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Meta updates RTO policy with stricter mandate, saying workers may lose their jobs if they don't show up 3 days a week
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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Absolutely, this return to office stuff has been an absolute gift for CEOs wanting to downsize, it's the perfect fluffy PR way to turn the thumbscrews. Factor in the popular idea that you're a slacker if you don't work hard all the time and you basically have public support too.
I'm sure plenty of people will just suck it up and view the past few years as a very extended break from office nonsense and commuting hassle, but enough will jump ship to fill quotas
Office space costs a lot of money. Desktop computers cost a lot of money. The inability of their co-workers to immediately wake up and solve some emergency costs a lot of money.
Every day they are not continuing remote work practices is another day they are bleeding money.
The company I work for is still fully committed to remote first. They have closed multiple office locations including the entire headquarters campus. They can’t stop gushing about how much money they’re saving.
Thing is though that often, real estate deals are made over long periods of time. I think a lot of RTO stuff is happening because companies can’t just get out of their leases. They spent years and millions of dollars actually building offices and by god they want to see them get used.
Yeah, there's definitely a big sunk cost thing going on too
Whether people are remotely working or in the office, it's still the same cost. As soon as they sell it off, it's not a cost any more. Justification doesn't make the cost less.
I suspect that these big corporations were advised by banks and the government to scale back work from home policies to avoid triggering a real estate market collapse in cities by vacating expensive office space en masse. This could cause defaults by landlords and a housing crisis as workers no longer need to pay premiums to live near offices. An exodus from cities would crater housing markets, which would severely damage the overall economy. Thus corporations are pushing for office returns to shed some staff but also to avert an economic crisis, despite the cost savings of remote work
Since when do big corporations give a shit about bursting industry bubbles? If it's not their own bubble, they loooooooove to capitalize on the profit margins that come from disasters. Even if it is their own bubble, they'll find a way to short their own stock to see a big windfall.
This is almost guaranteed to have trickled down. If the banks go down due to being overleveraged, everyone suffers. Isn't it strange all the major companies are doing this, even when it doesn't make sense? Literally no one else from my team works in my office, they're all in another state. Then again, I work for a bank, so... Yeah. This is the "if I go down, we all go down" part of the plot
Economy collapse -> people have less money -> people spend less money -> the corporation has less revenue -> :)