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> My guess is that most employers really have no way to measure if an employee is being productive or not so managers are just reporting what makes them look go
by mkl95 3y ago
> My guess is that most employers really have no way to measure if an employee is being productive or not so managers are just reporting what makes them look good...and now we are back to where managers will look better with lots of people running around the office.
My guess is that CEOs and VCs have some obscure reason to force people back into the office. Perhaps related to real estate, especially considering how hard to sell it is and how much higher the interest rates are. Middle management will typically eat up whatever narrative C-level feeds them.
- rabuse 3y agoI honestly think it's mostly a huge ego boost to flex with. "Look at how GIANT our new billion dollar HQ is, and look at all of these people working for ME!"
- nine_zeros 3y ago> I honestly think it's mostly a huge ego boost to flex with. "Look at how GIANT our new billion dollar HQ is, and look at all of these people working for ME!" This may sound like a joke but having gleaming, globally distributed offices is absolutely is a matter of great pride and ego for the C-Suite. They absolutely fantasize about how they are jet setting from one office to another and how all the employees roll a red carpet for them.
- AtlasBarfed 3y agoAnd of course the mountains of deductions and balance sheet games you can play with a lot of real estate. We already know the C-suite is oligarchical in nature with wage suppression in Silicon Valley, so we know they meet and communication. And things like corporate real estate is garden variety MBA stuff that these guys can freely talk about at the get-togethers. Not having employees in buildings means those buildings aren't really worth anything. A collapse in the value of office space is something none of these companies want. It would impact share price, options, and executive pay, because these things are 30-50 year investments at a minimum.
- MBCook 3y agoDon’t forget that a lot of offices are leased for many years or even purchased/built. Do you know what looks REALLY bad? A giant fancy office with five people in it. Better force people to fill it up. We are stuck, we spent the money, can’t have it look bad.
- ekianjo 3y agoWho cares what it looks like. Sunk cost fallacy
- MBCook 3y agoExecutives who dream of big fancy offices? Workers certainly don’t.
- ornornor 3y agoMaybe they could hire all these movie extras who will soon be replaced by AI generated alter egos and be out of work? Everybody wins: extras get to not be homeless and pay their bills, companies look busier than ever, extras can act whatever fantasy management wants to show off, offices have some kind of purpose again, we get to work wherever we like and do actual work… What’s not to like?
- dragonwriter 3y agoEven if your firm isn’t exposed to real estate, its probable that a lot if its shareholders are and are interested in ending the slump in commercial real estate. Plus, while the overall employment situation is strong, the tech downsizing wave may not be over and if you can get people to self-select out, you can maybe avoid having to officially have layoffs.
- generic92034 3y ago> Plus, while the overall employment situation is strong, the tech downsizing wave may not be over and if you can get people to self-select out, you can maybe avoid having to officially have layoffs. Are you sure announcing layoffs hurts share prices? I mean, companies only recently were doing it while still being highly profitable.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> Are you sure announcing layoffs hurts share prices? I'm relatively sure losing people without severance and without WARN Act and similar notice issues, is easier on the financials for the same number of positions cut than the alternative.
- generic92034 3y agoSo why did SV companies fire a lot of employees recently, if the severance and WARN act outweigh the positive impact on the share prices?
- dragonwriter 3y ago> So why did SV companies fire a lot of employees recently, if the severance and WARN act outweigh the positive impact on the share prices? I didn’t say they did. I said that if you can get people to leave voluntarily, that’s better for the financials. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t conditions where the best available option (from a serving the shareholders perspective) is layoffs. Just that, ceteris paribus, its better to shed the headcount without the added costs imposed by layoffs; the benefit (when there is a benefit) of layoffs is reducing the headcount, not bearing the severance, WARN Act compliance, and other costs particular to layoffs.
- ajkjk 3y agoI doubt that very much. Most likely it's because unlike before, in WFH when nothing is happening it feels like there's nothing they can do about it.
- also23throwaway 3y agoIn my company’s case, RTO is because of tax cut deals with the city/state. They need butts in seats to maximize profit after taxes, so they are passing the cost onto their employees.
- ghaff 3y agoThat's one of the few non-productivity/collaboration/etc. rationales that may actually make some sense. States (e.g. NH and MA) have had tiffs because workers living out of state are no longer commuting into an office and are no longer paying income tax to the state they used to commute to as a result. I'm sure there are many local cases where there was some agreement about creating jobs in some town which have been essentially thrown out the window now that very few people are actually working in that town except maybe on paper.
- hamburglar 3y agoI’ve heard this “tax impact / tax break” idea floated as a theory about what’s going on, but if municipalities are putting that type of pressure on companies, shouldn’t we see some concrete evidence of it? What is the actual mechanism by which such force is being applied? I have a little bit of a hard time believing that such large company policies are frequently being set based on deals that we have no actual evidence of. Is there actual evidence that I just haven’t seen?
- lacrimacida 3y agoThat and wouldn’t the saved rent expenses offset those taxes anyway? Second companies would have the freedom to move the main location freely to cities/states with lower taxes.
- PeterStuer 3y agoNot obscure at all. They are also invested in all the other lucrative service businesses that feed and clean and move and supply all those offices. And then there's the leases on the office buildings they own that are under threat etc etc.
- berkes 3y agoThe article mentions "sunken cost [fallacy]" as a driver to fill the offices again. Where office space is paid for, and hence has to be filled or else this investment is wasted.
- spacemadness 3y agoHN keeps telling me it’s sunk cost and it’s not real estate so stop saying that. Then this article also mentions it’s real estate. Guess what HN? It’s partly real estate costs and having few people fill those spaces.
- ngneer 3y agoI heard a story of high up executives stepping into an Uber, only to discover that the driver was actually an employee for their firm.