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.
Your have this insane idea that the whole country is one big “business”.
Facebook is a business that doesn’t give a single shit about real estate, because they’re not in the business of real estate, and yet they’re bringing their workers back to the office.
Your words, not mine. But businesses tend to want to make money, cut costs and protect their investments (surprise), so you do the math.
I don’t 100% agree, and for every Facebook there is a Microsoft.
But this discussion isn’t going anywhere, mostly about you blowing steam and probably more interesting to you than it is to me, so let’s just agree to disagree.
LOL this is not at all about me “blowing steam” and 100% about you conjuring up a wild conspiracy theory because you can’t accept a reality that you don’t like.