Strange way to frame it. It sounds to me like businesses are saving $800 billion in unnessicary expenses.
Someone is holding that bag, though. Unfortunately for us, the people holding that bag have the kind of money to make our lives hell just for a fraction of a percentage point of value for their bottom line.
We were always going to pay for their failures; this one, or the next.
this one, or the next.
More like this one and the next
I’m fine with that.
Turn them all into housing we desperately need
“But office building pipes aren’t set up for that!”
Okay so make communal housing/bathrooms for cheaper rent or invest in expanding the plumbing
“But that’s too expensive!”
More expensive than $800 billion??
they’d never do that. then they’d be killing the housing bubble as well. think of the investors!
Yeah, great, build housing. Minimize commuting, minimize pollution, maximize autonomy, maximize bathrobe sales.
It’s insane that we as a society are even having the debate between pushing capital investment strategies to adapt and come into the 21st century or dragging globally-distributed workers back to the 20th century just to avoid short-term pain and costs associated with updating outdated laws, tax incentives, and capital business practices.
Boomers. My former boss was like this. Sit in a crowded, loud, hot, glare on every screen office BeCaUse it ProMotEs CollAborAtiOn. Yeah. No one “collaborated.”
When did we sign something that said I’ll work for you but also in some of the worst conditions because well just because.
The problem is that the idea of WFH being more productive is slowly being shown to be false.
It can be a viable business strategy of you design for it, but WFH being the best in all cases has shown itself to be false.
Edit: The working-from-home illusion fades from TheEconomist
That is the source. Feel free to post your own sources.
What you’re saying is absolute bullshit. But, even IF it was true, I’d still be for WFH.
Society should make things better for people. Less time spent in cars, more time spent with family is worth the 5% stock dip for the investor class.
The worker has been taking it up the ass since the 60s and getting more and more productive while wages have stagnated.
So yea what you say is nonsense, but even if it was true in the immortal words of Red: I don’t give a shit.
It is fine to want to WFH, I get it. It is a great perk for some people.
I’m not saying that WFH is horrible for companies.
I’m just saying that there seems to be productivity reasons why employers want their employees to work in an office.
IMHO it’s more of a management issue than productivity. Managers like seeing you work.
The good news is I don’t care if it’s more productive fuck offices :)
And I like that answer because you’re being honest. You don’t like working in an office, and that is fair.
The productivity metrics at my company were consistently up by around 150% month by month for the entire duration that we were all permanently working from home without the distraction of the office and the time sink of in person meetings where nothing is achieved.
The only reason we were forced back to a hybrid arrangement is that none of the middle managers had any work to do and it became painfully obvious how little they actually contribute. They don’t actually generate any value.
Instead of restructuring, and distributing the heinous waste of money that they and our real estate holdings represent they made the decision to limit WFH arrangements to two days per week and our metrics went right back where they were previously.
Please provide sources with who funded the study and we can provide sources that show the opposite!
If you expect results in given time and you’re not getting it, you’re gonna have talk with employee, WFH or office, doesn’t matter.
The “productivity” is an illusion and always has been.
If you design for work in office, WFH probably isn’t going to be more productive and the other way around. A lot of companies made the mistake thinking that WFH is the same as regular office but with everyone being home. This is not the case.
I have experience with company without WFH employees, where any team that wasn’t literary all in the same building had some serious communication and cooperation isuues. I have experience with company where there was no office whatsoever, people were across globe and time zones and we managed to cooperate effectively.
I’m not saying that WFH can be always more effective. But in many cases it’s just terribly implemented change and companies are just moving back to investing into office space instead of investing into proper WFH culture.
Folks at Zapier wrote an excellent guide if anyone is interested. It’s serious effort, sure. People often feel like this is extra work to keep WFH viable, but they tend to forget that keeping the office running is also a serious effort. Many companies probably have office manager, how many of these have some alternative of that for WFH?
I would agree that implementation of WFH could be better. I also appreciate the link you shared. WFH can also be a viable option provided you set up for it.
However, I tend to find that a lot of the people who work best in WFH situations are generally friendly and productive people who will reach out on issues and cultivate relationships.
In contrast, those who seem to advocate the most for WFH online seem to want their direct manager to plug them into a system that will turn them into a cog that doesn’t need to be proactive in solving problems. That isn’t everyone who wants WFH, but they seem to be a loud minority.
Yeah, you absolutely have to set up for WFH. Which is no different than working from office. We just take that effort for granted.
Another issue is, that lot of the office work cost is not paid by companies. (At least not directly) For example the commute to work can easily be 10% of overall time spent from leaving your house until returning back home from work. But both the commute cost and time spent is paid by employee. So obviously companies are reluctant invest into WFH, because that does generate some expenses.
source? even before WFH, even before the internet it’s just common sense that if I need something from the Phillippines office or the London office or the California office while I’m in New York it’s much more efficient to call them than it is for me to get on a plane and go there.
The working-from-home illusion fades from TheEconomist
The article refers to several peer reviewed studies which you can look up.
Source?
Anecdotally, I can’t get shit done in the office. I like to talk to people, people interrupt me with questions, and towards the end of the day I’m watching the clock and dreading traffic.
When I need to get something done I work from home. My coworkers are the same way.
Dumb opinion is dumb lol
What would you expect The Economist to say?
Their reporting has a financial bent to it, but they would write an article defending WFH productivity wise if the data was there.
The article also doesn’t dismiss WFH either, noting other reasons to keep it.
Can you elaborate on this?
I can’t WFH so I haven’t really kept up with the trend
Don’t listen to the bootlicker below. He’s just spreading propaganda for his corporate overlords.
Basically there has been a mantra from people that WFH will always be productive and that, therefore, going into work is a waste. What is being found is that there seems to be a minor productivity hit, but it isn’t the end of the world and there may be reasons to allow WFH even if workers are less productive.
Saying that WFH isn’t anything but good gets a lot of people pissed off.
Every efficiency study, environmental model, and psychological model disagrees with your sentiments that WFH productivity is less than in office productivity. I am a software engineer, so it might be anecdotal and industry specific, but my experience as well as the studies done by my employer show that they get more out of WFH employees or Hybrid (1-2 days a week in office) than the traditional route. Commutes, in office distractions, etc are massive drains on the employee.
The working-from-home illusion fades from TheEconomist
The studies cited in the article say otherwise. Feel free to show your studies.
That article is pretty trash, a half finished doctoral study from 2020 and it draws some wild conclusions from this authors work who comes to the opposite conclusion than what was provided by the article. You can see more information mathematically here in this paper that seems to suggest that a lot of the WFH productivity might be eaten up by the lack of effective tools at the disposal of the worker provided by the company. You can also find more data driven, finished papers on WFH efficiency here:
This is a chinese study from 2013 for a call center, similar to the unfinished 2020 paper mentioned in the beginning of the terrible Economist Paper. This was done without the current tools and innovation, so I imagine if it were to be run again the numbers would probably be higher: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers/does-working-home-work-evidence-chinese-experiment
Here is a study on jobs that could be done from home. The above study allows you to see that the environmental impact from having those jobs actually be done from home could be massive. Especially since most of those jobs are located in urban centers and require commuting and/or massive carbon footprints.
This is a small (n = 519) study showing that peoples general mental health and happiness are higher when they are WFH. Also, a study showing that people who are happy are more productive.
The problem with the argument is that it is reductionist, it makes it seem like the ONLY thing that matters is how much more productive it is. It is more productive, and it can have a HUGE benefit to both the mental health of the individuals who are able to WFH as well as the environment.
So, like I said. The large company I work for is 80% WFH, with an optional hybrid approach and spent a bunch of money researching this and are looking to keep it up because their workers are happier, healthier, and more productive… That single economist piece that misrepresents data and uses kind of trash studies isn’t really a great one to be leaning on.
Edit: There are absolutely jobs that cannot be done from home, and people who can’t handle WFH because of their personality. However, WFH is primarily a good thing. All these hit pieces and garbo articles trying to justify people returning to these monolithic buildings without any value are trash and shouldn’t be promoted as information. At their core they’re opinion pieces.
Since I’ve had more time to read your sources.
The first study you cite only discusses the ability to work from home. Nothing in the study talks about productivity. I agree that a lot of jobs can be full remote.
The second study is about employee satisfaction, which I didn’t argue as well. The third study may be a thing, but it doesn’t outright compare those who work in an office to those who work full remote.
And as I’ve said earlier, it is fine if you want to make arguments for WFH outside of productivity. However, none of the studies you provided tries to directly measure the two. Thank you for providing some studies, though. You were the only one who tried to argue this via academic studies.
If you want to want to make the argument that productivity isn’t the be all end all reason, that is fine. WFH is a great perk and I can see why people like it. I also agree that it can work, but there is a difference between being able to work and being the best option.
But the argument is always that WFH is the best and most productive option where that may not be the case.
Alternative headline: remote work adds billions into workers’ pockets and an immeasurable amount of happiness
One person downvoted that, what a clown haha
Two people now. You are not going to see ANY of the money that will not be spent on real estate. Do you think it’s going to trickle down? But hey at least it feels good to pretend right? What we need is more snarky comments and less actual solutions.
I work remote and do see that money. Let me explain how:
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I save money on car maintenance, gas, and business attire.
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I save money on food by eating at home or eating in my neighborhood instead, which adds value to my neighborhood and creates businesses in my neighborhood instead of my bosses
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I save roughly 2 hours of getting ready / commute time per day, and time is money.
What’s wild is that my boss ever felt entitled to all of that for their benefit.
I mean WFH was literally impossible for a lot of jobs until broadband internet and personal computers became ubiquitous in the average workers home in the last decade or so. That’s part of why yor boss felt entitled to all that, but I see the rest of your points
oh my boss felt entitled to this recently
they point blank told me they needed me in the office because ‘they owned the building’ (read: they think they are entitled to use their employees time and resources to prop up the value of their commercial real estate)
they also spent the time during the pandemic installing a giant paid cafeteria, so they were hoping to capture some of that lunch revenue I mentioned for themselves, or the company they sub-contracted with
(yes, I did quit, get a new job, and a raise)
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I don’t give a fuck about that money, I already have money.
We have the solution, it’s remote work. Smart businesses are using it as a competitive advantage to attract the best candidates.
Let it burn!
Yet they still want us in the office…
I work remote twice a week, which is nice, but I seriously wonder why I even have to go to the office the other three days.
Most of who I communicate with to do my job is not even in my location, so I’m regularly using Microsoft teams and WebEx. Also all the programs are accessible on my work laptop from home.
They are starting the force people back to work at my company. Apparently a location had a fight break out and police called because of an argument over a spot. There isn’t enough room at these places so they were trying to make people go to an office an hour away instead.
If I were to go into the office I wouldn’t have anyone else on my team with me. And if someone were to ask me to do work, I could have easily done it if they sent a message instead of walking by. I also don’t eat lunch, so I would just work with headphones in. So I wouldn’t contribute to the collaboration that is claimed to take place.
The only reason they want people back in the office is for that control. They don’t want people having a good work/life balance. They want you to waste money on gas, time away from your family, and to eat out more often. It would be great if some states would prevent companies from forcing back to office.
This right here! My commute is rather long. I spend about 2 hrs total of my day commuting to and from work. I could save so much time and money on gas if I was full time remote.
work with headphones in. So I wouldn’t contribute to the collaboration that is claimed to take place.
In the new cramped environment with low visual privacy and especially no audio privacy, we all just end up with earpods in. We need the noise isolation to f’n THINK!
So the boss oozes his way over and ‘hums’ and ‘haws’ trying to get our attention before waving and doing that “hey pull out your earbuds so I can talk” gesture that resembles yokels trying to pick up someone in an elevator or on the bus and not.getting.it .
Because he doesn’t.
So that is the life of people I left at the old job, and it’s repeated a thousand times over.
Learn to also say on the phone “this environment has no audio privacy. Can you book meeting and a conference room? Thanks”, if you get too many desk calls.
Their wanting you in the office is about control - it’s nothing to do with productivity or any of the other excuses.
A lot of the investments by big companies were made in 2018-2019 with low near 0% interest. now a lot of those loans are coming due which will impact their total assets. they want workers in the office to keep Corp real estate in demand so their investments don’t tank. most likely will result in massive layoffs or bail outs as they will try to protect the shareholders for eternal growth.
Yea that’s true. You still can’t design and build an iphone, or near any physical product, remotely. But this is what people want to do. I work for a manufacturing company and there are engineers who want to stay at home and never see the prototypes and never colloborate on them in person. They aren’t going to last much longer. Good riddance. I’m pointing this out because there is a comment below me that says this is “all about control”. There’s a ton of jobs that should not be done remotely. There are a ton of jobs that can be done remotely too. The world is complicated.
Programming and fields like it can be done remotely. Manufacturing cannot be done remotely (like you said). I work in a semiconductor fab and my job is most definitely not compatible with remote work. I would like to transition to a job where I can be remote though, at some point.
Yeah for jobs like that it seems odd for the engineers to not want to see the prototypes.
Seems like people like that are in the wrong profession for sure.
I seriously wonder why I even have to go to the office the other three days.
You don’t; and you know this already.
I quit my union job when the new hotshot manager started mandating RTO into a newly compressed, hot, bright, loud environment; being able to actually see asses in chairs was his jam, despite the work impact. What a tool.
Found a job with another unionized IT shop, paid for it with a 3% pay cut but got an extra week of vacation (net loss: 3 days pay/yr) and a really great crew and 100% remote written into the contract. Thanks, ya tool.
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700 billion of that is pingpong tables and fridges
My new COO invited a few of us out individually to get a grasp on why people are leaving and how we can retain people. He really did suggest a ping-pong table. I think all of us set him straight that we couldn’t care less about that. I broke my personal record last month for hours worked in a week. It was over 75. If I leave, it will be because of that. Not because we don’t go to baseball games as a team, or don’t have a Foosball table.
This is so frustratingly common. I worked for a company I loved and it got bought out by a company I hated. When people (including me) started quitting, the CTO said “but why? We have video games in the break room.”
Large companies are often run by crazy people, I guess.
Oh no! The company is going to miss so many important aha moments that only happen spontaneously on coffee corner chit chat among the “how was your weekend with the kids and the wife”. To think of how many technological breakthroughs we’re going to miss…
Awesome, some of my favourite clubs were sold off to be used as offices. Can we turn them back into clubs now?
Finally something my generation can contribute to
Wonderful
Good.
Convert it to affordable housing. You made a bad investment corporate America, kindly eat shit. If you need us, will be working, from home.
Nah let’s just pump out more propaganda articles on why WFH is bad. /s
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A whole lot of Americans who don’t work from home look like that today :/
What a joke of an article. Claw hands? Wtf?
Some people have been working remotely for decades, they are fine.
Noooo, we can’t let companies lose on bad investments, it is a sin in the eyes of The Red Line! Quickly, let’s whip up a bailout for those poor billionares!
Time to practice the rugged capitalism that corporations preach. You want good workers? Follow them.
Zoning makes that difficult. We need to lobby to even allow for that even though it seems so obvious
Not just zoning, the average office building needs thorough work for that to happen. Washrooms are centralized and one per floor in an average office building for example, for it to have a bathroom for every apartment, it needs extensive piping.
It can definitely be done though, I live in such a building myself.
The piping also needs to be oversized for apartment areas compared to offices.
Local company made this mistake, raised an apartment building on sewage piping designed for offices. At peak hours in the evening and morning the sewage ended up backflowing into the apartments at the lower levels.
So just like in an office, life is less shitty on the top.
I’m sure there are special cases where residents would need bathroom access directly from their apartment, but are there any good reasons for private bathrooms, other than convenience?
To me, one of the most interesting things about converting non-residential building to residential is the potential for different ways of living. A shared bathroom and kitchen with offices converted into living space surrounding a communal area could lead to a more communal lifestyle for residents.
If you want to charge market rents you’d need to provide private bathrooms. Any apartment without a private bathroom is what we’d call a bedsit in the UK and it could be worth half the rent.
We’re talking about converting unused office space into affordable housing, though. Charging half the rent would qualify it as affordable housing and is still better than no income from an unused building.
Would have to be cheap as hell rent to put up with that.
Maybe for college dorms, hostels or halfway houses.
Yea it could definitely work for those but I don’t think it’s limited to those.
Difficult as long as we don’t want to do it, the second we do, it’s a man made obstacle that can be fixed in a moment.
Aww. So sad /s
Sounds generally positive to me.
Why not. Cheaper rent for ailing urban areas, and more incentives for residential construction.
Plus people commuting less = less pollution and less congestion.
Good for people, good for the planet, bad for profit for some.
Yeah but less pollution in the sky means people can see the clouds, and that’s where my data is stored. 😡 I don’t want people seeing my data.
Hopefully you mean more residential areas in mixed use. Zoning is cancer that destroys the climate
I guess that explains why they’re going to such great lengths to convince us that talking about Game of Thrones around a water cooler is such a tremendous benefit to humankind…
