Return to office is ‘dead,’ Stanford economist says. Here’s why::The share of workers being called back to the office has flatlined, suggesting remote work is an entrenched feature of the U.S. labor market.
Return to office is ‘dead,’ Stanford economist says. Here’s why::The share of workers being called back to the office has flatlined, suggesting remote work is an entrenched feature of the U.S. labor market.
This is the thing. Remote work as an option helps everyone. Lower costs for the employer, happier employees, the people who do want to work in an office have a better time because it’s less crowded, the people who need to care for kids or parents have an easier time…it’s entirely a win for everyone.
Except real estate companies, and therein lies the problem.
nothing has made me more sick recently than learning that these investor scum are trying to flog people back into the office because they gambled too much money on office buildings, so obviously this is the correct next step. never mind eating the fucking loss, never mind gambling on sports like a normal human being, these fucking vampires think they get THAT much control over your life for THAT petty and convoluted and i am sorry COMPLETELY FUCKING MADE UP reason like ‘we gambled on offices too much’
You just described investor landlords.
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Well, which is it? You can’t have it both ways.
He’s literally saying that while the workplace encourages collaboration at work two days a week, you don’t have to if it doesn’t fit your schedule.
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It doesn’t benefit them, though; they just prefer it.
There are tons of people who prefer it but don’t actually get any benefit out of it.
How is work being more pleasant not a benefit?
I’ve never met an overbearing middle manager who was pleasant. Every single one, without fail, has been a complete grouch and terrible to be around.
Okay, I thought you were talking about the employees, not the manager.
What gets me is that in this mad dash to address climate change, WFH is a valuable tool to reduce emissions from commuting. I remember driving during the early lockdowns and thinking it would be possible to skateboard down the freeway. You’d think Democrats would be encouraging WFH as a part of their green initiatives, but I can see that having donors in real estate and fossil fuels might run counter to that.
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I believe it. I had meant to say in the previous comment that during the initial lockdowns and driving on the empty freeways, the Southern California skies were the absolute clearest I had ever seen them. While I’m sure industry is the largest emissions contributor, factories and plants are localized, whereas cars are absolutely everywhere and a huge cause of general smog. It’s bonkers that we have the means to reduce our emissions significantly by allowing and encouraging WFH, but muh profits and control.
I’ve been saying this forever. We don’t need new tech to be developed or rolled out, we don’t need to move everyone to a city and take a train, we don’t need everyone to buy a new electric car, we just need to take away the reason 1/3 or more of driving occurs. And we already proved we can do it. It’s insane to not make that part of the climate goals.
This compounds too - less traffic means less need to add more lanes, or run more trains, or pave more parking lots, etc… So basically “bad, unnecessary” construction can go away. From what I can tell, almost no one actually wants a larger highway except because of traffic. But most of the traffic is commuters. We might have enough capacity (if you remove most commuters) for a very very long time to handle tourists, delivery trucks, and emergency services…
It’s even good for the environment! The amount of time, money, and energy (and that energy needs to be generated somehow) used to support everyone’s daily commute is IMMENSE. More than a few cities noted significantly improved air quality when the quarantines were in effect in 2020, and there’s still a noticeable difference in a lot of places.
I’m an essential worker, so I kept commuting pretty much like normal throughout the pandemic.
During the initial lockdowns I was averaging a whole MPG better just from not having any traffic.
And the real kicker is that my schedule is kind of weird, so I already commute at times when traffic isn’t too bad, I normally start at 2:30 in the afternoon and work 12 hours until the 2:30 in the morning (before anyone asks, my job isn’t very physically demanding, and I have more and more frequent days off, so 12 hour shifts aren’t too bad) so I’m going in after people have been running out to do stuff on their lunch breaks and before schools let out so traffic is minimal then, and I usually don’t even see a half dozen other cars on the road when I’m heading home, and some of my shifts are weekends so traffic is usually even lighter during the day. And my commute is only about 10 miles/20 minutes, no highways or anything, just normal semi-rural to suburban main roads.
And so a slight reduction in traffic during my commute into work (and no real difference to my commute home) got me a small but noticeable difference in my average fuel economy. Now all told that means I probably only saved a few gallons, maybe a tank of gas myself, but think of all of the millions of people who commute in much heavier traffic both ways, possibly even further, and how much extra gas they’re burning releasing CO2 and other pollutants into the atmosphere.
Imagine what more people being able to work from home, better public transit and carpooling to reduce number of cars on the road, companies staggering the start/end times of their business days so that everyone isn’t commuting at the same time, etc. could do.
That said, where I work, our policy explicitly forbids us from taking care of people at home during our work day…
Hmmm. How…would they know?
Also, I think there’s a question about the legality of your employer trying to enforce what you do in your own home, workday or not.
They won’t unless you tell them really, I think they’re just loading up a bunch of unappetizing restrictions on WFH in hopes people will just give up and come back into the office
Why they care so much is beyond me, though, with the kind of employer it is, but someone in the higher chain of command seems to be allergic to WFH, always has been resistant to allowing it
Devious. And baffling.