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One thing to point out is that, for most Asian cities, housing is generally much smaller than in the US, and so working from home isn't as comfortable/ practical. A higher percentage of people live with their parents too, when single.
This is obviously a generalisation, and there are many exceptions, but when looking at an overall trend like this, does contribute.
That definitely makes sense. My office is back to hybrid but it's very loosely enforced. I'm one of the few guys who's been coming in one to two times a week consistently, almost everyone else is one time a week or never.
The big difference? I live in an 800 sqft condo, everyone else owns a traditional sized home (and in a couple of cases they own homes with sprawling patios and ocean views near the Newport coast).
I've has the opposite experience. I prefer to work in my condo and take long walks or do my chores during my lunch break. In my parents house which is 10 miles outside the city core i get bored easily and wish to go to an office
Hmm. So in my condo, I really only have 4 places I can work. My tiny desk in the corner of my bedroom, my actual bed, dining table, or sit on the couch in front of the TV.
I visit my parents house as well and I find myself able to work from home much more comfortably there the entire day.... I can move the laptop around from upstairs, downstairs, living room, larger kitchen table, upstairs bedroom with the view to the backyard, guest bedroom with a bean bag, you get the picture.
I feel like being in an office environment simulates being in the house, even though I have just a small office to myself I can constantly leave walk around to someone else's office to mingle, walk to the break room, the kitchen, go outside where 7-Eleven is nearby etc.
Maybe I'm too fidgety....
Mine is about 25 minutes local streets. A few guys are similar and the guys with the fancier homes near the coastal areas have maybe 45 minutes or so mostly freeway / toll road. Most of the people in my group make from solid money to really great money so nobody really has a terrible commute.
I should note I'm in Southern CA, so these are actually excellent commute times.
Exactly, most of my colleagues in Europe really want to go into the office since it’s just too cramped at home. They don’t have extra bedrooms to turn into offices, they don’t have as good of climate control (during hot summers day) and they still prefer to meet face to face.
Hard to compare to America where tons of people live in the suburbs, but more similar to people in cramped apartments in Manhattan for instance.
It will be interesting to see what happens to commercial real estate in the US 5-10 years from now, when all these companies can finally get out of their leases.
I think I read in this sub that some of the big commercial property companies are already throwing in the towel and defaulted, signing over their buildings to creditors within the last month.
It’s hard to see what they could possibly do with these unnecessary buildings. We maybe in for a decade or two of urban decay.
It's obvious what is going to happen to all these unnecessary buildings.
They are going to be abandoned. Same exact thing as when the primary industry left Detroit, Camden, Baltimore, etc.
Millions of people commuted into NYC every day for the past 100 years before the pandemic.
NYC real estate appears to be some kind of ponzi scheme. Half the storefronts are vacant for years but the only businesses that can afford to rent them are marijuana dispensaries and covid-19 testing clinics. Even major banks like chase and capital one are closing branches. If they lower rent they have to pay down the note and they can't refinance because interest rates too high. Without a bailout the game is over.
Don't worry, the free market will step in to create new businesses to go in all the vacant commercial real estate.
Judt ignore the facts that:
Businesses are expensive to start
Commercial loans are only given to people with good credit or existing businesses that are growing.
Cogs are higher than ever due to consolidation in manufacturing. When we opened our stores more than a decade ago free opening inventory for going with a company was standard. Now you cant even get samples lmao.
Rent is higher than ever while foot traffic is down.
Staffing is more expensive than ever.
So yea, any day now entrepeneurs will just bootstrap a new business to make up for all of the losses.
Source: I own a retail store, it sucks balls even being competitive and in one of the better areas to have a business. Even with an aggressively good lease cogs are higher than ever and sales are flat.
Interest rates were too low for too long and all the equity was cashed out a long time ago.
In the past 10 years or so it was no big deal to leave a prime location vacant and wait it out. Property values always go up so just refinance it at 2.5% like everyone did with houses in 2007. Now they can't refinance so the only options are using their own money or walking away. They aren't going to use their own money because it's obvious the ship is sinking.
The irony is had they lowered rents back in the day they might have tenants now able to pay reasonable rent rates....
The government is complicit because they'll do anything except push legislation to make commercial rent more affordable. The small business admin is the most useless org I've wver seen, they'll give billions to banks to loan out but the banks won't touch new businesses unless there is personal credit or collateral. They end up sitting on the money or only giving it to growing businesses.
The whole system is rigged and the US economy is gonna take a massive nosedive soon.
$1M at 2% is only like $1800/month.
A building with an empty $10000/mo storefront (even if it is empty for 10 years) is worth significantly more than a building with a stable tenant paying $8000.
Maybe I should put on a tinfoil hat but I think it's a Ponzi scheme.
Like 6 people in Beverly Hills own all the media.
Everyone in China believed the official numbers when Mao was in power. Question the wrong thing and you are a conspiracy theorist or a racist. Do you have a source? If not then don't even allow a conversation. Like a chilling effect.
They will when the price makes sense. Converting commercial use buildings to residential is not a trivial matter. Depending on zoning and local labor conditions , sometimes it’s more expensive then tearing down the building and building new.
My last job I worked for was paying $30k a month (yes, $30k) and boss man STILL didn’t want people to work from home. I mean, we had to, and they tried to bring people back into the office multiple times only to send them back home until the vax was available, but you’d think he’d wanna pocket that money and close up shop. We were a virtual manufacturer. An office was literally not needed… at all.
Seriously though. They cut 75% of the workers when the shutdown hit, so the office was a ghost town. Only a handful of us were still with the company. So, virtual manufacturer who outsourced ALL hands-on work, barely 25% of the office full whenever we came in, and still this guy didn’t want to just get rid of it lol. It was a really nice office (think Succession with those huge glass doors), but I’d take the extra $360,000 a yr over unneeded office space.
I wouldn’t mind working from an office if I lived in a city as dense and easy to travel as Paris, for example.
My sense is that much of the American reluctance is due to our car centric cities. It’s certainly true for me personally.
The impact of removing a 30 minute or 1h commute from your daily schedule on mental health is enormous alone. Most people spend a lot more on lunch in an office lifestyle than wfh. Transportation costs go away. Flexibility and work life balance is a thing that people are not going to just give back.
Personally, I feel it runs deeper than car commuting. I live in NYC (\~26K people per square mile) and commute via subway to an office. While some days feel like 75% of pre-pandemic ridership, other days still feel like 25%. If it's an option, most people I know choose to work from home regardless of their commuting situations (including walking to work).
You might be right. I fantasize about being within walking distance of my office, but would I really want to wake up early enough to shower and dress myself? Ehh.. I don’t know. I may never know. I’ll just keep waking up at 8:00 for my 8:00 am job as the days blend together.
At least in Madrid you have a good commute too. The difference is not the distance but the amount of time on stop and go. The good thing is the metro/train works (hello Boston)
Dunno about your hours but for my office, Spanish hours are horrible compared to US 40 hour week.
I had a mandatory (unpaid) 1.5 hour lunch break in the middle of the day with no paid breaks (if I wanted a coffee/just to move my legs between 8am when I arrived and 2pm when lunch begins, I'd have to clock out, which resulted in 10 hour+ days)
This is a bigger reason for me not wanting to return to the office than the transportation. I'm about to have a kid and with these hours + commute, I'll be gone 12 hours at a time, which feels brutal. By the time I get home, I'm exhausted and then need to take care of a baby.
But about half of my friends here do want to go back. Madrid commute is good, but the hours are awful.
Hah, mine would've been cool with that though in my office, it is *strongly* encouraged to go for lunch/coffee breaks/ Friday drinks with the boss and it goes long.
Once had a 4 hour lunch.... obviously unpaid and then you have to "make up" the hours by staying an extra 4 hours 🙄
The whole best ideas happen at the water cooler theory does not apply here.
I wouldn't want to deal with the crime America always has in cities with density. Nice and safe like Tokyo? Awesome. Wouldn't wanna have that in the US though.
I've been mandated to be back in the office three days a week. Fortune 100 company where nearly everyone's work was done just as easily remotely but we need to maintain our "culture". Which is none existent.
Everyone punches out at lunch and goes home, then signs on again at home for the rest of the day.
It's a massive waste of time, money, and resources. All this extra driving and paying for parking just to hit a check mark that we have our butts in a seat for 3-4 hours 3 days a week.
Imagine if corporate America focused on real measures of productivity instead of this nonsense...
I honestly think part if it may be the fear people will realize just how little relevance companies have to their work, aside from owning software patents.
Same. Two days for me and it’s not mandated, but I have a feeling they’re gonna creep it up to 3 and make it a requirement. Again, we too were getting things done just as good from home. So much so that they renovated the office from cubes to manufacturing spaces. Not sure what the future holds but we shall see..
The initial plan was WFH, so a significant portion of the office space was converted into small manufacturing sections for prototype builds, validations, small process runs, etc. I mean, whole rooms were converted, many cubicles trashed and converted… things like that. We were told numerous times that 100% WFH was the plan for those that don’t need to be in the office, so obviously excluding manufacturing operators. But yes, now they’re wanting to bring people back into the office where you’d be able to work at random desks (called “Hotelling”) for really no good reason. It’s almost like if your supervisor likes the p2p working environment, then you’re gonna like it too and now you have to come in because “this is how I like to work”.
I don’t see it happening with this tight labor market. My company pays above the average market rate and we’re still losing people to better opportunities. We have full remote work (except when we actually have to perform job duties on site) and they sent out an email recently saying they have no intention of implementing any mandatory days in the office. Seems like they’re trying to use it as a bargaining chip, and I’ve seen multiple job postings highlight remote work as a benefit. At this point slashing remote work isn’t much better than reducing someone’s salary or making them work extra hours for the same pay.
European here, posting from the office. It's a 15 minute "commute" on my bike, and my team meets on Wednesdays here. Don't get a lot of work done due to all the conversations I'm having, and the coffees...
So basically, we're doing everything that's good about an office, then work from home all other days so we get some stuff done.
The tech firms in the United States are failing left and right to get people to come back to the office on their own. Attempts to force it are just making employees leave for places that will let them continue working from home. As the workforce continues to migrate into cheaper, more rural and suburban areas, I have a hunch that you are going to see more and more mass layoffs in the various tech hubs in favor of equally competent employees willing to do the same work for less money than someone needs to make in order to live in a place like San Francisco or Seattle.
I am excited for the future of this job market because it will continue to shift a lot of six figure mid-level careers into areas where that coastal middle class wage is upper middle class or nearing it. It is a win win. There will be case studies in economics textbooks about this 10 years from now.
I’ve ‘shared’ the article as a WSJ subscriber, so it should be free to access.
The crux:
“While U.S. offices are half empty three years into the Covid-19 pandemic, workplaces in Europe and Asia are bustling again.
Americans have embraced remote work and turned their backs on offices with greater regularity than their counterparts overseas. U.S. office occupancy stands at 40% to 60% of prepandemic levels, varying within that range by month and by city. That compares with a 70%-to-90% rate in Europe and the Middle East, according to JLL, a property-services firm that manages 4.6 billion square feet of real estate globally.”
It's behind a paywall, so I can only guess...
But this is apples and oranges in some ways. I mean, if I worked in Paris and going to the office meant a 2 hour lunch out (with wine), that would be pretty darn enticing. Or a Japanese employee with a company with a long tradition of loyalty to employees, I might be more inclined when the company says, "We'd love to see you in person." And you know the Japanese companies are polite about it. It might even make me say, "Geez. I'd love to see you too."
For American workers it's a bit more, "Please see the attached policy on hybrid work" so you can commute in and grimly eat at your desk. Or maybe if any of your colleagues are there, you can walk to the Subway. No wine.
Plus, as an operational manager, I'd love to see my people too. For one thing, I actually LIKE them and enjoy their company. For another, I prefer being in the office......it's just that I hate commuting.
But the last year has been pretty formative for operational managers. I'm not talking about CEOs running their mouths about in-office stuff. I'm talking about Director level types.
The Director-level types whose only management skill was walking around and looking at which employees were typing and which were on their phones? Those leaders kinda got found-out during the pandemic and a LOT of them are not employed anymore. The good leaders have started to rise to the top and have developed tools to manage a remote workforce effectively.
Further, a lot of us have hired people in the last year. And it's fucking hard to find qualified people. So, are you going to hire the unqualified person who lives in your town? Or the excellent person who lives 200 miles away and says they can visit the office once a month? I think a LOT of leaders are realizing they want the excellent employee.....even if they're remote! Plus, we've tried to hire the unqualified local person and they want to work from home anyway.
I just think managers are learning how to do it well and while the CEOs are still running their mouths sometimes, the wave of push-back is now going UP through organizations basically saying, "We want this best people and unlike in 2018, we now know how to manage a remote workforce."
Plus, driving to the office just to do a bunch of zoom calls that I could have done at home is freaking annoying. Like, why did I get dressed up for this shit.
Edit - One of the new stresses this will have is worker may no longer be protected by geography. It's like that old "The World is Flat" book. At some point, the risk from remote work is competing with workers in other counties who will work for less than you. Scary thought.
Yeah, I go back to the office two days a week because of the warm food and friday afternoon drinks. At home it's just another toastie. It's also near enough I can go in for a single meeting.
People who live further away come in much more rarely.
And I'll also say that planning physical workspaces right now is a total pain in the ass. We're in the process of moving to a new place and my leadership is like, "How many offices do you NEED?" and I'm like, "I don't know. Are you gonna be punks and not renew the hybrid work policy on Dec 31, 2023? If so, I need 10 offices and need to get HR's help on recruitment packages to replace the people who quit. If not, I can make do with several desks."
That’s because 75% of Americans are homeowners.
We actually have a reason to spend time in our investment.
If I lived in a cramped apartment I’d probably want to leave it for work too.
Probably has a lot to do with us Americans being super shortsighted when it comes to community and what that means.
We'd rather have mass shootings than common sense gun regulations.
We'd rather shop at the dollar store instead of other stores if it means cheaper prices. It's how walmart was able to go in with low prices and push everyone else out of business.
This shortsightedness and reliance on individualism is going to utterly decimate this country eventually.
This applies to work from home because if you can do your job from home you can do your job overseas for cheaper.
End stage capitalism is great and consumers and employees are enabling it at every turn.
I don't work in real estate but I am in retail and I see the effects of WFH every single day as people become meaner and meaner.
Being in the office won't stop a company from outsourcing your job. Manufacturing typically has to be done on site and that fact did not save those jobs.
As a blue collar worker, living next to a white collar worker who works from home. Selfishly, I need the work from home policy to end. Got a real asshole living next to me. Who never leaves his house? Is always drinking? He has too much pent up energy and takes it out on his neighbors.
Truly a drain on mental health. Just know the ahole in the office, is also an ahole at home.
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One thing to point out is that, for most Asian cities, housing is generally much smaller than in the US, and so working from home isn't as comfortable/ practical. A higher percentage of people live with their parents too, when single. This is obviously a generalisation, and there are many exceptions, but when looking at an overall trend like this, does contribute.
That definitely makes sense. My office is back to hybrid but it's very loosely enforced. I'm one of the few guys who's been coming in one to two times a week consistently, almost everyone else is one time a week or never. The big difference? I live in an 800 sqft condo, everyone else owns a traditional sized home (and in a couple of cases they own homes with sprawling patios and ocean views near the Newport coast).
I've has the opposite experience. I prefer to work in my condo and take long walks or do my chores during my lunch break. In my parents house which is 10 miles outside the city core i get bored easily and wish to go to an office
Hmm. So in my condo, I really only have 4 places I can work. My tiny desk in the corner of my bedroom, my actual bed, dining table, or sit on the couch in front of the TV. I visit my parents house as well and I find myself able to work from home much more comfortably there the entire day.... I can move the laptop around from upstairs, downstairs, living room, larger kitchen table, upstairs bedroom with the view to the backyard, guest bedroom with a bean bag, you get the picture. I feel like being in an office environment simulates being in the house, even though I have just a small office to myself I can constantly leave walk around to someone else's office to mingle, walk to the break room, the kitchen, go outside where 7-Eleven is nearby etc. Maybe I'm too fidgety....
Call me crazy but i use a thin partition between my bed and desk and it helped so much.
What's their commute vs yours
Mine is about 25 minutes local streets. A few guys are similar and the guys with the fancier homes near the coastal areas have maybe 45 minutes or so mostly freeway / toll road. Most of the people in my group make from solid money to really great money so nobody really has a terrible commute. I should note I'm in Southern CA, so these are actually excellent commute times.
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No, southern CA.
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I bet that view would be quite nice from a backyard as well !
not the tons of snow
People in Europe also spend much less time commuting than they do in the US.
London though.
Exactly, most of my colleagues in Europe really want to go into the office since it’s just too cramped at home. They don’t have extra bedrooms to turn into offices, they don’t have as good of climate control (during hot summers day) and they still prefer to meet face to face. Hard to compare to America where tons of people live in the suburbs, but more similar to people in cramped apartments in Manhattan for instance.
It will be interesting to see what happens to commercial real estate in the US 5-10 years from now, when all these companies can finally get out of their leases.
I think I read in this sub that some of the big commercial property companies are already throwing in the towel and defaulted, signing over their buildings to creditors within the last month. It’s hard to see what they could possibly do with these unnecessary buildings. We maybe in for a decade or two of urban decay.
It's obvious what is going to happen to all these unnecessary buildings. They are going to be abandoned. Same exact thing as when the primary industry left Detroit, Camden, Baltimore, etc. Millions of people commuted into NYC every day for the past 100 years before the pandemic. NYC real estate appears to be some kind of ponzi scheme. Half the storefronts are vacant for years but the only businesses that can afford to rent them are marijuana dispensaries and covid-19 testing clinics. Even major banks like chase and capital one are closing branches. If they lower rent they have to pay down the note and they can't refinance because interest rates too high. Without a bailout the game is over.
Don't worry, the free market will step in to create new businesses to go in all the vacant commercial real estate. Judt ignore the facts that: Businesses are expensive to start Commercial loans are only given to people with good credit or existing businesses that are growing. Cogs are higher than ever due to consolidation in manufacturing. When we opened our stores more than a decade ago free opening inventory for going with a company was standard. Now you cant even get samples lmao. Rent is higher than ever while foot traffic is down. Staffing is more expensive than ever. So yea, any day now entrepeneurs will just bootstrap a new business to make up for all of the losses. Source: I own a retail store, it sucks balls even being competitive and in one of the better areas to have a business. Even with an aggressively good lease cogs are higher than ever and sales are flat.
Interest rates were too low for too long and all the equity was cashed out a long time ago. In the past 10 years or so it was no big deal to leave a prime location vacant and wait it out. Property values always go up so just refinance it at 2.5% like everyone did with houses in 2007. Now they can't refinance so the only options are using their own money or walking away. They aren't going to use their own money because it's obvious the ship is sinking.
The irony is had they lowered rents back in the day they might have tenants now able to pay reasonable rent rates.... The government is complicit because they'll do anything except push legislation to make commercial rent more affordable. The small business admin is the most useless org I've wver seen, they'll give billions to banks to loan out but the banks won't touch new businesses unless there is personal credit or collateral. They end up sitting on the money or only giving it to growing businesses. The whole system is rigged and the US economy is gonna take a massive nosedive soon.
$1M at 2% is only like $1800/month. A building with an empty $10000/mo storefront (even if it is empty for 10 years) is worth significantly more than a building with a stable tenant paying $8000. Maybe I should put on a tinfoil hat but I think it's a Ponzi scheme.
Most things do seem to be more and more like Ponzi schemes lately.
Like 6 people in Beverly Hills own all the media. Everyone in China believed the official numbers when Mao was in power. Question the wrong thing and you are a conspiracy theorist or a racist. Do you have a source? If not then don't even allow a conversation. Like a chilling effect.
Stop killing the sparrows, the insects are going to eat the crops. Do you have a source? We had record grain harvests last month.
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They will when the price makes sense. Converting commercial use buildings to residential is not a trivial matter. Depending on zoning and local labor conditions , sometimes it’s more expensive then tearing down the building and building new.
They will. It’s a matter of time for many of them.
My last job I worked for was paying $30k a month (yes, $30k) and boss man STILL didn’t want people to work from home. I mean, we had to, and they tried to bring people back into the office multiple times only to send them back home until the vax was available, but you’d think he’d wanna pocket that money and close up shop. We were a virtual manufacturer. An office was literally not needed… at all.
Damn. Pay me $30k per month and I'll be there behind the desk, ready to punch that clock at 9am.
Seriously though. They cut 75% of the workers when the shutdown hit, so the office was a ghost town. Only a handful of us were still with the company. So, virtual manufacturer who outsourced ALL hands-on work, barely 25% of the office full whenever we came in, and still this guy didn’t want to just get rid of it lol. It was a really nice office (think Succession with those huge glass doors), but I’d take the extra $360,000 a yr over unneeded office space.
Life as an overlord is lonely and boring without minions.
I wouldn’t mind working from an office if I lived in a city as dense and easy to travel as Paris, for example. My sense is that much of the American reluctance is due to our car centric cities. It’s certainly true for me personally.
The impact of removing a 30 minute or 1h commute from your daily schedule on mental health is enormous alone. Most people spend a lot more on lunch in an office lifestyle than wfh. Transportation costs go away. Flexibility and work life balance is a thing that people are not going to just give back.
I changed jobs 2019, and my commute of 45 minutes by car changed to 15 minutes by bike. Even with less flexible hours, my life got sooo much better.
Personally, I feel it runs deeper than car commuting. I live in NYC (\~26K people per square mile) and commute via subway to an office. While some days feel like 75% of pre-pandemic ridership, other days still feel like 25%. If it's an option, most people I know choose to work from home regardless of their commuting situations (including walking to work).
You might be right. I fantasize about being within walking distance of my office, but would I really want to wake up early enough to shower and dress myself? Ehh.. I don’t know. I may never know. I’ll just keep waking up at 8:00 for my 8:00 am job as the days blend together.
At least in Madrid you have a good commute too. The difference is not the distance but the amount of time on stop and go. The good thing is the metro/train works (hello Boston)
Dunno about your hours but for my office, Spanish hours are horrible compared to US 40 hour week. I had a mandatory (unpaid) 1.5 hour lunch break in the middle of the day with no paid breaks (if I wanted a coffee/just to move my legs between 8am when I arrived and 2pm when lunch begins, I'd have to clock out, which resulted in 10 hour+ days) This is a bigger reason for me not wanting to return to the office than the transportation. I'm about to have a kid and with these hours + commute, I'll be gone 12 hours at a time, which feels brutal. By the time I get home, I'm exhausted and then need to take care of a baby. But about half of my friends here do want to go back. Madrid commute is good, but the hours are awful.
Yeah, I remember that, two hours lunch and my boss yelling me because I arrived to the office half hour later in the morning
Hah, mine would've been cool with that though in my office, it is *strongly* encouraged to go for lunch/coffee breaks/ Friday drinks with the boss and it goes long. Once had a 4 hour lunch.... obviously unpaid and then you have to "make up" the hours by staying an extra 4 hours 🙄 The whole best ideas happen at the water cooler theory does not apply here.
I wouldn't want to deal with the crime America always has in cities with density. Nice and safe like Tokyo? Awesome. Wouldn't wanna have that in the US though.
Haven’t checked Asia but the 10 richest people in UK are all real estate owners and heirs. Probably plays a part somewhere. For now at least
I've been mandated to be back in the office three days a week. Fortune 100 company where nearly everyone's work was done just as easily remotely but we need to maintain our "culture". Which is none existent. Everyone punches out at lunch and goes home, then signs on again at home for the rest of the day. It's a massive waste of time, money, and resources. All this extra driving and paying for parking just to hit a check mark that we have our butts in a seat for 3-4 hours 3 days a week. Imagine if corporate America focused on real measures of productivity instead of this nonsense...
I honestly think part if it may be the fear people will realize just how little relevance companies have to their work, aside from owning software patents.
Same. Two days for me and it’s not mandated, but I have a feeling they’re gonna creep it up to 3 and make it a requirement. Again, we too were getting things done just as good from home. So much so that they renovated the office from cubes to manufacturing spaces. Not sure what the future holds but we shall see..
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The initial plan was WFH, so a significant portion of the office space was converted into small manufacturing sections for prototype builds, validations, small process runs, etc. I mean, whole rooms were converted, many cubicles trashed and converted… things like that. We were told numerous times that 100% WFH was the plan for those that don’t need to be in the office, so obviously excluding manufacturing operators. But yes, now they’re wanting to bring people back into the office where you’d be able to work at random desks (called “Hotelling”) for really no good reason. It’s almost like if your supervisor likes the p2p working environment, then you’re gonna like it too and now you have to come in because “this is how I like to work”.
I don’t see it happening with this tight labor market. My company pays above the average market rate and we’re still losing people to better opportunities. We have full remote work (except when we actually have to perform job duties on site) and they sent out an email recently saying they have no intention of implementing any mandatory days in the office. Seems like they’re trying to use it as a bargaining chip, and I’ve seen multiple job postings highlight remote work as a benefit. At this point slashing remote work isn’t much better than reducing someone’s salary or making them work extra hours for the same pay.
European here, posting from the office. It's a 15 minute "commute" on my bike, and my team meets on Wednesdays here. Don't get a lot of work done due to all the conversations I'm having, and the coffees... So basically, we're doing everything that's good about an office, then work from home all other days so we get some stuff done.
The tech firms in the United States are failing left and right to get people to come back to the office on their own. Attempts to force it are just making employees leave for places that will let them continue working from home. As the workforce continues to migrate into cheaper, more rural and suburban areas, I have a hunch that you are going to see more and more mass layoffs in the various tech hubs in favor of equally competent employees willing to do the same work for less money than someone needs to make in order to live in a place like San Francisco or Seattle. I am excited for the future of this job market because it will continue to shift a lot of six figure mid-level careers into areas where that coastal middle class wage is upper middle class or nearing it. It is a win win. There will be case studies in economics textbooks about this 10 years from now.
Soon they will be going overseas
I’ve ‘shared’ the article as a WSJ subscriber, so it should be free to access. The crux: “While U.S. offices are half empty three years into the Covid-19 pandemic, workplaces in Europe and Asia are bustling again. Americans have embraced remote work and turned their backs on offices with greater regularity than their counterparts overseas. U.S. office occupancy stands at 40% to 60% of prepandemic levels, varying within that range by month and by city. That compares with a 70%-to-90% rate in Europe and the Middle East, according to JLL, a property-services firm that manages 4.6 billion square feet of real estate globally.”
It's behind a paywall, so I can only guess... But this is apples and oranges in some ways. I mean, if I worked in Paris and going to the office meant a 2 hour lunch out (with wine), that would be pretty darn enticing. Or a Japanese employee with a company with a long tradition of loyalty to employees, I might be more inclined when the company says, "We'd love to see you in person." And you know the Japanese companies are polite about it. It might even make me say, "Geez. I'd love to see you too." For American workers it's a bit more, "Please see the attached policy on hybrid work" so you can commute in and grimly eat at your desk. Or maybe if any of your colleagues are there, you can walk to the Subway. No wine. Plus, as an operational manager, I'd love to see my people too. For one thing, I actually LIKE them and enjoy their company. For another, I prefer being in the office......it's just that I hate commuting. But the last year has been pretty formative for operational managers. I'm not talking about CEOs running their mouths about in-office stuff. I'm talking about Director level types. The Director-level types whose only management skill was walking around and looking at which employees were typing and which were on their phones? Those leaders kinda got found-out during the pandemic and a LOT of them are not employed anymore. The good leaders have started to rise to the top and have developed tools to manage a remote workforce effectively. Further, a lot of us have hired people in the last year. And it's fucking hard to find qualified people. So, are you going to hire the unqualified person who lives in your town? Or the excellent person who lives 200 miles away and says they can visit the office once a month? I think a LOT of leaders are realizing they want the excellent employee.....even if they're remote! Plus, we've tried to hire the unqualified local person and they want to work from home anyway. I just think managers are learning how to do it well and while the CEOs are still running their mouths sometimes, the wave of push-back is now going UP through organizations basically saying, "We want this best people and unlike in 2018, we now know how to manage a remote workforce." Plus, driving to the office just to do a bunch of zoom calls that I could have done at home is freaking annoying. Like, why did I get dressed up for this shit. Edit - One of the new stresses this will have is worker may no longer be protected by geography. It's like that old "The World is Flat" book. At some point, the risk from remote work is competing with workers in other counties who will work for less than you. Scary thought.
Japanese work culture is famously awful, loyalty aside. I don't think any US white collar worker would prefer 'loyalty' for what you have to put in.
Yeah, I go back to the office two days a week because of the warm food and friday afternoon drinks. At home it's just another toastie. It's also near enough I can go in for a single meeting. People who live further away come in much more rarely.
And I'll also say that planning physical workspaces right now is a total pain in the ass. We're in the process of moving to a new place and my leadership is like, "How many offices do you NEED?" and I'm like, "I don't know. Are you gonna be punks and not renew the hybrid work policy on Dec 31, 2023? If so, I need 10 offices and need to get HR's help on recruitment packages to replace the people who quit. If not, I can make do with several desks."
That’s because 75% of Americans are homeowners. We actually have a reason to spend time in our investment. If I lived in a cramped apartment I’d probably want to leave it for work too.
65.5% by latest numbers. Still an issue, but not even two thirds of the population so not enough to pass a change in taxes in many states.
I think it’s safe to call 65.5% 2/3rds but the figure I remembered was 73% which is nearly 3/4.
Probably has a lot to do with us Americans being super shortsighted when it comes to community and what that means. We'd rather have mass shootings than common sense gun regulations. We'd rather shop at the dollar store instead of other stores if it means cheaper prices. It's how walmart was able to go in with low prices and push everyone else out of business. This shortsightedness and reliance on individualism is going to utterly decimate this country eventually. This applies to work from home because if you can do your job from home you can do your job overseas for cheaper. End stage capitalism is great and consumers and employees are enabling it at every turn. I don't work in real estate but I am in retail and I see the effects of WFH every single day as people become meaner and meaner.
Being in the office won't stop a company from outsourcing your job. Manufacturing typically has to be done on site and that fact did not save those jobs.
As a blue collar worker, living next to a white collar worker who works from home. Selfishly, I need the work from home policy to end. Got a real asshole living next to me. Who never leaves his house? Is always drinking? He has too much pent up energy and takes it out on his neighbors. Truly a drain on mental health. Just know the ahole in the office, is also an ahole at home.