11 ms·

My vaguely populist take is that the pandemic, WFH/remote and hybrid gave the mass white collar class a taste of what the C-suite has had for years.. flexibilit

My vaguely populist take is that the pandemic, WFH/remote and hybrid gave the mass white collar class a taste of what the C-suite has had for years.. flexibility. Sure, these guys might go into the office but they do so from their pied-a-terre / 3rd home / whatever within a 5 minute chauffeured drive. They do this while maintaining a nearby suburban/exurban estate and maybe a lake/beach/ski houses where they spend the majority of their actual hours. I was listening to a podcast and they observed that US commuters might have had a boiled frog scenario where you slowly just get used to having a worse & worse commute as you age.. and COVID snapped everyone out of it cold turkey. Now attempting to go back to it is revolting for many.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
[flagged]
- rwmj 3y ago
  He didn't say it wasn't a difficult job, just that the C-suite were always able to work flexibly, and afford to have a second flat next to the office (or in extreme cases, force the office to move near to their homes).
  - pc86 3y ago
    Not replying to you but the above comment got flagged before I responded and I already typed the comment up so I want to post it :) -- If we're specifically talking about large enterprises, these CEOs make more in a year than most Americans make their entire life. If you didn't live a Fortune 1000 CEO level lifestyle you could literally do the job for 4-6 months and retire, and that's ignoring the fact that they've typically been in the C-Suite making 20-50% of that salary for decades already. It's not often somebody living paycheck to paycheck is promoted into CEO. I've worked jobs in public companies where the CEO and half the C-Suite was driven to work every morning. I've worked jobs where a rank and file programmer got denied a raise because he left at 4 every day (despite working 8 or more hours every day) because the policy was to work 8-5, while the CEO worked from a vacation home when the weather wasn't nice where our HQ was. Whether the job is hard is irrelevant, all the GP is saying is that you have ultimate flexibility in that role, and now the poors have a taste of it too, and most of them/us aren't going to give it up without a fight.
steveBK123 3y ago
My favorite story on this thread is that during the hybrid period, GS CEO threw a fit when out in the Hamptons because some analyst (fairly junior role almost at the bottom) had the balls to go introduce themselves during a workday lunch at a restaurant. He couldn't articulate a specific, valid complaint like "I was out at a client lunch and they were goofing off" or "I was on a vacation day while they were supposed to be working". He was just mad that underlings had the same flexibility that he, as CEO, had always had. This being the same CEO who jets around DJing on the side for fun and has connections to do so at pretty high levels. So even the "cool CEO" is in fact, NOT cool. It's like getting mad at all the other idiots on the road making traffic, lol. What do you think you are?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- flandish 3y ago
  This example is a stark reminder that the complaints are most often not about details but about class. The CEO was upset others were allowed to perform as if they were of the same class. It’s always class when one boils it down, imho.
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    Precisely. He couldn't put it into words because the words wouldn't have looked good. But the obvious complaint was what are these slobs doing in my summer resort town, dining in the same establishment as me!! Rather than stuck in downtown Manhattan in the August heat. Or - the least they could do is go to Coney Island / Jones Beach / Jersey Shore or something eating some hotdogs.
    - gitfan86 3y ago
      I have not run into this attitude in tech from executives. Finance is much more of a heiracy culture I guess. I have run into this at a peer level though. I've negotiated WFH and extra vacation and have learned to keep it in the down low. They get mad at me, but I'm not the one that is their boss and I couldn't care less if they WFH.
rayiner 3y ago
> My vaguely populist take is that the pandemic, WFH/remote and hybrid gave the mass white collar class a taste of what the C-suite has had for years.. flexibility. That’s not populist at all. It’s just another example of the white collar class enjoying the benefits of technology and globalization while everyone else gets left behind: https://www.epi.org/blog/wage-inequality-continued-to-increase-in-2020-top-1-0-of-earners-see-wages-up-179-since-1979-while-share-of-wages-for-bottom-90-hits-new-low https://www.epi.org/blog/wage-inequality-continued-to-increa.... Before the pandemic, I already made a lot more money (as a lawyer) than my middle class neighbors. Now I also get to work from home three days a week, and get a lot more quality time with my kids, while they have to go to work every day because their jobs aren’t knowledge work. Obviously, management versus other white collar workers is one class dividing line that exists. But work from home is a good example if the fact that on many important dimensions, such as work conditions and generational mobility,[1] those groups are in the same class. [1] CEOs are obviously richer than say accountants of engineers. But in the US, CEOs largely come from the class of these white collar professionals. In that sense, they’re in the same class as most other societies understand the concept.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  You could argue its not populist but we can say its like 10% vs 1%. That said, some COVID era stats showed 50% of working population doing at least 1 day remote.. and 50% is pretty much right in the middle of middle class and fairly populist-ish? Something like 30%+ are still remote/hybrid today in 2023, so this isn't precisely an elite-only thing ..
- reaperducer 3y ago
  It’s just another example of the white collar class enjoying the benefits of technology and globalization while everyone else gets left behind There's a lot more to it than that. WFH has been a godsend for a millions of people who work full-time, but are also poor. I drove for Uber for a while when I was between jobs. The majority of the people I carted around were people who thought Uber was a godsend because they were too poor to save for a car, and Uber allowed them to have a job that didn't involve manual or skilled labor they couldn't perform. People like call center operators, and medical coders (which is not the same thing as computer coding), and other jobs that aren't suitable for machines, and often done in a cube farm. The pandemic sent all those people into WFH, and many of their companies found that the price of equipping their people with a laptop and headset was cheaper than paying rent on cubical space. Now those working poor can put the expense of Uber into saving for a car, or buying clothes for their children, or any of the assorted other things that people need every day. For millions of people, WFH is a helping hand out of poverty.
pc86 3y ago
I think the boiled frog is a perfect analogy. I grew up always assuming there would be a long commute. I couldn't afford to move out of my parents house for almost a year out of school in my first job (2008 making less than $30k/yr) so I spent 7 or 8 months driving an hour each way. I'm too young to remember but my dad spent the first few years of my life and several before that commuting 2 hours one way. Spending at least 30 minutes each way driving was just assumed.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  Yes, also the typical career cycle in HCOL areas is you are 22 and live in a dumpy apartment with roommates but close to work. You maybe couple up with someone by 30 and get a nicer place a bit further, but still within a 20-40min transit commute. Finally you maybe decide to start a family by 40, and move out to somewhere 40-60min commute, if not further. Each step is just a small increment worse. But when you go from remote back to the worst level, it's jarring. Objectively, transit has also gotten worse in some cities (NYC, DC) since COVID and still not recovered. So we are also returning to something worse than where we left it!
  - nequo 3y ago
    In what way is transit worse in NYC and DC? Are trains and buses running on a sparser schedule today in these two cities than they were before COVID?
    - pschw 3y ago
      In the case of the LIRR: https://gothamist.com/news/lirr-riders-still-miffed-over-jamaica-transfer-after-mta-tweaks-schedules-for-grand-central-madison https://gothamist.com/news/lirr-riders-still-miffed-over-jam... https://nypost.com/2023/03/06/hell-on-wheels-bklyn-shuttles-longer-trains-still-leave-lirr-riders-fuming/ https://nypost.com/2023/03/06/hell-on-wheels-bklyn-shuttles-...
    - steveBK123 3y ago
      Well DC I know they had some serious train defects that took trains/lines out of service for repairs for some time and caused capacity reductions. https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/09/22/metro-7000-series-silver-line/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/09/22/met... NYC they are running fewer trains so even if overall ridership is down, the trains are as crowded or more crowded than ever. Further in NYC due to homeless/migrant population growth falling through the cracks, the subway ends up being the shelter of last resort. Finally violent crime on the subway increased substantially over covid, and while down is still not at 2019 levels. So while waiting longer for a train, you are more likely to be dealing with a general sense of crime/disorder/etc.
Roark66 3y ago
>My vaguely populist take is that the pandemic, WFH/remote and hybrid gave the mass white collar class a taste of what the C-suite has had for years.. flexibility. Exactly. I've been working 100% from home since 2017 (3 years before covid). I'd rather take a 50% paycut than go back to the office. Don't get me wrong. I did enjoy my life when I lived 15 min walk /5 min on a bike, from my job in a city. Before I got that job and I had to commute for 20 min I enjoyed it too. But WFH beats that by a mile. I can live wherever I want (where cost of living is a lot cheaper than central London). I can just go down to my kitchen and make myself proper food any time (although I still miss certain of my favourite restaurants). And most importantly, I get a lot more time to myself and I'm much more effective at my work. There is no chance in hell people like me will "go back to the office". Furthermore, companies that recognised the benefits early are reaping the benefits. Even just one. Having an order of magnitude larger talent pool by not limiting themselves to people from one place. In today's marker that is characterised by permanent skilled labour shortage I can't imagine stupidest way to shoot ones company in the foot than trying to force people to "get back to the office".
- folkrav 3y ago
  I know I could get paid ~10-20% more somewhere else, but I stay where I am. I still make good money, I like my job and the people well enough, it's fully remote, and the quality of life of being able to take care of my 5yo son after/before school, and being present to see my expecting baby as he grows up in between meetings, instead of through messaging and photo share, is IMHO well worth the pay cut.
- rqtwteye 3y ago
  " I'd rather take a 50% paycut than go back to the office." People should stop saying this. Otherwise it will soon be the standard to take a serious paycut for WFH. .
  - coryfklein 3y ago
    Not with unemployment where it is. Instead it's more likely that companies will offer more money to software engineers to compensate for a must-commute policy.
ghaff 3y ago
In my experience, VP+ level also maybe spend half the year on the road and are commonly on 10pm calls with e.g. customers and general managers in Asia. Certainly they're usually well-compensated but they're not spending their days by the swimming pool in their villa either. I suspect that a lot of people reading this would hate the job even if they could do it well.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  Sure. I write this as someone who works 12-14hrs/day and sporadically over the weekend, but I do it all remote from home & am well compensated so I am happy with the trade. However - I think some of the CEO class defenders shouldn't delude themselves as to why these people have 5 homes. It is not because they take a paltry 15 days paid time off per year in which they use those homes. They have the flexibility to dictate their schedule, and they use that flexibility to be where they want, when they want. At one fund I worked they Dual-HQd NYC & Miami (plus they all keep a Greenwich footprint) so that some of the execs could sleep outside NY State for statutory 183 days/year and avoid NYS/NYC 10-15% income tax on high earners. Plus they maintained their country homes outside the city. If you make $5M/year, the 2nd/3rd/4th home start to pay for themselves with those economics. Sleep in Greenwich Friday to Tuesday. Monday work from CT office. Blade to midtown office Tuesday AM. Sleep in your condo Tuesday/Wednesday and then back to Greenwich Thursday night to work remote Friday. Next thing you know you're in Manhattan for a paltry 2 nights/week, maybe not even every week if you go do a Miami 2 weeks/month, or for majority of winter, etc.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  I would be thrilled to have a job I hated for $5M a year. I would only have to bear it a year and I could retire.
spaniard89277 3y ago
If I had a small-medium company I would hand out money for renting coworking spaces. If enough people do this, coworking spaces will pop up more and more and compete to get the best deals. People who wants to WFH can pocket the difference and those who crave for socialization will have a place for such. A large company can probably do that with smaller offices or with setting up the coworking spaces themselves and renting the spaces left without occupants.
- coffeebeqn 3y ago
  I don’t think people working from random coworking spaces solves the problems the execs imagine working from one office does
- euniceee3 3y ago
  100% this. Remote first company and there are two offices. We get more done with in-person casual conversations than formal meetings. Our velocity from the office is significantly higher. I wish some of the other teams shared offices a few days per week. The commute is not bad when they are localized due to the team members having worked together in the past.
- ghaff 3y ago
  And yet WeWork is probably going to end up out of business. Maybe if I didn't have any real estate footprint yet, I'd consider an all coworking spaces footprint. The more general problem is that, even if I were fine with driving into a local office, I probably wouldn't know anyone much less work with anyone there on a given day.
thatfrenchguy 3y ago
> US commuters might have had a boiled frog scenario where you slowly just get used to having a worse & worse commute as you age You never have to move to the exurbs though :)
- ghaff 3y ago
  I like the exurbs. And my closest office--which I haven't spent a day in for at least the past 5 years--is basically in an exurb as well. (I go into our urban office more frequently for customer visits.)
cowmix 3y ago
My wife works for a big university and when the first "return to the office" pitch was happening, the head of HR for the whole org was on a Zoom and basically said, "If you are not back at work, you should be already. I love coming into campus and mingling with the students..." etc, etc. RIGHT at the moment, you could hear FedEX ringing his doorbell at his home. Insane.
supergeek133 3y ago
This is actually a decent take. Most of our C-Suite doesn't live near an office. Or, to be specific WE MOVED HQ to where they wanted to live. We have other VPs and whatnot who live not near an office, or have winter/summer homes they go back and forth from. Meanwhile our mandatory "3 days a week in the office" starts September.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  Exactly. The guys who get to choose the office locations happen to choose ones that are good for the locations of their home(s). Also, a reminder that C-suite guys that have multiple homes do in fact actually use those multiple homes. How do they do so? They have flexibility!
- fbdab103 3y ago
  We installed a helicopter pad so our leadership could literally fly to/from his condo.
notyourwork 3y ago
This is a really good take. I have some experience with it though I'm not a C-Suite person. Over my 15 years of software engineering I've always had a job that had flexibility to let me work the way I wanted. Some offices and some buildings were worse than others but in general I was always able to set my hours, work from home or from a random place (i.e. coffee shop, park, mall, whatever) as I saw fit. There were always times I needed to be present in person and I never scoffed at those. What I found recently, is employers are trying to shift from one extreme (fully remote) to the other. I hope we land back in the middle because I'm happiest when no one tells me what to do. I want to be treated like an adult and measured on merit and performance, not physical attendance.
- esafak 3y ago
  That's because it's the worst of both worlds. If you have to go into a particular office you are still geographically chained. Hybrid only makes sense if you can go to an office that is near you; e.g., a coworking space.
mlinhares 3y ago
100% this. In most places I worked the C-levels were not in the office most of the time, when there were multiple offices they would mostly visit the ones closer to their homes and for the usual "weekly/monthly conversations with c-levels" they'd be at their homes or second homes zooming in. One remote work hater I really like to listen to is Scott Galloway, that keeps on harping that remote work is horrible but doesn't even live in the same country where he's running his business anymore. Flexibility for me but not for thee.
lumost 3y ago
My 2 cents, companies are effectively asking to increase working hours by 5-10 hours per week for most workers assuming a 30-60 minute commute each way. Many employers will try lure workers away from the office with remote work. These firms may offset any hypothetical productivity costs with lower wages. Some engineers will prioritize remote for the larger employer pool, and others will prioritize in-person for greater social connection. We'll see what happens in 20 years. But my money is on a resurgence of the rural village and a lot of empty office towers.
jasmer 3y ago
[dead]
alexpotato 3y ago
> I was listening to a podcast and they observed that US commuters might have had a boiled frog scenario where you slowly just get used to having a worse & worse commute as you age.. and COVID snapped everyone out of it cold turkey. Now attempting to go back to it is revolting for many. This is a key part of the discussion. Pre-covid, I spent ~90 minutes one way to get to the office (this included a transfer from train to subway + 10 minute walk) and used to do it every day. At the time, I thought nothing of it since it was time to read/write code/watch a movie etc. Now, I find it hard to imagine I spent ~3 hours/day commuting but part of me also misses the time to myself but it's balanced out by seeing the kids more etc.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

[flagged]

rwmj 3y ago
He didn't say it wasn't a difficult job, just that the C-suite were always able to work flexibly, and afford to have a second flat next to the office (or in extreme cases, force the office to move near to their homes).
- pc86 3y ago
  Not replying to you but the above comment got flagged before I responded and I already typed the comment up so I want to post it :) -- If we're specifically talking about large enterprises, these CEOs make more in a year than most Americans make their entire life. If you didn't live a Fortune 1000 CEO level lifestyle you could literally do the job for 4-6 months and retire, and that's ignoring the fact that they've typically been in the C-Suite making 20-50% of that salary for decades already. It's not often somebody living paycheck to paycheck is promoted into CEO. I've worked jobs in public companies where the CEO and half the C-Suite was driven to work every morning. I've worked jobs where a rank and file programmer got denied a raise because he left at 4 every day (despite working 8 or more hours every day) because the policy was to work 8-5, while the CEO worked from a vacation home when the weather wasn't nice where our HQ was. Whether the job is hard is irrelevant, all the GP is saying is that you have ultimate flexibility in that role, and now the poors have a taste of it too, and most of them/us aren't going to give it up without a fight.

steveBK123 3y ago

My favorite story on this thread is that during the hybrid period, GS CEO threw a fit when out in the Hamptons because some analyst (fairly junior role almost at the bottom) had the balls to go introduce themselves during a workday lunch at a restaurant. He couldn't articulate a specific, valid complaint like "I was out at a client lunch and they were goofing off" or "I was on a vacation day while they were supposed to be working". He was just mad that underlings had the same flexibility that he, as CEO, had always had. This being the same CEO who jets around DJing on the side for fun and has connections to do so at pretty high levels. So even the "cool CEO" is in fact, NOT cool. It's like getting mad at all the other idiots on the road making traffic, lol. What do you think you are?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
flandish 3y ago
This example is a stark reminder that the complaints are most often not about details but about class. The CEO was upset others were allowed to perform as if they were of the same class. It’s always class when one boils it down, imho.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  Precisely. He couldn't put it into words because the words wouldn't have looked good. But the obvious complaint was what are these slobs doing in my summer resort town, dining in the same establishment as me!! Rather than stuck in downtown Manhattan in the August heat. Or - the least they could do is go to Coney Island / Jones Beach / Jersey Shore or something eating some hotdogs.
  - gitfan86 3y ago
    I have not run into this attitude in tech from executives. Finance is much more of a heiracy culture I guess. I have run into this at a peer level though. I've negotiated WFH and extra vacation and have learned to keep it in the down low. They get mad at me, but I'm not the one that is their boss and I couldn't care less if they WFH.

rayiner 3y ago

> My vaguely populist take is that the pandemic, WFH/remote and hybrid gave the mass white collar class a taste of what the C-suite has had for years.. flexibility. That’s not populist at all. It’s just another example of the white collar class enjoying the benefits of technology and globalization while everyone else gets left behind: https://www.epi.org/blog/wage-inequality-continued-to-increase-in-2020-top-1-0-of-earners-see-wages-up-179-since-1979-while-share-of-wages-for-bottom-90-hits-new-low https://www.epi.org/blog/wage-inequality-continued-to-increa.... Before the pandemic, I already made a lot more money (as a lawyer) than my middle class neighbors. Now I also get to work from home three days a week, and get a lot more quality time with my kids, while they have to go to work every day because their jobs aren’t knowledge work. Obviously, management versus other white collar workers is one class dividing line that exists. But work from home is a good example if the fact that on many important dimensions, such as work conditions and generational mobility,[1] those groups are in the same class. [1] CEOs are obviously richer than say accountants of engineers. But in the US, CEOs largely come from the class of these white collar professionals. In that sense, they’re in the same class as most other societies understand the concept.

steveBK123 3y ago
You could argue its not populist but we can say its like 10% vs 1%. That said, some COVID era stats showed 50% of working population doing at least 1 day remote.. and 50% is pretty much right in the middle of middle class and fairly populist-ish? Something like 30%+ are still remote/hybrid today in 2023, so this isn't precisely an elite-only thing ..
reaperducer 3y ago
It’s just another example of the white collar class enjoying the benefits of technology and globalization while everyone else gets left behind There's a lot more to it than that. WFH has been a godsend for a millions of people who work full-time, but are also poor. I drove for Uber for a while when I was between jobs. The majority of the people I carted around were people who thought Uber was a godsend because they were too poor to save for a car, and Uber allowed them to have a job that didn't involve manual or skilled labor they couldn't perform. People like call center operators, and medical coders (which is not the same thing as computer coding), and other jobs that aren't suitable for machines, and often done in a cube farm. The pandemic sent all those people into WFH, and many of their companies found that the price of equipping their people with a laptop and headset was cheaper than paying rent on cubical space. Now those working poor can put the expense of Uber into saving for a car, or buying clothes for their children, or any of the assorted other things that people need every day. For millions of people, WFH is a helping hand out of poverty.

pc86 3y ago

I think the boiled frog is a perfect analogy. I grew up always assuming there would be a long commute. I couldn't afford to move out of my parents house for almost a year out of school in my first job (2008 making less than $30k/yr) so I spent 7 or 8 months driving an hour each way. I'm too young to remember but my dad spent the first few years of my life and several before that commuting 2 hours one way. Spending at least 30 minutes each way driving was just assumed.

steveBK123 3y ago
Yes, also the typical career cycle in HCOL areas is you are 22 and live in a dumpy apartment with roommates but close to work. You maybe couple up with someone by 30 and get a nicer place a bit further, but still within a 20-40min transit commute. Finally you maybe decide to start a family by 40, and move out to somewhere 40-60min commute, if not further. Each step is just a small increment worse. But when you go from remote back to the worst level, it's jarring. Objectively, transit has also gotten worse in some cities (NYC, DC) since COVID and still not recovered. So we are also returning to something worse than where we left it!
- nequo 3y ago
  In what way is transit worse in NYC and DC? Are trains and buses running on a sparser schedule today in these two cities than they were before COVID?
  - pschw 3y ago
    In the case of the LIRR: https://gothamist.com/news/lirr-riders-still-miffed-over-jamaica-transfer-after-mta-tweaks-schedules-for-grand-central-madison https://gothamist.com/news/lirr-riders-still-miffed-over-jam... https://nypost.com/2023/03/06/hell-on-wheels-bklyn-shuttles-longer-trains-still-leave-lirr-riders-fuming/ https://nypost.com/2023/03/06/hell-on-wheels-bklyn-shuttles-...
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    Well DC I know they had some serious train defects that took trains/lines out of service for repairs for some time and caused capacity reductions. https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/09/22/metro-7000-series-silver-line/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/09/22/met... NYC they are running fewer trains so even if overall ridership is down, the trains are as crowded or more crowded than ever. Further in NYC due to homeless/migrant population growth falling through the cracks, the subway ends up being the shelter of last resort. Finally violent crime on the subway increased substantially over covid, and while down is still not at 2019 levels. So while waiting longer for a train, you are more likely to be dealing with a general sense of crime/disorder/etc.

Roark66 3y ago

>My vaguely populist take is that the pandemic, WFH/remote and hybrid gave the mass white collar class a taste of what the C-suite has had for years.. flexibility. Exactly. I've been working 100% from home since 2017 (3 years before covid). I'd rather take a 50% paycut than go back to the office. Don't get me wrong. I did enjoy my life when I lived 15 min walk /5 min on a bike, from my job in a city. Before I got that job and I had to commute for 20 min I enjoyed it too. But WFH beats that by a mile. I can live wherever I want (where cost of living is a lot cheaper than central London). I can just go down to my kitchen and make myself proper food any time (although I still miss certain of my favourite restaurants). And most importantly, I get a lot more time to myself and I'm much more effective at my work. There is no chance in hell people like me will "go back to the office". Furthermore, companies that recognised the benefits early are reaping the benefits. Even just one. Having an order of magnitude larger talent pool by not limiting themselves to people from one place. In today's marker that is characterised by permanent skilled labour shortage I can't imagine stupidest way to shoot ones company in the foot than trying to force people to "get back to the office".

folkrav 3y ago
I know I could get paid ~10-20% more somewhere else, but I stay where I am. I still make good money, I like my job and the people well enough, it's fully remote, and the quality of life of being able to take care of my 5yo son after/before school, and being present to see my expecting baby as he grows up in between meetings, instead of through messaging and photo share, is IMHO well worth the pay cut.
rqtwteye 3y ago
" I'd rather take a 50% paycut than go back to the office." People should stop saying this. Otherwise it will soon be the standard to take a serious paycut for WFH. .
- coryfklein 3y ago
  Not with unemployment where it is. Instead it's more likely that companies will offer more money to software engineers to compensate for a must-commute policy.

ghaff 3y ago

In my experience, VP+ level also maybe spend half the year on the road and are commonly on 10pm calls with e.g. customers and general managers in Asia. Certainly they're usually well-compensated but they're not spending their days by the swimming pool in their villa either. I suspect that a lot of people reading this would hate the job even if they could do it well.

steveBK123 3y ago
Sure. I write this as someone who works 12-14hrs/day and sporadically over the weekend, but I do it all remote from home & am well compensated so I am happy with the trade. However - I think some of the CEO class defenders shouldn't delude themselves as to why these people have 5 homes. It is not because they take a paltry 15 days paid time off per year in which they use those homes. They have the flexibility to dictate their schedule, and they use that flexibility to be where they want, when they want. At one fund I worked they Dual-HQd NYC & Miami (plus they all keep a Greenwich footprint) so that some of the execs could sleep outside NY State for statutory 183 days/year and avoid NYS/NYC 10-15% income tax on high earners. Plus they maintained their country homes outside the city. If you make $5M/year, the 2nd/3rd/4th home start to pay for themselves with those economics. Sleep in Greenwich Friday to Tuesday. Monday work from CT office. Blade to midtown office Tuesday AM. Sleep in your condo Tuesday/Wednesday and then back to Greenwich Thursday night to work remote Friday. Next thing you know you're in Manhattan for a paltry 2 nights/week, maybe not even every week if you go do a Miami 2 weeks/month, or for majority of winter, etc.
ryandrake 3y ago
I would be thrilled to have a job I hated for $5M a year. I would only have to bear it a year and I could retire.

spaniard89277 3y ago

If I had a small-medium company I would hand out money for renting coworking spaces. If enough people do this, coworking spaces will pop up more and more and compete to get the best deals. People who wants to WFH can pocket the difference and those who crave for socialization will have a place for such. A large company can probably do that with smaller offices or with setting up the coworking spaces themselves and renting the spaces left without occupants.

coffeebeqn 3y ago
I don’t think people working from random coworking spaces solves the problems the execs imagine working from one office does
euniceee3 3y ago
100% this. Remote first company and there are two offices. We get more done with in-person casual conversations than formal meetings. Our velocity from the office is significantly higher. I wish some of the other teams shared offices a few days per week. The commute is not bad when they are localized due to the team members having worked together in the past.
ghaff 3y ago
And yet WeWork is probably going to end up out of business. Maybe if I didn't have any real estate footprint yet, I'd consider an all coworking spaces footprint. The more general problem is that, even if I were fine with driving into a local office, I probably wouldn't know anyone much less work with anyone there on a given day.

thatfrenchguy 3y ago

> US commuters might have had a boiled frog scenario where you slowly just get used to having a worse & worse commute as you age You never have to move to the exurbs though :)

ghaff 3y ago
I like the exurbs. And my closest office--which I haven't spent a day in for at least the past 5 years--is basically in an exurb as well. (I go into our urban office more frequently for customer visits.)

cowmix 3y ago

My wife works for a big university and when the first "return to the office" pitch was happening, the head of HR for the whole org was on a Zoom and basically said, "If you are not back at work, you should be already. I love coming into campus and mingling with the students..." etc, etc. RIGHT at the moment, you could hear FedEX ringing his doorbell at his home. Insane.

supergeek133 3y ago

This is actually a decent take. Most of our C-Suite doesn't live near an office. Or, to be specific WE MOVED HQ to where they wanted to live. We have other VPs and whatnot who live not near an office, or have winter/summer homes they go back and forth from. Meanwhile our mandatory "3 days a week in the office" starts September.

steveBK123 3y ago
Exactly. The guys who get to choose the office locations happen to choose ones that are good for the locations of their home(s). Also, a reminder that C-suite guys that have multiple homes do in fact actually use those multiple homes. How do they do so? They have flexibility!
fbdab103 3y ago
We installed a helicopter pad so our leadership could literally fly to/from his condo.

notyourwork 3y ago

This is a really good take. I have some experience with it though I'm not a C-Suite person. Over my 15 years of software engineering I've always had a job that had flexibility to let me work the way I wanted. Some offices and some buildings were worse than others but in general I was always able to set my hours, work from home or from a random place (i.e. coffee shop, park, mall, whatever) as I saw fit. There were always times I needed to be present in person and I never scoffed at those. What I found recently, is employers are trying to shift from one extreme (fully remote) to the other. I hope we land back in the middle because I'm happiest when no one tells me what to do. I want to be treated like an adult and measured on merit and performance, not physical attendance.

esafak 3y ago
That's because it's the worst of both worlds. If you have to go into a particular office you are still geographically chained. Hybrid only makes sense if you can go to an office that is near you; e.g., a coworking space.

mlinhares 3y ago

100% this. In most places I worked the C-levels were not in the office most of the time, when there were multiple offices they would mostly visit the ones closer to their homes and for the usual "weekly/monthly conversations with c-levels" they'd be at their homes or second homes zooming in. One remote work hater I really like to listen to is Scott Galloway, that keeps on harping that remote work is horrible but doesn't even live in the same country where he's running his business anymore. Flexibility for me but not for thee.

lumost 3y ago

My 2 cents, companies are effectively asking to increase working hours by 5-10 hours per week for most workers assuming a 30-60 minute commute each way. Many employers will try lure workers away from the office with remote work. These firms may offset any hypothetical productivity costs with lower wages. Some engineers will prioritize remote for the larger employer pool, and others will prioritize in-person for greater social connection. We'll see what happens in 20 years. But my money is on a resurgence of the rural village and a lot of empty office towers.

jasmer 3y ago

[dead]

alexpotato 3y ago

> I was listening to a podcast and they observed that US commuters might have had a boiled frog scenario where you slowly just get used to having a worse & worse commute as you age.. and COVID snapped everyone out of it cold turkey. Now attempting to go back to it is revolting for many. This is a key part of the discussion. Pre-covid, I spent ~90 minutes one way to get to the office (this included a transfer from train to subway + 10 minute walk) and used to do it every day. At the time, I thought nothing of it since it was time to read/write code/watch a movie etc. Now, I find it hard to imagine I spent ~3 hours/day commuting but part of me also misses the time to myself but it's balanced out by seeing the kids more etc.