Let them plunge. Fuck these useless megaplexes of pointless concrete ruining cities and entire areas.
I went to a networking event for work recently, and a commercial real estate broker went into a frantic rant about how fucked building owners are if occupancy doesn’t pick back up, and I have to say it was the most poignant explanation of why companies are so indignant about it.
Honestly, of all the possible explanations for the desire for RTO, none of them felt like enough justification against the very real benefit to workers WFH provides. But this one guy having an existential meltdown in front of me felt like a glimpse into a world of entitlement this class of building owners feel.
I work as an architect, so my job is fucked if the real estate market crashes, but I fucking hope it burns.
“But corporates who are seeing maybe an average of one to two days a week in the office, they are really wanting to drive higher occupancy rates, because they see the benefits of collaboration, innovation. That kind of comes from people face-to-face in the office”.
The other element — mentioned by everyone from CEOs and executives to human resources leaders and academics — is about the mentorship and training of younger staff.
“That,” Mr Broderick notes, "is really hard to replicate from home”
Is anyone actually swallowing this tripe?
As a junior member at my work, this is actually a legitimate reason. Being in person is a way better environment to learn in. And work in to some degree (for me).
Still, I don’t think it’s worth going back to the office as a mandatory thing. It’s too inflexible for people with families, or if you don’t live that close to the city.
If you have management that tries to push for a return, give them this article from Microsoft and request a discussion of its many points.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/hybrid-work-is-just-work
WFH, particularly in 2020-2021, was the opportunity for managers to learn how to effectively manage remotely, using metrics and good planning practices. Those who failed to do so should be the ones questioned as to why they should remain as managers.
There’s two reasons for a push to return to office work.
1: as the title of the thread, real estate prices. A lot of companies have long ass leases they can’t get out for sometimes decades. Or they outright own the properties and said property is virtually worthless if no needs to come to work on location.
2: antisocial and narcissistic personality disorders and tendencies in that direction fill a very high percentage of management, especially higher management. These people need people to physically lord over to feel powerful and stroke their fragile egos.
They don’t give a flying shit what the numbers say. They don’t care work from home is better for workers or productivity, as they don’t give a shit about workers or productivity to begin with.
Issue 1 is, for the vast majority of companies that lease their offices, an entirely invalid reason. It’s the sunk cost fallacy in its most pure form. You’ve already paid for that lease. If paying but not using it ends up being better, that’s what you should do—and even better, plan your downsizing next time your lease is up for renewal. Paying for something but not using it isn’t an issue for a rational business decision-maker.
But issue 2 is very much a problem that’s difficult to overcome.
Their problem is not that they can’t manage remote work. It’s that remote work is so effective that they don’t need the buildings that they have invested too much money in.
@cosmicrookie @morry040 It’s also telling how many of these same managers have never had any problems with outsourcing their manufacturing roles overseas.
Or outsourcing contact centres to India.
Or outsourcing business processes to Manila.
Or outsourcing IT work to a Silicon Valley cloud platform provider.
You can’t get too much more remote than being in another country.
Had a manager go on about all the collab and help he got when starting out at the company and how important the connections are etc.
Someone else pointed out that if you can’t get help using MS teams then you have a problem. Plus it’s 2023 - no need to stuck to old ways of work.
When I’m in the office, I’m wearing headphones to try and block the noise from the random hot desking people from random parts of the business all talking loudly on teams calls. The business has multiple physical locations in various states hence the teams calls. There’s no chatting or “water cooler” talk.
I cannot work in these conditions nor do I want to spend 2 hours each way commuting to waste my day like this. It’s my personal hell.
All the rubbish they quote about collaboration is based on no real evidence either, or at best “studies” by corporate linked institutes with an agenda.
They make up all sorts of reasons why they want us back in the office but the reality is pretty obvious - it’s simply not necessary for many employees to be in the office at all.
Perhaps they could refit the properties to HOUSE people.
It can and should be done, but it’s quite a lot of work to do. This article concentrates on the natural light issue, which is a big one. But there are also ways that plumbing and fire protection are different in commercial buildings and residential. And there are probably other concerns besides that.
In some cases it may work out easier to demolish the building and put up an entirely fresh apartment building.
