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> I think the plan was to create a poor labor market so they could demand RTO. If we hit a major recession and unemployment spikes, corporations will be lookin

> I think the plan was to create a poor labor market so they could demand RTO. If we hit a major recession and unemployment spikes, corporations will be looking to downsize everywhere, including jettisoning more office space. And the Fed jacking up interest rates and trying to cap inflation and wage inflation is just what the Fed does, they're not caring about RTO. Volker didn't jack rates up in 1980 to force workers back into the office. There may be mangers/executives cheerleading all this, along with the cuts to headcount in tech, because they personally think that it'll result in RTO. But if the economy actually blows up then CFOs and boards will be telling them to cut costs everywhere and offices are a huge sink of money.

lamontcg 3y ago
To reply to myself: I guess I should say that what the Fed is doing is class warfare and a major unspoken reason for what they're doing is to remove bargaining power from the workers. They would be more concerned about pay and breaking the back of union organizing if they thought and talked about it more clearly. But they don't consciously talk about class warfare, they've got terms of art they use to talk about it like "2% inflation target" which is nice and ambiguous. However, "removing bargaining power from workers" is certainly a large enough bucket to stuff "remote work" into it as well. So they certainly do want to remove bargaining power, and some managers will think it'll be effective at enforcing RTO, but it isn't clear to me that the crude mechanism they've got will actually result in that. All they can really do is run the economy into a wall. The exact way that it breaks will depend on the push/pull of desperate workers willing to take office jobs again vs. desperate CFOs wanting to get out of office leases and crashing commercial real estate. The real driving force is just reducing worker bargaining power around pay and benfits and organizing though. The effect on remote work vs. RTO will have to play out to see how it happens. My own personal bet is that the cat is out of the bag when it comes to remote work, and that a recession will cause more companies to re-embrace full time remote work to cut costs to survive and flourish. And current RTO companies may start looking at their commercial office properties as massive boat anchors.

lamontcg 3y ago

To reply to myself: I guess I should say that what the Fed is doing is class warfare and a major unspoken reason for what they're doing is to remove bargaining power from the workers. They would be more concerned about pay and breaking the back of union organizing if they thought and talked about it more clearly. But they don't consciously talk about class warfare, they've got terms of art they use to talk about it like "2% inflation target" which is nice and ambiguous. However, "removing bargaining power from workers" is certainly a large enough bucket to stuff "remote work" into it as well. So they certainly do want to remove bargaining power, and some managers will think it'll be effective at enforcing RTO, but it isn't clear to me that the crude mechanism they've got will actually result in that. All they can really do is run the economy into a wall. The exact way that it breaks will depend on the push/pull of desperate workers willing to take office jobs again vs. desperate CFOs wanting to get out of office leases and crashing commercial real estate. The real driving force is just reducing worker bargaining power around pay and benfits and organizing though. The effect on remote work vs. RTO will have to play out to see how it happens. My own personal bet is that the cat is out of the bag when it comes to remote work, and that a recession will cause more companies to re-embrace full time remote work to cut costs to survive and flourish. And current RTO companies may start looking at their commercial office properties as massive boat anchors.