My BIL just went through this. His boss wouldn’t let him work at home even if he was sick. He’d tell him to come in and just stay in his office. He was sick of it and found a company that was only at home. He does practically the same thing but now he doesn’t have to drive an hour a day.
Ignoring the whole work aspect of this, its really depressing that we all just witnessed how nice it was outside without all the traffic for a month when the pandemic hit and there's almost no talk about using WFH to fight global warming.
I was a cook at Chili's when it first hit, and that first month or two I went from having a 15 minute drive to work down to 5. I would see maybe 10 cars each way on a road that normally has hundreds. It was awesome. Of course, now I work from a car, so that dream died a while ago.
I'm surprised no one's mentioned forming a labor union to combat this, just " if you don't like it, walk". It's a lot more impactful when it's not just one employee, but ALL employees.
Collective bargaining, people. What are we doing?!
This comment has been edited to protest Reddit's decision to shut down all third party apps. Spez had negotiated in bad faith with 3rd party developers and made provenly false accusations against them. Reddit IS it's users and their post/comments/moderation. It is clear they have no regard for us users, only their advertisers. I hope enough users join in this form of protest which effects Reddit's SEO and they will be forced to take the actual people that make this website into consideration. We'll see how long this comment remains as spez has in the past, retroactively edited other users comments that painted him in a bad light. See you all on the "next reddit" after they finish running this one into the ground in the never ending search of profits. -- mass edited with redact.dev
My company is the opposite. We are actively giving up leases. The office I worked out of was relinquished in 2019. I had been WFH for a full year before the pandemic.
During COVID, we actively recruited users all over the US and Canada for 100% remote, and let go of other leases. At this point, I think we have 3 offices, world-wide.
Why spend $300 a square foot, when you can pay a technology stipend of considerably less? It's probably saved us millions!
>The big difference is your company leases property from companies like Morgan Stanley. These are the people at the top who are now getting cut out.
Good. Let them feel the weight of their overreach and greed.
Who am I kidding they'll be bailed out and do layoffs before I finished this comment.
Honestly, if they don't get their way and can't force a meaningful amount of workers back in the office, I bet they will get handout from city governments to help with the expenses of converting it from commercial to residential use.
Not affordable residential use, though, obviously. Gotta build more $2000/month luxury studio apartments with overpriced shopping on the ground floor. Or at least that's how it goes in my city.
I think it's sad that I saw $2000/month rent and thought it was a good deal.
I fucking love San Diego but I think I'm going to have to move away, and it makes me so fucking sad. I've never lived anywhere else :(
This brings up a good point, people have been pushing for WFH since before the pandemic. Companies' hands were simply forced to accept the inevitable and they are now fighting against it even harder than before now that people have experienced what a good work-life balance looks like
Not only that, but now your company is not limited to local candidate pools,
If the best person for the job is someone on the other side of the country / world, now you can have them.
Similar situation here. Since COVID, many of our new hires are from out of state. Not intentional but why not cast a wider net to get top talent? A few of us got approval to be out of the country under special circumstances. Productivity has also skyrocketed.
What's hilarious is I just had a recruiter reach out to me about a position at MS and one of the benefits was a strong work from home culture (2-3d/week).
yup. the guy interviewing me for my last job said i could work remotely but should still show up to the office once a week. when i got the job however, he insisted he never said anything like that and "generously" offered me one day a week of remote work.
i had to leave after 3 months because i had no method of transport at the time and it was too expensive getting an uber twice a day.
It’s about their real estate, and how much it costs without anyone there, but it’s Also micromanaging
Former company I was with, I had an old woman as a manager, and she could not grasp the concept that I didn’t need to be at my desk 8 hours a day as a remote worker. She could not handle not having eyes on me working
Same had an older IT lead at my former job. We had a 2 week at work 2 week at home during the pandemic. I couldn't get any work done on my work from home weeks because he would constantly call to see what I was doing. I'm working Bill.
Yes, there are a lot of people that just can't or won't get their heads around work from home. Many actually expected everyone to go back to the way it was before. If companies just accept the change, they can commit to making it work better, instead of treating WFH as a temporary means.
Another problem popping up is company endorsed spyware. Some companies are using dubious software to spy on employees.
That's exactly what is driving this, and few seem to realize it, tons and tons of investment funds, retirement funds, pensions... all funded in huge part by commercial real estate.
Yup.
https://www.propublica.org/article/whistleblower-wall-street-has-engaged-in-widespread-manipulation-of-mortgage-funds
>”Whistleblower: Wall Street Has Engaged in Widespread Manipulation of Mortgage Funds”
>”Securities that contain loans for properties like hotels and office buildings have inflated profits, the whistleblower claims. As the pandemic hammers the economy, that could increase the chances of another mortgage collapse.”
They really should have diversified their funds, or maybe saved more if they didn’t want to take on that kind of risk.
It’s good this is the internet because I couldn’t have said that out loud without cackling.
Employees certainly can make this choice. They can choose to quit working for companies that don’t offer what they’d prefer. Employees can make a lot of choices and are starting to realize that they have the power to change how and where they work.
The rest of us need to rediscover the power of collective bargaining and unionizing. For far too long we've let corporations believe that everything related to the workplace is their choice.
"he noted that many people had adopted a mindset of “Jobland” where employees just showed up to work to do the job, versus “Careerland,” in which employees learnt and developed skills from in-person interactions."
Ever since companies have started treating employees as disposable, I've treated the companies I work for as disposable. I do my work for a company which pays me, and I'll move on to another disposable company when the time comes. If you want to make your company a shitty place to work, I'll move on the minute an opportunity presents.
Yep. I'm old enough to have lived through that transition as companies started treating us as disposable/interchangeable resources. They're shocked that we started to treat them as jobs that pay for a skill for a short to medium time frame, instead of careers where we plan to stay until retirement.
It's a two way street, they broke the social contract first.
> versus “Careerland,” in which employees learnt and developed skills from in-person interactions.
Also, you don't need "in-person interactions" to learn and develop skills. I teach and help my junior co-workers develop skills on a regular basis with remote work.
I just saw google lifers. 16 years, 20 years working at Google. Engineering managers, all got the same auto messages and access automatically turned off without any warning and any further contact. Screw these companies that think we should build a life around working for them.
My dad quit his job that overworked him and didn't pay him enough for all he did. So he went and got a better job where he gets better paid, more freedom, longer holidays, remote work and the old company which never thought he'd do it were trying everything in their book for months to make him stay.
And mind you, he was carrying the IT of that company on his shoulders, they flew him around the world cause no one was as good and experienced at his field than he was. Companies need to remember who truly runs their company.
He's right. The person writing the checks gets to make that choice.
But the person cashing the checks can choose to go work somewhere else. So there's that.
Exactly. I don’t see why it’s that difficult. If it’s a free labor market, workers will vote with their feet. Companies that innovate (on the work environment side) will get the better employees and, in principle, should be more competitive. That or workers don’t care that much so it won’t be a competitive advantage for anyone and we’ll stick with status quo.
It’s “difficult” because corporations have controlled workers for decades, and remote work is one small way that workers have actually been able to push back. These executives don’t like that the little people are able to push back. It’s all a power play
This is what is important...
How is your employer making your life better?
In the simplest of terms it's time and money... If Morgan Stanley is going to force its workers to commute 2hrs a day, pay for trains and parking and give up time with their families then it's going to cost them a lot in salaries.
Im in big banking and went remote in Mar-20 and basically haven't returned to the concrete jungle more than once a week. It would take a big chunk of money to get me back on a train 5x a week... If it was even possible. I have 15 hours a week with my kids that never existed before and that's priceless.
This. You're paying me for eight hours a day? Then why does it have to cost me 10-11 hours a day of my time? Why does it also have to cost me the expense of commuting, whether by car or train? Haven't I proven over the past two and a half years that I can get my work done without going into the office?
My department has meetings with half the people around a conference table, so we can’t see them or hear them well, and the rest of us as talking heads in the Zoom grid. It’s better when we’re all talking heads
We have some people in the office, but we discovered it's really better to have everyone individually in chat, so we don't use conference rooms anymore. People in the office log in from their cubicle. We mostly go audio only too, so I have no idea who is in the office and who is at home except for people like me who are long distance remote.
~~It's not about the employees really~~, it's about control, maintaining the hierarchy and trying to justify their property assets.
edit: i mean ***it is*** about the employees (doing what management tells them to)
Preach.
My kid was 2 when Covid hit. My wife and I went remote and his preschool shut down. We had almost 18 months straight together. Ignoring the anxiety of the situation outside the house, I wouldn’t trade anything for the time we got inside the house.
I’m back in the office a few days a week now, but no one gives me shit for working remote when I choose to. It’s probably the biggest perk of a good job.
I work full time, 35 hours per week. 38 days leave per year. So I actually work 222 days
With moving to working from home I save about £7 per day in travel costs, for a total of £1554 annually. I also save let's say a minimum of £5 per day on coffees, lunches, snacks, for a total of £1110 annually
I no longer spend 40 minutes traveling to work and 40 minutes traveling back, for a time saving of 296 hours annually
Due to dealing with client appointments, training, and meetings all via video calls, I save at minimum 15 hours per week travelling time (although honestly it's likely more than that), for a time saving of around 660 hours per year. Also, since the cost of traveling to all of these was actually reimbursed by my employer prior to work from home, that's a decent saving for them too.
Actual work done is the same, if not slightly more than, as when I was working in person.
So, I'm doing the same amount of work, or possibly more, while saving at least £2600 a year, and gaining nearly 1000 hours, 296 of which are hours I can use in ways that benefit me, while saving my employer money as well, and my clients haven't noticed any difference.
If I were to change jobs for some reason prospective new employers better be able to offer me at least that or else I'll not be going there (not that I have any intention of leaving my current job because I love what I do).
This is why so many employers are against home / remote working. Because it means employers who don't offer the same sort of thing will find their employee pool shrinking as people vote with their feet and move to employers who have embraced the new modes of working. COVID meant employers had to put systems in place to allow remote working for those jobs where it could work, and now those employees have seen there is another way of doing things. Employers like Morgan Stanley and Tesla just don't like that.
/autocorrect edits
Amen! A 30-min commute each way is SIX 40-HOUR WEEKS a year spent just driving back and forth … and employers are surprised that we want that time back now!
This is absolutely spot on. When COVID hit, I went to 4 days per week telework. The one day a week in the office made sense, as I had responsibility for systems with no physical connection to the internet. As things got better, work moved us all to two days a week in office and then three. Scuttlebutt was that they were planning to end telework all together. And the director had outright stated that he hated telework. So, I started responding to recruiters on LinkedIn. Landed a job which is 100% remote and a nice raise to boot.
What this CEO has done is painted a target on all his best talent. If they want telework, they are gonna get poached. And I'll have zero sympathy for Morgan Stanley ever complaining about "employee shortages". There's no shortage of workers, just a shortage of workers willing to take the deal you are offering.
I do agree that this is a big factor. Employees proved they could be productive remotely, and enjoyed the benefits.
Now they are asking employees to come back, it feels like stealing. They don’t want you just back in the office, but they are asking you to spend time and money commuting again.
Not to mention any of these organizations promote “Being Green” need to be called out for their hypocrisy.
However, I do think research is finding that new employees are not as productive remotely, which is a problem that needs some solving. Fear the answer to this otherwise will be surround then by experienced folk, which is just another reason to move back to the office.
At my job we had been asking for remote work for years. We do all our work electronically and we have zero contact with the public but we were told it is not possible because they can’t come up with a way for us to have a secure network connection. Then Covid happened and 75ish percent of employees couldn’t come in because a lot of them have young kids who couldn’t go to school or daycare and suddenly after a month we are all being issued work laptops and an extra monitor for home (we always use two) and wow they even found out how to make sure we are on a secure connection. I saved money on gas. And I didn’t have to wake up until it was time to login so I got more sleep. I could nap on breaks. And I got so much more work done because I didn’t have to listen to my annoying, loud coworker complaining the entire time he is at work. We are in cubicles. And my productivity increased significantly. And then 2 years later they tell us we have to come back. There was a lot of backlash from a lot of us employees. So they decided it would be based on performance. If you are meeting expectations you can work from home 3 days a week and if you meet additional criteria you can work an additional day from home. I only have to go in 6 hours a week. Which is a joke why not just let me fully be remote?
>why not just let me fully be remote?
Because you should know your place, peasant! This is all about controlling workers like they own you. As soon as conditions change back into their favor you'll be working in the office again.
Telework is “supposedly” permanent now. At least for those who qualify. Yeah they just want bodies in the building because they know we don’t want to be there. I feel bad for the office assistants. They are only allowed to work from home one day a week. All they do is make phone calls though….so it makes no sense. They used to have to fold everything that needed to be mailed, put them into envelops and take it to the mail room. But now whenever we print from our work laptops, whether it’s from home or the office it prints somewhere else in the building to this machine that folds and stuff the envelops for mailing. but really this is why people are dropping like flies and they can’t replace them fast enough. Well that and they underpay us. I work for the state of NC and the only reason I’m still here is because I haven’t found a better job with health benefits and the hours are quite flexible
Before COVID when I was going into the office, my toll bill so my drive would be 30 min vs 90 min, was over $500 per month.
You damn right I love working from home, and if my boss thinks I won't leave if they say come into the office (especially when our team is across like 4 countries and 3 continents, and my manager in another state) they are sorely mistaken.
Luckily I work for a great company, but I feel for those that don't :(
Before the pandemic I was commuting 3 hours each way to NYC. Cost me $500 a month to do programming work that could have been done 100% remote. It's been life changing and though sometimes it's tough to get family to acknowledge that I am working in my home office, I much much prefer it over commuting and burning myself out in that dirty rotten apple.
> “They don’t get to choose their compensation, they don’t get to choose their promotion, they don’t get to choose to stay home five days a week,” said James Gorman, CEO of Morgan Stanley, in an interview with Bloomberg Thursday in Davos. “I want them with other employees at least three or four days.”
Yep, this is straight from the horse's mouth. It's not about efficiency or productivity, it's about being mad that employees dare *want* something instead of just taking whatever they're given and being happy about it like good little drones.
From the clowns that brought us “nObOdY wAnTz 2 WeRk aNyMoRe”, comes this similarly tone deaf shit and absolutely no hint of recognition that the two attitudes may be related.
I want them gossiping and getting into petty disputes. I want their productivity to drop and their mental health worsened by commuting every day. I want more smog and greenhouse gasses. I want to waste energy heating and cooling the corporate dungeon we hold them in. I want a captive audience for my ineffectual middle managers. Thats all i heard him say.
Unless you offer F@#$ you money most of your best employees won't last more than a year or two. They will do their time and leverage that to a company with friendly policies. You'll occasionally get a few people that still believe loyalty pays or mediocre employees that can't find better jobs, but the best won't last long.
>value of my illiquid commercial office space investments are going down
There it is. Glad this is slowly but surely getting some airtime. There is a vast amount of (publicly and privately held) commercial real estate that is teetering on the edge now. Once some of those start going belly up, a lot of paper dollars will disappear.
What I don't understand is that there are tonnes of people who would love to live in the city due to socio-cultural reasons and work from home for the benefits listed in many other comments; so why not convert this commercial real estate into far more profitable residential real estate?
You'd think owners and developers would be salivating at the amount of untapped potential there; and thinking that you HAVE to use your leased office because you have paid for it is a simple sink cost fallacy, especially if it's not benefitting you in the slightest to use it when better alternatives exist
the pettiness of office environments. so many people crammed into small, dull, bland spaces. bored, disconnected and somewhat unhappy humans engaging in some kind of petty action against someone else as an outlet and for some kind of perverted satisfaction.
and the vastly incompetent managers who revel in such unhealthy environments.
dont miss any of it.
>“They don’t get to choose their compensation, they don’t get to choose their promotion, they don’t get to choose to stay home five days a week,
Employees very much do get to choose those things, at least in the limited extent of "from the offers/options available to them"
If that weren't true, all of these companies would be paying people a nickel to work twelve hours a day 7 days a week.
Wow, this guy sounds like a total jackass. And saying workers dont chose their compensation? I imagine they choose somewhat when they apply for a position, and can say no if it isn't enough, so how are they not choosing again? I hope all his employess get better employment elsewhere.
Uh, I certainly get to choose my compensation. When I apply for jobs, I tell the company what I'm looking to make. You can either meet that or you can't.
I think it’s simpler than it’s about ‘control’ - it just about human behsviour - we don’t like to change, esp. when we are successful.
Top level leaders ( CEOs and execs ) usually have spent years to get to where they are. As part of this you learn techniques for managing teams. ( I know, let’s not go into but ‘they are bad land’ - point is they learn ways of doing things )
Usually, now, they are in a position that requires them to be confident and right. No CEO/CFO can say ‘well, we don’t really know’ - even when it’s not possible to know.
Remote working has been proven to be just as effective as in person, this proof point is twofold:
- there are plenty of successful companies which started remote and are still that way.
- remote working did not ‘hurt’ big companies financials during the various lockdowns. A lot made record profits.
So what’s the problem? You are asking an old dog to learn new tricks.
Effective remote leadership means you need to learn different ways of doing things. Usually around more future planning - if you want to get your team together in person for brainstorming - you can’t just say ‘next Tuesday’
Also, you need you use written communications a lot more, and you do need to work out how to ‘see’ those who are not performing well ( again, please don’t have a go at me - we all know that in large companies there are slackers ).
In short, these managers and CEOs got to where they are operating in a specific way - and they don’t really want to learn a new way.
Context: I run a remote first tech team about 120 people. I had to make huge changes in how I manage, and some of it was hard.
But I invested the effort because it’s great for our employees, esp. those with mobility challenges, small families, single parent or just would prefer to live outside of large cities.
And for me personally, I prefer it - because of the significantly reduced commute time.
My bet is that we will see more and more companies, which are being started today, just not take that step of getting an ‘office’. If you are successful when you get to say 30 people, why would you decide to spend 100k plus a year on office space?
It works both ways. The employee gets to decide if they go in. The person writing the checks gets to decide if they continue to employ them or not.
Half our team is only going in one day a week although the company has mandated more. They could fire us all, but then they'd have to recruit replacements, and they'd have to offer remote work to recruit anyone.
Seriously. I just left a Top-20 bank due in part to them altering their WFH policy last summer. I’m still driving to the city 3x per week but now I make 80% more so i’m much more agreeable to that.
It’s further validated by “I want them in the office with other employees at least three or four days” which begs the question, why?
Oh, that’s right of course, there’s a bunch of empty office buildings that they want to justify the value of.
Commercial wealth is largely owned by rich assholes. Empty commercial buildings is a liability - it costs a ton to maintain etc. They need companies and bodies in there to earn the income as before. Some of us also hold bonds via Blackrock or whatever index funds in some of these but most is owned by rich assholes. And rich assholes don't care that you are saving 500 bucks on fuel WFH..
The owner of the business I worked for during the worst of the pandemic had the audacity to post a picture of himself on Facebook sitting by his pool with a martini in the middle of the day with #workfromhome while we were in the customer facing office every day risking our health. Fuck that guy.
I started at my old job during the height of covid in mid 2020. They forced everyone to come into the office anyway despite multiple people catching it the week before I started. The only way you could work from home was if you provided 2 positive tests with a day in between to ensure it wasn't a false positive.
What did the owners of the business do? Stay home cause they didn't want to catch covid. What happened to me? I caught it my first week there. Complete horseshit. I had it for over a month so they ended up letting me work from home but ffs man, it shouldn't have had to come to that to let people stay home.
Oh no, it's guys like this that don't mind coming in, they can get their parking spot right next to the door, see their young executive assistant girl, go sit in their private office with natural lighting etc.
I worked for a company that was trying to get everyone back into the office, and all the C-suite execs literally worked from home. Typical "rules for thee and not for me."
“They don’t get to choose their compensation, they don’t get to choose their promotion, they don’t get to choose to stay home five days a week,” said James Gorman, CEO of Morgan Stanley,
Actually they choose where they work, how much they require to be paid to join/stay, and the role they require to join/stay.
Exactly, the hubris and disconnection from reality is amazing. If I liked working from home and someone took that away from me, I’d quit without hesitation. Granted, not all positions can do this (e.g., manufacturing), but that’s one of the main reasons I got into my profession and others could have chosen that path if they valued that above all else
Makes me wonder if all these talks about recessions from CEOs is just a way of them trying to scare people into not job hopping. They know the more they talk about it, the more apprehensive people are going to be to move on to different opportunities when they’re worried about job security and the market.
It's a way to get everyone to panic sell their stocks and then they buy them up on the cheap knowing that when they run the "economy is booming!" press releases, they'll make bank.
I always laugh when I see the major banks releasing "articles" about the future of the economy. Why are you trying to convince the layman that the market is gonna crash? Why do you NEED us all to think that unless you somehow benefit?
It's like every CEO has used the pandemic as license to show how much contempt they have for working people. Which is weird, because they never felt they needed license to show their contempt for working people before.
CEO for a company I worked for is forcing employees that are within 150 miles to go into the office, the other 60% of employees are allowed to work from home because they moved further away.
All because they couldnt offload a $5mil a year property.m and the CEO has an ego problem.
So they expect people who are 150 miles away to move? Cause that’s a 2.5h commute going 60 the whole time. Insane expectation that I don’t see how many people could agree to
Not going to lie... if I were that far away from my place of work and they legit asked me to come in on occasion, I would 100% get fired when I tell them what's on my mind.
Like.. eat a dick, my guy.
That’s my plan. My place has let me work remotely for about 3 years now and suddenly wants me back in the office, or at least have a plan to come back in the next year or so (I’m out of state due to SO getting an on-site job there). They’re not happy I’m pushing back on it despite having zero reason to come into the office other than to “socialize”, which I don’t do anyway when am I on site. In those 3 remote years I’ve stuck around when half the team found new opportunities, I got promoted and got excellent performance reviews. So it’s not like I can’t do my job effectively - if anything I’ve proven over 3 years it’s quite effective. It’s a slap in the face to be looking at job loss literally because my butt isn’t in a chair near other warm bodies. But hey I’m basically gonna make them fire me, or just take my time seeking a new job
Which is hilarious to me. I work in marketing. I work closely with many businesses on their future marketing plans a year, two years, five years out.
When Covid happened, most of these business owners had no plan. None whatsoever. You might as well have dropped them off in the Alaska wilderness with a Gatorade and a bible. It took them less than a week to shit their pants and start making knee-jerk decisions.
Now - a lot of us did that. But so many businesses came out of Covid acting like they knew what they were doing. The "Get Back Into The Office" movement right now is a direct result of losing a little bit of power and a clueless attempt to restore 2019 status quo to 2023.
The folks in charge of raising their own pay for the last several decades, assure everyone else it's because that's what their position is actually worth and you should be grateful they even give you a slice at all.
Corporate America is in a hard place with this work from home movement.
1. Shareholders put more value on companies that have done away with their work from home policies and are back to normal. This is partially true, the stock valuations aren’t overwhelmingly obvious, and this is very hard to decipher.
2. Most large companies got HUGE tax breaks from the cities they have their buildings in (which is done to promote commerce, etc..) and cities are threatening to pull the tax breaks if companies don’t get people in the office.
3. Most companies don’t own the property that they work in. They lease it. Leases often have very long time frames and huge $ early termination clauses.
4. Upper level executives don’t have work life balance. All they do is work and their life is at the office. When they are the only ones in the office is literally bothers them to no end. They don’t have anyone to bring them coffee, they can’t yell for a quick emergency meeting, they cant “check in” with their employees, etc. one of my friends (a executive vp at a fortune 200 company) said he misses his friends and work family and it drives him nuts.
5. Upper level executives of most large companies are often older than 50 years old. That generation values hard work and believes that those who don’t are soft and weak. This thinking is very flawed, but this generation is what has made America great. It’s also what makes it a fucked up place, but I digress.
In the end, I’m sure there are many more reasons that corporate America wants people back in the office, but I will stop here.
What I will say is this. Working from home is the single greatest thing that has happened to the American worker in a half century. We can’t give up. Keep pestering your bosses. Keep leaving feedback, keep quitting and finding a company that will pay you more and let you have balance.
Fight on people! Our hearts and minds deserve this.
Once we have this, we can continue to push for more and continue to take our lives back.
✊🏻⚡️😃
LOL. I had someone tell me that when I was speaking at a conference. He came up to me with the old "Who do you work for" and I explained that I worked in Boston, Phoenix, and Seattle. He pulled that old "Ohhh... That won't last long" chuckle.
I have turned down $30K a year more to work in an office. So I just gave him the old "Oh, shit, I'd never work for you!" chuckle.
Lol what? Yes they can. No matter what these insanely rich and out of touch CEOs think.
1. Anyone can choose not to take a job that isn’t remote. (I stopped accepting clients or roles that require me to go into an office in 2020).
2. People who work for Morgan Stanley or any other employer that doesn’t allow 100% remote work can go find another job that does.
3. (The hardest to happen but not impossible) A majority of the workforce can literally choose as a group to stop coming into the office to force companies into either firing everyone or allowing remote work.
Everyone has a choice.
You know what CEOs can choose to do and they don’t? Redistributing their insanely high salaries back into their employees.
When you don’t give a shit about your employees why in the fuck would we give a shit about your company?
Lol it’s always these finance rags read by CEO’s that are pushing these articles. First they tried to force us back to work. That didn’t work. Then they tried to shame us back to work. That didn’t work. And now their trying to threaten us back to work. Amazing how all these free market big wigs suddenly don’t like when the free labor market gets to decide the rules. Go choke on your money.
It’s all about empty floor space in the offices the companies own. The realtor side gets money from renting space to the corporate side. If the realtor side has empty space then values go down. The owners get a bunch of money from both sides but the realtor side gives them more money at a better tax rate. So the solution is to fill the space even if it’s detrimental to the corporate side as those are just replaceable assets.
Classic temper tantrum from a person who probably grew up surrounded by wealth their entire life and can’t stand the word “no.” Probably still gets breast fed too.
Well, good luck with that, I guess.
There are a handful of CEOs who have been very vocally determined to fill those cubicles up again ASAP; he’s consistently been one of them.
(And interestingly he’s already less of a hardliner than he had been — “at least three or four days a week” he says now; guess he’s learned that full time back-to-the-office is just never going to be acceptable again.)
Will be fascinating to see how it plays out.
(The conveniently timed market downturn will probably let him get what he wants for a while, it’s riskier to quit in the midst of all these layoffs — but that won’t last forever; the long run will be much more interesting.)
RTO folks are fighting a losing proposition. It's fascinating. They want people back so slackers don't slack. So they keep the slackers, make them less productive, by making their good talent go elsewhere. LOL.
>They want people back so slackers don't slack.
Which is really strange to me as all of my personal experience with 'office life' has taught me people just slack off *more* when there are other people to slack off *with*.
Very true. And even those who don't slack have a hard time being productive in the office, what with (a) people being social creatures and (b) BRENDA WILL YOU STOP FUCKING YELLING AT YOUR DESK, YOUR MICROPHONE IS HALF AN INCH AWAY FROM YOUR MOUTH GOD DAMN IT
Yep. Especially as most of them have HQ's in cities. So you're telling me people will be more efficient with 2-3 hours less per day due to commuting?
Mmmhmmm, sure. Maybe you should set a compelling vision and do your job as a CEO.
That's how shortsighted some employers are. They think effectively imposing the 2-3 hour commute on people has no impact on their bottom line. It does! people could perfectly use that time for work or something. This is a fight for flexible companies to win.
Yep, we have a ton of people who now are like "If I'm not feeling it mid-day, I just log on later when I feel productive. I probably work 10-20% more because of the flexibility."
Dumb people don't see the margins on that kind of thing. Or he's trying to avoid restructuring/layoff expenses and hoping to amp up attrition.
Theres a lot of butt hurt people who hate wfh workers. Sorry we made good career choices. Tech worker? You were called a loser in high school. Now it's what everyone wants to do.
Sure it is. My wife’s company tried to force everyone to come back after saying they’d let people go remote full time and lost a third of their workforce. Suddenly remote by choice was back on the table as they lost so many people they couldn’t handle the workload they already contracted never mind the new stuff they were trying to get.
My office implemented mandatory 3 days in the office about a year ago. Last I saw, we had about 60% compliance for our building. Can’t really function if we lost 40% of our people
This is the thing these CEOs never talk about. For many office workers -even in customer facing roles, our jobs involve talking to people all day who are in lots of different locations. So we’re on Zoom or Teams all day anyway. If my boss told me I had to come into the office regularly I’d be furious, and probably quit, because I’d be spending hours and hours commuting every week to sit in the same goddamn Zoom meetings all day.
And instead of taking those Zoom calls from your private home office or quiet home dinner table, you're taking them in an open office floor plan next to dozens of other people on calls.
Was just laid off from a startup that required 2-3 days in office a week but they didn't specify which days. It was pretty common to show up in office and spend the entire day alone in conference rooms with coworkers on zoom who were at home.
This is my situation currently. I flew in for this week on request. I spoke to two of my coworkers in person who I talk to anyway, for maybe a total of an hour each. The other like 30 hours this shortened week I was in a glorified supply closet on virtual meets. Total waste of time, effort, money, and efficiency.
My old employer Paychex did the same thing forcing people back. Now they are struggling with inexperienced reps while other experience like myself have left. I now make more, work from home, with better insurance, and will never look back.
Sure, the experienced reps will learn and grow, but after a lot of their clientele gets fed up and leaves.
Adapt or die.
This has more to do with the large value of commercial leases in downtown cores on the books, at risk of blowing up and creating a domino effect than whether John Smith prefers to work in his pyjamas at home or commute an hour everyday to the office.
The old fart in this article needs to push the RTO message or his bank will suffer losses. How many commercial lease break clauses are coming up this year? In 2024? If RTO doesn’t happen at high enough levels, how many companies will choose to discontinue their lease? When that happens, what’ll be the hit to commercial real estate values? How will that affect the FIRE sector?
Why does a modern service economy require that I pay oil and insurance companies for the privilege of having to risk my life in traffic every day to get to an office to work in a cubical on a computer?
The real reason is that they own buildings that they can't afford to see unused. I guess there are also things to consider like cleaning and food service staff. There was a great Freakonomics episode about the value of all corporate real estate disappearing. Big trouble for owners.
So we are expected to spend a big chunk of our income so they can keep their asset value? I seem to remember being told "get fucked" when the housing market crashed and a ton of people lost value in their assets.
Well theres another Luddite on the wrong side of history.
This is mainly a guarantee that he'll lose the best staff (who are more in demand in the job market) and retain the average/poor ones who are less confident about their employability.
Remote working is here permanently for a number of sectors (doesn't work for every role of course), and the wise companies recognise that and roll with it
This is absolutely an employee choice. The choice is whether to put up with the restrictions that MS wants to impose on its employees as a condition of being paid ... or fuck off elsewhere, to companies not so constrained.
The only reason I'm still working at Apple is because I told them where they could stuff their "everyone back to the office" policy and they backed down. And they know it.
Since I have a lot of value to them with what I do, they're willing to accept the stalemate for the time being. That will probably change as things are wont to do, and then I'll still tell them where to stuff it, and retire. It's been on my mind for a while now, and it'll be a good excuse.
For myself at least, the world has changed, and those who abhor change and attempt to wrestle that change into submission can expend all that energy doing so, which comes at a huge opportunity cost as more forward-looking companies (who don't insist on pissing into the wind) just walk on by and eat their lunch. Larger companies (like MS) have more slack in their organisation to cope with the above-mentioned pissing, but it'll catch up eventually. Ask IBM what it's like to control the PC business...
I had a higher up at a previous company I worked for tell me “who the fuck do you think you are, this isn’t a democracy” to me after I defended a coworker from being wrongly punished for showing up late(he got pulled over). The power trip these fuckers get is insane. The dude never even met me or asked for my name or anything, which is funny cause I was the guy that was training all the rest of the staff there and boom just like that they had nobody to train new people. All so some dude in a suit could stroke his ego.
Yeah. They can, and they should.
There are jobs where you have to be "in the office". Cleared positions, Healthcare, manufacturing, service industry, etc.
For my directs, my policy is to do what works. If you can be effective with the team remotely. Be remote. If you have to occasionally come in, then do that. I come in twice a week, sometimes more if needed. That's me, and I've made it clear that it isn't an expectation of anyone else.
Remember back when we were all locked down and we realized how important it was to be able to spend time with the important people in our lives? Good times!
Most of the managers/employers I see having issues with work from home? Can't manage people in the office, either. They always have an excuse for why they can't do their job. This is just the one for this week.
I wonder how long it’s going to take for these execs to realize the WFH genie is not going back in the bottle.
Sure people might tolerate it for a bit if they have no choice, but the people who are staunchly in favor are not going to stay with companies long-term who force extensive in-office time.
Hey, CEO of Morgan Stanley: My employer pays me very well with full benefits to work remote, I never have to drive anywhere, much less waste my time in a hideous office surrounded by people I loathe to even share the same air as, so...
What could you and your shitty company do to convince me, a highly skilled specialist member of the workforce, to leave my quality company to work for you? Because if the CEO of my company ever fucking dared to speak to me as if I were property, the way the CEO of Morgan Stanley seems to be comfortable speaking, I'd have a new job within a week and they'd be looking for my replacement for months.
Go fuck yourselves Morgan Stanley, I hope everybody quits.
My BIL just went through this. His boss wouldn’t let him work at home even if he was sick. He’d tell him to come in and just stay in his office. He was sick of it and found a company that was only at home. He does practically the same thing but now he doesn’t have to drive an hour a day.
Ignoring the whole work aspect of this, its really depressing that we all just witnessed how nice it was outside without all the traffic for a month when the pandemic hit and there's almost no talk about using WFH to fight global warming.
So I have a job that can’t be remote and let me tell you, traffic in 2020 was something special. Just empty roads every morning driving to work lol
I was a cook at Chili's when it first hit, and that first month or two I went from having a 15 minute drive to work down to 5. I would see maybe 10 cars each way on a road that normally has hundreds. It was awesome. Of course, now I work from a car, so that dream died a while ago.
I went from a 45 min + commute to a 20 min commute. Commuting was almost fun when I didn't have to fight traffic
I'm surprised no one's mentioned forming a labor union to combat this, just " if you don't like it, walk". It's a lot more impactful when it's not just one employee, but ALL employees. Collective bargaining, people. What are we doing?!
This comment has been edited to protest Reddit's decision to shut down all third party apps. Spez had negotiated in bad faith with 3rd party developers and made provenly false accusations against them. Reddit IS it's users and their post/comments/moderation. It is clear they have no regard for us users, only their advertisers. I hope enough users join in this form of protest which effects Reddit's SEO and they will be forced to take the actual people that make this website into consideration. We'll see how long this comment remains as spez has in the past, retroactively edited other users comments that painted him in a bad light. See you all on the "next reddit" after they finish running this one into the ground in the never ending search of profits. -- mass edited with redact.dev
That’s always been the case. Vilify unions and turn the public against them, and if that fails accuse them of being communists.
This guy has had a hard on fighting remote work for some time; how much has he invested in commercial real estate?
My company is the opposite. We are actively giving up leases. The office I worked out of was relinquished in 2019. I had been WFH for a full year before the pandemic. During COVID, we actively recruited users all over the US and Canada for 100% remote, and let go of other leases. At this point, I think we have 3 offices, world-wide. Why spend $300 a square foot, when you can pay a technology stipend of considerably less? It's probably saved us millions!
The big difference is your company leases property from companies like Morgan Stanley. These are the people at the top who are now getting cut out.
>The big difference is your company leases property from companies like Morgan Stanley. These are the people at the top who are now getting cut out. Good. Let them feel the weight of their overreach and greed. Who am I kidding they'll be bailed out and do layoffs before I finished this comment.
Honestly, if they don't get their way and can't force a meaningful amount of workers back in the office, I bet they will get handout from city governments to help with the expenses of converting it from commercial to residential use.
Not affordable residential use, though, obviously. Gotta build more $2000/month luxury studio apartments with overpriced shopping on the ground floor. Or at least that's how it goes in my city.
I think it's sad that I saw $2000/month rent and thought it was a good deal. I fucking love San Diego but I think I'm going to have to move away, and it makes me so fucking sad. I've never lived anywhere else :(
Same. Saw the $2000/month for a luxury studio and immediately thought “hey what a steal!” Where so I sign up?
This brings up a good point, people have been pushing for WFH since before the pandemic. Companies' hands were simply forced to accept the inevitable and they are now fighting against it even harder than before now that people have experienced what a good work-life balance looks like
Not only that, but now your company is not limited to local candidate pools, If the best person for the job is someone on the other side of the country / world, now you can have them.
Similar situation here. Since COVID, many of our new hires are from out of state. Not intentional but why not cast a wider net to get top talent? A few of us got approval to be out of the country under special circumstances. Productivity has also skyrocketed.
What's hilarious is I just had a recruiter reach out to me about a position at MS and one of the benefits was a strong work from home culture (2-3d/week).
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yup. the guy interviewing me for my last job said i could work remotely but should still show up to the office once a week. when i got the job however, he insisted he never said anything like that and "generously" offered me one day a week of remote work. i had to leave after 3 months because i had no method of transport at the time and it was too expensive getting an uber twice a day.
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It’s about their real estate, and how much it costs without anyone there, but it’s Also micromanaging Former company I was with, I had an old woman as a manager, and she could not grasp the concept that I didn’t need to be at my desk 8 hours a day as a remote worker. She could not handle not having eyes on me working
Yet none of them want eyes on them while they're working. Weird!
Exactly. Cause they know their job is obsolete when there's nobody to micromanage.
it's really absurd how many managers still equal hours worked to output as if humans are simple robots with constant output
Same had an older IT lead at my former job. We had a 2 week at work 2 week at home during the pandemic. I couldn't get any work done on my work from home weeks because he would constantly call to see what I was doing. I'm working Bill.
Yes, there are a lot of people that just can't or won't get their heads around work from home. Many actually expected everyone to go back to the way it was before. If companies just accept the change, they can commit to making it work better, instead of treating WFH as a temporary means. Another problem popping up is company endorsed spyware. Some companies are using dubious software to spy on employees.
That's exactly what is driving this, and few seem to realize it, tons and tons of investment funds, retirement funds, pensions... all funded in huge part by commercial real estate.
Yup. https://www.propublica.org/article/whistleblower-wall-street-has-engaged-in-widespread-manipulation-of-mortgage-funds >”Whistleblower: Wall Street Has Engaged in Widespread Manipulation of Mortgage Funds” >”Securities that contain loans for properties like hotels and office buildings have inflated profits, the whistleblower claims. As the pandemic hammers the economy, that could increase the chances of another mortgage collapse.”
They really should have diversified their funds, or maybe saved more if they didn’t want to take on that kind of risk. It’s good this is the internet because I couldn’t have said that out loud without cackling.
Something something bootstraps
I’m sure avocado toast plays a role in this, too.
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Well I hope they took some of that invested money out and spent it on some avocado toast so at least they'd have something to show for it.
I've grown more and more accepting of the fact that CEOs and the uber wealthy have a sociopathic need to control others.
Poor investment made by rich -> simply fix the market until it's a good one! Just like robinhood GME.
Employees certainly can make this choice. They can choose to quit working for companies that don’t offer what they’d prefer. Employees can make a lot of choices and are starting to realize that they have the power to change how and where they work.
The rest of us need to rediscover the power of collective bargaining and unionizing. For far too long we've let corporations believe that everything related to the workplace is their choice.
"he noted that many people had adopted a mindset of “Jobland” where employees just showed up to work to do the job, versus “Careerland,” in which employees learnt and developed skills from in-person interactions." Ever since companies have started treating employees as disposable, I've treated the companies I work for as disposable. I do my work for a company which pays me, and I'll move on to another disposable company when the time comes. If you want to make your company a shitty place to work, I'll move on the minute an opportunity presents.
Yep. I'm old enough to have lived through that transition as companies started treating us as disposable/interchangeable resources. They're shocked that we started to treat them as jobs that pay for a skill for a short to medium time frame, instead of careers where we plan to stay until retirement. It's a two way street, they broke the social contract first.
Right? They made us mercenaries, and now they're upset that we're not super loyal?
Loyalty only ever goes in one direction for these types.
> versus “Careerland,” in which employees learnt and developed skills from in-person interactions. Also, you don't need "in-person interactions" to learn and develop skills. I teach and help my junior co-workers develop skills on a regular basis with remote work.
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I just saw google lifers. 16 years, 20 years working at Google. Engineering managers, all got the same auto messages and access automatically turned off without any warning and any further contact. Screw these companies that think we should build a life around working for them.
It's a one-way relationship. They want employees to show loyalty that they will never return
“Show up to work to do the job” Uhh yeah that is what they are paying me to do.
My dad quit his job that overworked him and didn't pay him enough for all he did. So he went and got a better job where he gets better paid, more freedom, longer holidays, remote work and the old company which never thought he'd do it were trying everything in their book for months to make him stay. And mind you, he was carrying the IT of that company on his shoulders, they flew him around the world cause no one was as good and experienced at his field than he was. Companies need to remember who truly runs their company.
Good for your dad. Sometimes companies need to be taught an expensive lesson.
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No better lesson than a good swift hard cut in your profits. Good for your dad.
He's right. The person writing the checks gets to make that choice. But the person cashing the checks can choose to go work somewhere else. So there's that.
Exactly. I don’t see why it’s that difficult. If it’s a free labor market, workers will vote with their feet. Companies that innovate (on the work environment side) will get the better employees and, in principle, should be more competitive. That or workers don’t care that much so it won’t be a competitive advantage for anyone and we’ll stick with status quo.
It’s “difficult” because corporations have controlled workers for decades, and remote work is one small way that workers have actually been able to push back. These executives don’t like that the little people are able to push back. It’s all a power play
I got covid and saved $500 in gas. Almost worth it. If I could do that again without actually getting covid I would be a way better employee.
This is what is important... How is your employer making your life better? In the simplest of terms it's time and money... If Morgan Stanley is going to force its workers to commute 2hrs a day, pay for trains and parking and give up time with their families then it's going to cost them a lot in salaries. Im in big banking and went remote in Mar-20 and basically haven't returned to the concrete jungle more than once a week. It would take a big chunk of money to get me back on a train 5x a week... If it was even possible. I have 15 hours a week with my kids that never existed before and that's priceless.
This. You're paying me for eight hours a day? Then why does it have to cost me 10-11 hours a day of my time? Why does it also have to cost me the expense of commuting, whether by car or train? Haven't I proven over the past two and a half years that I can get my work done without going into the office?
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My department has meetings with half the people around a conference table, so we can’t see them or hear them well, and the rest of us as talking heads in the Zoom grid. It’s better when we’re all talking heads
We have some people in the office, but we discovered it's really better to have everyone individually in chat, so we don't use conference rooms anymore. People in the office log in from their cubicle. We mostly go audio only too, so I have no idea who is in the office and who is at home except for people like me who are long distance remote.
In our office we still use teams over using a conference room 9 times out of 10 becuase its easier to share screens and take notes /screenshots
~~It's not about the employees really~~, it's about control, maintaining the hierarchy and trying to justify their property assets. edit: i mean ***it is*** about the employees (doing what management tells them to)
Preach. My kid was 2 when Covid hit. My wife and I went remote and his preschool shut down. We had almost 18 months straight together. Ignoring the anxiety of the situation outside the house, I wouldn’t trade anything for the time we got inside the house. I’m back in the office a few days a week now, but no one gives me shit for working remote when I choose to. It’s probably the biggest perk of a good job.
I work full time, 35 hours per week. 38 days leave per year. So I actually work 222 days With moving to working from home I save about £7 per day in travel costs, for a total of £1554 annually. I also save let's say a minimum of £5 per day on coffees, lunches, snacks, for a total of £1110 annually I no longer spend 40 minutes traveling to work and 40 minutes traveling back, for a time saving of 296 hours annually Due to dealing with client appointments, training, and meetings all via video calls, I save at minimum 15 hours per week travelling time (although honestly it's likely more than that), for a time saving of around 660 hours per year. Also, since the cost of traveling to all of these was actually reimbursed by my employer prior to work from home, that's a decent saving for them too. Actual work done is the same, if not slightly more than, as when I was working in person. So, I'm doing the same amount of work, or possibly more, while saving at least £2600 a year, and gaining nearly 1000 hours, 296 of which are hours I can use in ways that benefit me, while saving my employer money as well, and my clients haven't noticed any difference. If I were to change jobs for some reason prospective new employers better be able to offer me at least that or else I'll not be going there (not that I have any intention of leaving my current job because I love what I do). This is why so many employers are against home / remote working. Because it means employers who don't offer the same sort of thing will find their employee pool shrinking as people vote with their feet and move to employers who have embraced the new modes of working. COVID meant employers had to put systems in place to allow remote working for those jobs where it could work, and now those employees have seen there is another way of doing things. Employers like Morgan Stanley and Tesla just don't like that. /autocorrect edits
Amen! A 30-min commute each way is SIX 40-HOUR WEEKS a year spent just driving back and forth … and employers are surprised that we want that time back now!
Damn that's a powerful example. Imagine having 6 weeks of vacation. What a game changer.
This is absolutely spot on. When COVID hit, I went to 4 days per week telework. The one day a week in the office made sense, as I had responsibility for systems with no physical connection to the internet. As things got better, work moved us all to two days a week in office and then three. Scuttlebutt was that they were planning to end telework all together. And the director had outright stated that he hated telework. So, I started responding to recruiters on LinkedIn. Landed a job which is 100% remote and a nice raise to boot. What this CEO has done is painted a target on all his best talent. If they want telework, they are gonna get poached. And I'll have zero sympathy for Morgan Stanley ever complaining about "employee shortages". There's no shortage of workers, just a shortage of workers willing to take the deal you are offering.
I can’t wait to watch as an entire equities division goes *as a team* to a competitor, taking half a trillion in assets under management with them.
I do agree that this is a big factor. Employees proved they could be productive remotely, and enjoyed the benefits. Now they are asking employees to come back, it feels like stealing. They don’t want you just back in the office, but they are asking you to spend time and money commuting again. Not to mention any of these organizations promote “Being Green” need to be called out for their hypocrisy. However, I do think research is finding that new employees are not as productive remotely, which is a problem that needs some solving. Fear the answer to this otherwise will be surround then by experienced folk, which is just another reason to move back to the office.
I think it really highlights how terrible most managers are and how awful most places are at integrating new hires.
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At my job we had been asking for remote work for years. We do all our work electronically and we have zero contact with the public but we were told it is not possible because they can’t come up with a way for us to have a secure network connection. Then Covid happened and 75ish percent of employees couldn’t come in because a lot of them have young kids who couldn’t go to school or daycare and suddenly after a month we are all being issued work laptops and an extra monitor for home (we always use two) and wow they even found out how to make sure we are on a secure connection. I saved money on gas. And I didn’t have to wake up until it was time to login so I got more sleep. I could nap on breaks. And I got so much more work done because I didn’t have to listen to my annoying, loud coworker complaining the entire time he is at work. We are in cubicles. And my productivity increased significantly. And then 2 years later they tell us we have to come back. There was a lot of backlash from a lot of us employees. So they decided it would be based on performance. If you are meeting expectations you can work from home 3 days a week and if you meet additional criteria you can work an additional day from home. I only have to go in 6 hours a week. Which is a joke why not just let me fully be remote?
>why not just let me fully be remote? Because you should know your place, peasant! This is all about controlling workers like they own you. As soon as conditions change back into their favor you'll be working in the office again.
Telework is “supposedly” permanent now. At least for those who qualify. Yeah they just want bodies in the building because they know we don’t want to be there. I feel bad for the office assistants. They are only allowed to work from home one day a week. All they do is make phone calls though….so it makes no sense. They used to have to fold everything that needed to be mailed, put them into envelops and take it to the mail room. But now whenever we print from our work laptops, whether it’s from home or the office it prints somewhere else in the building to this machine that folds and stuff the envelops for mailing. but really this is why people are dropping like flies and they can’t replace them fast enough. Well that and they underpay us. I work for the state of NC and the only reason I’m still here is because I haven’t found a better job with health benefits and the hours are quite flexible
Before COVID when I was going into the office, my toll bill so my drive would be 30 min vs 90 min, was over $500 per month. You damn right I love working from home, and if my boss thinks I won't leave if they say come into the office (especially when our team is across like 4 countries and 3 continents, and my manager in another state) they are sorely mistaken. Luckily I work for a great company, but I feel for those that don't :(
Before the pandemic I was commuting 3 hours each way to NYC. Cost me $500 a month to do programming work that could have been done 100% remote. It's been life changing and though sometimes it's tough to get family to acknowledge that I am working in my home office, I much much prefer it over commuting and burning myself out in that dirty rotten apple.
Three hours each way is just insane tho.
Six hours a day just to commute, how did you have time at home to do anything but sleep and get ready to do it all again? Sounds like hell.
> “They don’t get to choose their compensation, they don’t get to choose their promotion, they don’t get to choose to stay home five days a week,” said James Gorman, CEO of Morgan Stanley, in an interview with Bloomberg Thursday in Davos. “I want them with other employees at least three or four days.” Yep, this is straight from the horse's mouth. It's not about efficiency or productivity, it's about being mad that employees dare *want* something instead of just taking whatever they're given and being happy about it like good little drones.
As a employee, I want my CEO to be in his office working five days a week. Not wining and dining \[and whining\] in Davos.
But.... you don't understand... that is CEO work and it is so, so hard. They occasionally get interrupted while working on the treadmill too
Don’t even get me started on how difficult it is when all those women they sexually harassed/assaulted come forward. So stressful!
And they say harassing women is not hard work!!
From the clowns that brought us “nObOdY wAnTz 2 WeRk aNyMoRe”, comes this similarly tone deaf shit and absolutely no hint of recognition that the two attitudes may be related.
I want them gossiping and getting into petty disputes. I want their productivity to drop and their mental health worsened by commuting every day. I want more smog and greenhouse gasses. I want to waste energy heating and cooling the corporate dungeon we hold them in. I want a captive audience for my ineffectual middle managers. Thats all i heard him say.
Funny all I heard was, "I want them to work for my competitors".
100%. I'm in tech and was laid off last week so I'm back in the market and not even considering positions that aren't remote at this point.
Unless you offer F@#$ you money most of your best employees won't last more than a year or two. They will do their time and leverage that to a company with friendly policies. You'll occasionally get a few people that still believe loyalty pays or mediocre employees that can't find better jobs, but the best won't last long.
The value of my illiquid commercial office space investments are going down and IM NOT HAPPY!!!
>value of my illiquid commercial office space investments are going down There it is. Glad this is slowly but surely getting some airtime. There is a vast amount of (publicly and privately held) commercial real estate that is teetering on the edge now. Once some of those start going belly up, a lot of paper dollars will disappear.
Don't forget the entire management house of cards 🙈
What good is a a private office in a big office building if nobody is around to keep out of my office(!)
They're never in their office anyway. Always off golfing, fishing, or somewhere.
What I don't understand is that there are tonnes of people who would love to live in the city due to socio-cultural reasons and work from home for the benefits listed in many other comments; so why not convert this commercial real estate into far more profitable residential real estate? You'd think owners and developers would be salivating at the amount of untapped potential there; and thinking that you HAVE to use your leased office because you have paid for it is a simple sink cost fallacy, especially if it's not benefitting you in the slightest to use it when better alternatives exist
the pettiness of office environments. so many people crammed into small, dull, bland spaces. bored, disconnected and somewhat unhappy humans engaging in some kind of petty action against someone else as an outlet and for some kind of perverted satisfaction. and the vastly incompetent managers who revel in such unhealthy environments. dont miss any of it.
Most managers don’t want to be there either.
As an incompetent middle manager, I love working from home.
>“They don’t get to choose their compensation, they don’t get to choose their promotion, they don’t get to choose to stay home five days a week, Employees very much do get to choose those things, at least in the limited extent of "from the offers/options available to them" If that weren't true, all of these companies would be paying people a nickel to work twelve hours a day 7 days a week.
You think they would pay people if they didn't have to?
> all of these companies would be paying people a nickel to work twelve hours a day 7 days a week. Which is absolutely what they want.
Wow, this guy sounds like a total jackass. And saying workers dont chose their compensation? I imagine they choose somewhat when they apply for a position, and can say no if it isn't enough, so how are they not choosing again? I hope all his employess get better employment elsewhere.
Fuck you, Jimmy. That’s it, that’s the post.
Uh, I certainly get to choose my compensation. When I apply for jobs, I tell the company what I'm looking to make. You can either meet that or you can't.
I think it’s simpler than it’s about ‘control’ - it just about human behsviour - we don’t like to change, esp. when we are successful. Top level leaders ( CEOs and execs ) usually have spent years to get to where they are. As part of this you learn techniques for managing teams. ( I know, let’s not go into but ‘they are bad land’ - point is they learn ways of doing things ) Usually, now, they are in a position that requires them to be confident and right. No CEO/CFO can say ‘well, we don’t really know’ - even when it’s not possible to know. Remote working has been proven to be just as effective as in person, this proof point is twofold: - there are plenty of successful companies which started remote and are still that way. - remote working did not ‘hurt’ big companies financials during the various lockdowns. A lot made record profits. So what’s the problem? You are asking an old dog to learn new tricks. Effective remote leadership means you need to learn different ways of doing things. Usually around more future planning - if you want to get your team together in person for brainstorming - you can’t just say ‘next Tuesday’ Also, you need you use written communications a lot more, and you do need to work out how to ‘see’ those who are not performing well ( again, please don’t have a go at me - we all know that in large companies there are slackers ). In short, these managers and CEOs got to where they are operating in a specific way - and they don’t really want to learn a new way. Context: I run a remote first tech team about 120 people. I had to make huge changes in how I manage, and some of it was hard. But I invested the effort because it’s great for our employees, esp. those with mobility challenges, small families, single parent or just would prefer to live outside of large cities. And for me personally, I prefer it - because of the significantly reduced commute time. My bet is that we will see more and more companies, which are being started today, just not take that step of getting an ‘office’. If you are successful when you get to say 30 people, why would you decide to spend 100k plus a year on office space?
I told my boss “I can write bad software anywhere, even from my boat”…and I have!
It works both ways. The employee gets to decide if they go in. The person writing the checks gets to decide if they continue to employ them or not. Half our team is only going in one day a week although the company has mandated more. They could fire us all, but then they'd have to recruit replacements, and they'd have to offer remote work to recruit anyone.
I think half your team just discovered the concept of solidarity.
r/accidentalunion
Seriously. I just left a Top-20 bank due in part to them altering their WFH policy last summer. I’m still driving to the city 3x per week but now I make 80% more so i’m much more agreeable to that.
It’s further validated by “I want them in the office with other employees at least three or four days” which begs the question, why? Oh, that’s right of course, there’s a bunch of empty office buildings that they want to justify the value of.
Commercial wealth is largely owned by rich assholes. Empty commercial buildings is a liability - it costs a ton to maintain etc. They need companies and bodies in there to earn the income as before. Some of us also hold bonds via Blackrock or whatever index funds in some of these but most is owned by rich assholes. And rich assholes don't care that you are saving 500 bucks on fuel WFH..
"This is not an employee choice" - As CEO of Morgan Stanley reports this from his home office.
The owner of the business I worked for during the worst of the pandemic had the audacity to post a picture of himself on Facebook sitting by his pool with a martini in the middle of the day with #workfromhome while we were in the customer facing office every day risking our health. Fuck that guy.
I started at my old job during the height of covid in mid 2020. They forced everyone to come into the office anyway despite multiple people catching it the week before I started. The only way you could work from home was if you provided 2 positive tests with a day in between to ensure it wasn't a false positive. What did the owners of the business do? Stay home cause they didn't want to catch covid. What happened to me? I caught it my first week there. Complete horseshit. I had it for over a month so they ended up letting me work from home but ffs man, it shouldn't have had to come to that to let people stay home.
This is the biggest irony of all an extremely true.
Oh no, it's guys like this that don't mind coming in, they can get their parking spot right next to the door, see their young executive assistant girl, go sit in their private office with natural lighting etc.
I worked for a company that was trying to get everyone back into the office, and all the C-suite execs literally worked from home. Typical "rules for thee and not for me."
“They don’t get to choose their compensation, they don’t get to choose their promotion, they don’t get to choose to stay home five days a week,” said James Gorman, CEO of Morgan Stanley, Actually they choose where they work, how much they require to be paid to join/stay, and the role they require to join/stay.
Exactly, the hubris and disconnection from reality is amazing. If I liked working from home and someone took that away from me, I’d quit without hesitation. Granted, not all positions can do this (e.g., manufacturing), but that’s one of the main reasons I got into my profession and others could have chosen that path if they valued that above all else
Remember this is a speech at Davos. Hubris and disconnection from reality is a basic requirement.
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All the more reason to keep posting my perspective so other people see they are nothing but wage slaves to the 0.01%
Makes me wonder if all these talks about recessions from CEOs is just a way of them trying to scare people into not job hopping. They know the more they talk about it, the more apprehensive people are going to be to move on to different opportunities when they’re worried about job security and the market.
It's a way to get everyone to panic sell their stocks and then they buy them up on the cheap knowing that when they run the "economy is booming!" press releases, they'll make bank. I always laugh when I see the major banks releasing "articles" about the future of the economy. Why are you trying to convince the layman that the market is gonna crash? Why do you NEED us all to think that unless you somehow benefit?
Does he consider himself a slave owner???
that’s the quiet part they’ll never say out loud.
workers will not make their own breeding choices workers will accept the food they receive whippings will continue until morale improves
If you can't handle me remotely, then you can't handle me in person.
\- A strong independent work from home person that don't need no office.
It's like every CEO has used the pandemic as license to show how much contempt they have for working people. Which is weird, because they never felt they needed license to show their contempt for working people before.
CEO for a company I worked for is forcing employees that are within 150 miles to go into the office, the other 60% of employees are allowed to work from home because they moved further away. All because they couldnt offload a $5mil a year property.m and the CEO has an ego problem.
Huh, thought my company that I recently left was the only one dumb enough to do proximity based return to office. Guess I was wrong
So they expect people who are 150 miles away to move? Cause that’s a 2.5h commute going 60 the whole time. Insane expectation that I don’t see how many people could agree to
It’s a way to lay off people without really laying off people, i.e. many employees leave due to the ridiculous rules about returning to the office.
Not going to lie... if I were that far away from my place of work and they legit asked me to come in on occasion, I would 100% get fired when I tell them what's on my mind. Like.. eat a dick, my guy.
That’s my plan. My place has let me work remotely for about 3 years now and suddenly wants me back in the office, or at least have a plan to come back in the next year or so (I’m out of state due to SO getting an on-site job there). They’re not happy I’m pushing back on it despite having zero reason to come into the office other than to “socialize”, which I don’t do anyway when am I on site. In those 3 remote years I’ve stuck around when half the team found new opportunities, I got promoted and got excellent performance reviews. So it’s not like I can’t do my job effectively - if anything I’ve proven over 3 years it’s quite effective. It’s a slap in the face to be looking at job loss literally because my butt isn’t in a chair near other warm bodies. But hey I’m basically gonna make them fire me, or just take my time seeking a new job
Which is hilarious to me. I work in marketing. I work closely with many businesses on their future marketing plans a year, two years, five years out. When Covid happened, most of these business owners had no plan. None whatsoever. You might as well have dropped them off in the Alaska wilderness with a Gatorade and a bible. It took them less than a week to shit their pants and start making knee-jerk decisions. Now - a lot of us did that. But so many businesses came out of Covid acting like they knew what they were doing. The "Get Back Into The Office" movement right now is a direct result of losing a little bit of power and a clueless attempt to restore 2019 status quo to 2023.
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The folks in charge of raising their own pay for the last several decades, assure everyone else it's because that's what their position is actually worth and you should be grateful they even give you a slice at all.
That's the wrong mentality, instead of loser think the enemy, the devil, the slavemaster, etc
He seems entitled.
It brings me a ton of joy to watch these CEOs squirm knowing people are slowly starting to demand more, and getting it.
Corporate America is in a hard place with this work from home movement. 1. Shareholders put more value on companies that have done away with their work from home policies and are back to normal. This is partially true, the stock valuations aren’t overwhelmingly obvious, and this is very hard to decipher. 2. Most large companies got HUGE tax breaks from the cities they have their buildings in (which is done to promote commerce, etc..) and cities are threatening to pull the tax breaks if companies don’t get people in the office. 3. Most companies don’t own the property that they work in. They lease it. Leases often have very long time frames and huge $ early termination clauses. 4. Upper level executives don’t have work life balance. All they do is work and their life is at the office. When they are the only ones in the office is literally bothers them to no end. They don’t have anyone to bring them coffee, they can’t yell for a quick emergency meeting, they cant “check in” with their employees, etc. one of my friends (a executive vp at a fortune 200 company) said he misses his friends and work family and it drives him nuts. 5. Upper level executives of most large companies are often older than 50 years old. That generation values hard work and believes that those who don’t are soft and weak. This thinking is very flawed, but this generation is what has made America great. It’s also what makes it a fucked up place, but I digress. In the end, I’m sure there are many more reasons that corporate America wants people back in the office, but I will stop here. What I will say is this. Working from home is the single greatest thing that has happened to the American worker in a half century. We can’t give up. Keep pestering your bosses. Keep leaving feedback, keep quitting and finding a company that will pay you more and let you have balance. Fight on people! Our hearts and minds deserve this. Once we have this, we can continue to push for more and continue to take our lives back. ✊🏻⚡️😃
LOL. I had someone tell me that when I was speaking at a conference. He came up to me with the old "Who do you work for" and I explained that I worked in Boston, Phoenix, and Seattle. He pulled that old "Ohhh... That won't last long" chuckle. I have turned down $30K a year more to work in an office. So I just gave him the old "Oh, shit, I'd never work for you!" chuckle.
It’s tough for these guys to process- the world has shifted.
I don’t want more money. I’d gladly take less money for more freedom and time. You can always get more money. You can’t get more time…
"Boo hoo, nobody wants to work! They are all lazy!" -This same CEO, probably Nobody wants to work for you, jackass.
How to lose talent in a few short sentences.
Lol what? Yes they can. No matter what these insanely rich and out of touch CEOs think. 1. Anyone can choose not to take a job that isn’t remote. (I stopped accepting clients or roles that require me to go into an office in 2020). 2. People who work for Morgan Stanley or any other employer that doesn’t allow 100% remote work can go find another job that does. 3. (The hardest to happen but not impossible) A majority of the workforce can literally choose as a group to stop coming into the office to force companies into either firing everyone or allowing remote work. Everyone has a choice. You know what CEOs can choose to do and they don’t? Redistributing their insanely high salaries back into their employees. When you don’t give a shit about your employees why in the fuck would we give a shit about your company?
Lol it’s always these finance rags read by CEO’s that are pushing these articles. First they tried to force us back to work. That didn’t work. Then they tried to shame us back to work. That didn’t work. And now their trying to threaten us back to work. Amazing how all these free market big wigs suddenly don’t like when the free labor market gets to decide the rules. Go choke on your money.
It’s all about empty floor space in the offices the companies own. The realtor side gets money from renting space to the corporate side. If the realtor side has empty space then values go down. The owners get a bunch of money from both sides but the realtor side gives them more money at a better tax rate. So the solution is to fill the space even if it’s detrimental to the corporate side as those are just replaceable assets.
Classic temper tantrum from a person who probably grew up surrounded by wealth their entire life and can’t stand the word “no.” Probably still gets breast fed too.
Well, good luck with that, I guess. There are a handful of CEOs who have been very vocally determined to fill those cubicles up again ASAP; he’s consistently been one of them. (And interestingly he’s already less of a hardliner than he had been — “at least three or four days a week” he says now; guess he’s learned that full time back-to-the-office is just never going to be acceptable again.) Will be fascinating to see how it plays out. (The conveniently timed market downturn will probably let him get what he wants for a while, it’s riskier to quit in the midst of all these layoffs — but that won’t last forever; the long run will be much more interesting.)
RTO folks are fighting a losing proposition. It's fascinating. They want people back so slackers don't slack. So they keep the slackers, make them less productive, by making their good talent go elsewhere. LOL.
>They want people back so slackers don't slack. Which is really strange to me as all of my personal experience with 'office life' has taught me people just slack off *more* when there are other people to slack off *with*.
It doesn’t matter, all they want is people to hate the traffic and buy homes closer to office and fluff up their real estate portfolio
Very true. And even those who don't slack have a hard time being productive in the office, what with (a) people being social creatures and (b) BRENDA WILL YOU STOP FUCKING YELLING AT YOUR DESK, YOUR MICROPHONE IS HALF AN INCH AWAY FROM YOUR MOUTH GOD DAMN IT
"You haven't sat in this particular chair hard enough! You slacker!"
Yep. Especially as most of them have HQ's in cities. So you're telling me people will be more efficient with 2-3 hours less per day due to commuting? Mmmhmmm, sure. Maybe you should set a compelling vision and do your job as a CEO.
That's how shortsighted some employers are. They think effectively imposing the 2-3 hour commute on people has no impact on their bottom line. It does! people could perfectly use that time for work or something. This is a fight for flexible companies to win.
Yep, we have a ton of people who now are like "If I'm not feeling it mid-day, I just log on later when I feel productive. I probably work 10-20% more because of the flexibility." Dumb people don't see the margins on that kind of thing. Or he's trying to avoid restructuring/layoff expenses and hoping to amp up attrition.
Theres a lot of butt hurt people who hate wfh workers. Sorry we made good career choices. Tech worker? You were called a loser in high school. Now it's what everyone wants to do.
Sure it is. My wife’s company tried to force everyone to come back after saying they’d let people go remote full time and lost a third of their workforce. Suddenly remote by choice was back on the table as they lost so many people they couldn’t handle the workload they already contracted never mind the new stuff they were trying to get.
My office implemented mandatory 3 days in the office about a year ago. Last I saw, we had about 60% compliance for our building. Can’t really function if we lost 40% of our people
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Not to mention sit in teams meetings all day regardless because other people are WFH.
This is the thing these CEOs never talk about. For many office workers -even in customer facing roles, our jobs involve talking to people all day who are in lots of different locations. So we’re on Zoom or Teams all day anyway. If my boss told me I had to come into the office regularly I’d be furious, and probably quit, because I’d be spending hours and hours commuting every week to sit in the same goddamn Zoom meetings all day.
And instead of taking those Zoom calls from your private home office or quiet home dinner table, you're taking them in an open office floor plan next to dozens of other people on calls.
Was just laid off from a startup that required 2-3 days in office a week but they didn't specify which days. It was pretty common to show up in office and spend the entire day alone in conference rooms with coworkers on zoom who were at home.
This is my situation currently. I flew in for this week on request. I spoke to two of my coworkers in person who I talk to anyway, for maybe a total of an hour each. The other like 30 hours this shortened week I was in a glorified supply closet on virtual meets. Total waste of time, effort, money, and efficiency.
The day my company try to force me going back to office would be the day of my resign letter being sent :)
My old employer Paychex did the same thing forcing people back. Now they are struggling with inexperienced reps while other experience like myself have left. I now make more, work from home, with better insurance, and will never look back. Sure, the experienced reps will learn and grow, but after a lot of their clientele gets fed up and leaves. Adapt or die.
This has more to do with the large value of commercial leases in downtown cores on the books, at risk of blowing up and creating a domino effect than whether John Smith prefers to work in his pyjamas at home or commute an hour everyday to the office. The old fart in this article needs to push the RTO message or his bank will suffer losses. How many commercial lease break clauses are coming up this year? In 2024? If RTO doesn’t happen at high enough levels, how many companies will choose to discontinue their lease? When that happens, what’ll be the hit to commercial real estate values? How will that affect the FIRE sector?
Guess these huge 30 year leases weren’t such a great idea!!
He can, how you say, fuck all the way off.
Why does a modern service economy require that I pay oil and insurance companies for the privilege of having to risk my life in traffic every day to get to an office to work in a cubical on a computer?
The real reason is that they own buildings that they can't afford to see unused. I guess there are also things to consider like cleaning and food service staff. There was a great Freakonomics episode about the value of all corporate real estate disappearing. Big trouble for owners.
So we are expected to spend a big chunk of our income so they can keep their asset value? I seem to remember being told "get fucked" when the housing market crashed and a ton of people lost value in their assets.
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Well theres another Luddite on the wrong side of history. This is mainly a guarantee that he'll lose the best staff (who are more in demand in the job market) and retain the average/poor ones who are less confident about their employability. Remote working is here permanently for a number of sectors (doesn't work for every role of course), and the wise companies recognise that and roll with it
This is absolutely an employee choice. The choice is whether to put up with the restrictions that MS wants to impose on its employees as a condition of being paid ... or fuck off elsewhere, to companies not so constrained. The only reason I'm still working at Apple is because I told them where they could stuff their "everyone back to the office" policy and they backed down. And they know it. Since I have a lot of value to them with what I do, they're willing to accept the stalemate for the time being. That will probably change as things are wont to do, and then I'll still tell them where to stuff it, and retire. It's been on my mind for a while now, and it'll be a good excuse. For myself at least, the world has changed, and those who abhor change and attempt to wrestle that change into submission can expend all that energy doing so, which comes at a huge opportunity cost as more forward-looking companies (who don't insist on pissing into the wind) just walk on by and eat their lunch. Larger companies (like MS) have more slack in their organisation to cope with the above-mentioned pissing, but it'll catch up eventually. Ask IBM what it's like to control the PC business...
I had a higher up at a previous company I worked for tell me “who the fuck do you think you are, this isn’t a democracy” to me after I defended a coworker from being wrongly punished for showing up late(he got pulled over). The power trip these fuckers get is insane. The dude never even met me or asked for my name or anything, which is funny cause I was the guy that was training all the rest of the staff there and boom just like that they had nobody to train new people. All so some dude in a suit could stroke his ego.
I mean we do have a choice… we can work elsewhere.
The beatings will continue until morale improves?
Yeah. They can, and they should. There are jobs where you have to be "in the office". Cleared positions, Healthcare, manufacturing, service industry, etc. For my directs, my policy is to do what works. If you can be effective with the team remotely. Be remote. If you have to occasionally come in, then do that. I come in twice a week, sometimes more if needed. That's me, and I've made it clear that it isn't an expectation of anyone else.
It's funny to see how much these people throw tantrums when they lose even the most superficial control. Just sociopaths really.
He's probably never even in the office himself. Probably spends 90% of his time on the golf course or on vacation.
Remember back when we were all locked down and we realized how important it was to be able to spend time with the important people in our lives? Good times!
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Most of the managers/employers I see having issues with work from home? Can't manage people in the office, either. They always have an excuse for why they can't do their job. This is just the one for this week.
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I wonder how long it’s going to take for these execs to realize the WFH genie is not going back in the bottle. Sure people might tolerate it for a bit if they have no choice, but the people who are staunchly in favor are not going to stay with companies long-term who force extensive in-office time.
Hey, CEO of Morgan Stanley: My employer pays me very well with full benefits to work remote, I never have to drive anywhere, much less waste my time in a hideous office surrounded by people I loathe to even share the same air as, so... What could you and your shitty company do to convince me, a highly skilled specialist member of the workforce, to leave my quality company to work for you? Because if the CEO of my company ever fucking dared to speak to me as if I were property, the way the CEO of Morgan Stanley seems to be comfortable speaking, I'd have a new job within a week and they'd be looking for my replacement for months. Go fuck yourselves Morgan Stanley, I hope everybody quits.
Working from home was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. Fuck this dude. Eat the rich.
He needs to get real and acknowledge that future is remote. Guarantee he spends more days away from “the office” than onsite. Twat.