Why the fuck would any office worker whose job is 100% on a computer need to be in an office? I don’t understand why companies want to pay for all of that electricity and real estate just to make people sit in cubicles.
I’ve been screaming its just wage theft. My city provides tax breaks for occupancy (employees prop up the local economy buying lunch). They are making me pay for gas, time, and car maintenance (and lunch but fuck them, I’ll just not eat) for this tax break which goes to C-level bonuses/shareholders. Its just another way of skimming off the top of employee wages.
We worked fully remote for nearly 2 years and the hybrid policy just keeps getting worse and worse. Coupled with quarterly riffs, I also suspect this is to avoid severance pay/unemployment while accelerating the down sizing. Yet our CEO bonus keeps going up and up despite our stock plummeting since the end of COVID lock downs.
Why should they care though? It’s not like commercial real estate sells more computers. Staff still needs desktops, infrastructure still needs datacenters.
Cloud infrastructure is great for this. You don’t need your own data center when you can just rent space on a farm. As a bonus, it’s less work for the IT team who no longer have to deal with server hardware upkeep.
This is what is so fascinating to me about most people, they don’t understand that companies hord their assets in my different kinds of investments when they are this large. Having real estate gives them an asset they can can store large sums of money in that generally appreciate in value over time. If a company is under finacial duress, they can fire a bunch of employees, then sale the land where those employees worked and and save themselves from much larger losses on revenue for a given time period.
Both major companies I’ve worked for sold their commercial real estate and leased it back as one of their very first measures when cost cuts were needed. What we have here is essentially the reverse where tech companies scare off their workforce and industry knowledge and drive up employee costs so they can impart some secondary effect on the commercial real estate market… so yes i remain confused about the priorities in play here.
You do understand that large corporations invest in many kinds of assets in order to diversify them right? Real estate is one of the oldest investments any entity can make, and is often considered a pretty strong investment. Everyone needs land right?
Some people are bad at working remote, and want to drag the rest of us down with them, too.
Yes, it’s a slightly different skill set to work remote. You have to be better at the written word. You can’t just roll up to someone’s desk and be like “have a minute?” (which is fucking awful anyway). You also need to be responsive and set your status appropriately. A lot of coworkers just wander off and leave their slack status as active. To my mind if you’re running an errand longer than taking a dump, you should update your status.
I just have slack running on my phone. If I’m at IKEA instead of my computer and someone wants something, I’ll just tell them I’ll take a look at it after lunch. If I’m out biking in the afternoon, I just tell them I’ll take a look at it tomorrow morning.
If someone wants something really urgently, I’ll tell them to give me thirty minutes. Thirty minutes later I’ll tell them that the results are inconclusive and this will need more time, for which I have scheduled a block for tomorrow.
A response (or status!) on slack that’s like “I’m at the grocery, back in 20” is fine with me. It’s more annoying when someone wanders away with no status and is unresponsive for hours.
I’m obviously exaggerating. I got some stupid “top slacker” award at the last company function. My wife told me that actually does not shine a good light on me.
Especially in sales and finance: every call is potentially on the record, and that’s a problem.
A lot of internal communication in these departments is, to put it mildly, legally not without interest. A quick chat after a meeting is completely off the record, an email is not.
Why the fuck would any office worker whose job is 100% on a computer need to be in an office? I don’t understand why companies want to pay for all of that electricity and real estate just to make people sit in cubicles.
To prevent a crash in the commercial office real estate market.
Meh fuck the commercial real estate market. Turn all the buildings into micro apartments or tear them down and install fields of solar panels.
I’ve been screaming its just wage theft. My city provides tax breaks for occupancy (employees prop up the local economy buying lunch). They are making me pay for gas, time, and car maintenance (and lunch but fuck them, I’ll just not eat) for this tax break which goes to C-level bonuses/shareholders. Its just another way of skimming off the top of employee wages.
We worked fully remote for nearly 2 years and the hybrid policy just keeps getting worse and worse. Coupled with quarterly riffs, I also suspect this is to avoid severance pay/unemployment while accelerating the down sizing. Yet our CEO bonus keeps going up and up despite our stock plummeting since the end of COVID lock downs.
Tear them down and build houses. Flood the market of every major city with houses so it becomes unprofitable to buy thousands of houses just to rent.
Then home sales go up, and millenials can ACTUALLY buy houses in their lifetime!
That would piss off the voting base that actually votes though
Condos! Best of both worlds. Especially in a dense city, a standalone house isn’t really feasible when you can fit 8+ families into the same lot.
Why should they care though? It’s not like commercial real estate sells more computers. Staff still needs desktops, infrastructure still needs datacenters.
Because all these companies have a shit load of money in the market including real state…
So sell it
That’s the crux of the issue.
Who’s going to buy it for a high price, if there is no demand for office space, because workers are all remote?
So burn it!
Property damage is an extremely effective way to fight against money. We should be doing it a lot more.
Cloud infrastructure is great for this. You don’t need your own data center when you can just rent space on a farm. As a bonus, it’s less work for the IT team who no longer have to deal with server hardware upkeep.
This is what is so fascinating to me about most people, they don’t understand that companies hord their assets in my different kinds of investments when they are this large. Having real estate gives them an asset they can can store large sums of money in that generally appreciate in value over time. If a company is under finacial duress, they can fire a bunch of employees, then sale the land where those employees worked and and save themselves from much larger losses on revenue for a given time period.
Both major companies I’ve worked for sold their commercial real estate and leased it back as one of their very first measures when cost cuts were needed. What we have here is essentially the reverse where tech companies scare off their workforce and industry knowledge and drive up employee costs so they can impart some secondary effect on the commercial real estate market… so yes i remain confused about the priorities in play here.
Why would Dell care about the commercial office real estate market?
they bought instead of rented? iunno
You do understand that large corporations invest in many kinds of assets in order to diversify them right? Real estate is one of the oldest investments any entity can make, and is often considered a pretty strong investment. Everyone needs land right?
Some people are bad at working remote, and want to drag the rest of us down with them, too.
Yes, it’s a slightly different skill set to work remote. You have to be better at the written word. You can’t just roll up to someone’s desk and be like “have a minute?” (which is fucking awful anyway). You also need to be responsive and set your status appropriately. A lot of coworkers just wander off and leave their slack status as active. To my mind if you’re running an errand longer than taking a dump, you should update your status.
I just have slack running on my phone. If I’m at IKEA instead of my computer and someone wants something, I’ll just tell them I’ll take a look at it after lunch. If I’m out biking in the afternoon, I just tell them I’ll take a look at it tomorrow morning.
If someone wants something really urgently, I’ll tell them to give me thirty minutes. Thirty minutes later I’ll tell them that the results are inconclusive and this will need more time, for which I have scheduled a block for tomorrow.
A response (or status!) on slack that’s like “I’m at the grocery, back in 20” is fine with me. It’s more annoying when someone wanders away with no status and is unresponsive for hours.
I’m obviously exaggerating. I got some stupid “top slacker” award at the last company function. My wife told me that actually does not shine a good light on me.
Sociopathy, mostly.
So managers and other poor personality types have someone to torment. This is said flippantly but I’m quite serious.
probably because their cost is sunk in the real estate already and no one wants to buy it.
Especially in sales and finance: every call is potentially on the record, and that’s a problem.
A lot of internal communication in these departments is, to put it mildly, legally not without interest. A quick chat after a meeting is completely off the record, an email is not.
Quick answer to that…you forget everything said off the record.