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> the capital savings on electricity and floor space is not thought to make up for lost productivity. For a lot of companies, there were no savings on floor sp

> the capital savings on electricity and floor space is not thought to make up for lost productivity. For a lot of companies, there were no savings on floor space. They were stuck with a ton of huge leases and weren't getting any value out of them. Even if these companies are okay with remote workers, they need to push the non-remote workers back to the office to get what they're paying for.

rco8786 5y ago
I don’t buy “to get what they’re paying for” as a motivation at all. It’s a simple sunk cost fallacy. If a company is doing just as well or better with people at home at no extra cost to the company, it makes no sense to make everyone come back against their wishes. At best it’s making a decision that pisses off your employee base and has no upside. The only thing that makes sense is that something is going worse with everyone remote. Something important enough to make an unpopular decision to fix.
- von_lohengramm 5y ago
  > I don’t buy “to get what they’re paying for” as a motivation at all. It’s a simple sunk cost fallacy. If a company is doing just as well or better with people at home at no extra cost to the company To be fair, you and I don't have the metrics of these large companies. Plus, there are plenty of yet-to-be-seen consequences of remote-work. My team has recently hired a few new people, and so far their onboarding has been noticeably rougher. There's significantly less passive knowledge sharing, and Slack has not proven itself to be a good replacement of wheeling your chair to your neighbor's desk. > it makes no sense to make everyone come back against their wishes. At best it’s making a decision that pisses off your employee base and has no upside. Anecdotally speaking, almost every single coworker of mine is dying to go back to at least partial in-office. Personally, I love being able to work half the hours and avoid wasting a couple hour each day commuting, but I don't think I'm representative of the majority.
  - rco8786 5y ago
    > every single coworker of mine is dying to go back to at least partial in-office That's a decent reason, if that is true for folks at your company. Where I work offices have been back open for months but they're ghost towns. My only point is that we can't assume that CFO offices are pushing for something unpopular just because there happens to be a lease with a few years left. Note, this would also imply that once that lease is up they would not renew and send everyone home again...which I think we can all agree is not on anyone's roadmap.
fargle 5y ago
no immediate savings, maybe. but if they chose to remain remote, they'd downsize, cancel or not renew leases, etc. they're not dumb - they know this and if they wanted to do it they would. bottom line - follow the money. it wasn't thought (correctly or not) a good value proposition.

rco8786 5y ago

I don’t buy “to get what they’re paying for” as a motivation at all. It’s a simple sunk cost fallacy. If a company is doing just as well or better with people at home at no extra cost to the company, it makes no sense to make everyone come back against their wishes. At best it’s making a decision that pisses off your employee base and has no upside. The only thing that makes sense is that something is going worse with everyone remote. Something important enough to make an unpopular decision to fix.

von_lohengramm 5y ago
> I don’t buy “to get what they’re paying for” as a motivation at all. It’s a simple sunk cost fallacy. If a company is doing just as well or better with people at home at no extra cost to the company To be fair, you and I don't have the metrics of these large companies. Plus, there are plenty of yet-to-be-seen consequences of remote-work. My team has recently hired a few new people, and so far their onboarding has been noticeably rougher. There's significantly less passive knowledge sharing, and Slack has not proven itself to be a good replacement of wheeling your chair to your neighbor's desk. > it makes no sense to make everyone come back against their wishes. At best it’s making a decision that pisses off your employee base and has no upside. Anecdotally speaking, almost every single coworker of mine is dying to go back to at least partial in-office. Personally, I love being able to work half the hours and avoid wasting a couple hour each day commuting, but I don't think I'm representative of the majority.
- rco8786 5y ago
  > every single coworker of mine is dying to go back to at least partial in-office That's a decent reason, if that is true for folks at your company. Where I work offices have been back open for months but they're ghost towns. My only point is that we can't assume that CFO offices are pushing for something unpopular just because there happens to be a lease with a few years left. Note, this would also imply that once that lease is up they would not renew and send everyone home again...which I think we can all agree is not on anyone's roadmap.

fargle 5y ago

no immediate savings, maybe. but if they chose to remain remote, they'd downsize, cancel or not renew leases, etc. they're not dumb - they know this and if they wanted to do it they would. bottom line - follow the money. it wasn't thought (correctly or not) a good value proposition.