> They only care about one thing, forcing warm bodies back into office buildings to stop the commercial real estate apocalypse. If they can’t fill those zombie

> They only care about one thing, forcing warm bodies back into office buildings to stop the commercial real estate apocalypse. If they can’t fill those zombie towers, they have to trim their budgets with stealth layoffs. The problem with these evil capitalist conspiracy theories is evidence: there should be evidence of this motivation _somewhere_. If you're a captain of industry, your compensation is driven by equity, which is in turn driven by shareholders' forecast of future earnings. So CEOs should be shouting their evil plans from the rooftops --anything you do but don't tell shareholders about might as well not have happened! Yet it doesn't come up in earnings calls, shareholder reports or at industry analyst reports. Probably because commercial real estate has no bearing on most company's valuations, and the ones it does impact are usually lightly staffed anyways, or couldn't really work from home in the first place. I don't think the "us" vs "elites" framing helps the analysis at all, as it's far too reductive and treats actors as monoliths. Instead it's probably better to use something like "us" versus "small businesses, politicians, tech CEOs, bankers, and real estate investors." (And maybe even split up "us": not every job can work from home!) Tech CEOs generally have no exposure to commercial real estate. But bankers do, and real estate investors definitely do. These firms tend to be local in scope, and more directly connected to local politicians. In that network of actors, tech companies are the mark. Politicians come after them with taxes and rules while carving out small business exemptions without which they would otherwise be voted out. And unlike the 'Jeff Bezos is worried about the long term viability of REITs' theory, this one has evidence, from politicians telling us their plans[1][2]. They campaign on these in-all-but-name writ-of-attainder taxes. How any individual tech company reacts can vary. So that's the causal path between commercial RE and tech as I see it and it doesn't look like a strong one. Maybe it's more prevalent in the east coast where the banking and legal sectors are more represented, but here on the west coast only one company is fully 5 days in office They are widely reputed to have the highest employee churn target among big tech, and WFH lowered churn across the board. [1]: https://www.sanjoseinside.com/opinion/op-ed-cupertino-city-council-should-hold-apple-accountable-through-employee-head-tax/ https://www.sanjoseinside.com/opinion/op-ed-cupertino-city-c... [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/31/technology/san-francisco-tech-free-lunch.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/31/technology/san-francisco-...