why are companies trying so hard to have employees back in the office?

I have posted this on Reddit (askeconomics) a while back but got no good replies. Copying it here because I don’t want to send traffic to Reddit.

What do you think?

I see a big push to take employees back to the office. I personally don’t mind either working remote or in the office, but I think big companies tend to think rationally in terms of cost/benefit and I haven’t seen a convincing explanation yet of why they are so keen to have everyone back.

If remote work was just as productive as in-person, a remote-only company could use it to be more efficient than their work-in-office competitors, so I assume there’s no conclusive evidence that this is the case. But I haven’t seen conclusive evidence of the contrary either, and I think employers would have good reason to trumpet any findings at least internally to their employees (“we’ve seen KPI so-and-so drop with everyone working from home” or “project X was severely delayed by lack of in-person coordination” wouldn’t make everyone happy to return in presence, but at least it would make a good argument for a manager to explain to their team)

Instead, all I keep hearing is inspirational wish-wash like “we value the power of working together”. Which is fine, but why are we valuing it more than the cost of office space?

On the side of employees, I often see arguments like “these companies made a big investment in offices and now they don’t want to look stupid by leaving them empty”. But all these large companies have spent billions to acquire smaller companies/products and dropped them without a second thought. I can’t believe the same companies would now be so sentimentally attached to office buildings if it made any economic sense to close them.

HobbitFoot,

First, a lot of studies have shown the productivity boost for WFH may not be uniform or actually exist. Whether the possible productivity boost is worth the money on office space hasn’t been answered, it is likely more in that gray area than WFH proponents want it to be.

Second, while generic work productivity is about the same level, teaching new skills isn’t. We have data showing educating from home has been worse for students, and that seems to be filtering into the office place. Junior staff aren’t picking up skills fast enough and are probably a major reason why WFH productivity measures are lower than expected. It isn’t because new staff are lazy, just that they have fewer people to ask questions to and don’t ask as many questions in general.

Third, building and maintaining a work network has fallen apart. People don’t know others in an office, which can be a problem in flat company structures where communication is not expected to go through the boss only. So you have people who feel like they are doing productive work, but aren’t talking to others. This can cause a lot of rework that the managers see in slipping deadlines.

That said, the answer seems to be hybrid for these jobs as workers won’t tolerate full time in the office anymore. However, hybrid has been a clusterfuck in a lot of companies because the hybrid model is new and not everyone knows how to manage to it.

Shard,

I just wanted to say that this is pretty much the most well thought out answer on WFH I’ve seen. It’s nuanced and balanced.

Thank you.

HobbitFoot,

You’re welcome.

As you can see from some of the replies, there is the assumption that bosses and executives are evil and trying to make the worker’s lives worse, but I don’t see that in a lot of these discussions.

I can also see how some staff may see themselves as being more productive yet their managers may see less productivity within their department overall.

Zeth0s, (edited )

I am absolutely happy for the people I manage to stay home if they have real work to do. They can clearly do whatever they prefer, even work from the beach as far as I am concerned, but I know that going to the office is a waste of time. But the job we do is project based, long deadlines, no real “daily business” to handle. It however requires maximum focus, because it is not trivial. Offices are hells for concentration and quality work.

They can stay at home and call whenever they want whoever they want.

It has been working great.

It really depends on the positions. Office spaces are very bad for some positions, good fo others. Pushing a unique way of working for fishes and elephants cannot work. This is the main problem with current approach

HobbitFoot,

There are some teams that can maintain full remote; I usually find those teams are filled with people good at their job, can see the big picture, and know to communicate early.

The problem is that not all teams are like that.

antim0ny,

Your comment reflects what my own experience has been over the past few years.

slaacaa,

Great summary, I wish all the WFH fanatics would read and understand this. I really hate how in most online spaces they make it seem like 100% WFH is the answer for everything.

Jayb151,

To speak to your points, I started with about 1 year ago in a new career in IT. We initially were coming in one day a week and this has moved to two days.

First, when we moved to two days, I have it about 6 weeks, then started crunching numbers. By the sole metric of closing tickets… My team as a whole is more productive in the office. I didn’t break down exactly who was more of less productive, but I have my ideas. I’m willing to bet that I work better at home, but it’s a moot point as the team is better on site.

As far as learning new skills, even at one day a week, I’ve caught up to the rest of my team and have surpassed them technically. Again, it’s IT and I’ve always had a strong interest, whereas I see some of the team probably view it as “just work” I’m actually enjoying the work. Again, it’s a second career so maybe maturity is in play here too, but even the younger guys who were hired after me are growing very quickly.

You’re absolutely right about networking. I felt so isolated when I started. It wasn’t until I learned a few people a few steps above where I was that I learned who is a good resource, and who I can trust. Once I got my head around that, I think people actually see the work in doing and redirect me for it. If I were 100% wfh I don’t think I would be having as good a time.

Just my experience

Asafum,

Did you have any relevant experience or credentials? I’m looking to jump to a new career possibly in IT, but I have absolutely nothing on paper to sell myself with. The most I have is a few years experience in diagnostics as I was once a refrigeration tech.

6daemonbag,

I’m about to bootcamp myself out of my current career and into IT. My related experience is limited and this is a major (and costly) move for me. Cashing out an old 401k to finance it. Otherwise I’d be taking a predatory loan from Sallie Mae…

I’ll be starting from scratch, probably doing entry-level work. But I’m ok with that because I’ll eventually be able to better provide for my family, and I’m so broke and stressed that my hair is thinning. Check out springboard or thrivedx. My bootcamp is through them (haven’t decided between software engineer or cybersecurity) but handled by a local university.

Asafum,

Thanks for the info! I’ll have to check that out!

Jayb151,

I have no paper credentials, but I was a licensed educator, so at least it shows I can get credentials if I worked at it.

I started at a local community college party time, then transferred to my current role. Both bosses are the type like, “I can teach anyone IT, but it’s hard to teach soft skills.” Turns out they can’t really teach IT either and I’m left to getting knowledge from my team and outside sources.

I am taking some azure fundamentals courses right now though, so I’m going that legit certs will make me more hireable

PhantomPhanatic,
@PhantomPhanatic@lemmy.world avatar

Thanks for helping bring this perspective to light. Most threads on work from home go all in on productivity being higher, but don’t take into account the longer term consequences of working from home on knowledge sharing, education, training, and team building. Even if productivity is higher now, that doesn’t mean it will remain that way in the long run.

driving_crooner, (edited )
@driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br avatar

while generic work productivity is about the same level, teaching new skills isn’t.

As someone who did his last year of college and first two years of career from home this is spot on. My senior simply refused to teach me anything, or even answering my chats and my manager didn’t care. I had to learn doing inverse engineering on the excel files because I cannot even sit at his side and saw him work ans learn. I changed companies a month ago to a full-time in office position and I’m learning more in this month that what I did on the past two years (its also helps that my new manager is also a college professor and have like 40 years of industry experience).

Devi,

There are apparently some industries where there's less production at home, I work in an industry where this isn't the case though and it seems to be extrovert admin people pushing it, I think they think we're all sad and lonely at home?

"It's nice to come in and have people to talk to!"

Is it? Or are we all just being dragged in because you want chats?

Frog-Brawler,
Frog-Brawler avatar

If you’re going in to talk to people it means you’re not working. Unless… the company pays you just to talk to people. 🤷‍♂️

lagomorphlecture,

And how does that make you feel?

On a serious note though people who I didn’t like and didn’t want to talk to would come by my desk daily and spend a minimum of 20 minutes just talking about shit I didn’t care about. How they got any work at all done is beyond me because obviously they were doing the rounds and talking to everyone else too. And how I got any work done between the million visits? I hated being in an office. I was so miserable.

Frog-Brawler,
Frog-Brawler avatar

Same… it’s not my current company, but the company before this one got me interested in noise cancelling headphones. People bullshitting and talking loud all day may as well have been nails on a chalkboard.

VanillaGorilla,

Talking to people isn't really boosting my productivity. I need peace and time to think. The office is the last of all places where I can find that.

HobbitFoot,

Talking to others may not boost your productivity working, but it can give you a better understanding of what to do when you are productive.

VanillaGorilla,

Sure, clearing and refining tasks is important. But we're talking about your colleague or boss talking for talking's sake.

HobbitFoot,

Not all talking needs to be work related only.

I’ve seen a lot better productivity between staff that will talk to each other about non-work tasks than those that don’t. People aren’t robots.

VanillaGorilla,

And I'm not one of them. People are different.

Devi,

Absolutely, we have whatsapp groups now so if I have a question I can fire it over to anyone or everyone if needed, it's so much easier and I can ignore it until convenient.

AttackBunny,

Don’t forget all the people that hate their kids (and “family”) too. That was one of the biggest driving forces at the immediate end of the pandemic lockdowns. Then they changed course and said it was about productivity because hating your kids sounds bad.

DigitalAudio,
@DigitalAudio@sopuli.xyz avatar

I kind of agree that remote working every single day gets very socially deprived very quickly. Although the office isn’t a place for socialising, not having anyone to talk to day in day out at work drives me a bit mad.

But I also think 90% of the time, working from home is better. Maybe a hybrid model where you only go to the office once or maximum twice a week or something could work for most people. The introverts and the extroverts reaching a compromise.

Devi,

Or, just make it free choice? If you miss socialising then go in, if you don't then stay home?

Icalasari,

Also helps those of us unable to drive for various reasons (in my case, physical tourettes triggered by stress. Liable to start having pseudoseizures [like seizures but I'm concious during them] when driving which is... Really not good)

Devi,

That doesn't sound like a fun time

Icalasari,

It is not, no. Being concious as you lose control of your body is... Very unpleasant

shiroininja,

They’re wasting money on big buildings and rent.

Also, they want control of your activity while your on the clock. It bothers them if you’re more productive, get the same amount of work done but can relax more at home. Which is the way it should be. If I can do the same work in 4 hours than I can in 8, I should get paid the same, and be able to relax, instead of being made to stay at work for 8hrs and be given even more things to do to just stay busy.

Future203,

I’ve never understood the empty buildings argument. Wouldn’t the company be “wasting” just as much money if the building was empty or full? Might even cost more to have it occupied since then you need hvac.

shiroininja,

No, if the building was empty, they should get rid of it. But there’s the whole sunk cost thing if they built it themselves or are in a multi year lease

Steeve,

Not just rent, they own those big buildings. They’re assets, and what happens when everyone realizes they don’t need those buildings at the same time? Corporate real estate crashes and those assets are worthless. Nobody wants a huge asset dropping off their balance sheet because they let their employees wfh before they could offload their offices.

The shitty middle management who think like your second point are convenient, but I don’t think they’re the ones making the decision to call employees back in a lot of cases.

lol3droflxp,
lol3droflxp avatar

That does not make sense at all if you consider the number one priority of any company: money. If they make just as much or even more when people work more efficiently they would not care.

Wisely,

I am surprised they don’t just cut costs by not having a physical location then? Or is this just while waiting out lease agreements.

shiroininja,

Some smaller companies are doing this. It makes them more agile financially and actually helps their growth to not have a building to pay for. I don’t understand the larger companies.

Zachs,

They spent millions building a facility or are locked into 5/10 year leases. I’ve also heard it’s because cities are dying, no one in offices to eat ‘down the street’ at the food shops, people don’t stop at the bar on the way home, no impulse shopping trip because you’re already out.

Swedneck,
@Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

wait what? where are cities dying?

Isn’t it the opposite, where people move from the countryside into urban areas?

squiblet,
squiblet avatar

It refers to downtown areas with daytime businesses that relied on office workers as customers, dining at cafes and so forth. Downtown Denver, for example, has much less activity in the day than it used to.

https://kdvr.com/news/data/denver-has-not-recovered-two-thirds-of-pre-pandemic-downtown-life/

https://www.axios.com/local/denver/2022/08/02/denver-downtown-reinvention-pandemic

Neato,
Neato avatar

What's the penalty for a big Corp to break their lease? I can't imagine they care about credit rating.

Carighan,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

Imagine how much space we could reclaim for homes to reinvigorate those bars and eateries! :o

Blizzard,

deleted_by_author

    •
    SnowdenHeroOfOurTime,

    That is exactly what they were saying.

    Blizzard,

    Yeah, sorry, I must have misread that.

    DigitalAudio,
    @DigitalAudio@sopuli.xyz avatar

    What? That’s absolutely incorrect. Cities are the number one most sought after and thriving alternative, especially among young people.

    Maybe cities in the US, but that’s because they’re mostly poorly designed parking lots for suburbanites.

    Cities are certainly not dying anywhere else on Earth wtf.

    Cryst,

    I mean good? There is far to much concentration of people in cities and shit is too expensive.

    Dasnap,
    @Dasnap@lemmy.world avatar

    My company just moved their office space into a smaller section of the parent company’s building, which funnily enough is nicer than where we were beforehand. Going in every few months makes the trip into London feel like a nice trip instead of a commute.

    DigitalAudio,
    @DigitalAudio@sopuli.xyz avatar

    Yeah my office rents a WeWork space downtown and we only go there a couple days every few weeks. I like it, it’s a change of pace.

    Emperor,
    @Emperor@feddit.uk avatar

    A friend works for a housing association that had a very fancy office and that’s now been sold as they are all working from home.

    200ok,

    Correct. They either own the buildings and have to pay for upkeep (and can’t get rid of them) or they’re on a long term lease.

    postmeridiem,

    Another reason you’ve not yet been given is that some of these companies have decades long contracts for renting. The government should intervene and cancel the contracts and pay for them to be converted to flats tbqh. Someone will say “But that will cost more than building a new one![citation needed]” but knocking down half the office buildings at once will probably give everyone in the cities supercancer*[citation needed]*

    BanditMcDougal,

    I’m extremely pro-WFH for professions that can. I’ve been doing it for 10 years and it has only gotten better since others started to experience it and have empathy for what it means to be a remote worker. Just getting that out of the way before chatting more about hidden difficulties of converting buildings to residential use…

    I can’t speak for European office buildings (your use of “flats” has me assuming you’re on the other side of the pond from me), but a large number of US buildings would either have to be 100% gutted back to the main supporting beams OR pulled down and rebuilt. Issue here is a combo of proper placement of utility lines (mostly plumbing) within the building and the added weight residential use brings rather than business use.

    Large office leases here have a lot of control over how their floors are laid out, but floor planning normally takes electrical runs into consideration and will leave spaces like kitchens and bathrooms unmoved. Executive offices and other private interior spaces can be created/adjusted by making interior walls and tying into electrical connections already in a floor or drop ceiling.

    Plumbing is a whole other monster and takes a lot more work. Not an insurmountable consideration, just harder.

    The weight of residential living is one I hadn’t considered until someone pointed it out to me. In addition to all the additional plumbing needed (whose pipes add tonnage by the time you’ve converted a building), you also have to consider water within those pipes, and if a lot of people run their kid’s evening bath around 7 PM, that’s even more tonnage, normally all in a similar vertical line because of repeated floor plans. A lot of corporate buildings here, esp older ones, just weren’t engineered for that and a lot would need significant remediation to support it.

    I have way less to say about the super cancers… We did use a LOT of asbestos as we built up urban areas, though.

    postmeridiem,

    Yeah I think the floor weight is the actual concern and reason it doesn’t happen rather than zoning, but if it’s possible to renovate it within something close to the same cost as starting again, they should renovate it. We need to start taking into account things like the pollution for stuff like this but it not being considered doesn’t mean someone isn’t getting the bill. I don’t think people who would prefer to demolish and start again consider amount of shit that will be put into the air if you knock down a good portion of the office buildings, even if it doesn’t effect much on a grander scale it will effect the actual cities.

    Would be interesting if a structural engineer did a video on all the problems and solutions etc of converting office buildings. Maybe even getting away with the bottom few floors on all office big buildings would be a good start.

    Carighan,
    @Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

    Plenty are, it’s just that the largest companies built those places, they cannot trivially liquidate them. Plus they usually own the whole land, so cutting part of it away is not easy.

    They still should. For many jobs office work is a completely unnecessary waste of:

    • Productivity (via constant distractions)
    • Time (commuting)
    • Money (via the building maintenance costs)
    • Space (the actual building)
    • Resources (heating and shit)

    But managers are loathe to ever admit any failings, our market culture frowns upon this. Hence admitting that your building is no longer needed is not a thing any manager to wants to bring up in a meeting to their bosses, so back to the office it is. :<

    GreatAlbatross,
    @GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk avatar

    it’s just that the largest companies built those places

    And that’s the biggest one imho: They were able to leverage their huge size to save money long term by building and owning.
    Now that the status quo has changed, they want to change it back so that their advantage is still in effect.

    agressivelyPassive,

    And that’s why capitalism is so efficient.

    arthur,

    /s

    MoonlitCringe,

    A comment I’ve seen a few times is that remote work highlights the minimal value that middle-managers provide to companies.

    If you’re employees work from home with little interaction with their managers and they do it well/better, then why have those managers? Like you said, companies want to be cost effective. So the push back to the office could be coming from managers who don’t want a light shined on their lack of value.

    1nk,

    Ironically that probably ousts out their minimal value harder. Not a good look forcing your "underlings" if productivity was good prior, and subsequently falls flat.

    quixotic120,

    Middle management has gotten absolutely out of control in America

    Imo (and this is largely conjecture) it’s an end result of stagnant wages. It used to be that you might stay in the same position but get actual pay increases 50 years ago. Now you don’t get the pay increases really, maybe a 3% annual bump if you’re lucky. They need something to retain talent so a lot of places end up creating bullshit management positions out of thin air to retain staff that come with a slightly more modest pay bump.

    So instead of the 3% bump you get a 5% bump and now you’re “director of clinical programming” or “associate manager of marketing and sales for eastern iowa division” and have 10 employees “report” to you but in reality you’re neutered and have no actual power to do anything to them but tattle to the actual boss. But then the company doesn’t have to give you a 7-10% bump that outpaces inflation and feels like an actual raise. They save the real promotions for nepotism.

    But this happens constantly and now industries are jam packed with employees that just bother other employees all day and/or create systems that slow down employees en masse to “increase accountability” that are constantly updated and replaced without removing old ones.

    Whenever someone goes on about fixing healthcare this comes to mind. I’ve worked in healthcare for years and it is absolutely full of this. Pharma, insurance, hospital admin, all of them are loaded up with tons of these kinds of staff. I can’t tell you how many useless staff I’ve seen get promoted to positions that were literally created for them to supervise a handful of people. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to fill out 7 sets of paperwork that takes 2 hours and is all redundant copies of each other because 9 middle managers from the hospital, insurance, and state administration are all constantly convinced I’m a fraudulent liar despite being a licensed professional with a decade and a half of clinical experience and absolutely no investigations or citations on my record whatsoever.

    Single payer healthcare is definitely a great idea that should be pursued but this is a huge problem that also needs to be addressed regardless of who’s paying the bill if you want to see changes with actual costs, wait times, clinician burn out, etc.

    I’d imagine it’s similar for other industries too. How much wasted resources are in middle management at tech companies, at food production, at basically anything? How much of rising costs are basically going to pay the glut of middle managers that being nothing to the table but resource drain? Who do nothing in terms of bringing in money, who do nothing in terms of providing value? How much cheaper could my cellphone, bread, wood, etc be without these parasites sucking up resources

    But then the societal impact comes up. If you addressed this problem tonight that would mean millions of people go from comfortably middle class to jobless overnight. America isn’t known for great social supports as is, what happens when you throw a 7-8 figure number into the mix (with the reduced tax income from the loss of their job income).

    Fwiw I genuinely think that point is a huge factor in why our government resists proper single payer healthcare; a true program would displace millions of workers overnight as it would make companies like Aetna, Cigna, etc largely redundant and reliant on their much less lucrative life/home/auto/renters insurance divisions. They would slash workers left and right. If we ever get one it will be a two lane system where the private insurers stay alongside it as a “boutique” option for the rich to receive better service, guaranteed. Plus you know, those companies literally own politicians lol and that’s the other much larger problem

    31337,

    Same reason they all had layoffs at the same time; activist investors want them to. Probably because these investors own a lot of commercial real estate as well.

    Also, it’s probably a good way for them to reduce their workforce without publicly announcing layoffs.

    notatoad,

    It’s always good to step back from “companies” and think of companies as just a bunch of people.

    Is it good for companies to force employees back to the office? Nah, probably not. Is it good for the guy who has to explain why he signed a 10-year lease on all that office space, and now it’s sitting empty? Yup. Is it good for the lonely manager who wants to be surrounded by people, and has the power to make that happen? Yup. Is it good for the exec who has to find some reason why his department is underperforming, and decides remote work is a good scapegoat? Ehhh….

    boatswain,

    My hunch is that we’re seeing an influence campaign by people who own lots of commercial real estate swaying bosses. I don’t have any actual info about who owns or has a stake in commercial real estate, but my gut tells me it’s likely to be really wealthy businesspeople who a bunch of CEOs probably look up to/play golf with/whatever.

    Nioxic,

    I am no exoert

    But i have read of 2 reasons.

    1: the boss thinks people who sit at home, are lazy and get nothing done. When they are in the office he can keep an eye on them!

    2: nobody using their expensive office buildings means waste of rent money. Not wanting to let that go to waste… makes sense. Inviting potential clients to your empty offices would also seem awkward.

    Im sure there could be more reasons…

    thawed_caveman,

    I haven’t had a normal job since before covid so i’m not super qualified, but:

    I think big companies tend to think rationally in terms of cost/benefit

    I think they sometimes do, but not always. The reason being that companies are made of people, and people sometimes but not always think rationally.

    In this case, my guess is middle management may be fretting about leaving employees unsupervised. What if they play games or browse Twitter on company time? You can’t monitor them when they’re not in the office!

    Inspirational wish-wash like “we value the power of working together” strikes me as common corporate wish-wash. It’s sort of along the lines of “we’re a family here”. They’re trying to make employees emotionally invested in the corpo so they’ll put up with more bullshit.

    andallthat,

    Well yes, I do feel we might have collectively given more thought to this here than my company has…

    It’s just that I work in one of those places where a trivial change that our users are asking for requires a business case and endless discussion, so it’s weird to think that a big, life-changing decision like this would just be taken without a particularly strong motivation.

    But maybe I’m just starting from the wrong premise here. The purpose of the business case is for us little guys to obtain buy-in from the top management, but if a decision comes directly from the top management they don’t need much more than their own gut feelings?

    Maybe especially so if they have to make a decision based on an unprecedented situation with no data and no guidance from what other companies have done before.I can see how the least risky bet would seem returning to the previous, proven situation where most people were working in the office.

    thawed_caveman,

    Oh yeah, power in a corporation goes top down, and it figures that top management likes it that way.

    There’s definitely safety to be found in the familiar, i do it a lot, whenever i have to do something unfamiliar i will often let myself get overwhelmed trying to consider all the tiny implications. Eventually though the experience from early adopters will enlighten other companies. It’s a lot easier to take a decision like this when other people have done it and you have data to see what the results were. In the case of work from home, this process is already well underway, it’s been three years since covid and there’s already a lot of data that you can point to.

    psion1369,

    There is the wonder why hold value on office space ersus the smaller companies that are bought and dropped with no sentimental value. The big difference there is that purchasing out a company doesn’t usually come with a years-long agreement to keep it in place, use the products, etc. Office space has that. A years-long agreement to use the space and pay for the use. And to drop the use before the agreement is done costs more than it’s worth. And it’s even worse for a company that owns property. It costs money to keep the office space usable, money that comes from leases. If someone is going to back out of a lease, the owner of a building now has to pull from other sources of money to upkeep a building.

    I know developers have spent years building and growing office buildings and regions to put said office buildings, and now a massive push to work remotely makes all that effort not just for nothing, but a very costly nothing. And then there is the secondary economy around office buildings. Many stores and restaurants spring up where there are plenty of people working. If there are no people, no reason for those businesses. I used to work in a downtown area with plenty of restaurants that I would eat at. Now that I don’t work there, I don’t eat at those restaurants anymore.

    The push and call for remote work is going to change literal landscapes in cities and industrial regions in ways we cannot predict, or prevent.

    isVeryLoud,

    Correct, my (large) company was literally getting bullied in the newspaper for no longer "contributing to the local economy by letting its employees work from home*.

    will_a113,

    As an anecdote, I work at a midsized software company as a product manager. I have an international team of about 20 that I manage from home (full-time remote). Overall there is some loss of speed and agility versus having a full-time in-office staff. I’m not a fan of trying to quantify productivity per se, but for things like estimations and deviations there’s no question that in my environment at least, things move a little slower and take a little longer. Now personally, the fact that we can hire engineers anywhere across the globe (including in LCOL areas), don’t have to pay rent and related fees, and that some of the best engineers specifically want full-time remote more than outweighs the reduced agility (putting aside all of the other potential QOL benefits) – and if needed, some of the savings from reduced rent and salaries could be used to expand the team anyway. Thankfully my management team agrees and has continued to pursue a remote/hybrid environment. But for those places that value speed and agility most it could be a bit of a problem.

    thawed_caveman,

    I’ve been helping a Chinese company and it includes getting on the phone at 9am to talk to them right as they’re leaving the office. For an international team there can be time zone issues like that, but if you can find overlap between Europe and China then you can find overlap between anywhere

    sturmblast,

    Control.

    HexesofVexes,

    A couple of extra ones to add to the list:

    “Work you don’t see didn’t happen”

    I think a lot of it is down to the assumption that employees are working less because less work is seen.

    “A tired employee is a loyal employee”

    That one might sound dystopian, but it’s also true. Commutes make people feel worse, and contribute to burned out feelings by reducing recuperation time. People in that kind of space are unable to look for new opportunities as easily.

    ChaoticEntropy,
    @ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk avatar

    There are a whole lot of issues around commercial property and corporate taxes that interplay to mean that occupancy is heavily encouraged.

    TheAnonymouseJoker,
    @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml avatar

    Power over employee, since their life is empty without it. This is all they found as a purpose in life.

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