7 ms·

The clear agenda divide across different media platforms is interesting. WSJ, Fortune, FT, all fall along the same line with opinions about all the cons of rem

The clear agenda divide across different media platforms is interesting. WSJ, Fortune, FT, all fall along the same line with opinions about all the cons of remote work, or all the virtues of RTO. Whilst most online only newspapers fall along the opposite end of the spectrum. Seems like a topic where everyone has made up their mind and will only accept data if it aligns with their world view.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
outside1234 3y ago
Or it is almost like the people they advertise to have a vested interest in RTO. It is sort of like how you see all sorts of segments about "the hydrogen economy" on Fox News as if they live in some bizzaro world there are more than two hydrogen cars out there. It's because the natural gas folks want hydrogen vs. electric and are paying to advertise it.
geodel 3y ago
Makes sense. All financial newspapers are usually located in same downtown where financial or other firms are occupying huge buildings. And so are city halls and other utils. So CEOs and real estate firms would be giving far more interviews to WSJ and FT about virtues of coming to office.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Lets not mince words. CEOs and other folks in that same class certainly get together in person and online discussing these efforts (amongst other topics they're optimizing for of course). "It's a big club, and you ain't in it." -- George Carlin
  - geodel 3y ago
    No, I totally agree. I just wouldn't use cabal or conspiracy because it is happening in broad daylight.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      Fair, agreed.
dimitrios1 3y ago
Nothing to do with the media platforms, and everything to do with commercial property owners and commercial real estate. Commercial real estate has big influence in this country and they won't go down without a fight. Media platforms are just shills for whoever is giving them most of their money.
chadash 3y ago
I don't understand why there has to be such a divide. There can be a world where some companies are remote and it's a competitive advantage (ability to recruit from a wider pool of people) and other companies that are in-person and that's a competitive advantage (better social dynamics among employees, easier collaboration in certain ways). I personally like working in person. And I completely understand people who like working remote. I think it's great that we've gotten to a point where people can pick and choose what is best for them!
- michaelcampbell 3y ago
  > I think it's great that we've gotten to a point where people can pick and choose what is best for them! They often can't, though. Companies change policies after being hired (mine did), the job market is hard (my son has had his start date pushed back 2x now for a total of over a year), and a lot of time this "choice" of job is not in a context you can deal with. I want to go into the office, but I'd have to move to do it. I want to WFH, but I can't find anyone to hire me for the $ I need to live where I do. Moving isn't an option for many.
  - danaris 3y ago
    This is why it's good that we're finally starting to see a resurgence of support for labor power, and a wave of unionization.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Those are all reasons why things will take time. And in the transition period a fair number of people won't be very happy with their situation (which is often the case anyway).
    - michaelcampbell 3y ago
      > > we've gotten to a point where people can pick and choose what is best for them! > Those are all reasons why things will take time. These 2 things are at odds, which is why I posted. I agree with you, but we're not "at a point"... yet. GP might be, and to some degree I am too, but this is hardly universal nor even as widespread as GP posits.
jerf 3y ago
Not just worldview... there's a lot of money at stake. Providing office space is effectively an entire industry, so an entire industry is at stake here. And then that industry has financial derivatives on top of it, so the financial industry has a lot of incentive to get people back in offices so supply goes down and prices can go back up. There's a lot of money available to PR-submarine articles about the virtues of back-to-office. I'm surprised we don't see much, much more.
- Workaccount2 3y ago
  This take is so common and so bizarre to me. Executives at companies do not give a fuck about the landlords of their buildings. It's an annoying expense that they complain about. They idea that they are working together to make sure the real estate firm has a tenant is so hilariously detached. It's akin to saying that apartment renters care immensely about their landlords to the point of going out of their way to keep paying them rent. Its a total and complete fiction.
  - dataduck 3y ago
    No, it's akin to saying landlords care about the occupancy of their buildings and their tenants paying rent. Of course they do, and of course they're prepared to use media influence to try and make that happen.
    - Workaccount2 3y ago
      Of course they care. But no tenant really cares that they care. Execs will look at the numbers. Renting is very expensive and eats up a large chunk revenue. So if you are going to keep paying rent and maintaining an office, you better have a good explanation for investors other than "Our landlord will be upset". I'm sure plenty of CEOs are falling over themselves to mislead the board on rental costs so that they can protect their 2% portfolio stake in some random commercial REIT. Totally logical here.... /s
  - chownie 3y ago
    ‎
tivert 3y ago
> Seems like a topic where everyone has made up their mind and will only accept data if it aligns with their world view. I'm kind of between both camps. I actually like in-office work, but the combination of 1) facilities pursuing bad office plans (open-offices, hot desking) and 2) the rise of remote work and distributed teams makes RTO pretty unappealing. Co-located in-office work also makes me feel a lot more secure. It's much harder to form social bonds remotely, which makes you much more isolated and replaceable. Remote work pretty ruthlessly cuts away all relationships except direct working relationships, and even makes those much flatter and less warm. It's easier for a higher up to fire someone they don't know, and fewer of your peers will care or even notice if you leave. Also, here's your daily reminder that an offshore job is a remote job, so once you're no longer in an office you've removed a big speed bump for replacing you.
- ghaff 3y ago
  As someone who has been effectively remote for a long time, I actually sort of agree with you. To the degree that an office is very hybrid, remote people will often be somewhat marginalized while the environment for in-person will naturally use things like hot desking and a lot of people won't just be there. Some of this can probably be mitigated (and large companies always had people in a lot of different locations).
  - tivert 3y ago
    > Some of this can probably be mitigated (and large companies always had people in a lot of different locations). They always have, but I think the key mistake is smearing a single team across different locations. Once you do that, or start doing that habitually, you've completely undermined whatever benefits you think your organization will get from RTO. IMHO, if you really want to RTO, you need to co-locate all team members (and reorganize teams to make that happen), and ideally co-locate closely collaborating teams.
- surajrmal 3y ago
  Every time I go into the office (very rarely) I understand the benefits of going in. Having 1:1s in person is night and day different than having it over video. Lunch discussions really help with sending subtle messages which you might not do in more structured meetings. Moving around is probably also healthier for me than staying still constantly in my home office. That said my team is distributed across 5 offices and it would be unfair to some of them if I went in, so staying home levels the playing field. I'm also far more productive in many ways (no commute, no running between meeting rooms, ability to multitask during meetings, etc). If my entire immediate team was in a single location I don't think I could get away with not going in despite the tradeoffs.
jyunwai 3y ago
As a reader of the Financial Times, I haven't seen a bias for or against remote working with its articles. The FT articles on remote work can be found listed at: https://www.ft.com/search?sort=relevance&q=remote+work https://www.ft.com/search?sort=relevance&q=remote+work Long-time columnist Simon Kuper's column [1] published on September 21 was in favour of working from home, with the position: "Homeworking is not just a corporate issue, it’s a chance to create a better society." Another article from columnist Sarah O'Connor published in May 2023 [2] argues that "More flexibility has improved work-life balance for many since the pandemic began." Though the FT has also featured opinions in favour of more in-person office time (such as a podcast [3] featuring an interview of a professor who speaks about the benefits of in-person work), there is no clear bias for or against remote work from the search results. To sum up the search results: there are opinion articles in favour of remote work, news articles about major companies ending work-from-home with quotes from executives who favour in-person work, and articles that report on the benefits of hybrid working arrangements. For the FT, I've seen a diversity of opinion, without any clear effort to sway the readership one way or another about the issue. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/74b43b83-1af1-4045-9bd1-15fc8556972d https://www.ft.com/content/74b43b83-1af1-4045-9bd1-15fc85569... [2] https://www.ft.com/content/44e81232-9b25-4f4a-91ab-4462978dc204 https://www.ft.com/content/44e81232-9b25-4f4a-91ab-4462978dc... [3] https://www.ft.com/content/b35e3643-de04-4a0e-ae4a-c0f2db6b5e27 https://www.ft.com/content/b35e3643-de04-4a0e-ae4a-c0f2db6b5...
LanguageGamer 3y ago
The average income of FT readers is £221k [0] and the average income of WSJ readers is $234k [1]. I'm guessing the average reader of most online only newspapers is closer to the US median of $74k [2]. These readers belong to different economic classes with different financial interests, so the agenda divide is not surprising! [0] https://commercial.ft.com/our-products/financial-times/ https://commercial.ft.com/our-products/financial-times/ [1] https://abcnews.go.com/Business/IndustryInfo/story?id=3421988&page=1 https://abcnews.go.com/Business/IndustryInfo/story?id=342198... [2] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-279.html https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-27...
LanceH 3y ago
Fortune in particular has been maddening over the years. I keep seeing articles about how interviewees aren't professional in the interview process. I've never seen them mention that this is a learned behavior from how they are being treated in interviews. To be fair, they may be better now. It's been years since I've read a Fortune article.
asdajksah2123 3y ago
I can't search the WSJ or FT due to paywalls, but searching Fortune.come other than the straight news (Amazon executive threatens promotions will be blocked) all the top 5 or so articles I saw are about RTO being challenging.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
linza 3y ago
I found I'm ok with the divide. Both can coexist and in our case it works. I manage people and anecdotally I see engineers having collectively more output if they are in the office, and they do grow in seniority on average. The remote folks produce sum-of-its-parts impact and do well, but grow slower and not as much. More senior folks really benefit from WFH, they have similar performance, but I as the manager of the team miss out on a senior person training the junior folks. We don't offer remote positions for junior candidates.
zer0tonin 3y ago
We must not be reading the same FT. They publish at least an article a month to say that remote work is great and there to stay.
_teyd 3y ago
I mean, it's obvious right? We are surrounded by all this garbage open source software that proves that people who aren't physically proximate cannot possibly build anything valuable, much less without the warm steady micromanaging hand of middle management. /s

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

outside1234 3y ago

Or it is almost like the people they advertise to have a vested interest in RTO. It is sort of like how you see all sorts of segments about "the hydrogen economy" on Fox News as if they live in some bizzaro world there are more than two hydrogen cars out there. It's because the natural gas folks want hydrogen vs. electric and are paying to advertise it.

geodel 3y ago

Makes sense. All financial newspapers are usually located in same downtown where financial or other firms are occupying huge buildings. And so are city halls and other utils. So CEOs and real estate firms would be giving far more interviews to WSJ and FT about virtues of coming to office.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
Lets not mince words. CEOs and other folks in that same class certainly get together in person and online discussing these efforts (amongst other topics they're optimizing for of course). "It's a big club, and you ain't in it." -- George Carlin
- geodel 3y ago
  No, I totally agree. I just wouldn't use cabal or conspiracy because it is happening in broad daylight.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Fair, agreed.

dimitrios1 3y ago

Nothing to do with the media platforms, and everything to do with commercial property owners and commercial real estate. Commercial real estate has big influence in this country and they won't go down without a fight. Media platforms are just shills for whoever is giving them most of their money.

chadash 3y ago

I don't understand why there has to be such a divide. There can be a world where some companies are remote and it's a competitive advantage (ability to recruit from a wider pool of people) and other companies that are in-person and that's a competitive advantage (better social dynamics among employees, easier collaboration in certain ways). I personally like working in person. And I completely understand people who like working remote. I think it's great that we've gotten to a point where people can pick and choose what is best for them!

michaelcampbell 3y ago
> I think it's great that we've gotten to a point where people can pick and choose what is best for them! They often can't, though. Companies change policies after being hired (mine did), the job market is hard (my son has had his start date pushed back 2x now for a total of over a year), and a lot of time this "choice" of job is not in a context you can deal with. I want to go into the office, but I'd have to move to do it. I want to WFH, but I can't find anyone to hire me for the $ I need to live where I do. Moving isn't an option for many.
- danaris 3y ago
  This is why it's good that we're finally starting to see a resurgence of support for labor power, and a wave of unionization.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Those are all reasons why things will take time. And in the transition period a fair number of people won't be very happy with their situation (which is often the case anyway).
  - michaelcampbell 3y ago
    > > we've gotten to a point where people can pick and choose what is best for them! > Those are all reasons why things will take time. These 2 things are at odds, which is why I posted. I agree with you, but we're not "at a point"... yet. GP might be, and to some degree I am too, but this is hardly universal nor even as widespread as GP posits.

jerf 3y ago

Not just worldview... there's a lot of money at stake. Providing office space is effectively an entire industry, so an entire industry is at stake here. And then that industry has financial derivatives on top of it, so the financial industry has a lot of incentive to get people back in offices so supply goes down and prices can go back up. There's a lot of money available to PR-submarine articles about the virtues of back-to-office. I'm surprised we don't see much, much more.

Workaccount2 3y ago
This take is so common and so bizarre to me. Executives at companies do not give a fuck about the landlords of their buildings. It's an annoying expense that they complain about. They idea that they are working together to make sure the real estate firm has a tenant is so hilariously detached. It's akin to saying that apartment renters care immensely about their landlords to the point of going out of their way to keep paying them rent. Its a total and complete fiction.
- dataduck 3y ago
  No, it's akin to saying landlords care about the occupancy of their buildings and their tenants paying rent. Of course they do, and of course they're prepared to use media influence to try and make that happen.
  - Workaccount2 3y ago
    Of course they care. But no tenant really cares that they care. Execs will look at the numbers. Renting is very expensive and eats up a large chunk revenue. So if you are going to keep paying rent and maintaining an office, you better have a good explanation for investors other than "Our landlord will be upset". I'm sure plenty of CEOs are falling over themselves to mislead the board on rental costs so that they can protect their 2% portfolio stake in some random commercial REIT. Totally logical here.... /s
- chownie 3y ago
  ‎

tivert 3y ago

> Seems like a topic where everyone has made up their mind and will only accept data if it aligns with their world view. I'm kind of between both camps. I actually like in-office work, but the combination of 1) facilities pursuing bad office plans (open-offices, hot desking) and 2) the rise of remote work and distributed teams makes RTO pretty unappealing. Co-located in-office work also makes me feel a lot more secure. It's much harder to form social bonds remotely, which makes you much more isolated and replaceable. Remote work pretty ruthlessly cuts away all relationships except direct working relationships, and even makes those much flatter and less warm. It's easier for a higher up to fire someone they don't know, and fewer of your peers will care or even notice if you leave. Also, here's your daily reminder that an offshore job is a remote job, so once you're no longer in an office you've removed a big speed bump for replacing you.

ghaff 3y ago
As someone who has been effectively remote for a long time, I actually sort of agree with you. To the degree that an office is very hybrid, remote people will often be somewhat marginalized while the environment for in-person will naturally use things like hot desking and a lot of people won't just be there. Some of this can probably be mitigated (and large companies always had people in a lot of different locations).
- tivert 3y ago
  > Some of this can probably be mitigated (and large companies always had people in a lot of different locations). They always have, but I think the key mistake is smearing a single team across different locations. Once you do that, or start doing that habitually, you've completely undermined whatever benefits you think your organization will get from RTO. IMHO, if you really want to RTO, you need to co-locate all team members (and reorganize teams to make that happen), and ideally co-locate closely collaborating teams.
surajrmal 3y ago
Every time I go into the office (very rarely) I understand the benefits of going in. Having 1:1s in person is night and day different than having it over video. Lunch discussions really help with sending subtle messages which you might not do in more structured meetings. Moving around is probably also healthier for me than staying still constantly in my home office. That said my team is distributed across 5 offices and it would be unfair to some of them if I went in, so staying home levels the playing field. I'm also far more productive in many ways (no commute, no running between meeting rooms, ability to multitask during meetings, etc). If my entire immediate team was in a single location I don't think I could get away with not going in despite the tradeoffs.

jyunwai 3y ago

As a reader of the Financial Times, I haven't seen a bias for or against remote working with its articles. The FT articles on remote work can be found listed at: https://www.ft.com/search?sort=relevance&q=remote+work https://www.ft.com/search?sort=relevance&q=remote+work Long-time columnist Simon Kuper's column [1] published on September 21 was in favour of working from home, with the position: "Homeworking is not just a corporate issue, it’s a chance to create a better society." Another article from columnist Sarah O'Connor published in May 2023 [2] argues that "More flexibility has improved work-life balance for many since the pandemic began." Though the FT has also featured opinions in favour of more in-person office time (such as a podcast [3] featuring an interview of a professor who speaks about the benefits of in-person work), there is no clear bias for or against remote work from the search results. To sum up the search results: there are opinion articles in favour of remote work, news articles about major companies ending work-from-home with quotes from executives who favour in-person work, and articles that report on the benefits of hybrid working arrangements. For the FT, I've seen a diversity of opinion, without any clear effort to sway the readership one way or another about the issue. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/74b43b83-1af1-4045-9bd1-15fc8556972d https://www.ft.com/content/74b43b83-1af1-4045-9bd1-15fc85569... [2] https://www.ft.com/content/44e81232-9b25-4f4a-91ab-4462978dc204 https://www.ft.com/content/44e81232-9b25-4f4a-91ab-4462978dc... [3] https://www.ft.com/content/b35e3643-de04-4a0e-ae4a-c0f2db6b5e27 https://www.ft.com/content/b35e3643-de04-4a0e-ae4a-c0f2db6b5...

LanguageGamer 3y ago

The average income of FT readers is £221k [0] and the average income of WSJ readers is $234k [1]. I'm guessing the average reader of most online only newspapers is closer to the US median of $74k [2]. These readers belong to different economic classes with different financial interests, so the agenda divide is not surprising! [0] https://commercial.ft.com/our-products/financial-times/ https://commercial.ft.com/our-products/financial-times/ [1] https://abcnews.go.com/Business/IndustryInfo/story?id=3421988&page=1 https://abcnews.go.com/Business/IndustryInfo/story?id=342198... [2] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-279.html https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-27...

LanceH 3y ago

Fortune in particular has been maddening over the years. I keep seeing articles about how interviewees aren't professional in the interview process. I've never seen them mention that this is a learned behavior from how they are being treated in interviews. To be fair, they may be better now. It's been years since I've read a Fortune article.

asdajksah2123 3y ago

I can't search the WSJ or FT due to paywalls, but searching Fortune.come other than the straight news (Amazon executive threatens promotions will be blocked) all the top 5 or so articles I saw are about RTO being challenging.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

linza 3y ago

I found I'm ok with the divide. Both can coexist and in our case it works. I manage people and anecdotally I see engineers having collectively more output if they are in the office, and they do grow in seniority on average. The remote folks produce sum-of-its-parts impact and do well, but grow slower and not as much. More senior folks really benefit from WFH, they have similar performance, but I as the manager of the team miss out on a senior person training the junior folks. We don't offer remote positions for junior candidates.

zer0tonin 3y ago

We must not be reading the same FT. They publish at least an article a month to say that remote work is great and there to stay.

_teyd 3y ago

I mean, it's obvious right? We are surrounded by all this garbage open source software that proves that people who aren't physically proximate cannot possibly build anything valuable, much less without the warm steady micromanaging hand of middle management. /s