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Damaging results of mandated return to the office: it’s worse than we thought
- cwkoss 3y agoCommercial real estate value is a bubble that's gonna pop soon. There's just way more office space than anyone needs.
- pc86 3y agoIs there a way to short CRE other than investing in non-commercial RE? I'd think you can probably directly short CRE-focused REITs but I'd be worried about them rebalancing or diversifying even as CRE starts to pop.
- thanatropism 3y agoIf you can find intelligence about which CRE will crater to zero and which will just be half of what it's now, you can arrange some in-kind swaps. But the ethics of this feels wrong.
- OJFord 3y agoProbably fine if they own their buildings? I can't imagine how they would adapt that quickly, but if it still concerned you you could hedge with brownfield developers or even REITs that don't own (whose costs would presumably plummet)? Not at all an expert.
- JackFr 3y agoThere are like a half dozen levered short CRE ETF's.
- slashdev 3y agoEverybody and their uncle has seen this coming for a while. I think it’s mostly priced in. I wouldn’t short it.
- randomdata 3y ago> other than investing in non-commercial RE? Does that help if you believe CRE is on the outs? CRE typically carries a much higher property tax burden, which means that if CRE starts to meaningly go by the wayside: That burden will shift to other property classes, making them much less attractive and/or cuts to services will be made, making the municipality much less attractive overall.
- spacemadness 3y agoAt this point this would be quite the opposite of the Michael Burry “nobody saw this coming” inspired short if real estate. I wouldn’t bother.
- draw_down 3y ago[dead]
- anilakar 3y agoOur office building management is giving half a month free for new referrals; meanwhile they are refusing to rent us more floor space.
- jmopp 3y agoWhy would they do that? Would it not make more sense to focus on existing customers instead of chasing new leads? I mean, sure, don't put all your eggs in one basket. But when an existing customer is asking you to take their money, why turn them down?
- Kye 3y agoSpeculating: One company occupying the extra: company goes bust, you lose their business, probably spend months/years fighting with a bankruptcy holding company to get paid and maybe lose. Two companies occupying the same space: same risk, but you still get paid for the extra space while dealing with it.
- gottorf 3y agoOf course it's too early to tell with lots of confounding variables, but labor productivity has been taking a steep dive[0]. So perhaps in the aggregate, WFH is resulting in less work being done. I say this as someone who's been full-time WFH for over a decade; I'm not taking a position one way or another. [0]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MPU4910063 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MPU4910063
- ricardobeat 3y agoHave salaries followed that curve for productivity increases?
- LatteLazy 3y agoProductivity can't really be defined, let alone measured. When people start talking about it they have left hard facts behind I'm afraid...
- pc86 3y agoMaybe not for what most of us do but for a lot of jobs, especially blue collar jobs, it absolutely can be measured down to the smallest increment. If you work on an assembly line, or really anything that isn't mostly knowledge work, your productivity can be measured very accurately.
- LatteLazy 3y agoHow many people do knowledge work vs assembly work these days? Plus WFH is really not for manual work. And that's without getting into the fact that on an assembly line you can only go as fast as the slowest worker, so everyone's productivity is capped. Or looking at things like error/defect rates that contradict "items per minute" definitions of productivity. People think you can measure this as a single number. At best, for a very limited number of workers, who don't WFH anyway, you can measure it. But you cannot compare those workers with the workers next to them doing similar but slightly different jobs even. So it's a huge mess and the idea of a graph of it for the USA is like making a graph of the average number of testicles. Except people take it seriously!?
- 2023throwawayy 3y ago> The survey equates the displeasure of shifting from a flexible work model to a traditional one to that of experiencing a 2-3% pay cut. I think they forgot a 0.
- unglaublich 3y agoYes, this doesn't add up. The typical 2x20 mins daily commute is effectively an 8% unpaid increase in working hours, not counting transportation costs.
- farnsworth 3y agoI don't know anyone with a 20 minute commute- I'd be in the office every day if I had that. Actually I think the commute pain is the best single predictor of how people feel about going back to the office.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoWhile people driving cars solo is surely a pitiable waste of time and resources, and my current commute is about 20ft from bedroom to living room, I would say that a happy medium has been my public transit-based commutes. As long as there's at least one leg with a long-haul distance (30+ minutes), I am usually able to enter a calm and meditative state, lower my blood pressure, and set aside the cares of home and work alike. This is not always the case, because there may be stressors from other passengers, but most of the time, my situational awareness does not require rapt attention, and I can soften my gaze, stare out the window, or poke my nose into my phone. It is often difficult to describe to recruiters how public transit makes my commute different, not just more time. The distance calculations work differently: based on number of transfer points and frequency of service, etc.
- Tarball10 3y agoYou can also sit out on your porch or deck in the morning before work with a cup of coffee and a podcast, and meditate, relax, or whatever you like to do to get ready for work. I've heard managers try to spin a commute as a good thing, giving you transition time between work and home, but it always comes off to me as corporate BS and nothing you can't also do at home without dealing with traffic or public transit.
- warning26 3y ago> “staggering 76% of employees stand ready to jump ship if their companies decide to pull the plug on flexible work schedules” People always say this, but I’d bet that the vast majority of those 76% would begrudgingly go in if it was demanded. Talk is cheap, as they say.
- LatteLazy 3y agoIt's not the same thing but... We've had 2 of 3 engineering role candidates we recently made offers to decline citing our 3 days a week in office policy...
- pc86 3y agoAre you not advertising that it's 60% in-office? It seems surprising that multiple people would see that and go the whole way to an offer without self-selecting out.
- LatteLazy 3y agoWe are. I think in both cases people were selecting between us and another job. One said he was taking another job for 10k LESS (GBP) but full remote. (As always, the stated reasons might not be accurate)
- yomlica8 3y agoThe cost of maintaining transportation and the unpaid hours from a commute are quite significant. Depending upon their circumstances they could be taking home more money even being paid less.
- LatteLazy 3y ago100% this. Here in the UK, just not having to live near London will save you enormous amounts on rent/mortgage as well. I'm in the office full time (I actually need to be) and I pay 700 a month just in rent on a crappy room not too close to central. That alone is the equivalent of about £17k before tax, and I am a single guy who doesn't mind housemates. No thanks.
- Thoeu388 3y ago[flagged]
- mistrial9 3y agothe author of this article is a PhD who is advertising their services at the end -- it is partially a self-promotion piece. However it has quantitative survey data, and speaks to the regulatory and also practical concerns that real corporate management faces in managing a mid-size work force. Unlike other recent articles, there is little reference to the real-estate value of office property. Instead this article talks about protected minority employees, the role of job security in the minds of both management and job-seekers, and common carrot-and-stick negotiation parts from both sides. The Internet combined with recent lockdown public policy has definitely changed the constant back-and-forth of corporate hiring and job roles. One thing not mentioned at all is the change in productivity of IT overall.. For example, in farm work is was easy to measure the effects of gasoline-powered machines to replace hand labor. The effects of modern computer systems against clerks and secretaries, not so straightforward. There is no question that the returns for certain individuals has rocketed compared to "ordinary workers" .. Will job negotiations ever be the same? insider tip - the answer is "no"
- Kye 3y ago>> "the author of this article is a PhD who is advertising their services at the end" That's an author bio. Completely ordinary for articles and has been since the print days.
- JackFr 3y agoNonsense -- it's entirely self-promotion: > At that point, they called me to help as a hybrid work expert who The New York Times has called “the office whisperer.” We worked on adapting their return-to-office plan, . . . > In another case, a large financial services company began noticing employee turnover despite offering competitive salaries . . . . After consulting with me, they adjusted their policies to be more competitive in offering flexibility. He's just trying to sell books and consulting. Nothing wrong with that -- but hardly objective analysis.
- Kye 3y agoYou missed this: >> "at the end" Whether the stuff elsewhere is promotion is a different discussion. I didn't comment on that. The stuff at the end is a bog standard author bio.
- obnauticus 3y agoIt is unclear who wants RTO, at least within tech and other leaders whom I know within tech.
- warning26 3y agoSome people do and some people don’t. It seems to me it’s largely a matter of personal preference. I worked from home before the pandemic, hated it, and vowed to never do it again. Then the pandemic happened.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoI worked remote for a year before the pandemic for health reasons and didn't like it much, was looking forward to going back. The pandemic was a huge rearrangement to so many things though. It forced through a lot of the accommodations that previously I had to beg and fight for. Got everyone used to having to write more, have video option for all meetings, train judgement about what can be async etc. It also normalized the lunch errand, the early dinner then back at work, the "I might just be away from the computer when you message me" dynamic that makes remote work genuinely fulfilling. I no longer feel like I'm committing a moral transgression against my coworkers by stopping to help a family member with a chore or whatever. I once said I would never willingly do remote. Now I say I'll never willingly work from an office regularly. I might turn out to be as wrong about this as I was about that, we'll see.
- pfannkuchen 3y agoA lot of these things seemed normal to me in Bay Area tech companies pre pandemic (large companies, not even startups). I always left the office in the middle of the day to do errands or go to the gym and never felt bad about it. I can’t tell if I somehow had an unusual experience within those companies, or if it’s just that most people on HN work at more restrictive companies.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoBay area tech companies aren't the norm even for programmers. There are like 4 million software devs in the US, most of us are working at companies you've never heard of, and have office norms much closer to that of the rest of office workers. Often somewhat more prestige and flexibility, but not so dramatic. So yes I think your experience is probably an outlier. And on HN generally I think that sort of environment is overrepresented still.
- ericzawo 3y agoThe manager class is going to go kicking and screaming into the new world where they can no longer call their otherwise totally capable, productive employees into the office for morning snack like schoolchildren. The faster they accept it, the better off their organizations will be.
- thanatropism 3y agoI empathized a little with my manager during the pandemic. My job got somewhat easier, his got much, much harder. I guess managers took a little longer to be whacked by the wrecking ball of technology.
- bluefirebrand 3y agoI don't think managing got that much harder unless you're managing by gut feel where butts in seats factors in a lot.
- thanatropism 3y agoMy manager called me for short chats on world events (semi-relevant to our larger work, not for current-assignment). Now I realize that was 20% to get my take on whatever (say, 2008 auto companies bailout) and 80% just to look me in the eyes and hear me talk and feel that I'm really here and committed and not silent quitting.
- hospitalJail 3y ago>manager class What is the manager class? The people who sacrificed their $/hr in favor of power? If I want to be a manager, I can hire people with my fat income and manage them on my spare time or when I take a few years off work. Then I can come back as a manager with all my new experience.
- underseacables 3y agoI understand why businesses want us to return to office, and cannot disagree that I would likely react the same way. However returning to the office has numerous additional costs that are very much avoidable. I have to go to the office once a week. That’s a week do gas, time, money, pollution, and using resources and space that is duplicative.
- FredPret 3y agoHere’s the thing with commercial leases. They go on for years at a time and cost a very large amount. So some companies are locked into their office leases and stupidly think not having people there is a waste of that money when it’s a sunk cost and has already been wasted. But for companies without an office, it’s a massive saving. So in the long run, cubicle-minded managers will go out of business, and get outcompeted by their younger and more modern replacements.
- briandear 3y ago“Younger” replacements? I am 46 and I’m the opposite of cubical minded. At lot of us old guys remember when remote was a thing long before Covid. The only time I worked in an office was 3 of my 5 years at Apple. And it wasn’t by choice. Plenty of “younger” workers often equate “work life” with “life” and love the ping-pong and beer culture of “tech” offices. I despise it. A lot of younger workers coming out of college see the office as a place to get their lattes and socialize. So while I agree with the “cubicle-minded” aspect, the “younger” aspect isn’t quit accurate or fair. Many of us that have a life outside of work hate that cubicle-minded attitude regardless of our age. It’s often the older and more experienced people that have less tolerance for office culture, especially those of us that were doing remote long before it was a widespread “thing.” Unless I have to work with physical stuff, there is zero need to be in an office.
- FredPret 3y agoYounger as in next wave of owners and CEO’s. Economically speaking, the average person is just getting started at 46. I didn’t use the term to refer to 21 yo’s.
- seydor 3y agoHybrid work is an unstable point. An office where half people are missing / zooming is useless. remote vs fully present are the only two stable attractors
- pc86 3y agoMost hybrid places are a set in-office schedule, e.g. Monday and Tuesday in-office, Wed-Fri WFH, not "be in whatever two days you want."
- mnw21cam 3y agoMy experience is more that a hybrid working environment includes people who are in the office all week (because they have to pipette things and look down microscopes) and people who are never in the office (like me, because I'd rather not go into hospital with covid again, and I can do everything on the computer). That means meetings will typically be a zoom/teams thing with a load of people in a meeting room and a load of people joining individually.
- DiggyJohnson 3y agoSeems more nuanced than this discussion is making it out. We have had attrition and recruiting challenges with RTO, but also noticeable improvements in morale and productivity - especially when it comes to onboarding new folks.
- js8 3y ago> also noticeable improvements in morale and productivity - especially when it comes to onboarding new folks I am sure you will need it with all the attrition. ;-)
- DiggyJohnson 3y agoYea weirdly enough it seems to be pretty balanced right now. For what its worth, the key players are not attrition risks, which is why I can be so blaise about it. I have seem attrition ruin many a team in my career.
- weard_beard 3y agoWhy are squishy subjects like, "morale" and "onboarding" suddenly weighted so highly when middle managers might be laid off? These topics are often ignored, neglected, de-prioritized, or laughed at 90% of the time when the bottom line of the company is at stake.
- DiggyJohnson 3y agoMorale and onboarding experience most directly affect individual contributors, not management. I'm not sure I really understand your point.
- weard_beard 3y agoMy point is that they affect individual contributors but they are being held up by middle management as the motivator to return to office. This is self serving and largely disingenuous. The real reasons for RTO involve middle management feeling uncomfortable or unable to micro manage in a way that actually impedes productive work.
- kindatrue 3y ago"Unispace found that nearly half (42%) of companies with return-to-office mandates witnessed a higher level of employee attrition than they had anticipated" No severance payouts. No bumps to your unemployment insurance payments. Everything is working to plan.
- xyzzy_plugh 3y agoYep! This is it. Managers associate willingness to RTO with loyalty, so the idea is very much to induce voluntary, mostly non-regrettable attrition. They're playing with fire.
- spacemadness 3y agoGood. Let these dinosaurs burn their houses down while the smart companies allow flexibility. I’m tired of these psychological tactics of lying to employees about RTO decision making and making people feel like they’re not team players all of a sudden.
- willcipriano 3y ago[flagged]
- maxbond 3y agoWhat's the plan you are thinking of?
- shrimp_emoji 3y ago*Bogdanoff voice* Do you feel in charge, Mr. Rothschild? /s
- willcipriano 3y agoA bit of artistic license perhaps, it's not really a plan. Pointing out the bucket of skilled labor is already empty and even the unskilled labor bucket is getting dry. Forcing layoffs now will probably bite them in future.
- blahyawnblah 3y agoI kind of prefer going in to the office. I like talking to people around the water cooler and whatnot. BUT, remote work has definitely allowed me more opportunity than I would have otherwise based on where I live. I can see how the choice thing would sway people. Maybe if going into the office, you still had the flexibility to go run errands or whatever.
- powera 3y agoBad use of statistics. 42% of companies seeing more attrition than expected doesn't really mean "worse than we thought". But the author is in the business of selling pro-WFH consulting, so the facts don't really matter.
- wredue 3y agoI reclaim 1.5 hours a day from work from home, so a mandated back to work would actually represent a 6 point pay cut on the day assuming I thought that through properly. I don’t even have an egregious commute compared to others. Never mind that all of a sudden I no longer need before and after daycare. I have a home gym and can acceptably exercise at lunch. I don’t have peer pressures to go out for lunch all the time to eat. Etc. The amount of money changes just from working from home is huge. Never mind that I get more done, and have way fewer interruptions. This whole “get back to the office” is transparently a middle management “I’m still relevant!” Move.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoEd Zitron wrote about it a lot in his newsletter a while back and I think had some really excellent insights about it. Especially these three factors: - Executives work in a way that genuinely does probably reward or even require in person interaction. A lot of their job is "intangible" human connection-building stuff with other executives, shareholders, investors, manufacturers, etc. And because of the way executives are selected, a lot of these people haven't worked a "normal" job in decades or sometimes ever. They mistakenly think everyone else's work is, or should be, more like theirs is. - Ego shit: from executive down to middle management a significant amount of the "reward" of the job is prestige, in the form of authority and control over other workers. Seeing "their" workers all lined up in the office is a visceral experience of this prestige and they don't want to give it up. - Some significant fraction of middle management is genuinely not necessary or beneficial, but is essentially skimmed off the productivity of the lower workers and presented upwards as managerial competence. And especially, this isn't evenly distributed: maybe all managers do it a little, inadvertently or through bureaucratic structure, but some managers are almost exclusively this. Their actual career is at stake because it makes clear who is doing the work, and prevents them from intercepting it to take credit. And then finally my own view on it is exposed in the disgusting euphemism "labor discipline." White collar pay went up during the pandemic. WFH is incredibly better for the quality of life of many workers, with few or no downsides. We are realizing we don't have to live and work the way we have been, things can be better for us at no one's expense. We are getting uppity and need to be reminded who is really in control of our lives.
- anilakar 3y agoBusiness practices evolved but the office space did not. Our open floor plan was still somewhat reasonable pre-2020 with a few quiet software developers around. Now it has been turned into a shared video conference space and thanks to the company growing there are no longer dedicated desks. As if business practices changing the requirements was not bad enough, half of the floor has been taken over by the provisioning, shipping & tech support team, but that's more of an issue with the building management refusing to rent us more space in this specific case.
- JackFr 3y agoAre we pretending that this is a news or analysis, and not a sales pitch for "the office whisperer"? Article is a joke.
- xyzzy_plugh 3y agoAnecdotally my org is on a hiring tear lately and we're completely remote, and the quality of candidates has steeply risen as of late. I mean really good candidates I'd rarely see before are pouring into my inbox. I've never talked to so many folks currently at Google, Meta, Amazon, but also big banks and other F500s. Many candidates are coy about their reasons for leaving, especially given all the layoffs, but, still anecdotally, the trend I've seen is for folks to be sending out a lot of feelers during RTO and many folks have even told me straight up that's why they're looking. They want flexible hours and work locations. I talked to a director last week who spends 1/3 the year in ski country, 1/3 the year in the Midwest and 1/3 the year on the coast. He's not going back, and practically anyone would be lucky to have him. It's going to be a bloodbath.
- antisthenes 3y ago> I talked to a director last week who spends 1/3 the year in ski country, 1/3 the year in the Midwest and 1/3 the year on the coast. He's not going back, and practically anyone would be lucky to have him. Does he actually spend any time working?
- xyzzy_plugh 3y agoThe folks I've known to do this have been hard workers, so I would guess yes. I used to work with an incredible engineer who went skiing from 6-9am every day and then again at 6pm, weather permitting. Slopes were 5 minutes from his front door. If you tried to fit this sort of thing in while working in an office, then no you probably wouldn't spend much time working, and that's the whole point.
- McDyver 3y ago> Does he actually spend any time working? This seems the exact thought process of management wanting people to RTO. They forget there's time, and life, after working hours. And the less you need to commute, the more free time you have to actually live and enjoy life.
- 3y ago
- Raidion 3y agoMy take on remote work as a manager for a company with significant name recognition: I think it's clear some people prefer working remotely (and the online hacker news crowd leans heavily that way). It's also clear that some people feel real benefits from being in the office. I think it's inevitable that the culture of a company mirrors the values of it's leaders. Companies with leaders that value in person communication, place a high premium on random collaboration will prefer their teams to be in office, and hire people based on this. This could involve companies with large amounts of more junior people that need training or experience (and whose leaders feel that training is easier done in person). Companies with leaders that feel like collaboration is less important, are more willing to set metrics and not be as directly as involved, and hire experienced employees with less oversight, lean towards remote work. This means you'll see a decline in hybrid teams. Teams want to be made up of people who share values, and this is something that will polarize teams. Companies that prioritize growing talent will prefer to be in person, companies that prefer to hire for specific roles with clear expectations will be OK being remote. This polarization will be painful and shouldn't happen quickly. I see many companies putting their finger on the scale when hiring, preferring in office roles (and selecting people that want or can't get remote roles). Over time, natural attrition will mean less and less remote workers, and that eventual makes it easier to push others out. I don't think this is a good or bad thing, but it does mean that if you want to be fully remote, you need to remain very competitive in terms of skills. You're competing against a wider talent pool. I do expect 3 days a week (Tues/Wed/Thurs) to become standard for many companies, and that broadens the "recruiting" radius for in office companies. 1 hour commute 5 days a week is the same time commitment as 1.5 hours commute 3 days a week.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago> It's also clear that some people feel real benefits from being in the office. If I could instantly teleport in the office and if the office had quiet private spaces, yes sure, but the terrible housing market, long commutes and shit offices, are bigger downer that prevent me from prioritizing going to the office even though I like working and socializing with my coworkers.
- sam0x17 3y ago> It's also clear that some people feel real benefits from being in the office. I'm so tired of this equivocation. These aren't two neatly swapable things like some sort of cute little "preference" that each company can decide for itself without receiving any judgement. The costs behind in-office work are GARGANTUAN, both in terms of the literal cost of renting + heating + cooling a huge office space that is vacant every weekend and every night, and the environmental impact of this flagrant waste, combined with the costs of requiring everyone to commute (and typically do so without compensation), the brain drain of only allowing "local" applicants, etc, etc... This isn't some cute little preference where you can be like oh well Johnny prefers in-office. Johnny better come up with some really huge world-changing justifications or better yet we can stop renting such spaces and save money and the environment across the board.
- derealized 3y agoCopy and paste of a previous article discussed here a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36500448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36500448 EDIT: And copied and pasted here too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36956799 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36956799
- AgentK20 3y ago...Is this article plagiarized from this article posted June 26: https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/the-damaging-results-of-the-mandated-return-to-office-is/454043 https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/the-damaging... ? It was even submitted to HN and had a few hundred comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36500448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36500448
- arielweisberg 3y agoSure, but what is it doing to productivity for those who remain? What is the opportunity cost of maintaining the extra office space vs using that money for other things such as travel so people can actually meet the people they work with?
- elvis10ten 3y agoEvery time this topic comes up on HN, I see many anecdotes on why WFO is bad. My anecdote: I work from the office everyday (unforced). 20-30 minutes commute. I come in at 6am/7am and leave at 2pm/3pm. I do a 30 minutes calisthenics session and then head home and usually leave my laptop in the office (as a forcing function to disconnect). The result: I have built strong bonds with colleagues outside my team. A few of them have become close friends. I'm also generally as productive and sometimes even more than my colleagues that WFH. I feel the ideal environment is *contextual* and it’s probably a hybrid work environment where people who want to work remote can but have to touch base in-person a few times every month. I wish both sides on the debate can see this. Edit: The point of my comment is neither option is bad or good. Certain people benefit from each option and it’s unfair to paint either one as bad. E.g: As an immigrant, the office has been useful in seeding my social circle and learning useful things about Berlin that I probably wouldn’t have know. Just the other day a colleague outside my team informed me how I can get an extra 10 days off . Someone in a different situation probably have different priorities.
- pjc50 3y agoHow long is your commute? I'm in the middle on this: I have a very good office at the moment, and am content to be there and chat with my coworkers, but that doesn't make the commuting any less of a deadweight loss. It also makes it far easier to organize e.g. work on the house or dental appointments.
- elvis10ten 3y ago20-30 minutes. This includes a little cycling I need to do, else the time is 35+ minutes.
- bluefishinit 3y ago> I feel the ideal environment is contextual and it’s probably a hybrid work environment where people who want to work remote can but have to touch base in-person a few times every month This necessitates living near the office/only hiring people that live near the office. I will not let my employer dictate where I live and I will not live in some of the most expensive real-estate markets in the world
- ojbyrne 3y agoThere's an editorial in the Washington Post today from Michael Bloomberg pushing for RTO in the federal government, and generally, everywhere else. I wonder who is more influential? https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/01/michael-bloomberg-federal-employees-offices-washington/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/01/michael-b...
- timcavel 3y ago[dead]
- StimDeck 3y ago[dead]
- 1letterunixname 3y agoI will not relocate and I will not commute to some subpar, noisy office where no one around is on my team. If everything can't be done remotely, then there's a collaborative tech problem. The other insanity is shared desks. Why even bother having an office if you're going to take away things from your employees? It and pointless penny pinch sends the message that you're no longer a cool place to work and nudging people to quit by stacking up the misery factor as high as possible to alleviate your guilt of doing more layoffs to keep profits high and salaries low.