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.
A lot of large companies and executives have investments in real estate. If everyone stopped using offices all of a sudden, they would lost a bunch of money because the space wouldn’t be in demand anymore.
I think you’re attributing far more coordination to these guys than they’re actually capable of.
What I’ve learned from following cryptocurrencies is that people don’t need intentional coordination to be affected by the reality-distorting bias of their investments. If someone has bought a narrative about why the thing they invested in has value, when faced with evidence that this narrative may actually be wrong, most of them aren’t going to be sophisticated enough to think “Well that’s a strong argument, I guess it would be in my interest to pretend that it’s false while privately defecting”. Instead they are going to want to dismiss it outright, shit-talk everyone disagreeing, and throw more money/time/effort in the hole. Being financially invested in something messes with your emotions like that.
Basically I think that being invested in commercial real estate is likely to make someone actually believe any ideas that imply that commercial real estate has value, even if they are bullshit.
There doesn’t have to be coordination if there’s incentives.
It’s like how so many people who drive cars act in ways that benefit cars and is counterproductive for those who don’t drive. They want plentiful free parking, lots of lanes, and cheap gasoline. They’re not particularly coordinated. They’re just incentivized because of their position. They benefit from those kinda things, so gravitate towards them (and also don’t oppose them).
What’s the incentive here, though? They personally lose money paying for office space they don’t need.
I don’t think there’s some shadowy Illuminati organisation behind it. They are pretty blatent when they manipulate things.
That said, I do think there are a lot of investors and analysts that have come to the same conclusion and are talking to each other and passing info to their clients.
Well, maybe you know something I don’t, but I’d expect most rich guys would be happy to save on office costs for themselves while still collecting rent from other rich guys, if they were personally okay going remote.
Sure, but if everyone who can goes remote, all that rent money dries up. Most also don’t directly own buildings to rent, but rather have investments in companies that do. If those other companies go under then they lose money on investments. I don’t have any inside knowledge though, this is just the conclusion I’ve been able to come to. Other than just being control freaks.
It’s a shared resource looked at that way. Usually they aren’t so good at managing those without being forced to by law. If it was a forest, they’d cut it all down and go broke afterwards.
I think they’re just being stupid. Or, at least their middle managers are, like CBC has suggested in a more tactful way. I have a bit of inside knowledge, because I’m close with someone that’s been working remote since the early 2000’s, and this is what he’s said about clients and vendors trying to comprehend the arrangement.
I definitely agree that they do stupid things because of short term gains and narcissism. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if they’re just grumpy bosses mad that it’s harder to boss people around.
I also worry though about portraying executives as buffoons. Most of their short term decisions that look stupid make a lot of sense when you look at it through the lense of them just not caring that it makes life worse for other people. It’s honestly probably a combination of a bunch of dumb and greedy things.