“Innovation” from random hallway interactions is the official reason from my employer, but “innovation” is also the euphemism they use for “profits”, so I am wondering what you all think is the real reason why many employers are now ordering employees to return to office.
Nobody is talking about the elephant in the room: remote work has led to a lot of people slacking off, working less, doing errands, taking more time for lunch, etc. while <i>you</i> may not do this, I think we vastly underestimate how many people are using remote work as an opportunity to work less, and coast through the day
They are just grabbing at anything to justify what they want. Typical. I know my company just spent a lot of money on a new campus before covid. But other than that they just want it so they act like feudal lords, lording over serfs. Odds are they are narcissistic extroverts that need to justify their own existences. No one I work is in my time zone, let alone state. Completely pointless expectations, how high can you jump? How about if you're on fire?
the capital savings on electricity and floor space is not thought to make up for lost productivity.<p>realize most employers are leaching off your wifi, electricity, and floorspace. for free and that alone should have saved a bundle. the fact that they didn't glom on to that trick is evidence that it was thought to be not worth it.<p>some jobs are perfect or amenable to remote work. some aren't. some employees abuse that "privilege". many employees just need face-to-face interactions to be productive and integrated into a team, even if they also like working from home.<p>it could also cause a little friction if things happen like bob from FANG is still making CA $$$$ (or even $$$$ - 30%) and has moved to another state while jane from FANG who worked in that same state but was only making $$. now they live in the same city and both work remote. it's just a whole new continent of unexplored human resource problems - might just not be worth it.<p>some companies are liberal and want to push the envelope of new things and ways of doing things to maybe get an edge. some companies are conservative and were working with on site employees <i>just fine thank you</i> before this.<p>i don't really think it's a conspiracy of evil middle-manager toadies trying to cling on to their way of life - they aren't in charge.
I worked at Microsoft a quarter century ago. I can tell you that an incredible amount of work happened in the hallways and in the cafeteria. Also, try putting yourself in the shoes of an employer. Imagine two equally good employees, but one comes into work more often. Which would you imagine to be the more dedicated or interested in promotion?<p>I am not trying to dis people who work at home. I am also making no judgments about how well they work at home. I say this as a person who has worked for himself for many many years and prefers to do so. Just letting you try on a different perspective.
There is a permanent structural change underway, Covid accelerated that change, it didn't cause it.<p>The people who want to return to the prior status quo are under the illusion that Covid caused the change, and things will revert back afterward.<p>There is a vicious spiral about to take place in our largest urban cores. The business value associated with those specific locations has taken a permanent hit. Thus, rents will be harder to justify, but the way commercial real estate loans are written prevent lowering the rent. Thus a larger and larger cost DISadvantage will emerge, forcing all but the most location dependent of entities to migrate away from those punitive rents.<p>Our largest cities will implode, fiscally, as a result. Corrective action could be taken, but would require the Oligarchs give consent to actions against their self interests. Thus, it is essentially inevitable.
Communication. I see this every day. We're a distributed company but communication has gone to sh!t with no one in the office.<p>Or it could be because many people prefer to use teams over slack and teams just isn't suited to long term discussions.<p>It's just awful now. I really hope people going back to the office changes this but maybe this is the new norm.<p>... and before all this we relied heavily on slack and didn't have these problems.
One simple factor is that many companies value their physical property and don't want to sell it.<p>A company that leases space might have an expensive multi-year lease. If the office sits unoccupied, that looks like an inefficiency.<p>These are both examples of reactive thinking.
When you are big bad wolf owning a holding company sucking out cash from your other risk facing companies by renting them office space, material and vehicles, you will understand why u need peons in the office.
Some companies put in the extreme effort to make remote work useful.<p>A lot of companies didn't, and never wanted to, and have been trying to count down the days until they can attend a meeting without their toddler screaming in the background.<p>Remote work _cultures_ are harder to create, and if you're a low performing company, even two years wasn't enough time to change.
Because my employers never went all-in on remote anyways. Telework was used to achieve social distancing goals (office at 1/4-1/3rd capacity, then 1/2). It isn't possible to do all technical work remotely (for various technical or regulatory reasons).<p>Also, mentoring new hires absolutely sucks when you're working remote.
Middle managers are desperate to get people back in the office so that they can justify their jobs by looking busy. Constantly interrupt the productive people with meetings, stand ups and other BS work.
There are likely many factors but I was expect taxes to be one of them. I am not a tax expert. Buildings can't be vacant for {n} period of time in some states before there are tax implications but I am not a tax expert. The definition around occupancy also appears to vary by state.