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> Globally much of the pro-office camp's public position is driven by personal leanings of CEOs who genuinely seem to have made the decisions without evidence

> Globally much of the pro-office camp's public position is driven by personal leanings of CEOs who genuinely seem to have made the decisions without evidence In some cases, the pressure is also coming from external to the company, from cities and VCs and similar who care about the commercial real-estate value of now-abandoned offices.

kvmet 2y ago
Is this actually happening? I have seen this idea thrown out a lot online but it always feels like a conspiracy theory to me (akin to "fine art is a tax write-off")
- finnh 2y ago
  I think it explains some of Amazon's choices, as they made multibillion dollar bets on office space and real estate in Seattle.
  - coliveira 2y ago
    Yes, Amazon needs people to fill their expensive offices in Seattle, or otherwise explain to investors that they wasted billions of dollars building new offices that were used less than 5 years.
    - bruce511 2y ago
      >> otherwise explain to investors that they wasted billions of dollars building new offices that were used less than 5 years. So what? I mean companies write down things all the time. "We've revalued our $billion office and adjusted our balance sheet to match. Cause was a global pandemic which we considered as a risk factor in 2019, but it was negligible." Stock will drop a % or two for a week, then recover and move on (especially as the Amazon machine continues to print cash.) Microsoft wrote off the Nokia purchase with a shrug and the world just moved on. Explaining a change of work environment to investors seems like a pretty minor bump, not a major factor in decision making.
      - finnh 2y ago
        I agree in that I don't think explaining a write off is a problem, per se. But I do see Amazon taking a long term view of their real estate investment and saying "OK we have it in our power to make this payoff" which dynamic is not in play with most writedowns.
- longnt80 2y ago
  feel like that to me too I bet there are some incentives in there but it's not the whole picture. It's probably the combination of many things but mostly management that don't know how to manage people remotely, or they started to realise that most middle manager positions are obsolete/unnecessary.
- JoshTriplett 2y ago
  The conspiracy theory version is that it's the sole cause, rather than one of many causes.
- azemetre 2y ago
  This is the case for the city of Boston. The city derives the vast majority of its budget from commercial property taxes, it's why residential property taxes are so low in the city. Use to work for a company that was literally told by the city that if they don't have X amount of people in the building they will lose their tax incentives they got for having the company there. The company slowly mandated hybrid then RTO everyday in about 6 months. Got out 2 weeks before it was implemented. My coworkers were extremely jealous that I got a WFH job. Doubt Boston is alone in these propositions
  - kortilla 2y ago
    Why would the city care about number of people in the office if they are deriving the money from commercial property taxes?
    - azemetre 2y ago
      I don't understand the complete calculus but Boston is facing a $500mil shortfall and the mayor is increasing taxes to makeup the shortfall: https://news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-report/boston-residents-face-28-tax-increase-as-office-values-slump https://news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-report/boston-reside... I think part of the equation is that less people are going into the office so values of buildings are going down, less people in downtown the less money that goes to all the restaurants/shops/stores during the week. I can't speak for other cities since I don't live in them but Boston has never really recovered from the pandemic in terms of office workers.
    - mvanbaak 2y ago
      - public transport - spending money in local stores - spending money on housing - spending money on local child care - etc etc etc
    - bongodongobob 2y ago
      Why would the city care if no one is working downtown?
      - 2y ago
- vermilingua 2y ago
  “You don't need a formal conspiracy when interests converge. These people went to the same universities, they're on the same boards of directors, they're in the same country clubs, they have like interests, they don't need to call a meeting, they know what's good for them and they're getting it.” George Carlin: https://youtube.com/watch?v=XE3sYUJASLY https://youtube.com/watch?v=XE3sYUJASLY
Terr_ 2y ago
> real-estate value Separately but simultaneously, there are often local tax-benefits which depend on the company "creating jobs", and that's often defined in a way that means butts-in-offices downtown.
- notyourwork 2y ago
  Ding ding ding … this is the most overlooked aspect of the RTO/WFH dynamic.
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    "RTO is definitely the play: the CEO says all his friends are doing it; activist-investors want RTO for their own porfolios, PR says breaking the lease on our newish HQ is embarrassing while Legal says it makes more work for them; Accounting says we'll pay more in tax unless we can prove X jobs created locally; our middle-managers need it in order to tell if work is happening, and HR notes that we can slim our workforce by prompting a lot of 'voluntary' departures! Seven key stakeholder groups." "But will the employees be happy, and will good ones stay?" "Seven to one, my friend. They're just grumbling like always."
    - cjbgkagh 2y ago
      While all of that is true, I wonder how much of it is re-affirmation of a social hierarchy. From the bosses point of view RTO is a costly signal that demonstrates how much people want to work for them - signals must be costly in order to be effective. Promoting WFO as more productive and less costly destroys the signaling aspect. Perhaps workers could offer other costly signals - maybe regular arduous in person team building exercises that management can show their friends photos. I really can't think of many alternative socially acceptable costly signals that can be required from employees which is probably why RTO continues to remain so popular.
  - mvanbaak 2y ago
    This might be the nr 1 reason. The hidden layoff round is also high on that list if you ask me. They call everyone back to the office, the people that dont want/cant will not adhere, and thus be fired without the companies having to pay severance.
mewpmewp2 2y ago
I keep seeing this being brought up, I haven't researched it too much, but it's a bit hard for me to believe that this could truly be the case, that there's such huge influence from commercial real estate owners on CEOs of much larger companies? What causes them to have such power over large companies?
- brandonmenc 2y ago
  It's not like, a direct marching order. It's just a general attitude that has filtered around C suites or whatever. Go watch any daytime cable news investment shows and you'll see it. Just run of the mill cohort thinking. No big conspiracy.
  - mewpmewp2 2y ago
    I'm not from the US, so I don't have direct sight into all of that. Luckily, I think there's many start ups and other companies who are valuing and all in on the remote work. I haven't felt the risk at my company to have a strong urge of getting people return to the office.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - gruez 2y ago
    >Go watch any daytime cable news investment shows and you'll see it. As in "we need to RTO to prop up commercial real estate" specifically, or something more general like "we need to RTO to increase collaboration" or whatever?
    - brandonmenc 2y ago
      As in a general, "what about city centers!" and "everyone needs to get back in the office just because!" It's all feels and vibes.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
mikeweiss 2y ago
I really don't think this is the case... I believe more than anything it's about the kind of personalities that make up people who are in charge of these decisions... Think about the types of people who are c-suite executives. They are likely people who prefer to be in an office setting.. at least most of the time. I don't think they like it very much coming into an office and seeing it mostly empty... Partly because it diminishes their perceived value as a leader and everything they've worked for but also because they truly believe people work better in person because that's what they've always done and continue to want to do.
- mewpmewp2 2y ago
  I think that's actually plausible, because yeah, if I was to put myself in their shoes. If someone is looking for status, and people looking up to them, etc, it would make sense that they would get much less that sort of attention if everyone is working remotely. Getting that through the Zoom is not exactly what it would be in real life.
  - eastbound 2y ago
    While we’re debating whether it’s a conspiracy from the elites or not, that eludes debates on the real important questions for a team lead/founder like me: Does the office provide a better environment for building things together? How much do people cheat in WFH situations? Do people ask for help at the right time in WFH? What are the right ratios: A few days per week, or a few weeks per year, or everyone at home because we don’t like each other? By the way, do people develop the same sense of workmateness when only meeting colleagues remotely? It seems all that union-talk “Boss is evil. Boss wants office. Office evil. Bad managers.” is kidnapping a real debate that is extremely important. Unless I’m proven otherwise: - People who WFH 2 days per week seem to spend 1hr less per day working, - 100%-Remote people never seem to belong to the company, and in fact the team of 4 that I’ve recruited still seems to be in the underproductive ramp-up after 8 months, and it only lasts 2-3 months with local people. Unless we stop debating whether real estate companies form a coup against the workers, I’ll never hear better arguments.
jnordwick 2y ago
I'm going to need some data to prove this. I keep seeing this claim, but have not seen anything more than conjecture. There are just too many factors for this, and you would have to believe that a company is willing to throw away money for this to happen.
- jagged-chisel 2y ago
  They already threw away the money by purchasing real estate and falling for the sunk cost fallacy. Or they’re on the hook for a lease for the next five years and it will cost more to break the lease. Companies waste money all the time. I don’t think it’s a stretch to think they did or would waste oodles of money on purchasing or leasing their offices.
  - appendix-rock 2y ago
    That’s not evidence. It’s as baseless as the other side’s arguments. You’ve just heard it on HN enough times and are parroting it. I assure you that there’s not a person on this website that hasn’t read essentially your exact comment 100 times. OP is saying that one nerd’s reckoning doesn’t constitute evidence.
    - The_Colonel 2y ago
      Exactly. The home office debate is a great example of motivated reasoning - many people really like the personal benefits of home office which makes them look for things which confirm their view (with the bar for "evidence" being very low). The more passion you have, the more ridiculous form it takes. In normal debates, intelligent people usually admit that there are various trade-offs, and there are different POVs which might favor one trade-off over another. But in the home office debate, pro-HO seems to take a position that RTO cannot have any true, valid benefit, there's no real trade-off to be made, and therefore it can be explained only by ulterior motives or some conspiracy - usually hyper-controlling managers or this real estate conspiracy.
      - 2y ago
gruez 2y ago
>In some cases, the pressure is also coming from external to the company, from cities and VCs and similar who care about the commercial real-estate value of now-abandoned offices. That logic seems... questionable. Even if CRE firms are in VCs/investors' portfolios, it doesn't make sense to divert money from your SaaS companies to prop up your CRE firms. In the best case (ie. both sides are owned by you), such transfers are zero to slightly negative sum (from opportunity costs and costs associated with operating an office). In the typical case where you're renting from another CRE company, such transfers are definitely negative. It doesn't make sense to go spend your money to prop up the broader CRE market as a CRE investor, just like it doesn't make sense for you to go out to buy iPhones to prop up Apple shares as an Apple investor.
tightbookkeeper 2y ago
This argument has never made sense. Commercial real estate exists to optimize the real cost (labor). There is no temptation to put it above the needs of labor.

kvmet 2y ago

Is this actually happening? I have seen this idea thrown out a lot online but it always feels like a conspiracy theory to me (akin to "fine art is a tax write-off")

finnh 2y ago
I think it explains some of Amazon's choices, as they made multibillion dollar bets on office space and real estate in Seattle.
- coliveira 2y ago
  Yes, Amazon needs people to fill their expensive offices in Seattle, or otherwise explain to investors that they wasted billions of dollars building new offices that were used less than 5 years.
  - bruce511 2y ago
    >> otherwise explain to investors that they wasted billions of dollars building new offices that were used less than 5 years. So what? I mean companies write down things all the time. "We've revalued our $billion office and adjusted our balance sheet to match. Cause was a global pandemic which we considered as a risk factor in 2019, but it was negligible." Stock will drop a % or two for a week, then recover and move on (especially as the Amazon machine continues to print cash.) Microsoft wrote off the Nokia purchase with a shrug and the world just moved on. Explaining a change of work environment to investors seems like a pretty minor bump, not a major factor in decision making.
    - finnh 2y ago
      I agree in that I don't think explaining a write off is a problem, per se. But I do see Amazon taking a long term view of their real estate investment and saying "OK we have it in our power to make this payoff" which dynamic is not in play with most writedowns.
longnt80 2y ago
feel like that to me too I bet there are some incentives in there but it's not the whole picture. It's probably the combination of many things but mostly management that don't know how to manage people remotely, or they started to realise that most middle manager positions are obsolete/unnecessary.
JoshTriplett 2y ago
The conspiracy theory version is that it's the sole cause, rather than one of many causes.
azemetre 2y ago
This is the case for the city of Boston. The city derives the vast majority of its budget from commercial property taxes, it's why residential property taxes are so low in the city. Use to work for a company that was literally told by the city that if they don't have X amount of people in the building they will lose their tax incentives they got for having the company there. The company slowly mandated hybrid then RTO everyday in about 6 months. Got out 2 weeks before it was implemented. My coworkers were extremely jealous that I got a WFH job. Doubt Boston is alone in these propositions
- kortilla 2y ago
  Why would the city care about number of people in the office if they are deriving the money from commercial property taxes?
  - azemetre 2y ago
    I don't understand the complete calculus but Boston is facing a $500mil shortfall and the mayor is increasing taxes to makeup the shortfall: https://news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-report/boston-residents-face-28-tax-increase-as-office-values-slump https://news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-report/boston-reside... I think part of the equation is that less people are going into the office so values of buildings are going down, less people in downtown the less money that goes to all the restaurants/shops/stores during the week. I can't speak for other cities since I don't live in them but Boston has never really recovered from the pandemic in terms of office workers.
  - mvanbaak 2y ago
    - public transport - spending money in local stores - spending money on housing - spending money on local child care - etc etc etc
  - bongodongobob 2y ago
    Why would the city care if no one is working downtown?
    - 2y ago
vermilingua 2y ago
“You don't need a formal conspiracy when interests converge. These people went to the same universities, they're on the same boards of directors, they're in the same country clubs, they have like interests, they don't need to call a meeting, they know what's good for them and they're getting it.” George Carlin: https://youtube.com/watch?v=XE3sYUJASLY https://youtube.com/watch?v=XE3sYUJASLY

Terr_ 2y ago

> real-estate value Separately but simultaneously, there are often local tax-benefits which depend on the company "creating jobs", and that's often defined in a way that means butts-in-offices downtown.

notyourwork 2y ago
Ding ding ding … this is the most overlooked aspect of the RTO/WFH dynamic.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  "RTO is definitely the play: the CEO says all his friends are doing it; activist-investors want RTO for their own porfolios, PR says breaking the lease on our newish HQ is embarrassing while Legal says it makes more work for them; Accounting says we'll pay more in tax unless we can prove X jobs created locally; our middle-managers need it in order to tell if work is happening, and HR notes that we can slim our workforce by prompting a lot of 'voluntary' departures! Seven key stakeholder groups." "But will the employees be happy, and will good ones stay?" "Seven to one, my friend. They're just grumbling like always."
  - cjbgkagh 2y ago
    While all of that is true, I wonder how much of it is re-affirmation of a social hierarchy. From the bosses point of view RTO is a costly signal that demonstrates how much people want to work for them - signals must be costly in order to be effective. Promoting WFO as more productive and less costly destroys the signaling aspect. Perhaps workers could offer other costly signals - maybe regular arduous in person team building exercises that management can show their friends photos. I really can't think of many alternative socially acceptable costly signals that can be required from employees which is probably why RTO continues to remain so popular.
- mvanbaak 2y ago
  This might be the nr 1 reason. The hidden layoff round is also high on that list if you ask me. They call everyone back to the office, the people that dont want/cant will not adhere, and thus be fired without the companies having to pay severance.

mewpmewp2 2y ago

I keep seeing this being brought up, I haven't researched it too much, but it's a bit hard for me to believe that this could truly be the case, that there's such huge influence from commercial real estate owners on CEOs of much larger companies? What causes them to have such power over large companies?

brandonmenc 2y ago
It's not like, a direct marching order. It's just a general attitude that has filtered around C suites or whatever. Go watch any daytime cable news investment shows and you'll see it. Just run of the mill cohort thinking. No big conspiracy.
- mewpmewp2 2y ago
  I'm not from the US, so I don't have direct sight into all of that. Luckily, I think there's many start ups and other companies who are valuing and all in on the remote work. I haven't felt the risk at my company to have a strong urge of getting people return to the office.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- gruez 2y ago
  >Go watch any daytime cable news investment shows and you'll see it. As in "we need to RTO to prop up commercial real estate" specifically, or something more general like "we need to RTO to increase collaboration" or whatever?
  - brandonmenc 2y ago
    As in a general, "what about city centers!" and "everyone needs to get back in the office just because!" It's all feels and vibes.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

mikeweiss 2y ago

I really don't think this is the case... I believe more than anything it's about the kind of personalities that make up people who are in charge of these decisions... Think about the types of people who are c-suite executives. They are likely people who prefer to be in an office setting.. at least most of the time. I don't think they like it very much coming into an office and seeing it mostly empty... Partly because it diminishes their perceived value as a leader and everything they've worked for but also because they truly believe people work better in person because that's what they've always done and continue to want to do.

mewpmewp2 2y ago
I think that's actually plausible, because yeah, if I was to put myself in their shoes. If someone is looking for status, and people looking up to them, etc, it would make sense that they would get much less that sort of attention if everyone is working remotely. Getting that through the Zoom is not exactly what it would be in real life.
- eastbound 2y ago
  While we’re debating whether it’s a conspiracy from the elites or not, that eludes debates on the real important questions for a team lead/founder like me: Does the office provide a better environment for building things together? How much do people cheat in WFH situations? Do people ask for help at the right time in WFH? What are the right ratios: A few days per week, or a few weeks per year, or everyone at home because we don’t like each other? By the way, do people develop the same sense of workmateness when only meeting colleagues remotely? It seems all that union-talk “Boss is evil. Boss wants office. Office evil. Bad managers.” is kidnapping a real debate that is extremely important. Unless I’m proven otherwise: - People who WFH 2 days per week seem to spend 1hr less per day working, - 100%-Remote people never seem to belong to the company, and in fact the team of 4 that I’ve recruited still seems to be in the underproductive ramp-up after 8 months, and it only lasts 2-3 months with local people. Unless we stop debating whether real estate companies form a coup against the workers, I’ll never hear better arguments.

jnordwick 2y ago

I'm going to need some data to prove this. I keep seeing this claim, but have not seen anything more than conjecture. There are just too many factors for this, and you would have to believe that a company is willing to throw away money for this to happen.

jagged-chisel 2y ago
They already threw away the money by purchasing real estate and falling for the sunk cost fallacy. Or they’re on the hook for a lease for the next five years and it will cost more to break the lease. Companies waste money all the time. I don’t think it’s a stretch to think they did or would waste oodles of money on purchasing or leasing their offices.
- appendix-rock 2y ago
  That’s not evidence. It’s as baseless as the other side’s arguments. You’ve just heard it on HN enough times and are parroting it. I assure you that there’s not a person on this website that hasn’t read essentially your exact comment 100 times. OP is saying that one nerd’s reckoning doesn’t constitute evidence.
  - The_Colonel 2y ago
    Exactly. The home office debate is a great example of motivated reasoning - many people really like the personal benefits of home office which makes them look for things which confirm their view (with the bar for "evidence" being very low). The more passion you have, the more ridiculous form it takes. In normal debates, intelligent people usually admit that there are various trade-offs, and there are different POVs which might favor one trade-off over another. But in the home office debate, pro-HO seems to take a position that RTO cannot have any true, valid benefit, there's no real trade-off to be made, and therefore it can be explained only by ulterior motives or some conspiracy - usually hyper-controlling managers or this real estate conspiracy.
    - 2y ago

gruez 2y ago

>In some cases, the pressure is also coming from external to the company, from cities and VCs and similar who care about the commercial real-estate value of now-abandoned offices. That logic seems... questionable. Even if CRE firms are in VCs/investors' portfolios, it doesn't make sense to divert money from your SaaS companies to prop up your CRE firms. In the best case (ie. both sides are owned by you), such transfers are zero to slightly negative sum (from opportunity costs and costs associated with operating an office). In the typical case where you're renting from another CRE company, such transfers are definitely negative. It doesn't make sense to go spend your money to prop up the broader CRE market as a CRE investor, just like it doesn't make sense for you to go out to buy iPhones to prop up Apple shares as an Apple investor.

tightbookkeeper 2y ago

This argument has never made sense. Commercial real estate exists to optimize the real cost (labor). There is no temptation to put it above the needs of labor.