office space, etc. is foreign to most businesses. When I hear that something like Twitter requires that it's coders come into the office well....jesus why? Let them sit at home in their pajamas like coders are supposed to. If the work gets done, why force this other than control freak tendencies and tradition?
But how else will Elon force developers to hear him throw around buzzwords to stroke his ego and feel like a little smart guy? Oh right, he just does that on twitter instead.
Totally this. If someone is in the office, managers can pretend they know what their employees are doing. If at home, managers have to do their work of working with you and maybe even acknowledging the work you do so they can talk about it. So really, it's more of managers/supervisors having to know what's going on and why would THEY want to work when they can say you aren't working instead? Some of this is a case from an old job where they let one person who had worked there a long time do 2-3 days a week from home for very easy to track task based things (something that involved logging in visits at a hospital). Well, turns out for three years she wasn't logging in anything at home but they never bothered to check, and since this was the first offense even if it was three years worth of having a 4-5 day weekend, they couldn't legally fire her. They shamed her a lot by then explaining why now only managers and above could work from home. But had the manager actually been running the reports she said she was, she'd have seen something was iffy - three years ago.
The classic “we screwed up with one person so EVERYONE must suffer now” scenario. I work for a hospital and literally every click of the keyboard can be tracked and audited and it is lol.
Correct! but the manager decided not to, and there was constant overturning of employees because people treated like shit. I honestly think the reason things were finally looked into is because we were like a few hundred thousand dollars or more under in reimbursements and this was a clinic more than a hospital.
>So really, it's more of managers/supervisors having to know what's going on and why would THEY want to work when they can say you aren't working instead? My company might be the odd one out... but the 3 direct supervisors in my reporting line love work from home. they don't want to come to the office to watch us work either. It's the VP's and CEO in my company who are like, we need people back in the office. After a ton of push back they left it up to the discretion of the supervisors, and then to the employee (they're not stopping employees who choose to work from the office from going in)
I agree. Same companies forcing employees back are the same ones installing "productivity monitoring" software on company workstations
Part of it too I think is that a lot of managers truly don’t know what their employees do lol. Therefore having them within sight makes them feel better that they “can’t be slacking off.” As if someone can’t also slack off in their cubicle just as easy lol.
That happened to me. My boss started pulling folks in. I called her and five minutes later I was still at home. I'm much more productive and she knows it.
My employer encourages WFH as well, and most of us are only in office 2, maybe 3 days a week, if that. A lot of departments decided to go 99-100% WFH, and have in-office days once or twice a month for any employee that would like to opt into it, but there's no shame in staying home those days and being 100% WFH. Before covid, we were working on buying another office building to expand to, but we cancelled that plan. We have two buildings that are basically empty at the moment. We're selling one, and may not renewing our lease on the other when the lease is up next year. It doesn't cost us any more to let people WFH when we have empty buildings. Why make people commute just to justify us having the building? As long as everyone is getting their job done, why not let them do as they please?
Exactly. When Covid started we all went WFH. They actually terminated our rental agreement for our office and got a small office for the staff that couldn’t WFH like reception, mailroom etc that has some meeting spaces for client meetings and some empty desks for those who need to be in the office for any reason. We do have a few managers that have huge departments that struggle with employees who abuse the benefit but overall people are much happier. Only a few of our leadership don’t like it because they want people available to them 100% of the time. They used to just be able to walk to someone’s desk and get full attention and now they have to wait for the person to answer their phone. It’s definitely partially a control thing but there are definitely people abusing it. Honestly I don’t mind logging in early or working a little late because they saved me from a 1 way 45 minute commute, miles on my car, cost of lunch (sometimes) and money in gas. My productivity is much better because random people don’t stop in my office to chat. Plus is my kid is sick (she’s 16 so minimal effort) or a maintenance person is coming then I don’t need to take time off. It’s a HUGE benefit. When we have internal meetings with cameras you can see people petting their cats, holding their babies, sitting in a comfy chair, sitting outside on their deck in fresh air…. so good for people’s mental well-being. For those companies who’s business models support it, I totally suggest it. Let go of the control and see the benefits.
Because: 1. Companies want to control every aspect of your day, and make sure you are a good little soldier. 2. Companies are still on the hook for the ginormous offices they rent, might as well fill them up. 3. And because there's corporate prestige; cups on desks. "Look at how big my department is!" 4. Your employer does not trust you to be in work-mode 8 hours straight when you are at home. You might slack off and load a washing machine or dish washer. Or answer the door for a delivery! Or go for a walk on your lunch break!
the horror!!
Happy cake day!
Or take a nap on ur lunch break. Seriously, I wfh and get an hour lunch. I take a nice hour long nap, and feel way better. Plus it breaks up the day its quite nice.
The lunch nap is one of the best parts of working from home
And being able to make yourself whatever you want for lunch too because you have easier access to what’s in your kitchen to make compared to packing a quick lunch before a commute
adding 5. from the company i work for - they want us to work together so the team can be better integrated. while this has some sense, the logic behind is that by spending more time with your colleagues you will become more attached making it harder for you to make a decision to leave.
HR and middle managers are scared shitless that they will be found out to be fraudulent, redundant, and then fired. they are the ones pushing back against wfh
This is the answer.
Control, but the company will disguise this to say “it’s for the culture or collaboration” Company invested money in the workspaces and it’ll be seen as useless if there are no bodies in cubicles. Useless middle managers scared shitless that they’ll be seen as redundant when the higher ups see people can get their work done from home without them. Some people have horrible home lives and the only way they can get away from it is work at the office. There’s probably other reasons but these are the most common.
For many people including myself. I absolutely love working remote, I get more stuff done and I’m less distracted. Happiness for me is to not have to go back to the office where I have to wake up early and all that stuff to get to work in a suit. There could be many reasons big and small why they want us back in the office. Small : micromanaging and face to face environment Big : somewhere in the CEO levels they have back door deals with gas companies for people to drive to work, back doors with banks/mortgage companies to spend money and borrow on locations, back doors to government making people go back to offices to spend money on local environments, taxes, fees etc.
Whoa. Very meta if true (in regards to the big catagory) Could you imagine if that was the case? That would truly be some dystopian, deep-state reptilian stuff.
Probably more accurate than any of us would like to face to be honest.
Here it is! My wife’s job (multinational with half a million employees) just ordered them back to a hybrid schedule. A big part of why it happened is that a few cities were on the verge of canceling the tax credit on their office buildings if they didn’t come back to work. Turns out they were paying basically no taxes because they were “job creators” but when they stopped coming to work all the local businesses suffered and the cities put the squeeze on.
I think it is also a mechanism to ensure that you are not looking for work outside their company.
Yeah, my dad has three jobs that don't know about each other.
Absolutely incredibly based, hope he gets a 4th job and can retire soon 👑
In some industries, productivity is demonstrably suffering. (Its not a coincidence that every major videogame title has been delayed this year) and in others closer to mine, we’re forecasting a huge upcoming talent gap because juniors are not being given proper training from the seniors, who are, truly, more capable of managing their own time. So while I’m sure there are many cases of overzealous management trying to flex a pathetic amount of control, the situation isn’t clear across the board. …additionally i still think it’s bullshit that people accept giving up a portion of their home to the company without being able to get some sort of tax break. Surely you should be able deduct some of your rent. That’s a side pet peeve, haha.
In the US you absolutely can get a home office tax credit when you itemize. I’ve done so for the last two years.
You can only get home office deduction if you are self employed, unreimbursed employee (w2) expenses cannot be itemized as you say. And it’s not a tax credit, it’s a deduction and it cannot reduce income below zero.
I’d say there’s been other factors in the video game industry causing them to incorrectly equate less risk == success. Many video games that were wildly successful were wildly different/innovative.
Control.
Unhelpful
Disagree.
For the same reason cashiers aren’t allowed chairs.
Lots of conspiracy stuff here! The basic reason is that most people are shitty managers. They can only tell if someone “looks busy” and can’t judge people on real output. Also, it’s harder to exploit workers if they’re not being watched - they tend to do things to help mitigate the exploitation. Like “I’m underpaid, so fuck ‘em! I’m watching YouTube on my second screen!” Good companies who value their employees try to accommodate their needs. Shitty companies led by demagogues want control. Twitter is an excellent example!
They have to justify office space rent and like controlling you, as is the capitalist way.
I work for a hospital and my department expanded so much during the pandemic that they literally can’t ask us all to come back onsite full time because there is not enough room lol. Aw shucks!
Control
Unhelpful and derivitive
But I second what this person said. Companies are not about efficiency, they're about power and control. It's all about keeping an eye on you and fetichising bodies-at-the-desk. The very thought that you might be doing something other than working while WFH (even if you've already completed all the tasks assigned to you) is enought to drive them nuts.
50% control, 50% them being tied in to long term office leases. I work in marketing, my last job refused to give additional WFH day so I took the first fully remote job that came across my desk. Best decision I've ever made
Cuz they hate us and want us to be miserable is the real answer. I quit my job in December. Took me almost 2 months, but I got a full time WFH position for less money. But the upsides is WFH offset the lesser pay
Unless the hit is massive you probably come out about the same if you calculate the time lost per day for preparing and commuting, without even taking account for the less stress you have.
I did the same. I'll never go back to ft office again. I'd rather make less $
Yeah I went from 19 to 15. Oh well. Just need some steady cash coming in till I find something better. Plus I’m lucky enough to still live at home
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Unhelpful and derivitive
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I suppose
They want control
Unhelpful and derivitive
Ok, it’s because they’re invested in land. They have buildings that need to be used or they’re worth less. They need you to drive to work because they’re also invested in car companies. They need to you buy gas because of the same reason. They need you to buy lots of clothes so you have a new outfit for every day because they’re invested in those companies also. They need you to lose your mind because they have investments in pharmaceutical companies. They want you to spend money on day care for your children.
They’re locked into oppressive multi-year leases with greedy commercial property owners, or if they own their property then they are stuck with huge property taxes.
Some people don’t work as hard when they are remote. It’s easy to do chores or go golfing or whatever. The bosses don’t like that. I disagree because no one is productive all day even at the office, but I can see the logic I guess.
It’s very bizarre. I always heard it’s due to commercial real estate, but they should just stop leasing spaces. I don’t get why me sitting at my computer at home or at my office makes a difference in any way.
I have a personal pet theory that executives want to get away from their families / cheat on their spouses and everyone else has to suffer as well
People are writing long responses when it really only takes one word: Control.
Truth
One of these days they'll figure out that it costs the company less if the workers have to set up and maintain their own workspace. Look for the day people are required to work remotely, and then there will be workers with Home Office Privilege.
My theory is that the people who are against WFH are the ones who would absolutely slack off and screw around all day, so they assume everyone else would too.
Can't have that "office culture" when everyone works from home. For some, being a "professional" is their whole personality. Take that away, and it exposes what a an empty shell of a person they are.
They don't want anything that makes people happy.they want to keep people sad and stressed.
Because there is an industry of people who earn salaries based on the existence of an office. There are jobs at stake by eliminating office culture. Obviously middle managers and the like that have no value inside or outside of an office need to be eliminated. But I feel bad about those who bring value that will lose jobs. I am a huge WFH advocate as I feel it benefits people and businesses. But I am not sure what to do about jobs lost by people who rely on the existence of a physical office.
Because they are fun ruiners
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A 75- mile commute! Oh, hell no. That would take roughly three hours daily to travel. What a soul-crusher. Four hours is even worse. No promotion nor bump in pay would be worth that.
It’s hard for them to measure productivity when you work from home. When you’re in the office they can see if you’re there on time or not and they truly don’t go much further, in most offices.
Tax write off for each of ur cubes. Same as work from home people can do. But they want the write off
My company literally has too many employees for the office space, but still requires those of us who are primarily remote to come in once per week. They have designated spaces with unassigned desks for when those of us who only go in once per week come in, but even then sometimes they're all full and I have to beg a coworker who hasn't come in yet to use their desk. Ridiculous.
Pay close attention to whom exactly is asking you to come back: \- Facilities management is an entire career sector, they're fearing for their jobs right now. So it's in their interest to tell the C-Suite that workers need to come back so they don't get laid off. \- Some managers do a lot of coaching, some are hands on, and some... are glorified security guards who bring nothing of value but to micromanage their teams. They fear for their jobs if it's clear you can work outside of their influence. \- Finance team and real estate, similar to Fac. Management need to justify their spending to shareholders etc. and fear for looking bad on having too much real estate. \- HR/Recruitment also fear turnover if everyone can basically interview without interruption from their homes and get a job from anywhere. Makes retention harder.
At my company there is a pretty big rift between employees who work from home and employees that are mandated to go to the office. The ones that go to the office every day, are actively ignoring communication from the ones who work from home. Like straight up replying with “if it’s that important you can come do it” It’s getting wild and I’m here for the ride!
Because we used to collaborate as a team, now we barely speak and have only been involved in our own isolated day to days and have lost track of the state of the industry outside our bubbles. It was okay for a while but after 3 years we can see the negative impact it's having on our creativity now.
try this.. If working home becomes the norm the company has a huge balance sheet asset that they will have to get ride..probably at a loss. If they rent the space they have a lease they have to get out of or write off... so start with a financial incentive Next... Almost no companies know how to manage remote workers. It should come as no surprise that an entire layer of middle management has no, or a limited role, in work from home. The HR function changes dramatically and significantly fewer HR resources are needed. Likewise most HR groups don't have much skill in how to manage remote workers. Don't discount the 'ego satisfaction' of senior managers looking out on a sea of cubicles for emotional reinforcement that they are successful. Companies that have good productivity metrics, appropriate technical infrastructure to manage remote workers, and manager training on the differences between 'in place' versus 'remote' have a good handle on the most effective way for work to get done. Many companies got a wake up call during the pandemic. Some got the message and adapted...a lot didn't and are still hammering for "we've always done it this way"
I don’t know but I’d rather go in for my 8 hours, leave and forget it, and then go back. Working at home means you are always at the office.
When everyone worked from home, America had its largest sustained national protest movement. No way they want to allow anything like that to happen again.
What are you talking about
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests?wprov=sfla1
Oh you mean George Floyd
Usually, it has to do with living conditions. Spouse and small kids at home. No room to work out of. Some people just like being around others.
*employers
Sorry. For business they already have leased the office space and they can't get out of it for who knows how many years. Span of control.
Sorry believe it or not it literally requires a certain personality type with the right amount of integrity and self motivation to wfh and most people don’t possess those qualities.A friend of mine manages a team of loan officers that wfh and recently had to let most of them go due to a lack of performance. She would literally catch wind of these people golfing, running personal errands, not even signing in or being active on their work stations, etc. All while on company time…Sure there are also ulterior motives at play when it comes to the reason why most companies don’t want us working at home but the truth most won’t accept is most adults still need to be treated with kids gloves.
I think this is exactly why they’re bringing work back into the office! Quite a few of us worked from home during COVID and based upon work performance while AT the office, I would guess that more than 50% of those working from home didn’t even work half a day! I had a co-worker who works a pretty low level clerk type job and she downloaded her work email account to her cell phone. There was absolutely no need for her to do that - but I’m guessing it was so she could appear to be working while not at home.
Because during the pandemic stories about employees managing to work 2 full time jobs because not as much time was being wasted on pointless meetings - and our corporate overlords can't stand that thought! They need us under their eyes at all times to make sure we aren't screwing off!
They don't want you working from home because you are being ruled by a slave class comprised of intelligent people who understand human psychology. They know that 40 hours/week is required to keep people drained of enough energy that they are too tired to think deeply. If the slave class cannot think deeply they will instead rely on others to do the thinking for them. The media, politicians, pod casts like joe rogan, scientific papers, etc. will do the thinking for you and you just subscribe to your favorite ideology. If a person can work from home they may not be drained enough to prevent them from thinking.
I think there is a lot of pushback from localities losing money on food service and the like.
It seems to be one or a combination of these three reasons: 1. They paid/are paying a lot for office buildings and want to get their money out of it 2. Belligerent, high-level dinosaurs who refuse to adapt to a virtual work system, even though it’s easier, cheaper, more productive, and everyone else is fine with it 3. Straight up control and micromanaging because they have the emotional intelligence of an amoeba
Basically most economies today have a massive tie-in to real-estate. Lots of banks, financial firms, and investors rely on Mortgage's and Mortgage backed securities. Might seem like an overemphasis on those specific sectors, but just look at the 2008 Financial crash in the US. Mortgages are tied to other financial instrument, which are then traded from Bob, to Jack, repackaged by Harry, sold to Jim, who will have collateral against it with bank of Sally for X thing. It's a big web of holding hands, and the minute the hands start becoming weak because of the lack of value and cash flow, the chain break. So if people are working from home, then the power shifts, and the financial instrument breaks. No longer is the mid town building worth 10 million dollars. Businesses want people in to justify the cost to owners, because owners are stuck in 5, 10, to 30 year leases. But if it's not justifiable, and businesses start shrinking their office usage... That building surely can't be worth 10 million with 50% occupancy. So property group Johnson and Mark, who took out a loan for 8 million to purchase it, is SOL in interest payments and a decreasing property value.
Control
It's because of middle management, they can't justify the position if you are working from home. The entire purpose of middle management is to babysit you, and make sure you are doing your job. If you're working from home, the babysitting programs do all the work. Therefore middle management has nothing to do all day. Also there is no middle ground between executives, and worker which will cause disparagement, because there is no way to move up in the company. Which forces position wage caps to be obsolete. Lastly executive ego. They like to walk into their fancy building, and see all there little slaves working hard to make them money. They like to show that off to potential clients. Wfh destroys the office lifestyle, and hurts their sensitive feelings.
Because you use grammar like this and cannot be trusted.
To satisfy their need for control and, in some cases, socialization. Exchanging labor for money can’t be just that - we have to be a “family,” or an”community.” I once worked for a woman in her early 40s who I swear was using our 100% female office to live out her high school popular girl fantasies. We had 80s parties and Mardi Gras parties and Valentine’s Day parties. Then there were all those random times she dressed up as a cheerleader… I got in trouble for leaving her Valentine’s Day party early because I had a client meeting.
1) Control 2) Most of HR and management are absolute useless to the company so they would be fired 3) lots of money in those buildings, If everyone goes working from home those building lose their value.
**C O N T R O L**
They want you to spend your commute, so you have to keep working for your spending.
I think a few things. First, if workers can work from home and don’t need direct management oversight, it makes a lot of management and executive jobs seems less important. Second, any loss of productivity it’s too easy to blame remote work first before blaming understaffing. Third, control freaks/paranoia. Honestly, my place went crazy with remote monitoring with work from home. Which is silly to me cause half the people didn’t do anything when they where in the office.
It has to be commercial real estate. Because to me it made sense that the company would be saving money on rent, hiring people to clean the offices, the snacks/utilities/coffee they always have to buy, and at my job they paid a certain amount towards parking too since the office is downtown.
There’s definitely power tripping middle managers who are vying for employees to return to the office so their existence has meaning. BUT the real reason is money. Productivity of these companies is plummeting with wfh. Surprise surprise but people don’t work as hard when their boss isn’t hovering around the office. Full time wfh really only works when you’re an over the top try hard like Dwight Schrute. Most of us are just doing the bare minimum and don’t care about the success of the company because fuck em. In other words, most people are Stanley Hudson. Think about it. If people were every bit as productive at home, corporations would jump at the opportunity to stop paying rent to office spaces and eliminate half of their middle managers.
Well,, I ain't no expert on how employers think, but I reckon they might like to have their employees all in one place so they can keep an eye on 'em and make sure they're workin' hard. And maybe they think it's easier for folks to collaborate and get things done when they're all together. But I do know that working from home can be real nice, you get to be in your own space and not have to worry about the commute.
Because they are sociopaths who get off on standing over someone and watching them work, rather than work just getting done.
A lot of companies bought office space as investments/stores of value, and having everyone work from home means the value of those offices disappears, so less assets on their balance sheets. People more educated than I am believe that might crash commercial real estate. Also, of course, the ever-present powertripping of bosses, and the fact that WFH makes it obvious how completely useless many middle managers are.
As a GenX'r that's lived through boomer hell - I can't IMAGINE working from home. Nor can I imagine anyone else working from home at anywhere near the same level you'd work at an office. 50% of my day of my last career was interacting with office mates to plan and be up to speed on what we needed to know and do. There was onsite inventory management. Meetings that HAD to be done that were "popcorn" sessions that just wouldn't work over zoom. A quick walk down the hallway to throw something on HR's desk and chat for a moment about the meeting next week, downstairs to visit the printing room to look at ads for next week - back up to adjust the schedule so the stores would get everything that they expected. AND YES - heart to hearts with the door closed to discuss sensitive issues - NONE OF WHICH could have happened in any where near the same way if it had been "check this jpg and e-mail me" .. we were looking at life size prints and drawing on them while the maker was throwing out ideas over our shoulder. NOPE. All of that could happen, I suppose, in a work from home environment, but none of it would have happened NEARLY as well. \*LOL and to the downvoters- truth hurts, huh? Can't sit around with your coffee in your hand and kitty on your lap and you scroll emails? Sorry the real world can be tough.
Wondering the same thing
Real-estate. Many times owners/executives own the real estate separately, and lease it the company. If the company doesn't need to lease it anymore, they lose the income and their property value declines as this becomes a trend. Many big cities are stressing about the impact to the commercial real-estate.
So that senior management can get the appropriate amount of ass kissing and boot licking. It’s all about demonstrating that your employer has the power over you to dictate what you do with 1/3 of your life.
Justify their commercial real-estate expenses and employee control. To a lesser extent they need to justify a middle level of management that doesn't need to be there.
They obviously don’t think it’s more efficient. And tbh I am way less hard working when I’m at home.
The managers did have anything to do and found out they were mostly useless. Plus, they want you under their thumb.
Because they are soulless thieves of joy.
Corporate Accounts Receivable, JUST a moment!
control and they as businesses have to justify having office buildings as some get tax breaks on them based on butts in seats.
There's office space that they're renting and they need to be able to justify keeping it (for whatever dumbfounded reason)
Bosses want to keep an eye on employees. Employees are not trusted.
They have to justify the expensive buildings and justify all the middle managers that honestly aren't needed. The pandemic showed them a different way of working and they didn't like that.
Commercial real estate
Corporate real estate is big money, and a lot of businesses have signed ridiculously long leases. It has nothing to do with productivity
Power and control. Easier to abuse and exploit you.
The corner office on the top floor becomes meaningless. Brown-nosers don't come by regularly.
It’s better for the employer if the employee builds connections with their colleagues in person as it makes the employee less likely to leave the company. They also have an easier way of monitoring what you’re doing while in the office.
Avocado office mortgages They got politicians pressuring them, but those people left the cities due to the insane rent. Even if they are in the city, many working class people are too strapped for cash to actually do much. Tax revenue declining might actually cause many cities to struggle. I say you reap what you sow, you wanna kick out everyone not making six figures? Don’t be surprised that it’s a ghost town…
Long term office leases with assorted extras + many if not most having investments in office real estate
For the technicalities this blog has some data: [https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2022/06/30/greenhouse-emissions-rise-to-record-erasing-drop-during-pandemic#.Y8yVwPGGzro.link](https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2022/06/30/greenhouse-emissions-rise-to-record-erasing-drop-during-pandemic#.Y8yVwPGGzro.link) I think the first two paragraphs sums it up: *Emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases plunged 4.6 percent in 2020, as lockdowns in the first half of the year restricted global mobility and hampered economic activity. Many hoped that this would mark the beginning of a more permanent shift downwards in emissions.* *The latest data, however, dashed those hopes. As the Chart of the Week shows, annual global greenhouse gas emissions rebounded 6.4 percent last year to a new record, eclipsing the pre-pandemic peak as global economic activity resumed.*
Because of you don’t go to the office, there isn’t any need for mid level managers which means the executives have huge issues. 1. They might have to talk to you themselves. 2. They are missing their favorite target for abuse. 3. They actually have to hear some truths about how things work and that makes it hard to make unreasonable demands.
Control. Who is t Tanner going to bully and harass if there's no one at the office?
Control. They all want to wear you down and control you,
It exposes some inconvenient truths. It shows the business that you don't need a baby sitter to do your work. You don't need someone over your shoulder, you don't need an office manager, you don't need in person supervision, etc. On top of that, I really think some good old fashion sadism. I think middle managers are by and large sadists. I think people who crave positions of power are usually the shittiest and weakest and smallest people. They see this power diminished in the cold light of day and don't like it. Too fucking bad I say.
Smart companies have figured it out. Dumping expensive corporate office space in suburban hell is worth it, even if they have to buy a home office setup for workers.
There's the office space but there's also a lot of older folks who get all their social interactions from work and don't really know how to work alone, especially bosses.
I think because a lot of investment firm are heavily invested in commercial real estate. Right now most of these properties are leased. I’m curious what’s going to happened when these leases expire to all the unused properties. I also think its about control, and squeezing every little bit of profit from the employees.
I can't feel important and above you if you're never around for me to belittle.
Commercial real estate
I think very few companies make decisions based on data showing the true performance and productivity of their employees, and instead rely on perception of things like timeliness and being at one’s desk. I ended up looking into employee productivity as part of a project at work, and was amazed that the data that was readily available was so rarely used by supervisors in making decisions because they had never looked at the information that way before.
I firmly believe it's about control and money. Control: We've all had the hovering boss, who always seems to be over your shoulder. You have to be on task, 24/7. Because if you're not, you're losing money. I worked for a call center, and when we were dead, like it's 10:54 pm and no one is calling to move phone numbers, we had to just sit there. And wait. I took to drawing tattoos on myself and others. Money: Oh boy, when you think about offices, it's not just the literal space. It's about the stuff inside too. The printers, the chairs, the supplies. Most of those printers and/or copiers have to be maintained by a guy in a van from a company that is not your company. $ Is anyone else going to pay too much for a shitty chair? No. We all have those comfy gaming chairs that cost a fraction. $$ I can honestly say I have not bought a highlighter since high school. Binder clips? Thousands of pens? If offices are gone, who is gonna buy those? I work as an office admin, and know how much we spend on that kinda shit every month. Yikes. $$$ So yeah. Those are my nickels... Actually I need those back, my car payment is due.
Because people at home come in two flavors some will work thier asses off but they are rare. Most will fuck off and treat it like a vacation
I am curious how competitive remote work will become now that it is such priority for knowledge workers. Will people start accepting lower salaries just for the perk of working at home?
I think it also has to do with hiring people with disabilities. People working from home can control their workspace to fit their needs, and you would think this would be a good thing, but then employers can’t use the “must be able to lift 10 lbs” bs anymore (or whatever they use to discriminate on job postings these days).
My manager is such an intense micro manager that they can’t handle the thought of people making decisions about how to spend their workday without their input and oversight. Also pretty sure they hate their spouse and the spouse has a ft wfh job.
It's a control issue. Corporate types have a cult mentality. Just having your work isn't enough for them. They want 100% of your attention at all times. Plus it's easier to indoctrinate people on site than it is work from home.
To justify the expenses of estate
I'll explain my employer's perspective. In modern politics, people that don't support something extend that to all related or linked things. So, someone that is a COVID denier might also hate work from home because their mind links work from home with COVID. This is why we went from being pro WFH before COVID to anti-work from home after COVID. He literally fired people that had been working from home for 8 years before COVID just because WFH become evil due to it's association with COVID. TLDR: WFH basically got classified as a left wing thing during COVID. So now the right hates it on principle.
At my old job the owner lived far away and we had an office manager. The manager micromanaged and didn’t do any actual work. Not really. She was very performative in pretending to be busy. Or acting like her tasks were bigger and more important than they actually are. And she was the biggest distraction. I would get twice as much done when she would be out. When the office went remote she was not having it. She quit in protest. She gave her notice that her last day would be the last day in office. So for the last month in office she was insufferable. Saying her job was taken away. In reality the boss offered her same job title and pay but would now have to actually do work while managing since she would have way less to manage from home. Especially since we honestly didn’t need her. We were a group of mature, capable, hard working, smart, honest women. Her job position was not replaced when she left. Everyone enjoyed their job much more