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Ok, so which “elites” are holding real estate portfolios and creating these stories in the media bashing remote work? Who are they? I don’t think the world is

Ok, so which “elites” are holding real estate portfolios and creating these stories in the media bashing remote work? Who are they? I don’t think the world is so coordinated. Some people made a bad bet on real estate. Some other people want to write click bait pieces about lazy workers. Some other corporate leaders are scared that employees are goofing off outside the office (because productivity can’t be measured for most work).

dools 2y ago
"You don't need formal conspiracies when interest converge" - George Carlin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAFd4FdbJxs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAFd4FdbJxs
- winternewt 2y ago
  But also, there's Blackrock and Vanguard
- rdtsc 2y ago
  Right, they don’t all have to fly to a secret island. They can just read each other’s blog posts. They understand the hierarchy, too. The smaller companies usually parrot whatever the “prestigious” companies do. “Google is doing it, so should we”. It’s like the saying “Nobody got fired for picking IBM”. Same for these trends: nobody gets fired for mimicking Google or Amazon, even though it doesn’t make sense or is downright harmful to the company.
okamiueru 2y ago
I don't think it is far fetched tho. If you have a couple of millions to spare, you can easily set up a little think tank on how to effect certain changes. If you're willing to throw money at something, it requires minimal effort to coordinate. Your question as to who these people are, is still valid. So my objection is only to the extent that it being unknown doesn't mean it isn't likely.
- fire_lake 2y ago
  It would be a fantastic piece of investigative journalism if someone could link these stories to real estate investors somehow.
  - ustad 2y ago
    That would be neat but its very difficult to get someone to reveal who is paying for it behind the scenes. For example, this is the “survey” referenced in the article : https://www.surveymonkey.com/curiosity/surveymonkey-research-workplace-culture-and-trends/ https://www.surveymonkey.com/curiosity/surveymonkey-research... Now, who is “Sam Gutierrez” and how is he benefitting? Did he get compensated for it? Is he doing a public service? Is he licking ass? Do we care?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
DSingularity 2y ago
Or if maybe big landlord pay millions to consultants to fix this problem dollars get involved and you start seeings these PR pieces and these CEO edicts and so on.
lrem 2y ago
> I don’t think the world is so coordinated. I suggest you read or watch something about McKinsey.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  Oh please. The fact that McKinsey exists and has done plenty of shady shit doesn't mean they coordinate stuff like this. "People who believe in conspiracy theories have never been project managers."
  - drw85 2y ago
    It's a known fact that in many situations they already have both sides as customers and play them against each other. They absolutely have the power to move the chess pieces on both sides to guarantee an outcome.
  - computerthings 2y ago
    Calling stuff a "conspiracy theory" is just a thought-terminating cliché, and measuring the ability of humans to conspire [0] by equating that ability with stuff like Elvis still being alive isn't the attempt of an argument, it's just a slogan. [0] for which there is no communication between them required, or even conscious desire to "conspire" of single one of them. Consider how mobbing can go. People don't go "so, we're all racist, and this new guy is X, so I propose you are kinda sarcastic to him, and I forget to remind him of the thing tomorrow". It doesn't even happen that way in bad fiction, much less so in real life. Or put more positively, consider how teamwork and healthy group behavior can go, too. Most of it is simply done, gets fine-tuned by doing, and only some of it is thought, spoken or written about, usually in hindsight, often as a rationalization.
    - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
      What is "cliché" is to offer up "McKinsey is this shady organization we all hate!" as some sort of evidence that they could conspire to organize this sort of thing. Getting back to the original thesis of the article, the author is stating that people making the decision on RTO (the "elites", another nebulous scary term...) are doing so because commercial real estate is so critical to their decision making process. If anyone can provide any evidence that McKinsey could orchestrate such a thing (with actual details), I'm all ears.
Log_out_ 2y ago
Sum of all people receiving pensions? aka Boom(AndBust)ers. Welcome to the Gerontonecropolis, where we work hard to be burried in similar luxury .
coffeefirst 2y ago
I would agree, but... Didn't we just see a giant string of mass layoffs in spite of excellent company performance for no apparent reason besides investors wanted them? I rarely believe in conspiracies, but mindless group-think is very real.
- klodolph 2y ago
  > no apparent reason besides investors wanted them? If investors want it, I don’t see why any other reason would be necessary, ever, to explain a company’s behavior.
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    Yeah, that's why the comment you are responding to makes no sense. "Investors believe they can get the same amount of revenue with fewer expenses" - is that supposed to be some sort of "group think"??? Not to mention that the proposition of "for no apparent reason" is total BS to begin with. There was a ton of over-hiring during the pandemic for an expected long-term change in consumer demand that never materialized. Plus, lots of people just fundamentally don't understand how rising interest rates make many projects uneconomic. If your company is chugging along making, say, 4% return on capital, that may be fine in the ZIRP era, but when treasuries are paying north of 5% it means it makes more economic sense to close down the company and put your cash into government bonds. That's a bit of an oversimplification but not by much. Rising interest rates fundamentally mean there is a higher bar for getting ROI.
jaggederest 2y ago
It's all the people you'd expect, some purpose-built REITs, big investment firms and private equity, Blackrock, Blackstone and other wealth management, the larger investment banks and the commercial mortgage paper owners are also directly invested (double dipping just like we saw in 2008, where banks would buy mortgages and also leverage those mortgages with derivatives) Many of them are some of the companies that wax lyrical about remote work being bad and are often featured in articles. Submarine PR is absolutely rampant alongside "native advertising".
- dvt 2y ago
  It's so crazy to me how 2008 was barely a decade-and-a-half ago, and people already forgot how much of a coordinated, organized, and pseudo-fraudulent shitshow the CDO merry-go-round was. Loans were given out, rating agencies were being bought, and everyone was skimming off the top until the music stopped. Are we really pretending it can't happen again?
- erwald 2y ago
  Do you have any evidence to back these claims up? (genuinely curious)
  - jaggederest 2y ago
    You can look at who owns what in their portfolios, none of this is especially private information. They publish it all online. I literally just googled "who owns the most commercial real estate" and "commercial real estate bond ownership amounts" and things like that. It's not subtle, companies tout their ownership percentages and REITs list their investors.
    - erwald 2y ago
      I meant evidence of them campaigning, or financing/instigating campaigns, against remote work, thereby influencing decisions of companies to implement "back to work" policies. ETA: I agree that you did not say this was happening in your original comment, but it seems to me your comment implied that these companies were actually influencing major decisions (since that's the topic of the OP).
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
JimDabell 2y ago
> Ok, so which “elites” are holding real estate portfolios and creating these stories in the media bashing remote work? Who are they? It’s not just that. The article talks about “landlords who buy up trophy office buildings”, but fails to draw the connecting line to the managers who demand RTO. The managers aren’t the landlords but the article seems to treat them as one single “elites” entity. How can the landlords demand RTO? Where is the financial incentive for the managers to RTO? There’s a story here when Amazon gets tax breaks, for instance. But that doesn’t generalise to RTO mandates everywhere; it’s the exception rather than the rule.
hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
Exactly, these articles always just make me face palm because the authors never manage a cogent argument about who is making the actual RTO decisions and who cares about commercial real estate values. It's much easier just to chalk it up to the nebulous and scary "elites" and then the authors don't have to do any actual research. For one, look at the expenses of some of the large tech companies that often make the front page here on HN due to their RTO plans. Real estate is a relatively teeny portion (salaries are obviously the biggest). Point being, no sane CEO would demand RTO to "prop up commercial real estate" if they thought it would be a net negative for their actual business long term, precisely because their concerns about real estate values are so far down on their list of priorities.
- jaggederest 2y ago
  If you're a C-level at a Fortune 50 company, some massive percentage of your personal assets, if they're invested in the stock market or private equity, are in commercial real estate. There's no mystery here. People with assets want those assets to remain valuable, and act directly to reinforce it. This is why we don't let athletes bet on their own games. > Point being, no sane CEO would demand RTO to "prop up commercial real estate" if they thought it would be a net negative for their actual business long term, precisely because their concerns about real estate values are so far down on their list of priorities. What if they thought it didn't make any difference, or was mildly net positive to the short term value of their shares? Like, say, 2% increased value through voluntary attrition over the next 2 years, followed by 10% reduced value? And it propped up their portfolios? Is that really so far fetched? We see companies making a lot more questionable decisions in pursuit of quarterly numbers.
  - chii 2y ago
    > act directly to reinforce it. any real evidence of this will be easily evidence for a breach in fiduciary duty of the ceo towards the shareholders. RTO can be seen as costing more money, and likely reduce productivity, force attrition (of the best employees), etc.
    - 2y ago
defrost 2y ago
> I don’t think the world is so coordinated. The "think tanks" that are pre staffed and fully capable of churning out and placing 3x major long form articles per week that are pro or con {Subject X} (and an additional few that fence sit and are "just asking questions") already exist and have been about since at least Nine out of Ten Doctors Recommend Smoking. You know, 5+ decades ago. The "elites" that are losing money in {Domain X} simply have to question their circle, get a line on a half decent agency or three and hire them to pitch for the thought changes that will move money back towards {X}. Job done.
- erwald 2y ago
  Can you link some think tank pieces arguing against remote work? I tried looking but couldn't find any. I found a few things but clearly none of these are part of an anti remote work effort: an AEI interview https://www.aei.org/workforce-development/the-future-of-remote-work-highlights-from-my-conversation-with-nicholas-bloom/ https://www.aei.org/workforce-development/the-future-of-remo... which seems pretty balanced overall (and doesn't take a prescriptive position) an AEI piece https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/the-trade-offs-of-remote-work-building-a-more-resilient-workplace-for-the-post-covid-19-world/ https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/the-trade-offs-... which seems pretty balanced too a Heritage piece (from early in Covid) https://www.heritage.org/jobs-and-labor/report/labor-policy-covid-19-and-beyond-recommendations-get-americans-back-work https://www.heritage.org/jobs-and-labor/report/labor-policy-... that seems mostly bullish on remote work (but mostly focuses on other issues, like labor rights) a McKinsey report (also from fairly early in Covid) https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/whats-next-for-remote-work-an-analysis-of-2000-tasks-800-jobs-and-nine-countries https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/wh... which is mostly descriptive and also seems pretty balanced a Cato piece https://www.cato.org/commentary/remote-work-here-stay-mostly-better https://www.cato.org/commentary/remote-work-here-stay-mostly... which argues in favor of remote work
  - defrost 2y ago
    > Can you link some think tank pieces arguing against remote work? That's not the argument I made in my comment. I simply noted that if anyone wanted to hire a group to argue for (or against) remote work then such groups already exist and have done for decades. If there's a coordinated press placing of "back to work" articles then the starting point would be all the articles that make that case (or talk about that subject) and look for authors, their bio's, whether these are staff writer pieces (and if so whether they heavily quote "research shows" vague sources), opinion pieces, etc. The hardest to spot and most common is staff writers who cover all manner of things (no obvious bias) who are 90% copy pasta'ing unacknowledged "press releases" "media statements" handed to them on a plate by the Institute for Lazy Reporting. US work from home isn't an area of any interest to me and I have no particular awareness of any of the US writing on the subject. I'm an Australian that's largely worked remote (but not always from home) since the mid 1980s, largely for transnational resource companies. Part of my professional career did involve tracing and sourcing released information intended to sway opinion, but that was all related to mineral and energy resources.
XorNot 2y ago
The world doesn't have to be coordinated. People mistake the fact that it's easier to selfishly gain from chaos for conspiracy: what you see is a result of every man for himself thinking, combined with their being little downside to seeding a narrative and seeing if it sticks.
endgame 2y ago
Lobby groups like the Property Council of Australia were extremely supportive when the public service in New South Wales (a state of Australia) started forcing RTO: https://www.realestatebusiness.com.au/commercial/28416-nsw-s-return-to-office-directive-set-to-impact-property-and-people https://www.realestatebusiness.com.au/commercial/28416-nsw-s... ; https://www.governmentnews.com.au/nsw-public-servants-ordered-back-to-the-office/ https://www.governmentnews.com.au/nsw-public-servants-ordere...
esolyt 2y ago
Wealthy people are in the same social circles, of course they keep hearing these concerns about commercial real estate. They don't have to formally coordinate because they share the same class interests. You could even argue part of this coordination happens subconsciously. Of course, not all wealthy people invested in commercial real estate. But they still have an interest in preserving the existing economic system. They certainly don't want a domino effect.
hshshshsvsv 2y ago
If you have billions of dollars in real estate losses and think can offset the losses by driving some anti remote work stories in media, I don't see why rich people would not do this. Also you think planting stories needs coordinated work across media. It doesn't. Read more about it.
mitthrowaway2 2y ago
I can't answer this definitively; I doubt anyone can, but I can suggest at least two possible mechanisms that don't require a shadowy cabal of elite conspirators. These don't require anything other than people acting in accordance with incentives that they already have. I'm sure it's not hard to find more. Mechanism 1: Those S&P 500 shares that you own through Vanguard and BlackRock index funds, you don't actually control the voting rights to them. Vanguard and BlackRock do. They have coordinated voting power and a big voice in the C-suite of many large corporations. I do think that execs will listen when they make a suggestion, and it's in their interests that the value of assets under management stays high, because that's what determines their pay. Mechanism 2: C-suite comp is tied to stock price, often through options. Well, as it happens, asset markets are tightly interrelated, and high valuations are a result of leverage. Strangely enough, a dollar invested in real estate can also be a dollar invested in Amazon (even if it's not Amazon's real estate). When asset valuations are high, their owners can borrow against those assets and use that money to bid for other assets, raising the price of everything together. In this process new money is essentially created ex nihilo and increases the price of assets. Conversely, when asset prices start deflating, that can trigger a sell-off of other assets, and this money doesn't simply change hands, it disappears along with the leverage that created it. A pop in commercial real estate valuations can mean that many investment funds which own Amazon will have to sell them off at fire-sale prices to cover a margin call. If you're an exec, this wouldn't be a good thing to happen before your equity compensation package vests.
Lio 2y ago
Well here in the UK Lord Sugar has vocally complained about people working from home (whilst doing so himself). He's well know to have made most of his money in commercial property and has said he wants to protect that. If a billionaire, lord of the realm, TV celebrity doesn't count as "elite" I don't know who does. I can't really think of a bigger hypocrite that that. https://fortune.com/europe/2024/02/05/british-billionaire-lord-sugar-remote-work-morale-learning-the-apprentice/ https://fortune.com/europe/2024/02/05/british-billionaire-lo...
cess11 2y ago
It's not exactly coordinated. Powerful businesspeople usually own real estate, it's great for financing new ventures and so on, and they have habits. They go to clubs, golf courses, rather exclusive hunting trips and so on, where they meet other people with power in business. And they talk, speculate on the future and develop a community. A community where they go looking for contacts when they need something, like a public affairs firm for pushing political buttons, or a real estate investment to put a big payout into, or whatever. If you are in this environment and fuck around you'll make enemies. People won't recommend you as a public affairs customer, won't tip you off on good investment opportunities, might start to talk shit about you behind your back. Undermining the value of real estate can make these networks and communities a serious hazard to your business. And undermining the value of office estate means you undermine the really tasty cash cow in real estate, residential properties within commuting distance. Enforcing commutes to offices means that people will pay a premium to shorten the commute.
JeremyNT 2y ago
> I don’t think the world is so coordinated. Some people made a bad bet on real estate. Some other people want to write click bait pieces about lazy workers. Some other corporate leaders are scared that employees are goofing off outside the office (because productivity can’t be measured for most work). Right, I think there's pretty clearly a combination of factors at play and it's difficult to untangle them (adding one factor you didn't mention, soft layoffs). I'm incredibly skeptical of any attempt to quantify "productivity" with this granularity, and this is especially true as technological advances over the last couple of years like LLMs are providing some substantial time savings for many tasks people do.
oooyay 2y ago
There's two curious things happening at once that are not often talked about together: there are RTO mandates and tech companies are also dropping stock compensation without a replacement. Whether that lends credence to the authors theory or not is an open question, but it's another financial motivator.

dools 2y ago

"You don't need formal conspiracies when interest converge" - George Carlin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAFd4FdbJxs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAFd4FdbJxs

winternewt 2y ago
But also, there's Blackrock and Vanguard
rdtsc 2y ago
Right, they don’t all have to fly to a secret island. They can just read each other’s blog posts. They understand the hierarchy, too. The smaller companies usually parrot whatever the “prestigious” companies do. “Google is doing it, so should we”. It’s like the saying “Nobody got fired for picking IBM”. Same for these trends: nobody gets fired for mimicking Google or Amazon, even though it doesn’t make sense or is downright harmful to the company.

okamiueru 2y ago

I don't think it is far fetched tho. If you have a couple of millions to spare, you can easily set up a little think tank on how to effect certain changes. If you're willing to throw money at something, it requires minimal effort to coordinate. Your question as to who these people are, is still valid. So my objection is only to the extent that it being unknown doesn't mean it isn't likely.

fire_lake 2y ago
It would be a fantastic piece of investigative journalism if someone could link these stories to real estate investors somehow.
- ustad 2y ago
  That would be neat but its very difficult to get someone to reveal who is paying for it behind the scenes. For example, this is the “survey” referenced in the article : https://www.surveymonkey.com/curiosity/surveymonkey-research-workplace-culture-and-trends/ https://www.surveymonkey.com/curiosity/surveymonkey-research... Now, who is “Sam Gutierrez” and how is he benefitting? Did he get compensated for it? Is he doing a public service? Is he licking ass? Do we care?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

DSingularity 2y ago

Or if maybe big landlord pay millions to consultants to fix this problem dollars get involved and you start seeings these PR pieces and these CEO edicts and so on.

lrem 2y ago

> I don’t think the world is so coordinated. I suggest you read or watch something about McKinsey.

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
Oh please. The fact that McKinsey exists and has done plenty of shady shit doesn't mean they coordinate stuff like this. "People who believe in conspiracy theories have never been project managers."
- drw85 2y ago
  It's a known fact that in many situations they already have both sides as customers and play them against each other. They absolutely have the power to move the chess pieces on both sides to guarantee an outcome.
- computerthings 2y ago
  Calling stuff a "conspiracy theory" is just a thought-terminating cliché, and measuring the ability of humans to conspire [0] by equating that ability with stuff like Elvis still being alive isn't the attempt of an argument, it's just a slogan. [0] for which there is no communication between them required, or even conscious desire to "conspire" of single one of them. Consider how mobbing can go. People don't go "so, we're all racist, and this new guy is X, so I propose you are kinda sarcastic to him, and I forget to remind him of the thing tomorrow". It doesn't even happen that way in bad fiction, much less so in real life. Or put more positively, consider how teamwork and healthy group behavior can go, too. Most of it is simply done, gets fine-tuned by doing, and only some of it is thought, spoken or written about, usually in hindsight, often as a rationalization.
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    What is "cliché" is to offer up "McKinsey is this shady organization we all hate!" as some sort of evidence that they could conspire to organize this sort of thing. Getting back to the original thesis of the article, the author is stating that people making the decision on RTO (the "elites", another nebulous scary term...) are doing so because commercial real estate is so critical to their decision making process. If anyone can provide any evidence that McKinsey could orchestrate such a thing (with actual details), I'm all ears.

Log_out_ 2y ago

Sum of all people receiving pensions? aka Boom(AndBust)ers. Welcome to the Gerontonecropolis, where we work hard to be burried in similar luxury .

coffeefirst 2y ago

I would agree, but... Didn't we just see a giant string of mass layoffs in spite of excellent company performance for no apparent reason besides investors wanted them? I rarely believe in conspiracies, but mindless group-think is very real.

klodolph 2y ago
> no apparent reason besides investors wanted them? If investors want it, I don’t see why any other reason would be necessary, ever, to explain a company’s behavior.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  Yeah, that's why the comment you are responding to makes no sense. "Investors believe they can get the same amount of revenue with fewer expenses" - is that supposed to be some sort of "group think"??? Not to mention that the proposition of "for no apparent reason" is total BS to begin with. There was a ton of over-hiring during the pandemic for an expected long-term change in consumer demand that never materialized. Plus, lots of people just fundamentally don't understand how rising interest rates make many projects uneconomic. If your company is chugging along making, say, 4% return on capital, that may be fine in the ZIRP era, but when treasuries are paying north of 5% it means it makes more economic sense to close down the company and put your cash into government bonds. That's a bit of an oversimplification but not by much. Rising interest rates fundamentally mean there is a higher bar for getting ROI.

jaggederest 2y ago

It's all the people you'd expect, some purpose-built REITs, big investment firms and private equity, Blackrock, Blackstone and other wealth management, the larger investment banks and the commercial mortgage paper owners are also directly invested (double dipping just like we saw in 2008, where banks would buy mortgages and also leverage those mortgages with derivatives) Many of them are some of the companies that wax lyrical about remote work being bad and are often featured in articles. Submarine PR is absolutely rampant alongside "native advertising".

dvt 2y ago
It's so crazy to me how 2008 was barely a decade-and-a-half ago, and people already forgot how much of a coordinated, organized, and pseudo-fraudulent shitshow the CDO merry-go-round was. Loans were given out, rating agencies were being bought, and everyone was skimming off the top until the music stopped. Are we really pretending it can't happen again?
erwald 2y ago
Do you have any evidence to back these claims up? (genuinely curious)
- jaggederest 2y ago
  You can look at who owns what in their portfolios, none of this is especially private information. They publish it all online. I literally just googled "who owns the most commercial real estate" and "commercial real estate bond ownership amounts" and things like that. It's not subtle, companies tout their ownership percentages and REITs list their investors.
  - erwald 2y ago
    I meant evidence of them campaigning, or financing/instigating campaigns, against remote work, thereby influencing decisions of companies to implement "back to work" policies. ETA: I agree that you did not say this was happening in your original comment, but it seems to me your comment implied that these companies were actually influencing major decisions (since that's the topic of the OP).

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

JimDabell 2y ago

> Ok, so which “elites” are holding real estate portfolios and creating these stories in the media bashing remote work? Who are they? It’s not just that. The article talks about “landlords who buy up trophy office buildings”, but fails to draw the connecting line to the managers who demand RTO. The managers aren’t the landlords but the article seems to treat them as one single “elites” entity. How can the landlords demand RTO? Where is the financial incentive for the managers to RTO? There’s a story here when Amazon gets tax breaks, for instance. But that doesn’t generalise to RTO mandates everywhere; it’s the exception rather than the rule.

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago

Exactly, these articles always just make me face palm because the authors never manage a cogent argument about who is making the actual RTO decisions and who cares about commercial real estate values. It's much easier just to chalk it up to the nebulous and scary "elites" and then the authors don't have to do any actual research. For one, look at the expenses of some of the large tech companies that often make the front page here on HN due to their RTO plans. Real estate is a relatively teeny portion (salaries are obviously the biggest). Point being, no sane CEO would demand RTO to "prop up commercial real estate" if they thought it would be a net negative for their actual business long term, precisely because their concerns about real estate values are so far down on their list of priorities.

jaggederest 2y ago
If you're a C-level at a Fortune 50 company, some massive percentage of your personal assets, if they're invested in the stock market or private equity, are in commercial real estate. There's no mystery here. People with assets want those assets to remain valuable, and act directly to reinforce it. This is why we don't let athletes bet on their own games. > Point being, no sane CEO would demand RTO to "prop up commercial real estate" if they thought it would be a net negative for their actual business long term, precisely because their concerns about real estate values are so far down on their list of priorities. What if they thought it didn't make any difference, or was mildly net positive to the short term value of their shares? Like, say, 2% increased value through voluntary attrition over the next 2 years, followed by 10% reduced value? And it propped up their portfolios? Is that really so far fetched? We see companies making a lot more questionable decisions in pursuit of quarterly numbers.
- chii 2y ago
  > act directly to reinforce it. any real evidence of this will be easily evidence for a breach in fiduciary duty of the ceo towards the shareholders. RTO can be seen as costing more money, and likely reduce productivity, force attrition (of the best employees), etc.
  - 2y ago

defrost 2y ago

> I don’t think the world is so coordinated. The "think tanks" that are pre staffed and fully capable of churning out and placing 3x major long form articles per week that are pro or con {Subject X} (and an additional few that fence sit and are "just asking questions") already exist and have been about since at least Nine out of Ten Doctors Recommend Smoking. You know, 5+ decades ago. The "elites" that are losing money in {Domain X} simply have to question their circle, get a line on a half decent agency or three and hire them to pitch for the thought changes that will move money back towards {X}. Job done.

erwald 2y ago
Can you link some think tank pieces arguing against remote work? I tried looking but couldn't find any. I found a few things but clearly none of these are part of an anti remote work effort: an AEI interview https://www.aei.org/workforce-development/the-future-of-remote-work-highlights-from-my-conversation-with-nicholas-bloom/ https://www.aei.org/workforce-development/the-future-of-remo... which seems pretty balanced overall (and doesn't take a prescriptive position) an AEI piece https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/the-trade-offs-of-remote-work-building-a-more-resilient-workplace-for-the-post-covid-19-world/ https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/the-trade-offs-... which seems pretty balanced too a Heritage piece (from early in Covid) https://www.heritage.org/jobs-and-labor/report/labor-policy-covid-19-and-beyond-recommendations-get-americans-back-work https://www.heritage.org/jobs-and-labor/report/labor-policy-... that seems mostly bullish on remote work (but mostly focuses on other issues, like labor rights) a McKinsey report (also from fairly early in Covid) https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/whats-next-for-remote-work-an-analysis-of-2000-tasks-800-jobs-and-nine-countries https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/wh... which is mostly descriptive and also seems pretty balanced a Cato piece https://www.cato.org/commentary/remote-work-here-stay-mostly-better https://www.cato.org/commentary/remote-work-here-stay-mostly... which argues in favor of remote work
- defrost 2y ago
  > Can you link some think tank pieces arguing against remote work? That's not the argument I made in my comment. I simply noted that if anyone wanted to hire a group to argue for (or against) remote work then such groups already exist and have done for decades. If there's a coordinated press placing of "back to work" articles then the starting point would be all the articles that make that case (or talk about that subject) and look for authors, their bio's, whether these are staff writer pieces (and if so whether they heavily quote "research shows" vague sources), opinion pieces, etc. The hardest to spot and most common is staff writers who cover all manner of things (no obvious bias) who are 90% copy pasta'ing unacknowledged "press releases" "media statements" handed to them on a plate by the Institute for Lazy Reporting. US work from home isn't an area of any interest to me and I have no particular awareness of any of the US writing on the subject. I'm an Australian that's largely worked remote (but not always from home) since the mid 1980s, largely for transnational resource companies. Part of my professional career did involve tracing and sourcing released information intended to sway opinion, but that was all related to mineral and energy resources.

XorNot 2y ago

The world doesn't have to be coordinated. People mistake the fact that it's easier to selfishly gain from chaos for conspiracy: what you see is a result of every man for himself thinking, combined with their being little downside to seeding a narrative and seeing if it sticks.

endgame 2y ago

Lobby groups like the Property Council of Australia were extremely supportive when the public service in New South Wales (a state of Australia) started forcing RTO: https://www.realestatebusiness.com.au/commercial/28416-nsw-s-return-to-office-directive-set-to-impact-property-and-people https://www.realestatebusiness.com.au/commercial/28416-nsw-s... ; https://www.governmentnews.com.au/nsw-public-servants-ordered-back-to-the-office/ https://www.governmentnews.com.au/nsw-public-servants-ordere...

esolyt 2y ago

Wealthy people are in the same social circles, of course they keep hearing these concerns about commercial real estate. They don't have to formally coordinate because they share the same class interests. You could even argue part of this coordination happens subconsciously. Of course, not all wealthy people invested in commercial real estate. But they still have an interest in preserving the existing economic system. They certainly don't want a domino effect.

hshshshsvsv 2y ago

If you have billions of dollars in real estate losses and think can offset the losses by driving some anti remote work stories in media, I don't see why rich people would not do this. Also you think planting stories needs coordinated work across media. It doesn't. Read more about it.

mitthrowaway2 2y ago

I can't answer this definitively; I doubt anyone can, but I can suggest at least two possible mechanisms that don't require a shadowy cabal of elite conspirators. These don't require anything other than people acting in accordance with incentives that they already have. I'm sure it's not hard to find more. Mechanism 1: Those S&P 500 shares that you own through Vanguard and BlackRock index funds, you don't actually control the voting rights to them. Vanguard and BlackRock do. They have coordinated voting power and a big voice in the C-suite of many large corporations. I do think that execs will listen when they make a suggestion, and it's in their interests that the value of assets under management stays high, because that's what determines their pay. Mechanism 2: C-suite comp is tied to stock price, often through options. Well, as it happens, asset markets are tightly interrelated, and high valuations are a result of leverage. Strangely enough, a dollar invested in real estate can also be a dollar invested in Amazon (even if it's not Amazon's real estate). When asset valuations are high, their owners can borrow against those assets and use that money to bid for other assets, raising the price of everything together. In this process new money is essentially created ex nihilo and increases the price of assets. Conversely, when asset prices start deflating, that can trigger a sell-off of other assets, and this money doesn't simply change hands, it disappears along with the leverage that created it. A pop in commercial real estate valuations can mean that many investment funds which own Amazon will have to sell them off at fire-sale prices to cover a margin call. If you're an exec, this wouldn't be a good thing to happen before your equity compensation package vests.

Lio 2y ago

Well here in the UK Lord Sugar has vocally complained about people working from home (whilst doing so himself). He's well know to have made most of his money in commercial property and has said he wants to protect that. If a billionaire, lord of the realm, TV celebrity doesn't count as "elite" I don't know who does. I can't really think of a bigger hypocrite that that. https://fortune.com/europe/2024/02/05/british-billionaire-lord-sugar-remote-work-morale-learning-the-apprentice/ https://fortune.com/europe/2024/02/05/british-billionaire-lo...

cess11 2y ago

It's not exactly coordinated. Powerful businesspeople usually own real estate, it's great for financing new ventures and so on, and they have habits. They go to clubs, golf courses, rather exclusive hunting trips and so on, where they meet other people with power in business. And they talk, speculate on the future and develop a community. A community where they go looking for contacts when they need something, like a public affairs firm for pushing political buttons, or a real estate investment to put a big payout into, or whatever. If you are in this environment and fuck around you'll make enemies. People won't recommend you as a public affairs customer, won't tip you off on good investment opportunities, might start to talk shit about you behind your back. Undermining the value of real estate can make these networks and communities a serious hazard to your business. And undermining the value of office estate means you undermine the really tasty cash cow in real estate, residential properties within commuting distance. Enforcing commutes to offices means that people will pay a premium to shorten the commute.

JeremyNT 2y ago

> I don’t think the world is so coordinated. Some people made a bad bet on real estate. Some other people want to write click bait pieces about lazy workers. Some other corporate leaders are scared that employees are goofing off outside the office (because productivity can’t be measured for most work). Right, I think there's pretty clearly a combination of factors at play and it's difficult to untangle them (adding one factor you didn't mention, soft layoffs). I'm incredibly skeptical of any attempt to quantify "productivity" with this granularity, and this is especially true as technological advances over the last couple of years like LLMs are providing some substantial time savings for many tasks people do.

oooyay 2y ago

There's two curious things happening at once that are not often talked about together: there are RTO mandates and tech companies are also dropping stock compensation without a replacement. Whether that lends credence to the authors theory or not is an open question, but it's another financial motivator.