this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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Isn't it significantly cheaper for most businesses to be run remotely? What is the pressure of returning to work coming from?
It's so much cheaper that my last job, which was a remote-first company, was able to pay to fly everyone and a +1 to an all-expense-paid resort for five days to do team building. All of that was cheaper than an office in SF where they were based.
The portion of managers which don't actually contribute anything to productivity don't have much to do if everyone is at home.
And the people who own the real estate (more often CEO, executives, board members than you might think) need their office buildings to maintain inflated values and collect those sweet, sweet lease payments.
I think this is an underappreciated reason. There is often plenty of subtle and not so subtle self-dealing with real estate and also other smaller businesses that serve the needs of offices. Those at the top can double dip extracting money out of the company for themselves, but WFH undermines that source of money.
Then you have managers at various levels who are nothing but dead weight and need people to micro manage or bully to try and justify their existence. Or are social butterflies who want people to interact with regardless if if it is productive or not.
WFH has costs to many managers and executives, so WFH being better for the company and most employees is secondary to their personal interests.
It is!
Most companies make BS solutions for fake problems. Not going to the office exposes a large chunk of fake needs.
Do families really need two cars? If you aren't commuting every day, probably not.
Having more free time means people are more likely to cook and clean for themselves. Can't make money off of that.
How many suits do you need to own? None! You only owned them because you are supposed to wear them in the office.
Dry cleaners? No longer a bill.
Gas? When you aren't sitting in your cities parking lot of a freeway isn't bought as often.
Speaking of parking lots, you aren't paying for parking anymore.
Daycare and dog walkers aren't needed anymore.
Going up work is expensive and companies want us addicted to these fake expenses.
many companies have multi-year commercial leases they suddenly can’t get out of and lots of office furniture they can’t liquidate. it’s a huge investment that suddenly worthless. (boo-hoo!)
Sounds like they made a bad investment choice.