Like Elon Musk, 1 in 3 bosses admit they are pushing RTO because they're so upset about wasting money on all those empty desks
Like Elon Musk, 1 in 3 bosses admit they are pushing RTO because they're so upset about wasting money on all those empty desks
One in ten of those firms admitted that they plan to scrap the mandates entirely after their leases expire.
Sell the desks, save money on the office, utilities, and office supplies?
8That would require an admission of fault for the last year of these attacks on WFH. No no we don't do that here
4Or, even WORSE: Give up their hatred of poor people in order to save money.
1
Anyone who does not understand the sunk cost fallacy should not be in management.
You've spent $x on office space. You can:
A. Use it, and make your employees hate working for you or
B. Let it go unused, and your employees are happier to continue working for you.
The money is spent either way. The only difference is morale, which does in fact directly contribute to your bottom line.
166C. Get rid of what you don't need so that everyone is happy
69Or c, keep just enough office space to create rolling “layoffs” as people are asked to return to the office.
18Step 1: Hire staff
Step 2: Train staff to do job
Step 3: COVID! Oh no! Everyone work from home.
Step 4: ???
Step 5: Fire staff to save money.
Step 6: Profit.
22
It's nice to find the rant in your head written out. A previous employer of mine dropped two properties in favor of a store front.
10C. Sublet out the property and make back the cost of the lease or even a bit of profit.
8They can't depreciate the assets and use them as a deduction if it doesn't count as an office expense. That only qualifies if a threshhold minimum number of workers spend a threshhold minimum amount of time in the office.
5There have to be relationships at play or something like that. Or saving face. Maybe investments?
2IMO, it's worse than that. It's not like creating a digital product, paying for a Super Bowl ad, etc. Those desks, phones, computers all still exist and can be sold. Not to mention the real estate! The slightest bit of foresight and planning and these companies could easily offset any costs they're paying, but no; they only focus on the current fiscal quarter...
1
We had some slight pushing into going into the office more, but instead of firing people, it was decided to switch to a smaller office space, so the people who like to work in an office can do so, and less money is wasted on a mostly empty office
Understandable that this is not an option for all companies, but insane that people are happier losing talent than at least trying to work something out
84When the CEO personally owns the building and leases the office space to the company, that's not an option.
53Then he should act like any other office building owner and rent some space to other companies.
Bonus points if he gets with the future and works to convert some of the building to living space so people don't have to travel to get to work. Not everybody will want that, but it will appeal to enough to make it worth doing. Shopping malls across the country are being converted to such hybrid spaces so most everything one needs is within a convenient distance.
26then it's not wasted money is it
5
Ours tried full RTO, and then they compromised with hybrid WFH when they lost many skilled people who had been there for 10+ years to remote positions at other companies. Sometimes with little to no warning.
Some execs gotta learn the hard way.
27
I work in commercial real estate. Two years before the start of the pandemic, my company considered downsizing our office to have most employees work from home and just come in when needed. We also discussed how we expected the office building market to struggle in the future. (Thinking in 10 years, not two).
Anyways, we got a deal from the property owners to sign another lease, so we stayed put. And now, big surprise, they forced RTO. Someone asked our president about it in a quarterly call. He basically said “we’re never ever going back to WFH and you can quit if you don’t like it”.
So, naturally, we’re struggling with turn over and our headcount is down about around 10% so far.
For many of us, our teams are split up amongst multiple offices so there is no difference from working in the office and working from home. It’s all about that empty lease.
62Also! I should add that for many property owners in commercial real estate, they can be “punished” for tenants that go dark, or stop operating at the location, even if they are still paying rent.
For example, say you own a strip mall with a grocery store and a few restaurants. If the grocery store stops operating in that location, there are less customers at the restaurants, making it more likely that they will stop paying rent also.
11Yeah, too bad that a condo refit of a building is super expensive and needs some deep pockets to actually do it. Still worth the consideration if the building is a good candidate.
4
You would think that of all people, rich CEOs would understand the concept of the sunk cost fallacy.
The money on desks, rent, insurance, etc. is already spent. You're not getting it back. Asking people to come back to the office "so that it doesn't go to waste" assumes that you aren't taking on additional costs for people coming to the office.
You now have worn carpet, doors, pens, paper, etc...money you could have saved if you weren't such a knob.
55Are you really suggesting that you expect CEOs to be competent? Scamming people and exploiting workers doesn't require skills, except if immorality is one.
38Immorality is sadly a skill, ignoring that voice in your head that says "This doesn't feel right, we can't go othrough with this" and the one that says "Look what we're doing to them!?! We have to make this right!"
Is very hard to do for people like you and I.
17
You would think that of all people, rich CEOs would understand the concept of the sunk cost fallacy.
I'd expect that of someone who has to make hard decisions and work hard to get where they are.
A Nepo-Baby is neither of these things.
35
Early in the pandemic, our CEO asked why we paid so much for real estate if everyone could work from home. They've been trimming leases as quickly as they can.
We've been hiring people who live out of state. They only come onsite very rarely, maybe only once a year.
50My company did that too, then they replaced us with cheaper labor from overseas.
23Ours did that before the pandemic and not my area. Within a year, it went back to what it was because of how terrible the quality was. Now they are dumping all the buildings that aren't needed and sent a lot of us home. Of course, the main product that my job deals with needs buildings for machines to work so they didn't get rid of everything. No more corporate, and for now, we are all home for the foreseeable future. I also wonder when they will get the bright idea to start outsourcing again now that it's been like 7 years...
19
At least one in three bosses are shitty bosses. If their responsibility is to the company and the shareholders, telecommuting saves a ton of time and money.
24Also, for those companies that love to position themselves as "green", commuting is a horrendous waste of resources and a cause of pollution. My company preaches about how important it is to lower your carbon footprint, then institutes policies that increase carbon footprints by the tens of thousands and don't even blink.
14
Bunch of real Einstein's running these places, huh? Fucking morons, just don't waste the money leasing large offices.
21It's all about status. Big building = big dick. And more buildings spread all over the place is the equivalent to them having tons of kids.
It's such a primitive, ape-brain thing to do, but that's how these psychopaths operate.
8Seriously. Every job I had, the C-level were all about flexing the size of the company.
One Fintech company I worked at got a giant skyscraper in front of city hall as a Fuck You to the mayor because they had beef with them a few years back. Another tech company constantly bragged about how much square footage of campus they had, constantly comparing themselves to empires.
All just dick measuring.
4
We don't even have the office space anymore for full RTO. If at some day too many people would go into the office some wouldn't have desks to work on...
20Same here. A smart CEO wouldn't force RTO, they would lease out that unused space or expand using those unused desks.
19
Why do we have to preface this with “Like Elon Musk…”?
Who cares what that nonce thinks? Surely not anyone who would read this article or be receptive to its content.
20Probably (at least in the US perspective) he's the CEO of 3 companies and is going to be a high ranking government official.
5Awww cute, they have an idol like real people.
2
I guess they should enjoy the consequences of their actions like... regular people do?
Or maybe these bosses just aren't good at what they do. After all, they wasted millions on real estate and empty desks. Shouldn't the shareholders be demanding new leadership?
20Convert to apartments
Make profit
Tada!
18I agree this is what should be done! Though it is surprising challenging to convert an office building to an apartment.
One issue, for example, is that the plumbing and electricity lines tend to be located on one end of the building. If you want to convert it to apartments, you have to reroute all the plumbing.
In the US, there are also rules about the number of stair cases. That’s why many apartments here are long and flat buildings of 3-4 floors rather than taller, taking up less space.
12
When the lockdowns happened due to COVID, it was just incredible at the sheer number of jobs that could have been done at home.
Some people, like Sam Seder from The Majority Report, speculated that people will use this in the future to leverage their power as employees for added privacy and flexibility in working.
The other thing is that businesses could save on massive costs by simply not, as others have mentioned here, leasing/building/renting/whatever large office spaces, and those former office spaces can be made into something else, like more afforable housing.
But everyone just kinda forgot, or seriously underestimated, at the desire for businesses to have control over their employees. This is one major reason why so many businesses want private healthcare. It allows them to fuck over their employees more than they would otherwise, even if it is much more expensive for them to do so than just paying a tax for public healthcare.
18If you want to open your eyes even more, check out the neat overlap between commercial real estate and large businesses that require an office. Often, it's one and the same, so it's easy to see why they wouldn't want their buildings nearly empty.
12So the only people going to the Dunkin's in the office building are office workers. If we don't go back, that Dunkin's could go out of business. Is that something we can really allow on our collective conscience?
1Won't someone think of the
childrenshareholders???1
I think some of them are also doing it for the tax breaks they get if they pump a bunch of employees into the local area's economy.
And we all know how difficult is is to get companies to voluntarily give up free tax money from the government. It's like trying to take drugs away from an addict.
12Corporate "Welfare Queens"
5
Ah, RTO = return to office. That took me a while ..
12I thought it was because they couldn't make friends & wanted to force people to be around them.
11That's so, so stupid... They really are the dumbest of morons. They lost money, so they waste even more money and make their best workers flee.
11This article misses the real point.. they want voluntary turnover, when you layoff there's severance and unemployment costs...
7
Unless they signed long leases with “commercial real estate” the company can just you know save a load of money not renting those spaces and just liquidate the office for quick cash.
Or if they own, they can always sell unless “it’s an investment” so we can sell it in the future for more.
11A company I worked for got into a long lease for 3 floors in an office building. Never used one of them. Ended up subletting it to another company until they were out of that lease.
5But you can only sell if someone is buying, and the moment you list that huge skyscraper on the market and find out that the only offers you're getting are 1/10 the asking price, suddenly the other massive commercial buildings you have on your balance sheets (and those of all your rich buddies) suddenly drop 90% in value, and it's revealed the emperor has no clothes
5It would take some renovation but I imagine buying even just a couple of floors of space for apartments in the middle of NYC could be extremely desirable.
1
One of the only aspects of my previous employer that was smart and well-run was the attitude about RTO. Before the pan, the owner was planning to rent a second space in the same building to expand. Post-pan, we did a six week experiment where everyone came back two days per week. The metrics didn't meaningfully change and we downsized. Everyone became fully remote unless they needed supplies from the office for a client.
They managed everything terribly, but at least got that right.
9How was this not obvious when the panic set in with the pandemic.
It's never about productivity, it's always about increasing value.
6Empty desks is an opportunity to expand, including shared desks from work sharing or WFH some of the week.
Commercial real estate/rental spaces are also an opportunity to downsize and get out of leases at better per square foot rates. If not getting out of lease, then opportunity to sublet desk areas.
4The great reset is coming, it's nipping at their heals, soaking into the top of their eyelids like exhaustion, the darkness is creeping in from all the edges, making them wonder how close it will get, if it will truly envelope them as they've been warned
3Worked at Boeing, where you have 1990's cubicles with 17" 3:4 monitors. I'm glad to he back in the office.
3So does that mean you guys are gonna start doing actual work on the new planes, or…?
10Sorta. It's going to take 8 weeks for me to get a box of pens.
7
I used to work 10-15 hours a day, weekends included, in a small lab. I did not mind it, I felt seen, my boss was happy with my efforts, and I thrived in that atmosphere.
I now work completely remote for significantly more money, spending 10-16 hours indoors interacting with nobody. It's hell. My extra hours are unseen. I barely see the sun. My weight is ballooning.
My point: WFH is great for people with families or partners, or anyone who has essentially a settled home life. But for single people, WFH is torture.
I do 100% agree that it should be a choice, and not a mandate to RTO. I'd take it in a heartbeat if it was an option
2You shouldn’t do extra hours and you shouldn’t work more than 8 hours a day.
8Depends in how much you view your work as "work", I guess. In my old job, I used to spring out of bed burning with ideas I wanted to implement, and when you have that freedom to play with your work, the concept of billable work hours quickly falls apart.
In this job, I have less freedoms to play with my work, so I'm with you that 8 hours should be it
4