What an idiotic “article”, it’s just more propaganda from corporate real estate companies about “collaboration” and other buzz words that an office does not actually do.

I’m tired of the non stop “remote work is over” trend of articles that are being fed from billionaires

"Work in the office" is just the manager's way of saying they don't understand what you do and have no way to measure your output unless they can constantly look over at your desk and make sure you're not happy.

I've been in IT for 30+ years. Many of those years I was working alone, remoted into routers and switches overseas from my desk, all day long.

When the pandemic hit, and we were told to work from home, I busted my ass to get *more* done. I wanted to show them it could work.

It actually turned out to be easy. I had a 1.75 hour commute each day, so without that I just worked an extra hour a day- not even on purpose most days. It was no skin off my nose and I was still free from work earlier than I would have been. I got a huge bonus, and a promotion.

If I have to go back in the office every single day - my company will just lose 300+ hours of extra work, from a person with decades of experience in my field, each year. The days I go into the office are the least productive days for my organization.

Frak this author and frak OP for posting this drivel.

While I agree that new hires benefit greatly from being in the office, learning from coworkers, and seeing how things get done first hand, once they're trained up and can stand on their own, there's no need to have them in the office full time. And it makes no sense to require tenured employees to come into the office at all, if they're not involved in training a new hire.

The thing is, despite the big name tech companies right- sizing their workforce, the tech industry is still booming. Remote work is an important employment perk for many people and there are still plenty of places that offer it.

Help!

The cities that we have made dangerous, dirty and undesirable need you workers to come back into the office buildings so that we can tax you to death the way we used to.

The corporate property market needs to be rescued, so we are sponsoring article after article of propaganda explaining why you all need to come back to the office suddenly after 3 years of working fine remotely...

/s

We've purchased all these buildings with borrowed money. We need X% of you to occupy them, or else we have to sell them.

Sell them.

> “It’s a good deal for companies who don’t want to deal with the backlash and consequences that come with layoffs but need to cut costs somewhere,” she explains.

LOL

"It's great that we make it so undesirable that people just quit, saving us from having to fire them, which is harrrd.

Now, back to wasting a couple of hours a day commuting away from your familyu, wearing out your car and wasting gas, just to sit in an office so you can Teams video your coworkers from your cube."

...

If you run a company like this, good luck! My company and my wife's companies hire from all over the country. Not only are the prospects much better (much wider talent pool), but the idea that we can't communicate in a virtual office in 2023 is so ridiculous I wouldn't even know where to start.

They'll just go back to having an office the size of a gas station for a 300 plus person organization.

Oh it's the weekly article on this nonsense..

Smart companies are selling their offices for what they can get before the market for office space crashes.

Convert them to apartments! PLEASE, we need apartments in Denver. Rents are recockulous.

If anyone needed more evidence about how your media is controlled.

How to disenfranchise 90% of your work force in 1 policy document or less..

Quietly?

All these corporate spinsters trying resolve issues of their own making. For many, working from home makes fiscal sense for all. There is no definitive proof that commuting, sitting in an office, and then having to again clog freeways, pollute the air and ruin our own work-life balance, has any positive effect on productivity. In fact, many of us have proven exactly the opposite argument; many of us are MORE productive working from home.

Facilities managers were warned (anecdotally by me to our Facilities Managers, and) en masse, for multitudes of workers, management, senior management and even CEOs, that if they did not plan for increased vacancies, they would be left holding bag on poorly negotiated contracts, commercial real estate mortgages and more often, leasing, of office space.

“Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part”.

The rest, like the authors of these puff pieces, are merely shills for property managers who are losing out to those who DID plan well enough to expect a reduction of the in-person workforce. Enough! of these puff pieces… they’re just lies, contorted stories and innuendo designed to reset us all back into our Kafka-esque cubicle spaces.

Do not fall for this bullshit.

*Understand, this is not to say that many, many “jobs” are not only fit, but are better suited for in-person office work, but that should not preclude the millions and millions of jobs that have no reason to be forced back into cubicles.

My company downsized their hq, made the new office space hoteling style so no place to even put your work in a file or have a permanent seat. If we had 1400 people pre Covid in the office they only got enough space for 800. I went in this week and I was one of four people. And I was on teams calls all day. Other than, yes, my colleague and I could chat about some work stuff, it was a total waste of our time. It’s insane to think they’re going to trim around and spend more money to bring us all back to a corporate office.

I’ve worked at home for 12 years. I’d like to think my personal anecdotes and bias count for something here! /s

Many who have left the big city don't plan on going back. It's not just the issues with homelessness or traffic; it's the housing conditions for workers. To live in the city, you usually need to rent an apartment with a lease. But with layoffs rampant in the industry, committing to a year-long lease is risky. It's no wonder why some are hesitant to return to such an unstable employment situation, opting instead to work remotely.

Hell no. I've been remote since before the pandemic, and I'll never take a full time in-person job again. This is pure propaganda.

Chatgpt would have written a better article

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How about they start paying for our commutes. Not only is it dangerous to drive in general, but why should I have to drive 30 mins to the office when I could be doing my job from home? Why do they need us in the office so bad? Use the buildings for something else and charge rent if they are so concerned with their real estate.

Unfortunately, if all the big corporations start requiring return to office mandates, then you will see this trend more often because they have the ability to offer the most jobs and higher pay. I don’t see it ever returning to 5 days a week, but can definitely see a hybrid environment. It also depends on what your role is. People in IT, who have no client-facing responsibilities probably can stay fully remote buy for example in legal, lawyers will require face-time

I started the job I’m in now as a remote worker. I got highest marks on my performance review.

I’m more productive and less stressed. Of course middle managers are scared. Anything to justify their unnecessary role.

Until enough steps are taken to walk back the labor market into the hands of employers - they will continue to struggle finding talent to fill positions without remote work being an option.

Even then they're going to struggle, as everyone who wants to work or has to work for the most part has a job. Even with these layoffs. The reductions are almost all in the big tech sector which is but a portion of the total technology sector.

Feb labor numbers were pretty revealing there.

From an unemployment perspective the US over the last couple months has been where it was under Trump pre-COVID. And yes that's both the headline number and the often cited "real unemployment" number which is always higher than the headline number.

But yea this is all a real estate play. It's crazy too how hard it's being used to push the agenda. Must protect corp real estate! haha nope, no we don't.

> Benioff said that he “knows empirically” that new hires perform better “if they’re in the office, meeting people, being onboarded, being trained”

And of course no one required him to provide this empirical evidence that he totally has, but just doesn't share because reasons

It seems the truth is gradually being revealed. Initially, CEOs misled us by claiming that their intention was to foster team spirit. Then, they stated it was about preserving their work culture. They further deceived us by asserting that productivity was declining when it wasn't. Had they been honest from the outset, we might have been more accepting of their requests to return to the office. The real issue is their struggle with investors due to depreciating real estate assets as buildings remain underutilized. Their lack of transparency and honesty has fueled resistance to returning to the office. Embracing remote work is the modern approach to conducting business, and it's high time they accept this reality.

Anyone who thought remote work was a long-term trend wasn't very smart. Businesses want to control employees - they want to give them all a similar setting and measure who works well and who does not - they want to monitor employees.

Really can’t believe everyone thinks work from home is the standard that most people have. I’ve had to come into the office with no work from home option for over 2 years at this point

From the point of view of someone employed in manufacturing, it's hilarious to read about people freak out about the remote chance they have to go into the office once or twice a week.

>More companies are backtracking on earlier pledges to let employees work from home on a full or part-time basis. 

Across industries, major corporations including Disney, Twitter and Starbucks are requiring employees to spend more time at the office. 

While half of employers say flexible work arrangements have worked well for their companies, 33% who planned to adopt a permanent virtual or hybrid model have changed their minds from a year ago, according to a January 2023 report from Monster. 

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, is the latest leader to appear to reverse course after embracing remote work and criticizing return-to-office mandates. 

Salesforce was among the first tech companies to tell employees they didn’t have to come back to the office, declaring that “the 9-to-5 workday is dead” when it announced a permanent flexible working model in 2021.

Earlier this month, however, Benioff said that he “knows empirically” that new hires perform better “if they’re in the office, meeting people, being onboarded, being trained” on the “On With Kara Swisher” podcast. 

Benioff’s comments come amid new reports that Salesforce will require employees to up their in-office time. 

“Our hybrid approach empowers leaders to make decisions for their teams about how and where they work,” a Salesforce spokesperson said in a statement.

As recession fears loom and layoffs mount, the power pendulum is swinging back towards bosses — and more companies could seize on the moment to get their employees back to the office. 

>‘The bosses are back in charge’

Anxious about high inflation and mass job cuts, workers’ confidence is wavering — even though the labor market remains incredibly tight, with almost 1.9 unfilled positions for every jobseeker.

Meanwhile, managers who felt they had less leverage during the prolonged hiring shortage now feel they have more power in negotiations with employees, especially when it comes to office attendance, says Kathy Kacher, president of Career/Life Alliance Services. Kacher has been advising companies on their return-to-office plans. 

“When executives were scrambling to retain workers, they were afraid to ask workers to come back to the office and lose even more talent, because many workers have made their distaste for the office very clear,” she explains.

Kacher continues: “Now, faced with this shaky economy, I think organizations are going, ‘Okay, good. The bosses are back in charge. Now we can say what we really want.’” 

For some companies, remote work accommodations offered at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic were emergency measures that executives don’t believe are sustainable for the long term, says Susan Vroman, a lecturer in management at Bentley University. 

Now that the pandemic is entering its endemic phase, more managers are comfortable asking people to resume their pre-pandemic commutes.

“If executives like having people in the office, it feels like the safest time in three years to communicate that,” Vroman adds. “And if leaders at big companies are adjusting their return to office policies, others will see that and think, ‘I can do the same.’”

Work from office gang 💪🏻💪🏻💪🏻