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bustedbuddha t1_iyku9y5 wrote

If I were a shareholder of Morgan Stanley I would be asking "since the years the workers were working from home were some of your most profitable, and work from home saves the company money, why are you spending my money on office space, and forcing people to come back?"

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wabashcanonball t1_iykvo7g wrote

It’s so people can’t look for other jobs as easily—the five days in the office are job handcuffs as far as management is concerned—little do they know.

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Grass8989 t1_iykvubr wrote

Their office space leases are usually negotiated for decades, so there is mostly likely no increase in spending there.

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bustedbuddha t1_iyl098s wrote

Electricity, bandwidth, building services, utilities etc... etc...

Additionally in a company the scale of Morgan Stanley there are (and will continue to be) new Office spaces opened and closed every single year. This means there are constant opportunities to save money for those same decade timescales.

In a smaller company that may be a factor, but it's still cheaper even if you're biting down on sunk cost, to have workers be remote.

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Grass8989 t1_iyl4o0d wrote

Theses costs are already factored in. Clearly they feel like the costs outweigh any downside, since they want their workers back in the office.

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bustedbuddha t1_iyl822y wrote

"these savings are found money so we plan to waste them" that's what I'm hearing.

edit: look, my point is that you should have to show it's better to be worth spending money on. I'm sure there are companies that could easily do just that. Most of the financial services industry seemingly could not if they had to.

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AugustWest7120 t1_iykzazz wrote

I always like the “has money= smart and empathetic” thought. Idk if that’s a real occurrence.

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bustedbuddha t1_iykzqxj wrote

I believe in good, but people don't listen to good. You have to explain to them why good is good for their greed. In this case it's obviously fucking better from a pure money perspective to let workers stay home. Many companies were trying to move more workers to remote in the pre-pandemic for that very reason.

The reality is that every CEO who is forcing services workers back to the office, who's company did well during the pandemic, is wasting money for their egos. Fuck them.

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myassholealt t1_iyl5rnw wrote

I don't believe that's the reality. When people get more money they tend to start voting conservative for financial reasons. And are willing to ignore all other conservative policies as long as there's financial benefits. And we all know empathy is the enemy for the gop when it comes to policies.

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olli_bombastico t1_iym77r3 wrote

>since the years the workers were working from home were some of your most profitable

Our staff was also getting sick during that period. That means getting sick is good for business. We should demand c-suite to get staff sick on a regular basis to keep those profits up.

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sayheykid24 t1_iym51hl wrote

Morgan Stanley has been profitable in past years because the brands adder market was up. You think that has something to do with remote work though?

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bustedbuddha t1_iymeggj wrote

No, I think remote work has been shown to not be harmful to profitability. Since it saves money and isn't harmful to profitability, forcing people back should be justified if management is going to spend money on it.

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sayheykid24 t1_iymgwli wrote

I don’t know that you have a vantage point to say that without confidence about Morgan Stanley. In my industry it’s been a major drag on productivity for the past year and a half because entry level employees are not ramping up as quickly as they used to pre-remote work, and it has knock on effects throughout organizations.

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bustedbuddha t1_iymk4qi wrote

Sure, I mean it's not like as a publicly traded company they've released their financials on a quarterly basis showing continued profit growth throughout the time they've been primarily WFH... /S

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sayheykid24 t1_iymradk wrote

Go take a look at their earnings reports and point out where they pin profitability on anything related to remote work. You can't be that dense that you equate short-term profitability driven primarily by market conditions and the long-term management of a business, right?

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bustedbuddha t1_iyms0t5 wrote

That's not how it works. they're proposing to spend more investor money, they need to show where it drives further profitability.

They don't directly tie profitability to WFH, I'm not either, I'm saying that the result show WFH has not damaged profitability.

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joyousRock t1_iyl3xcg wrote

Maybe not every company wants to be fully remote just because it’s easier for you to be in your pajamas all day

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bustedbuddha t1_iyl40r4 wrote

It costs investor money to make people come in. If that's the only justification you are wasting money.

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