I have posted this on Reddit (askeconomics) a while back but got no good replies. Copying it here because I don’t want to send traffic to Reddit.
What do you think?
I see a big push to take employees back to the office. I personally don’t mind either working remote or in the office, but I think big companies tend to think rationally in terms of cost/benefit and I haven’t seen a convincing explanation yet of why they are so keen to have everyone back.
If remote work was just as productive as in-person, a remote-only company could use it to be more efficient than their work-in-office competitors, so I assume there’s no conclusive evidence that this is the case. But I haven’t seen conclusive evidence of the contrary either, and I think employers would have good reason to trumpet any findings at least internally to their employees (“we’ve seen KPI so-and-so drop with everyone working from home” or “project X was severely delayed by lack of in-person coordination” wouldn’t make everyone happy to return in presence, but at least it would make a good argument for a manager to explain to their team)
Instead, all I keep hearing is inspirational wish-wash like “we value the power of working together”. Which is fine, but why are we valuing it more than the cost of office space?
On the side of employees, I often see arguments like “these companies made a big investment in offices and now they don’t want to look stupid by leaving them empty”. But all these large companies have spent billions to acquire smaller companies/products and dropped them without a second thought. I can’t believe the same companies would now be so sentimentally attached to office buildings if it made any economic sense to close them.
One of the ways big, established companies look at change is this: “will this change make it easier or harder for new competitors to enter our market and take some of our business?”. Depending on the answer, big players will ask for that change or will oppose it (and try to maintain the “status quo”, I.e. things the way they already are).
In other words, what is called the “barrier to entry” for new competitors must be as high as possible.
For instance, when OpenAI’s CEO started giving interviews on how dangerous AI like their own ChatGPT is and calling for more regulations, they are probably doing it to make it more difficult for new AI companies to enter the market and close the gap with them.
So, with that in mind, how would a big company view WFH? if a company already owns an office that they can’t easily take off of their balance sheets and remote working can now be an effective, cheaper alternative, then a new competitor could enter the market and do what your company does at a cheaper cost (not having the office cost). WFH is a chamge that lowers the barrier to entry, so big companies will tend to oppose it (or at least delay it)