6 ms·
A lot of business executives fall into the demographic that heavily invests into commercial real estate, which is facing some substantial depreciation. Telling
by theandrewbailey 3y ago
A lot of business executives fall into the demographic that heavily invests into commercial real estate, which is facing some substantial depreciation. Telling everyone they need to get back to the office would help to keep those prices up. To everyone else, they have no incentive to keep fighting traffic every day (and paying for it) to go to an uncomfortable place full of maybe awful people.
- postalrat 3y agoIs that true everywhere or just the USA? As far as I know remote work really only stuck around in the USA.
- izacus 3y agoTBH this sounds like a massive conspiracy theory that somehow gets continiously propagated. Your average small software company CEO doesn't give a crap while still forcing people to RTO.
- solarpunk 3y agoall the small companies my friends work for in my neck of the woods stopped leasing office space
- izacus 3y agoIndeed, which is why this real-estate conspiracy is downright bizarre.
- away271828 3y agoAnd even a larger company I'm familiar with has been looking very hard at lease renewals and has been walking away from a bunch of them. There's a certain lip service to the energy associated with having people back in the office but, in practice, people are being switched to fully remote if they don't come in and offices are being eliminated or swapped out for smaller spaces.
- LtWorf 3y agoI've never been in USA and I wfh.
- Lammy 3y agoThe drive to get people back into the office isn't due to any sunk cost on commercial real estate — it's a strategy to prevent workers from working multiple jobs simultaneously.
- brk 3y agoWhen did all the CEOs meet to decide this? I missed that one.
- arcastroe 3y agoThere's a large whatsapp group containing hundreds of Silicone Valley CEOs. I imagine they keep up with gossip and coordinate policies in that group. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38583253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38583253
- lolinder 3y agoIs there any evidence that this is actually happening and going undetected in large enough numbers for it to be rational to allow the possibility to dictate the official remote/not-remote policy of large companies? This feels more like a meme that circulates among management/executive types than it does an actual problem in the real world.
- izacus 3y agoThe thing about executives is... they don't need evidence, they can operate on feelings. And there's certanly enough of overemployed people around to have managers convinced its a problem.
- jeremyjh 3y agoIt has a pretty active subreddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/overemployed/ https://www.reddit.com/r/overemployed/
- billy99k 3y agoWhile this is happening, I don't think it's happening at a large enough scale to matter or long enough timespan. Most people burn out after a year or so of working multiple jobs. It's posted all the time in /overemployed.
- searchableguy 3y agoThe simplest reason is lack of effective communication, team bonding, and morale. People behave differently behind a screen even if incentivised by money. This becomes a problem at the scale of big companies. Eg - without body language, tone and context - everyone needs to be extra charitable to avoid miscommunication or distrust. This might cause people to be overly defensive in their approach to communicate.
- jonahhorowitz 3y agoI've said this in other places, but as a _manager_ it's much nicer to work in the office, in person. That gets more true the higher up the management chain you go. Managers spend most of their time in meetings. Meetings suck over video chat. This is the entire reason CEOs (and pretty much everyone between them and line employees) would rather everyone come back to work. It makes their workday more pleasant.
- FridgeSeal 3y agoManagers and execs ought to already know that not everyone else is an exec, and don’t have the same face-to-face requirements, and do actually need time to do the “productivity” that nets execs their fat pay checks.
- theandrewbailey 3y agoMeetings tend to be some the least productive activities, especially when everything "discussed" could have been sent out as an email (which can be read remotely).
- LoganDark 3y agoDepends on the type of meeting. Where I work, we have a short 15-minute meeting every morning that's done over video call, just to see who's working that day and make sure everyone is on the same page. The CEO constantly does screen-share meetings with clients so they can show him what they're trying to do with the product, and he can watch the recording later and break it into tasks to give to us. I'd say it works pretty well. Without this the product would lose out on a lot of valuable feedback.
- nickff 3y agoDo you have a source for the view that executives invest in commercial real estate, or is the view based on anecdotes? I have not observed any such trend/relationship, and am under the impression that most MBA-types are generally averse to CRE and similar markets, but this is anecdotal, and I have no data to support it.
- diggernet 3y agoI have heard rumors (yes, completely lacking proof) that some major banks with huge commercial loan portfolios are using those loans as leverage to coerce companies into loudly demanding return to office. That's actually pretty easy to believe, because they'd really be hurting if commercial real estate values were to plummet.
- BobaFloutist 3y agoHow are they using those loans as leverage? The terms are set, your student loan company couldn't make you, I don't know, tweet something you didn't want to.
- nickff 3y agoIt could be a line of credit, which might be modified. There could also be an ongoing relationship, related to the issuance of a series of loans used for financing inventory or something like that.
- diggernet 3y agoStudent loans are different from commercial loans. Student loans are long term, with all the details fixed for the life of the loan. Commercial loans are more fluid, and generally have short terms, adjustable rates, and other fun things. Two possible approaches to leverage quickly come to mind: - The carrot: "You've got a loan with us for $xM at y%. If you show you are committed to this office by maximizing occupancy, that lowers our risk and we can give you a 0.1% discount." - The stick: "Your loan term is expiring soon. I know it'd hurt to need to make that big balloon payment. Let's discuss our conditions for rolling you over into a new loan."
- llm_trw 3y agoThe funny thing is that if they invested more and made offices into, you know, offices people would want to work there. Instead we have these open floor plan monstrosities for the hoi polloi and private offices for the masters of the universe. I have no idea what brain damage causes this but if you can't work efficiently in the space you give to your workers to work in how do you expect them to work? A more or less verbatim conversation between the CEO and myself as CTO shortly before I quite: >The new office is so stuffy. I'm going to work from home. >>We need to get a new office. >No we paid too much to break the lease. >>But you can't work there. >I can work from home most of the time. I'll only come in for the big company meetings.
- jldugger 3y ago> if you can't work efficiently in the space you give to your workers to work in how do you expect them to work? I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that most CEOs and COOs use private offices as private, perpetual conference room space. I know my own executive manager has office space he barely uses because he's in conference rooms all day.
- candiddevmike 3y agoPrivacy for me but none for thee?
- iraqmtpizza 3y agoCode monkeys need conference rooms twice a month
- ghaff 3y agoEven fairly mid-level execs are probably in meetings--whether in their offices, at home, or in conference rooms--maybe 6+ hours a day.
- maerF0x0 3y agoI often have to hide from folks who want to interrupt me doing my work so I can do their work for them. If I turn them down I get a bad peer review and get labelled a "Jerk" (no jerks allowed!). If I help them, I don't get to begin doing my own work till 5PM.
- bevekspldnw 3y agoYup, the biggest class of assets in SV are boring single family homes owned by multimillionaires. Once you take the proximity to offices out of the picture the SV property bubble pops. Make the drones come in a few days a week and the assets value keeps going up due to artificial scarcity.
- cjbgkagh 3y agoI think it’s more that the big asset holders spent marketing money in CEO monthly magazine and it was effective.
- datascienced 3y agoThat doesn’t make sense unless the CEO owns the building the company rents. If you have money in REIT then your company’s little decision wont affect it. Anymore than buying a single share of Apple will affect the price.
- ryandrake 3y agoI've never understood the "because CEOs invest in commercial real estate" angle. Like really? Why would senior executives be more likely than the general investing public to invest in that one very specific asset class? It seems like a small tail wagging a big dog.
- jdlshore 3y agoYeah, it feels like conspiracy thinking to me.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- notabee 3y agoIt's called class solidarity, which the wealthy are smart enough to have and everyone else gets grind culture and crab bucket mentality instead.
- datascienced 3y agoStill I’d rather SPX500 it than commercial real estate. In general.
- ineptech 3y agoAny source for this at all? I've seen it before and it's a top-rated comment here, but it doesn't sound plausible and it's exactly the opposite of what game theory would predict.
- sergiotapia 3y agoTo quote ishowspeed: "simple as that bro". Who benefits from keeping everybody in these offices? People who have a financial interest in maintaining those real estate prices high.