[HN Gopher] Who still needs the office? U.S. companies start cut...
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Who still needs the office? U.S. companies start cutting space
Author : onetimemanytime
Score : 184 points
Date : 2020-07-23 21:14 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| holler wrote:
| How will this affect commercial real estate? I've already noticed
| an uptick in "for lease" signs on commercial buildings throughout
| the major city I live in...
| anpago wrote:
| Big effect as it will on many pension funds and so on.
| uberdru wrote:
| We need ateliers, not offices.
| david927 wrote:
| Brilliant. I hope you don't mind if I quote you.
| bluekite2000 wrote:
| A few years ago I had to commute from Orange county to Manhattan
| Beach. It takes 1 hour to get to the office (leaving at 5:15am in
| the morning) and 1.5 hour to get home (leaving at 4pm). By the
| time I got home I felt dead. It was a 30 mile trip. So to me the
| long commute is what makes WFH convincing.
| jariel wrote:
| This is going to be another short decision making drive, decided
| by the CFOs because they have the 'cost' numbers in front of
| them, whereas issues like productivity are a little more
| intangible.
|
| We work in 'open spaces' because the CFO can definitively say
| "$/employee!" - whereas the impact on staff is difficult to
| measure. The 'up front cost' is the driver.
|
| This same 'cost logic' will apply to remote working, once Ops can
| see 'how cheap it is' they will love it but it may have nothing
| to do with true ROI.
| dave_4_bagels wrote:
| Personally, I can't wait to get back into an office. Working from
| home has helped me break some previous bad habits and improve my
| self-discipline - which both positively impacted my productivity
| while working from home.
|
| However, even with commuting time, I'm happier (due to distinct
| separation of home-time and work-time) and more productive when I
| have an office I work from 3-4 days a week.
|
| During my last "remote" engagement I joined a small community co-
| working space in Boston after two weeks of "true" work from home.
| I've found my idea balance is 3-4 days a week in-office and 1-2
| days "remote".
|
| I envy those of you who can work remote without issue, even as an
| introvert who dislikes lots of people and distractions I can't
| see "remote first" as something I enjoy going forward.
| chasd00 wrote:
| i've been pretty much 100% remote the last 5 years or so. I
| definitely rely on coworking spaces to get out of the house and
| around other humans. It's especially bad when kids are in
| school and wife is working ( she's a teacher ). Being without
| human contact all day every day really weighs on me over time.
| chasd00 wrote:
| It's interesting to me that companies are threatening to reduce
| pay if a remote employee moves to a lower cost of living area.
| It's hard to understand the logic when geography is the only
| change driving the decrease in pay. Same person, same job, same
| skills, same productivity, the only thing that has changed is the
| person's cost of living.
|
| I wonder if a remote employee working in a low cost of living
| area moved to a high cost of living area would their pay be
| increased or would the company put up a fight? "You voluntarily
| moved to a high cost of living area, why should i pay you more?".
| However, "you voluntarily moved to a low cost of living area, i'm
| paying you less" is reality.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Great observation. It's a shake down because they have leverage
| over you.
| ipnon wrote:
| Markets in everything:
|
| Your salary is the balance between the leverage you have over
| the company and the leverage the company has over you. If
| they can get rid of you and hire someone remotely for half
| the price they will. If you want to stay in an expensive city
| while working remotely and the company can't do without you,
| they won't.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| It's hard to hire remote employees in different COL areas
| without opening yourself up to legal liability, if people are
| able to bounce around and hold onto COL salaries
| disproportionate to the local area.
|
| Ex, if a bunch of white and asian bay area employees relocate
| to Florida, taking their salaries, and then Facebook hires some
| local hispanic employees at 1/2 the rate... well, you can try
| to explain exactly what happened after you get sued, but that
| doesn't sound like a lot of fun. And even if you legally get
| away with it, you are going to have a lot of REALLY unhappy
| employees.
|
| Not to mention you're opening yourself up to a real game, where
| employees move to the Bay Area for a year to get hired at a
| high salary, and then immediately leave for 2x the salary. All
| you've done is turned salaries into a game that benefit highly-
| mobile employees.
|
| So I definitely understand why this feels shitty, but I
| honestly can't see it working any other way for large
| corporations. You have to have some kind of local salary
| adjustment you can stand behind, when you're remote-first
| hiring.
| ngngngng wrote:
| I've thought about playing this game, one of the largest
| retailers in the country just pays you based on the cost of
| living in your zip code. I could move in with my in laws in
| Honolulu for a few months and use that zip code, get hired,
| and then move back to my low cost of living area.
| dropit_sphere wrote:
| Realistically, there will be two scenarios:
|
| Company Type 1, where they don't care where you live
|
| Company Type 2, where they explicitly care, and have some
| stupid table they look at.
|
| I suspect it will lead to a lot of employees at T2 companies
| getting shafted. Not everyone is as Online as the HN crowd.
| sneak wrote:
| You could simply never give your employer your residential
| address (use a post box) and then just continue to not do so
| when you move.
|
| My personal residence address is need-to-know, and if I were to
| have an employer, they would have no need whatsoever to know my
| residential address.
|
| If you're remote, it's simply not their business. You might
| have an extra step when filing state income tax, but that's
| your liability, not theirs.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Your employer probably has to pay state taxes/state
| unemployment insurance, may have to ensure that they are
| filing certain state forms as an employer of a resident of a
| given state, may have to adjust health care policies to
| address state-specific requirements (or residency
| requirements of the plan they have, etc).
|
| Unfortunately, given the run-amuckness of registration and
| compliance requirements, it probably is needed for your
| employer to know where you live (or at least in which state
| and local taxation/regulation entity).
| jorblumesea wrote:
| > You voluntarily moved to a high cost of living area, why
| should i pay you more?".
|
| This does happen now when companies have multiple offices. I've
| seen people move from LCOL to HCOL and see a cost of living
| adjustment.
| Igelau wrote:
| Someone needs to run the experiment. Move to some place in
| Russia outside the Moscow metropolitan area. Apply to Gitlab.
| If you get the job, relocate to San Fran. See if your pay
| quadruples.
| alistairSH wrote:
| My wife's employer makes fairly drastic COL changes based on
| office location (bank with large corporate offices in 3-4 US
| cities and branches worldwide). From the lowest COL office to
| the highest, it can be 10s of thousands USD.
|
| Edit - they don't officially do WFH (outside COVID) so cant
| comment on that.
| jcmontx wrote:
| I seriously can't believe some companies have the nerve to pull
| off something like this
| spectaclepiece wrote:
| What I find most interesting is how this might transform inner
| cities. If central space is cheaper more space will be available
| to artists and other cultural activities while also making room
| for early stage startups which could give rise to a renewal of a
| vibrant inner city atmosphere in places where this has been on
| the decline due to high rental prices.
| m0zg wrote:
| Sure, the ability to work from anywhere in the world coupled
| with a severe epidemic, riots, looting, and boarding up of city
| centers will give rise to a "vibrant inner city atmosphere".
| Uh-huh.
| gberger wrote:
| Cities will still exist even if remote work rises
| significantly. There is a huge amount of buildings and
| infrastructure which won't just disappear. Rather, demand for
| them will fall, and since supply is flat, prices will drop.
| This will give opportunity to less lucrative ventures to work
| at the city center. Artists, for example, would have a harder
| time working remotely.
| m0zg wrote:
| If we don't get a working, _and safe_ vaccine in the
| foreseeable future (a real possibility), cities could all
| turn into Detroit - high density living or work just won't
| be epidemiologically viable.
| rabidrat wrote:
| It's a common fallacy that rents fall when demand drops. In
| fact, they often don't, particularly for commercial space;
| the owners choose instead to let the spaces go unused. I've
| seen this happen up close with several buildings my city,
| in several neighborhoods. There was an article a while ago
| about how Greenwich Village suffered a similar fate.
| mrep wrote:
| Got a source to back up that claim? Detroit for example
| has seen inflation adjusted commercial office space
| prices massively drop:
|
| "Adjusted for inflation, the average office tenant paid a
| peak price of $34.34 per square foot during the fourth
| quarter of 2000, 65.5 percent more than the current
| average rate of $20.76, according to Newmark Knight Frank
| data. It's almost as deeply pronounced for Class A space
| -- which has the best amenities and finishes. Today's
| Class A rental rate is $24.36 per square foot, but in the
| third quarter of 2001, tenants paid inflation-adjusted
| rent of $38.12 per square foot, 56.5 percent more than
| now" [0].
|
| [0]: https://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20170730/news/
| 635141/d...
| chosenbreed37 wrote:
| Can the city councils do anything to counter that? I
| wonder...I heard about Frome (Southwest England) where
| the local council took proactive steps to prevent the
| high street being filled with betting shops. I think they
| lowered business rates significantly and possibly other
| measures.
| aeternum wrote:
| A land value tax can help quite a bit. It can both
| prevent landlords from capturing all / most of the value
| when rents rise and also help act as a cushion when rents
| fall.
|
| The current property tax system that most cities use make
| little sense. It penalizes people for improving and
| updating the structures on their land. Cities should be
| encouraging property improvements.
| pjmorris wrote:
| It's not the 'everybody works there' that does it, it's the
| 'cheap enough that artists can live there' that does it. My
| mom split her time between art, her true love, and working as
| a secretary, or a maid, or an office manager. She had a way
| of living near where the art was happening, as artists tend
| to have very little money, as did she. She could afford to
| live just off the Lincoln Road Mall in South Beach in the
| mid-80's, as did hundreds of other artists. The South Beach
| that is now luxurious and pricey was once cheap, and shabby
| and a bit dangerous. That's really the seed of a vibrant
| inner city atmosphere. She repeated that (to smaller degrees)
| several times in her life.
| andyljones wrote:
| There's no shortage of cities where central space has become
| cheaper after their industry has collapsed, and they do not
| have a great record of turning vibrant. The rust belt and the
| north of England are the first areas to mind.
| notJim wrote:
| That's true, but if now there is central space freeing up in
| major cultural hubs like NYC and SF, maybe it could be cool.
| These places might, although to a lesser extent, have the
| customer base of affluent people to support new cultural
| spaces.
| cortesoft wrote:
| For the short term, maybe, but will they still have that
| customer base if those affluent people don't need to stay
| there for work?
| notJim wrote:
| IMO that's a big open question. Anecdotally, I've heard
| of a lot of people moving away from these cities, but
| most of them say they intend to move back. Since the
| appeal of both cities is largely in activities that are
| unavailable now, this is plausible to me. But it's also
| plausible people will find they miss the city less than
| they expected.
| _jal wrote:
| There are important differences between cities in regions
| where an industry collapsed and where competition for down-
| town office space has collapsed.
|
| One of them lost their economic engine. The other is
| undergoing a real estate adjustment.
| ImaCake wrote:
| I have seen this happen in a medium sized coastal city on
| Australia's east coast. The major employer shut down in the
| early 1990's and the once vibrant inner city did indeed
| become a cesspool for a decade. But begining in the early
| 2000's it started to come back to life, and the people who
| moved in were the artsy types and the city became a wonderful
| and curious place while still having a bit of a air of danger
| and decay. These days it is somewhat gentrified, but it has
| become very beautiful and pleasant. In the end my city
| doesn't really have a central core which is a little
| problematic for public transit (terrible quality), but the
| old CBD is a lovely place.
| milquetoastaf wrote:
| Madchester, tho
| irrational wrote:
| My company is just finishing building millions of square feet of
| additional office space on our campus. I wonder if someone up
| high is starting to regret that decision.
| Andow wrote:
| AZ?
| rwmj wrote:
| If AZ = Astra Zeneca then drug research is not something you
| can easily do at home!
| perfmode wrote:
| Could anyone have honestly foreseen the pandemic and its
| ensuing upheavals?
|
| Of course, one is free to regret.
|
| Now, it would seem that the best we can do is make the most of
| the information available to us in the present moment.
| acituan wrote:
| > Could anyone have honestly foreseen the pandemic and its
| ensuing upheavals?
|
| Absolutely. Previous WHO classification has a "Phase 4:
| Sustained community-level outbreaks -> Medium to high
| probability of pandemic" designation, which has a roughly
| once-a-decade frequency historically. Compared to multi-
| quarter, multi-year scale of real estate planning, 10 years
| is not infinite long term. Of course it is so in comparison
| to quarterly earnings, share prices, average tenure of a fund
| manager, a CEO and so forth, so it doesn't get priced in or
| gets bundled with other catastrophes.
| perfmode wrote:
| Interesting. Have any people/groups/organizations been
| credited as having made prescient, non-trivial bets
| anticipating this pandemic?
| danny_sf45 wrote:
| The only reason for me to not go back to the office is: fixed
| working hours. Sure, my contract says I have to work 40h/week,
| but I just can't. If I'm at the office, I would probably work
| (focused) around 4 or 5 hours. The rest is "wasted" with: chat
| with other coworkers (non-work related stuff), breaks... but I
| have to be there for 8 hours no matter what. At home, I can work
| those 4 or 5 hours (focused) and call it a day. I don't have to
| pretend I'm working, I just close the laptop.
|
| Same outcome (for the company), less (wasted) hours for me. This
| is impossible to achieve if one has to go to the office. (can you
| imagine entering at 9am and leaving at 2pm while telling
| everybody: "hey, I cannot work anymore, I'm only able to work
| focused 5 hours per day. See you tomorrow!".)
| orwin wrote:
| Yes, i'm the same. And if you're like me, i suppose sometime,
| in high pressure situation, you can easily work 10 hours
| straight. Doing this at the office is impossible, doing this
| home is easy (if it stay exceptional). I'm more productive home
| than i was at the office, and this is really surprising for me
| ( i assumed i was just a slacker).
| cuddlecake wrote:
| I've had one of the most productive days yesterday, because
| my internet went off.
|
| Went on a berserk coding spree from 1PM to 1AM with some
| small breaks in between. Completely cut off from any
| distraction, I was able to concentrate.
|
| Willpower and discipline are nice, but real restrictions that
| are impossible to circumvent are better, at least for me.
| hinkley wrote:
| I have basically stopped eating lunch.
|
| I'm not saying that's a good thing (it really isn't, and my QoL
| improved when I forced myself to take a lunch break every day),
| but it does change how much time my butt is in the seat between
| 9 and 5.
|
| What I am definitely missing out on is small talk with
| coworkers. Small talk builds rapport. Rapport de-escalates
| engineering disputes. I expect a year from now we'll all be
| complaining about how nasty everybody is when everybody is
| working remotely.
| hesdeadjim wrote:
| Guess I must be wired differently, but I look at that extra
| time and think "what more could I do?", rather than "I'm
| convinced this is the output required of me, thus I will do no
| more with my new found time." _shrug_
| danny_sf45 wrote:
| Sure, if you can do more go for it. I just can't: my brain is
| tired, my eyes hurt, I cannot produce any productive
| output/outcome.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I think it's generally more related to a lot of time that's
| wasted having ad-hoc conversations with people.
| wil421 wrote:
| Someone I heard recently phrased it very well:
|
| "I don't want to spend 2 hours driving a day to do 4 hours of
| work."
| modzu wrote:
| then there are those of us with kids and so's around. i can
| barely get a bloody thing done and for one can't wait to go
| back!
| dijit wrote:
| Not sure why you're being downvoted, being without children
| (or having a dedicated space outside of the home) is
| important.
|
| Kids don't understand time or space boundaries very well, and
| will interrupt your focus, your meetings, your work in
| general.
|
| I have a colleague with kids and he was the first to
| volunteer back to the office.. I am without kids and I never
| want to go back.
|
| This works out decently well, because he's alone: thus, safer
| than if we all came back.
|
| But the issue is if there was more people in the office, then
| they would make decisions which the rest of us are not privy
| to.
| Koshkin wrote:
| Looks like nobody else wants to admit that.
| y2bd wrote:
| Isn't this more of an issue of school being out? Would your
| kids going back to school solve this issue?
| Polylactic_acid wrote:
| I feel the same. For the last 3 hours of the day I just state
| at my screen in zombie mode. With wfh when I start to feel
| braindead I just lay in bed for 15 minutes and when I come back
| I feel refreshed for the rest of the day. With no pressure to
| look like you are constantly working you can do what works best
| since no one can see more than your output at the end of the
| week.
| mavelikara wrote:
| > chat with other coworkers (non-work related stuff)
|
| > ...
|
| > Same outcome (for the company),
|
| What if the company cares for those non-work stuff - for
| example, some of those chats being a mentoring conversation?
| Koshkin wrote:
| A mentoring conversation is actually (or should be seen as)
| work stuff.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| I don't tell my coworkers when I do this but at Apple we are
| adults and can go to the bathroom without permission. You can
| come and go as you wish, that notwithstanding the waste of
| colocating with and/or commuting to an office. I want virtual
| reality so I can be in shared spaces for impromptu conversation
| and coworking.
|
| (Edit: I really don't miss my boomer/genx coworkers jamming out
| to hair metal)
| mc32 wrote:
| The most productive workers barely scrape 50% productivity;
| however, idle, chat, socialization and other "wasteful" time
| isn't wasted. You learn things about the needs of other groups,
| colleagues, the politics and all sorts of things you'd never
| pick up on working remotely.
| katbyte wrote:
| I'd rather spend that time on other things tbh
| danny_sf45 wrote:
| I agree that the socialization part is not actually "wasted"
| time and I would love to do it as much (or as little) as I
| want per week (ideally one or two days, instead of five days
| per week on a forced basis).
| baron_harkonnen wrote:
| > all sorts of things you'd never pick up on working
| remotely.
|
| When people say these things I seriously question if they've
| ever worked remote before. Yes if being remote makes you
| atypical for your workplace, then you'll probably be left
| out. But if you're working for a remote-first team the it's
| completely different. Nearly all of my closest coworkers I've
| met have been at remote companies.
|
| I have had tons of interesting conversations, brainstorming
| session and just generally fun discussion while remote.
|
| Honestly, I have personally found the amount of more toxic
| conversations also drops when remote. The problem with in-
| office socialization is that you have to socialize with
| people you might not particularly like (working with people
| you don't like is fine, but having to have conversations with
| them, go out for team drinks with them etc is another thing).
| This leads to generally more toxic behavior, since you have
| to put more energy into those social interactions.
| Polylactic_acid wrote:
| I have actually spoken more to my coworkers while remote
| than at the office where its one bit open plan room where
| having a conversation will bother 20 other people.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Political power play doesn't work out as easily remotely.
| Social manipulations is harder. That is my observation.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I would be very interested to hear more about these claims if
| you can share a link.
| zwayhowder wrote:
| Would love to read any research that backs that number. (I'm
| not saying you're not right, I just like reading research
| papers).
| dijit wrote:
| This one says we are only productive about 40%, which is
| in-line with other stuff I've read:
|
| https://www.inc.com/rebecca-hinds/new-research-says-
| workers-...
| throwawaysea wrote:
| I really hope this trend sticks so that we can decentralize away
| from big urban centers. It would really allow us to free
| ourselves from crowded spaces/amenities, painful commutes, and
| high prices, as well as letting us seek out the community/culture
| that fits us best.
| m_sanders wrote:
| There was a fansinating take on the potential impact of a WFH
| revolution on white collar works in The Telegraph the other day.
|
| As companies embrace working from home and downsize their offices
| presence, a lot of the barriers to entry to offshoring start to
| disappear - if everyone is remote then a remote individuals in
| cheaper Eastern Europe will likely integrate a lot easier than
| when most the employees were sitting together in expensive
| London.
|
| White collar workers could face the same globalisation pressure
| and wage deflation that's happened to blue collar workers over
| the last 50 years or so.
|
| Personally, if my team stays remote, then our next hire will most
| likely not be London based. There's a much larger pool of
| European talent available to us and we're now better setup to and
| culturally open to hiring remote first. This isn't something our
| company would have considered before COVID.
| bitL wrote:
| London is notorious for low SWEng salaries; you might not have
| any other choice than to contract somebody in Ukraine who
| didn't escape somewhere else if your own employees get higher
| paid remote gigs in the US...
| [deleted]
| jdhn wrote:
| >White collar workers could face the same globalisation
| pressure and wage deflation that's happened to blue collar
| workers over the last 50 years or so.
|
| I've been thinking about this a lot recently. Lots of white
| collar people seemingly have a very "meh" attitude towards
| manufacturing getting outsourced. What will the attitude be
| once these white collar jobs start leaving?
| philjohn wrote:
| The flip side to that is with the UK leaving the EU will there
| be legal and taxation hurdles. Also, sometimes having local
| context, and the ability to meet locally at short notice is an
| important requirement. I don't think it's as clear cut in all
| cases.
| visarga wrote:
| Doesn't work well when time zone difference is too large,
| though.
| chosenbreed37 wrote:
| > Doesn't work well when time zone difference is too large,
| though.
|
| That is true. Although I've noticed that some outsourcing
| companies are comfortable working to the office hours of the
| headquarters.
| ghaff wrote:
| I was already unofficially remote. Meetings are actually a bit
| better with everyone at home on camera. The thing I miss is
| travel which was about 1/3 of my time. (And, fortunately, I live
| in a fairly rural location with a dedicated office and forest
| paths out my door.)
| davidw wrote:
| I miss working in the office a lot. It's nice to have a physical
| separation between 'work' and 'home'. And I enjoy the company of
| my coworkers - it's fun to occasionally chat about something
| tangential to work, perhaps some interesting problem they dealt
| with in the past, or local politics or whatever.
| [deleted]
| torcete wrote:
| I wonder if this is going to be the beginning of the decline of
| big cities. Who wants to live in a expensive place if you don't
| need to commute to work everyday?
| game_the0ry wrote:
| Corporate managers need to run the following exercise:
|
| 1) Quantify the loss in productivity from employees working from
| home. Call this "x."
|
| 2) Calculate the savings in rent you don't have to pay for
| putting the company's employees in an office. Call this "y."
|
| 3) If x < y, pass on savings to shareholders, take your bonus,
| and have a nice day.
|
| 4) Explore hiring candidates outside of major metros and see if
| you can pay them less.
|
| Will not happen, of course. The modern corporate middle manager
| thrives as a sycophant, constantly praising their bosses / and
| boss's bosses - yes sir / ma'am, how high would you like me to
| jump for my bonus? Thus, they are desperate to get back into the
| office and play that sweet, sweet game of "office politics."
| Also, they probably leased additional space for more tech and
| digital marketing workers, so they are trying to not regret that
| decision.
| rwmj wrote:
| What loss of productivity is that? Knowledge workers get a
| whole lot more done when they're not being constantly
| interrupted in an open plan office.
| game_the0ry wrote:
| x can be negative.
| Terretta wrote:
| So call it gain and have X positive.
|
| Even the folks in non-tech jobs who hate WFH, griping about
| missing look-em-in-the-eyes managerialism, or how they
| can't do management-by-walking-around, acknowledge the past
| few months have been more productive and curiously more
| collaborative (right people across national offices invited
| to "meetings" and able to attend).
|
| So actual productivity up, other factors important to
| Taylorist managers (but not to individual contributors)
| sharply down.
| s1t5 wrote:
| Hopefully in the future we'll have more options rather than
| offices becoming completely obsolete. Personally I still need a
| good office environment to do my best work and an all-remote
| future looks pretty bleak.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| We will let the free market decide if an office is a net positive
| to the company. Each company will be different.
| j45 wrote:
| I see a real rise in each company having it's own internal
| coworking/hoteling.
|
| Getting together still has value but spaces will be transformed
| more for collaboration... and also small individual offices as
| work pods
| jorblumesea wrote:
| I wonder if this will result in the hollowing out of the American
| downtown similar to the 60s and suburban white flight. It just
| started to feel like the American inner urban core was coming
| back, density was increasing, more funding to transit.
|
| One of the great tragedies of American society in the 20th
| century (in my opinion) was a focus on building everything around
| the car, the suburb, and the commute. Producing well paid office
| workers disconnected from any sort of community or the issues
| around them. Everything is a drive away, no one walks anywhere,
| feelings of isolation and segregation.
| david927 wrote:
| This is a huge question and I don't hear a lot of people asking
| it. What is the future for cities? How will this change
| suburbs? How can we create optimal communities?
|
| I think it goes hand-in-hand with the coming loss of the car as
| a personal device and its transformation into "individual
| transit" as opposed to "mass transit". In the future, when you
| can use an app to get an autonomous vehicle to take you where
| you want to go, communities will restructure. Parking lots and
| garages will go away, opening up a huge amount of real estate.
|
| I wouldn't mind starting a sort of "virtual salon" to talk
| about these larger questions. It's fascinating.
| triceratops wrote:
| > yet more focus on sprawl and car based transit.
|
| Would it? With commutes dead, a good chunk of weekday traffic
| is gone.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| It will, because people will buy farther out. One of the
| major drivers of the urban core, density and transit was how
| bad traffic can be. You want to live closer to work, which is
| usually downtown. Now you want pretty much live on the
| outskirts or the sticks. Without the commute, nothing
| stopping cities from becoming extremely diffuse.
| fortran77 wrote:
| I don't have to work in an office, but I do. My consulting
| company owns commercial space in Sunnyvale and Tel Aviv. I like
| separating home and work. I work at work, and do non-work
| activities at home.
|
| I worry that this trend is simply to squeeze employees harder.
| Now employees have to pay for their own workspaces, desks,
| chairs, etc.
| [deleted]
| dougmwne wrote:
| If I may ask, how far do you live from your office? Is your
| home comfortable and does it meet your needs? Is your office a
| pleasant and productive space? I know many people who do
| grueling 2-hour, one-way commutes so they can afford a modest-
| size home and half-decent schools for their kids. Consider that
| many people might not be in your position.
| JMTQp8lwXL wrote:
| The owners of traditional office buildings who will see the most
| success in this crisis will be those who realize that --while,
| yes, corporations may no longer need as large a footprint--
| there's still valuable use of the capital infrastructure they
| hold. The first ones to pivot to alternate property uses will do
| best.
|
| Another set of commercial property owners will sit on their
| above-market lease agreements and try and squeeze blood from a
| stone.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| we probably going to needs Starlink to cover rural area first.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Predicted headline about 1 year from now: "U.S. companies decide
| to move away from WFH arrangements, return to office".
|
| (saying this as someone who's been WFH for a few years now)
| progman32 wrote:
| A coworker of mine recently pointed out that not only are
| businesses saving money by closing offices, they're also
| offloading other costs to the employees. Things like:
|
| - Water, electricity, HVAC, sanitation
|
| - Desks, chairs, ergonomic equipment, safety equipment
|
| - Telecom, networking support
|
| - Physical security
|
| - Office supplies
|
| - Misc. amenities like coffee and snacks
|
| Some companies are taking this into account, but not all.
|
| A personal anecdote: we had an all-hands meeting today and the
| amount of emotion on display when the topic turned to returning
| to the office strongly suggests people want to go back. Whether
| or not that's temporary nostalgia for a previous life or an
| enduring need is an interesting discussion, but there are
| definitely people wanting to go back. I for one am even more in
| the no-remote-only-gigs camp given recent events.
|
| edit: formatting, I'll learn eventually
| vecinu wrote:
| Your coworker is totally on the money with this analysis.
|
| More so, I think folks like me that had a 5 minute walking
| commute are losing out a ton of benefits by not being near the
| office anymore.
|
| I'm lucky the weather's been cooperating but if I had to have
| the A/C on for days I would easily be spending $60-100/mo just
| for HVAC, forget the extra water, electricity and other utility
| costs for the extra usage at home.
|
| We got a $500 WFH stipend but it definitely won't cover 12-16
| months of this.
|
| Overall though, I realize I'm in the minority and most people
| are winning back their time and money.
| technofiend wrote:
| I can take public transportation which is $2.50 a day. If I
| don't then parking downtown is $150 per month in our current
| building, but no one is allowed to go into the office. We're
| getting a new building next year when we do return to the
| office and parking will be $250+ across the street or $300+
| for garage attached to the same building. That's what it
| costs me to run my ancient, inefficient 220 volt window unit
| and keep an uninsulated wooden garage apartment cool in the
| summer. I will gladly go back to the office when it's
| allowed.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| At least with my own company, the approach has been pretty
| reasonable.
|
| They know they're saving money in the long term on space, and
| they're splitting that with employees pretty fairly. $1500 up
| front for all existing employees and all new hires to
| provision a space to work remote, and a $125 a month in
| reimbursement for internet/phone/electricity, no questions
| asked.
|
| Frankly, it's made the transition pretty positive for all
| parties. The company saves a ton in the long term on rental
| space, and employees get a nice perk.
|
| There are still folks that would prefer not being remote, but
| most folks are pretty happy without a commute.
| taurath wrote:
| I think it depends where you live and your situation. I have
| coworkers in small NYC studios who just want to get outside. I
| have others who don't mind not taking the train for an hour a
| day.
|
| Many coworkers have a nice big house to work from. The ones
| with kids most want to come back, because they appreciate the
| mental separation they get.
|
| Remember, Quarentine Work Is Not Remote Work -
| https://www.hanselman.com/blog/QuarantineWorkIsNotRemoteWork...
| setpatchaddress wrote:
| This. People with many young kids, especially, seem to be
| absolutely miserable.
|
| More interesting than remote/in-office is that we don't seem
| to be acknowledging the inevitable permanence of social
| distancing measures. No more four-dudes-in-an-office. No more
| coming to work with mild cold symptoms.
| taurath wrote:
| Maybe, oh goodness please, the return of actual OFFICES.
| With DOORS. Thats the only way you're getting me to come
| back into a work office, barring a rediculous raise.
| chosenbreed37 wrote:
| > A coworker of mine recently pointed out that not only are
| businesses saving money by closing offices, they're
|
| I hadn't considered this. I've always thought that many
| companies are tied to long leases they wouldn't be able to get
| out of that quickly. I can imagine some savings on the other
| associated office costs.
|
| > I for one am even more in the no-remote-only-gigs camp given
| recent events.
|
| Interesting...could you please elaborate on this?
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| My company was at the end of their lease for several office
| buildings. They've since closed all but our largest offices.
| We have some jobs that can't be done remotely (security and
| certification requirements precludes outsourcing.) The
| remaining offices are running skeleton crews with the
| heaviest precautions we can do while remaining operational.
| danny_sf45 wrote:
| Another personal anecdote: in my company nobody wants to go
| back to the office.
| Guest42 wrote:
| In my office the parents and people that have their own
| offices as opposed to cubicles are the only ones looking to
| return.
| btgeekboy wrote:
| Sure says a lot about open workspaces.
| gsk22 wrote:
| No it doesn't, it's just one anecdote. Anecdotally, most
| people in my office are excited to return, including
| those who work in an open workspace.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| I had the best of both worlds, I went in once a week - but I
| loved going in. I met with my team, talked with our people
| outside my division. Grabbed some good "city miami" food, no
| "suburb miami" food. It was like a mini-vacation, every week
| and it energized me for the following week.
|
| Hard problem to solve. Other people in the company had to go in
| every day, and I'm sure they LOVE not having to commute, and
| for good reason.
|
| Companies can't really "rent an office space" for one day a
| week can they? It's not realistic. I wonder what will work look
| like in the next 2 years. I'm glad I had a chance to experience
| the office setting for a year at least.
| mperham wrote:
| > Companies can't really "rent an office space" for one day a
| week can they?
|
| Not exactly but they could get 1/5 the space and rotate
| people onsite one day per week.
| misterbwong wrote:
| I'm on board with you on not wanting 100% remote anymore. I
| used to want to work 100% remote but this pandemic has shown me
| that working in any sort of team remotely is _hard_ to get
| right (most companies don 't). I've come to the conclusion that
| 3-4 days/wk max is viable and can be healthy.
|
| The problem is there's so much information and communication
| that happens implicitly through our day-to-day actions that
| when you're remote, you have to make that information explicit.
| It's tiring as hell.
|
| For example, meetings. In person, you can look at a room and
| understand some basic relationships-who is talking to whom, who
| is laughing, who is avoiding, etc. This gives you valuable
| information on the shape of the team and how to navigate and
| work best with each other. Turn that into a zoom meeting,
| however, and that information either has to be explicitly
| pointed out or it is lost. This kind of thing eats up valuable
| cycles for information that could have been communicated in a
| literal glance.
| baron_harkonnen wrote:
| Remote meetings work best when they're frequent, short and
| small groups.
|
| Good remote teams have better communication in my experience
| because very often "implicit" communication in an office
| means you think you communicated something but did not.
|
| Making all communication explicit is a useful habit to into,
| and overall improves everything.
| notJim wrote:
| > I for one am even more in the no-remote-only-gigs camp given
| recent events.
|
| I don't understand this, why?
|
| Regarding the rest of your comment, I totally agree. My mom and
| sister both work for a large, old-fashioned company, and the
| company didn't even let them take their dual monitors home with
| them when WFH started. They both had to buy setups out of their
| own pocket, and these are not people making tech salaries.
|
| Really the biggest cost you're leaving off is space though.
| It's really preferable to have a dedicated space for an office,
| and this is not free. It's one thing for someone who made a
| choice to go remote, but for people forced into it, it feels
| unfair to me.
|
| It wouldn't surprise me if in the new world, offices are viewed
| as a perk rather than a requirement due to all this. I
| personally work remotely for the record, but talking to many
| people in my life, it's clear this is not for everyone.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| >and the company didn't even let them take their dual
| monitors home with them when WFH started
|
| That is such a low life mentality. Not to give two screens
| worth $200 to someone who's probably making 10-20 times that
| a month.
|
| What I envisage is super localised hubs,or small office
| spaces in residential areas. Small building nicely fitting
| into the area and offering local people some level of office
| like environment
| philjohn wrote:
| Exactly - I'm lucky in that I made a deliberate decision to
| have a slightly longer commute because it meant a bigger
| house and closer to an amazing school my children attend. I'm
| fortunate to have a proper office that I can enter at the
| start of the work day, and leave at the end - separating my
| work and home life.
|
| Having to work from your lounge, or kitchen, or worse bedroom
| makes it much harder to switch off.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| > I don't understand this, why?
|
| As far as I can tell, this seems to be an introvert/extrovert
| thing (for the most part). Extroverts miss being around
| people they can engage in conversations with, while
| introverts love not having extroverts around trying to engage
| in conversations with them. I think both camps have valid
| needs and right now the extrovert's needs aren't being met to
| their satisfaction.
| bitbuilder wrote:
| >I don't understand this, why?
|
| My sentiments are similar to OP's, and for me a large part of
| my job satisfaction _was_ getting to hang out with really
| incredible people all day, getting lunch with those people,
| getting afterwork drinks with them, etc. Hanging out on video
| chat just isn 't the same.
|
| Of course, an argument can (and maybe should) be made that
| it's smarter to to keep your work focused on the work, and
| find your social outlets elsewhere. However, the unfortunate
| reality is that for those of us far removed from school and
| our home towns, work is where we tend to make our friends.
|
| On top of that, I just enjoyed the change of scenery in
| leaving my apartment in the burbs to go into a nice office
| space in the city. Feeling restricted to the same space for
| 24 hours a day is driving an unhealthy level of cabin fever
| and boredom. For the first time in my life, I envy those with
| the big house and a yard.
|
| Of course that later point would be somewhat mitigated in a
| world where I could work out of shared space or the local
| coffee shop, so I'm not sure if that's an indictment of
| remote work in general for my purposes.
| dakiol wrote:
| > Feeling restricted to the same space for 24 hours a day
| is driving an unhealthy level of cabin fever and boredom.
| For the first time in my life, I envy those with the big
| house and a yard.
|
| This is because of corona, not because of working from
| home.
| webdood90 wrote:
| People say this but I don't really see the alternative. I
| can't imagine going to a coffee shop to loiter every day.
| The reality is I'm gonna be at home in my office, and
| that is tiring.
| flatline wrote:
| I used to work remotely and really disliked it. Not
| talking to coworkers and being stuck at home all day were
| the two big reasons. I'm right back there now due to the
| pandemic, and it's much the same, the evenings and
| weekends are somewhat more boring than before but we
| still manage to get out and do stuff because the weather
| is nice this time of year.
|
| I think this _could_ be different with a complete
| overhaul of corporate culture but I haven 't seen it yet
| in 20 years of employment with "teleworking" being an
| option at least part of the time. Perhaps remote-first
| teams really are different, but you're still stuck at
| home all day, or spending time and money going to a
| coffee shop and maybe finding a seat+wifi, etc.
| draw_down wrote:
| Yes, this downside of remote work almost never gets brought up.
| I've worked remotely for about 10 years now and have no
| interest in going back, but I think people should be clear-eyed
| about what's in it for employers. Not so much coffee and
| snacks, but office space, desks/monitor/chair, etc. Ethical
| employers should be offering stipends for these.
| randycupertino wrote:
| > the amount of emotion on display when the topic turned to
| returning to the office strongly suggests people want to go
| back.
|
| Could also be the most vociferous or those worried about losing
| jobs to outsourcing? Also there's morale at play which could be
| people wanting to showcase they're all-in for facetime and not
| wanting to be the only ones without team spirit. imo people
| will vote with their feet re: remote work by not interviewing
| or accepting offers at companies that force back to the office.
|
| Agree there's a nostalgia factor at play and need for ongoing
| discussions, I think overall things are going to move towards
| greater flexibility and maybe flex days/time etc.
| egypturnash wrote:
| I just wanna add one thing to this list:
|
| - Physical space. If you've got a small home without a spare
| room to turn into an office, have fun working on the kitchen
| table!
| briandear wrote:
| True, but if you were remote only, you could live in a low
| cost place and afford a bigger space.
| mynegation wrote:
| I could but I just do not want to. This pandemic definitely
| stacked the cards against my living preferences
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| The place is chosen not only for the cost. Some people like
| to live near the park, or downtown, because theaters
| museums movies bars dancehalls are all there.
| Shivetya wrote:
| I am more that willing to take on those costs to work from home
| forever because I get the freedom of no commute which not only
| incurs an obvious cost but puts me at risk each day.
|
| I also find my costs reduced because now I am no longer eating
| out for lunch, let alone because I felt pressure to do so
| daily.
|
| However there are companies that are overly proud of their head
| quarters and other real estate and are going to be loathe to
| give it up; this includes elite addresses and locations
| bradlys wrote:
| Many people in big tech hubs don't pay for lunch. Work
| provides it. Now, they all have to pay for lunch that they
| weren't paying for before because the office is closed.
| Sometimes this isn't just lunch - but up to 3 meals a day.
| Same is true with transit. They took a company bus or work
| paid for public transit.
|
| Now, people who were living in spaces where they didn't have
| a dedicated office space are dying for one. (like myself)
| And, unfortunately, the competition for homes with more
| bedrooms has skyrocketed. I'm looking at paying $2000 more a
| month just so I can get a couple more bedrooms for office
| work! Moving away for a year or more isn't a real option
| either.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Fringe benefits should always be expected to be transient
| (meals, commute transportation), and it isn't wise to
| include them in total comp calculations (as they're easier
| to do away with than your comp).
| bradlys wrote:
| >Fringe benefits should always be expected to be
| transient (meals, commute transportation), and it isn't
| wise to include them in total comp calculations (as
| they're easier to do away with than your comp).
|
| Yet places like Google would argue for them as part of
| their TC. The companies that tend to offer these benefits
| don't usually get rid of them until they're going out of
| business...
| z3ncyberpunk wrote:
| The companies offering these services are also so few and
| far between it's ridiculous to even mention it
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| It's your job as an employee to not drink the kool aid
| and to properly value benefits provided, regardless of
| how they're marketed. Cash is king, everything else is
| window dressing.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Sure but it is not just the $ sum but also $/h and
| $/sweat and tear. Having eg. parking lots even if you
| arrive at 10 aclock is also a big deal.
| ckdarby wrote:
| I have a hard time relating to your comment.
|
| Why do you need a couple more bedrooms?
|
| Can split a bedroom as an office with the other person in
| your house.
|
| If you have kids you can pair them up in the same bedroom
| with bunk beds.
|
| You could spend the money on a Murphy bed that folds up and
| turns into a desk.
|
| I have co-workers who even work from their dining room
| table for the time being.
|
| Moving is always an option every excuse you have just
| follow up with, "and...?".
| skwb wrote:
| There has long been a debate if these free means actually
| count as a form of reimbursement (and are therefore
| taxable).
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/silicon-valley-cafeterias-
| whet-...
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/irs-and-free-food-at-tech-
| co...
| spo81rty wrote:
| Or you can move somewhere where the cost of living is 80%
| lower...and still work remote.
| bradlys wrote:
| Until you have to go back to the office whenever that
| is... And say goodbye to all of your friends/family.
| michaelt wrote:
| If my time's worth $50 an hour, it'd have to be a damn good
| free lunch or a damn short commute for the free-lunch-for-
| unpaid-commute trade to be a good deal.
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| If tech companies don't adjust for cost of living and you
| move you can save money on housing and get more space.
| take_a_breath wrote:
| Isn't that the point though? If the worker has to move in
| order to get more space, the worker is bearing the costs
| (literal and opportunity).
| progman32 wrote:
| @notjim @chosenbreed37 - I chose not to expand because it's
| specific to my own situation, but: I found remote work isn't
| for me. A selection of reasons (from pre-and-post covid
| experience): I find my communication stilted, I really miss
| hanging out with my colleagues, online whiteboards aren't the
| same, we have beer and board games, aisle conversations are
| useful, it's easy to see if it's OK to interrupt someone with a
| question in-person, and frankly it's motivating to have people
| bustling around working on stuff directly related to your own
| work. Half-and-half remote and in-person is probably a good
| balance for me. Yes a lot of the above reasons are a)
| privileges and b) can be mitigated with good remote work
| discipline, but again, it's just my preference.
|
| > Really the biggest cost you're leaving off is space though.
|
| 100% agree. Many people are literally working in closets or
| worse, if they even can.
|
| @taurath - "Quarantine Work Is Not Remote Work" good point.
| People are learning to support their remote colleagues right
| now, whether they intended to or not :) So "normal remote work"
| might be even better after this chapter concludes.
| toss1 wrote:
| Definitely a trade-off, as the costs previously mostly foisted
| off on employees were related to commuting to the office (time,
| car, parking, public transport, etc.)
|
| The leading companies would take account of those costs. One
| would hope they would also adapt to take acct of home office
| costs
|
| I'm seeing/expecting people will want to go in some, but not
| back to 5-days in the office. 2-3 days, when necessary to
| really do things together.
|
| If this reduced office loading prevails, it'll also help
| everyone from workers to cities with the misery & costs of
| commuting (tho I did read that NPR has lost huge audience due
| to loss of commute-time listeners).
| take_a_breath wrote:
| I've been saying this for months on HN and it hasn't been very
| well-received. Maybe such a large percentage were already
| remote that it seems obviously better to them?
| schwinn140 wrote:
| I'm not experiencing this and I would assume anyone employed at
| a larger or established company would mirror this.
|
| I've seen our company quickly react to the reduced office
| related costs and have reallocated that to cover employee's
| home office needs: internet service, phone, supplies. If you
| needed a desk at home, that also was accommodated.
|
| Being able to take our work computer(s), including dual
| monitors, was also immediately available to everyone.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| We run two office buildings on the same road: we went to the
| main one to collect all the IT equipment,pack it up and put it
| in the other,smaller office. We used to run fully in house.
| Yes,some people do want to go back to the office but the main
| reasons are: we were all stuck at home for months,so people do
| want to regain some sort of normality. Some have difficulties
| at home,so going to the office is better. Me personally? I run
| a 10 people team that will be half that size in a few days. I
| live in a 1 bed flat,so writing unit tests and dealing with
| dodgy suppliers,while Peppa Pig is blasting in the background
| can be challenging. However,I don't want to spend 3h on
| commuting daily.Screw that. The desk cost was about PS3K a
| year,so I'm sure there will be some negotiation space to get
| something arranged for WFH.
| chosenbreed37 wrote:
| > I run a 10 people team that will be half that size in a few
| days.
|
| Is this something that is coming about as a result of the
| pandemic?
| cosmodisk wrote:
| We were very reliant on consumer credit, while selling
| services almost twice the going price,which has now gone,so
| the sales won't be anywhere near of what it used to be.
| scarface74 wrote:
| I worked at a job I loved pre-Covid - great coworkers, freedom
| to tinker, a large amount of autonomy, admin access to our AWS
| account so I didn't have to worry about the infrastructure
| gatekeepers (I was hired as the de facto "cloud architect"),
| etc.
|
| But, I couldn't stand the loud open office. One of the reasons
| I changed jobs was because there was talk about us coming back
| into the office by the end of June.
|
| My job (for a FAANG) now was always designed to be fully remote
| and I couldn't be happier. I've job hopped for the last decade,
| but there isn't a dollar amount that would make me go back into
| the office.
| aresant wrote:
| Office buildings are a $2,500,000,000,000 asset class in the USA
| alone.
|
| Throw in retail and you're at >$5 trillion of value.
|
| And the market is in total chaos due to COVID-19, fortunes are
| going to be made and lost on a ridiculous scale over the next
| decade as institutional investors reposition their trillions of
| dollars of equity in this market.
|
| Institutional investors rely on commercial real estate as it's
| one of the only asset classes at SCALE that can:
|
| (a) Generate cash flow
|
| (b) Is asset backed
|
| (c) Is highly leverageable w/relatively low default risk (debt)
|
| As a result the world's largest institutional funds - pensions,
| sovereign wealth, insurance companies, etc typically invest a
| large allocation of their overall funds (10 - 25%) in the CRE
| class.
|
| This lets them pay their current liabilities - teacher pensions,
| public services, insurance coupons, etc - with cash, while also
| generating longer term IRR returns on the appreciating assets to
| cover ever expanding liabilities.
|
| For generations of institutional wealth managers retail and
| office space were the #2 and #3 largest overall allocations of
| their real estate portfolios (1)
|
| Part of this is due to the scale in office / retail - those two
| product types represent ~$5 trillion in asset value and are only
| outstripped by multifamily ($2.9t) in scale. (2)
|
| But as both office and retail have been slipping for the past
| decade institutional managers had slowly begun to reposition and
| reallocate to other sectors while keeping a toe in.
|
| But as it's done elsewhere COVID-19's arrival has massively
| pulled trends in CRE forward by probably a decade with regard to
| the reallocation.
|
| As a result what most CRE investment pros are expecting a
| significant increase in valuation multiples across alternative
| CRE asset classes including multifamily, self storage,
| industrial, etc.
|
| What's terrifying about the idea of massive winners & losers in
| the space is the potential further erosion of returns on
| institutional investors, who are typically already well behind
| investment targets to maintain their expanding liabilities.
|
| Great resource / primer here if you're interested - (1)
| https://www.leggmason.com/en-us/insights/investment-insights...
|
| (2) https://www.reit.com/data-research/research/nareit-
| research/...
| birdyrooster wrote:
| The reason I won't be coming back to the office is because my
| managers love not having to come in anymore. It's that simple.
| supergeek133 wrote:
| I'm still amazed the fight seems to be "everyone works from home"
| or "everyone works from the office".
|
| I've been fairly productive since we all started full-time from
| home in March. However I prefer working at the office. As time
| has gone on I've found myself losing routine. Either working
| sporadically through the day or longer hours in general.
|
| Being somewhere does a better job for me of time-boxing work.
|
| That being said, I also have my work and personal machine in the
| same room. So now I'm spending most of my time in one room! I'm
| working to rectify that situation.
| jacquesm wrote:
| If there is one business I would not want to be in right now it
| is commercial real estate. I'll be letting go of 2/3rds of our
| office space at the end of this year and I may even get rid of
| all of it depending on how things develop.
|
| With some luck this will have a nice downward effect on house
| prices in and around Amsterdam, where plenty of companies have
| converted houses to offices.
| oakfr wrote:
| Companies _think_ that remote work works but they fail to realize
| that most of what happened over the past few months was based on
| prior momentum built inside the office they are carelessly
| ditching.
| triceratops wrote:
| Couldn't you bring people together once a quarter or bi-yearly?
| Book a nice villa someplace exotic for a couple of weeks, get
| all the planning and coordination out of the way, give everyone
| the last few days off with families invited.
| bradlys wrote:
| Would that really be any cheaper for the business than just
| renting an office?? Flying people to nice destinations and
| putting them in expensive hotels along with their families is
| $$$.
| triceratops wrote:
| Almost certainly. Toptal used to do it. I'm not sure if
| they still do.
| helltone wrote:
| How would this work when both parents work different jobs and
| children in school?
| triceratops wrote:
| Same way they take vacations. The parent working remote has
| more flexibility to take on childcare responsibilities the
| rest of the year, so they can probably work something out
| together.
| greenyoda wrote:
| Going "someplace exotic" may be great for some people, but if
| you have responsibilities such as being the caregiver for an
| aging parent, being forced to be away from home for a couple
| of days or weeks can be a big problem.
| triceratops wrote:
| True. OTOH, and not to invalidate anyone's experiences, but
| people shouldering such responsibilities typically have
| help already (either paid or other family). Otherwise they
| couldn't do their current job. They also, presumably, have
| plans/protocols for when they need to take a vacation or
| break. Unless they were otherwise spending all their free
| time on caregiving, which isn't sustainable or healthy.
| They could potentially use those same measures when it's
| offsite time and even be given some makeup time off later.
|
| They could also get an exception and attend the working
| sessions remotely. But there's a chance that could lead to
| fewer opportunities for advancement for them, because they
| weren't there. Which sucks. It's not an ideal situation.
|
| BTW, lots of enterprise sales companies already do annual
| "sales kickoff" events where they fly all their salespeople
| globally to a single place. It's not unprecedented.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > Unless they were otherwise spending all their free time
| on caregiving
|
| You're not far off the description of parents of young
| and early school-age children. Kids are in school/daycare
| for part of the day, then at home, needing dinner, care,
| etc.
| triceratops wrote:
| That's different from caring for elderly family members.
| Parents with young families (maybe not those with
| newborns) can and do take vacations and travel. They also
| often have paid help even in their non-work hours e.g.
| babysitters or nannies.
| stormbeard wrote:
| This is resolved by going somewhere within an hour of the
| office location. It's a good idea, but not everyone wants
| to be forced into traveling for work.
| jefftk wrote:
| I worked at a company that did this: big in person retreats,
| once or twice a quarter. I've now been working remotely due
| to covid about as long as I worked at that company before I
| was laid off. I still feel much closer and more in sync with
| my current coworkers than I did to my coworkers at the remote
| company.
| devmunchies wrote:
| also most people on your team has met in person, so there's
| that momentum too. It's a complete different vibe when
| teleconferencing with people you've met several times than with
| those you have not.
|
| And I don't think a quarterly on-site is enough.
| sjtindell wrote:
| I like this point, we've had a lot of success going remote but
| also haven't been through multiple rounds of planning out the
| next quarters yet, everything was in place.
| huy-nguyen wrote:
| Will this trend revive the fortune of WeWork? We can have a
| future where teams within a company decide on "core days" where
| everyone is in the office but WFH the rest of the week and the
| company can pay for a variable number of office spaces depending
| on the week day. WeWork can become the cloud but for office
| spaces.
| [deleted]
| paul_f wrote:
| The general idea of WeWork, but not that business model
| chosenbreed37 wrote:
| I think there was always a viable business in WeWork. Just not
| with all the excesses and crazy valuations. But prior to the
| current pandemic it certainly meet a need. Granted they were
| not the only ones offering the same service. But even that in
| itself would suggest that with the proper management it would
| be successful operation.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| WeWork should make studio space for YouTubers that has
| ambient noise dampening and good facilities for lighting and
| rigging.
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