this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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The Absurdity of the Return-to-Office Movement::The return-to-office demands make little sense from an overall economic perspective, while working parents, in particular, benefit from not having to waste time commuting to an office, writes Peter Bergen.

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[–] givesomefucks 81 points 10 months ago (5 children)

Biden just did this to federal agencies...

For no real reason, Republicans wanted it, but as soon as Biden did it, they shut up about it. Democrats don't brag about it, because democratic voters hate it.

There was zero reason for it.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

The number one thing conservatives hate is "Other People Having Agency" and other people not "Living By My Rules (that I don't actually follow myself)."

People working at home and not having to be treated like a child who has to ask permission for a bathroom break is just too much for them to bear. If employees aren't risking health issues by holding their piss in or just straight pissing themselves, they can't handle it.

[–] givesomefucks 21 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, but they literally can't give Dems credit for anything. So all Biden did was piss off every federal employee that isn't maga.

And the fucked up part is they legitimately have to vote Biden.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

And the fucked up part is they legitimately have to vote Biden.

Yeah, leave it to the Democrats to abuse their own voting blocks, and then berate them if Republicans win, blaming it on the voters.

I'm sorry but it's literally abuse to hold Trump and Fascism over our heads basically saying if we don't "stop him at the ballot box" that they have no plans to stop him otherwise. If he wins, even illegitimately, these milquetoast fucking babies will be the first on a plane out of the country to leave the rest of us to suffer under a despotic regime.

It's abuse, and it's sickening that I have to vote for people who are abusing me and threatening me with fascism if I don't go along with their half-ass gotta-please-the-conservatives stupid bullshit. It's just like with Israel, we're supposed to be supporting the Democrats, but they're literally supporting the Israeli version of Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu. Like, why are we supposed to trust they'll have any balls when all they do is make nice with fucking fascists and try to give them what they want? Did anyone with half a brain expect anything other than straight genocide from Netanyahu? Because the Democrats have no balls so they'll glad-hand his fascist genocidal ass and tell us we need to vote for them to stop fascism, as if they're not enabling it in Israel.

[–] StereoTrespasser 20 points 10 months ago

The reason Biden did it is because his donors wanted it..

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[–] dumpsterlid 51 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

The ownership/management class sees Return To Office as a symbolic fight over class power. Who has the power, the worker class or the ownership class?

It has nothing to do with real hard numbers, efficiency, or really anything to do with rational choices at all. It has everything to do with the politics of who is considered to have the power in the modern workplace. The workers or the boss?

The ownership class knows how much they are stealing from the worker class so they really don't want workers to start realizing how much agency and power they really do have if they work together as a class...

I think everybody needs to keep the conversation on forced RTO focused on this. Yes there are arguments that forced RTO is about commercial real estate property values and I am sure there is truth to that but we really need to see this story for the simple, broad collective story it is; we are in a class war, the rich know it and that is exactly why they don't want to give in to the extremely reasonable accommodations of allowing workers to do their jobs remotely.

All they care about is the message it sends if they agree to worker demands, everything else including the reasonableness of the demands is noise to the people with the power and money.

[–] rwhitisissle 9 points 10 months ago

I feel like they're fighting an up hill battle against startups. If you're a tech startup, you don't have to invest in physical office space. You can hire competent people from anywhere. Pay them competitively and not have to drop 50K a month on a corporate office lease. It's a minor edge in the long run, but something of an inevitability I think. Anyone genuinely competent realizes that if you force people to go into the office, you're just gonna have people who dick around in the office and make idle conversation while staring at their phones instead of doing honest to God work.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 10 months ago (18 children)

Remote work forever, and repurpose the useless office buildings into conveniently located downtown living space to help ease housing shortages and drive urban density.

[–] FenrirIII 12 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Then you need mass transit to pick up the slack, otherwise there's just as much pollution and waste.

[–] RubberElectrons 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Correct. And that's what will follow. Not a fast process, but it'll happen.

[–] Cosmicomical 4 points 10 months ago

I don't get it. You need mass transit to stay home?

[–] stoly 4 points 10 months ago

Fortunately those transit systems are densest in the urban cores so that may not be such an issue.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

I generally don't care about going to the office, it's not a problem, but what my company did was to hire 3x as many people as before the pandemic and simply move to hot desk system instead of expanding the office. So now we have more people but less desks and less parking spots. We have to use some app to make reservations and it's just a constant struggle to book a desk so that I can sit next to guy I don't know talking on a video call all day. What's the fucking point?

[–] RubberElectrons 12 points 10 months ago

Ooof fuck that.

[–] stoly 6 points 10 months ago

Your bosses are idiots, gotcha.

[–] sleepmode 20 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Ours made everyone come back to work at one office if they live within 60 miles. Datacenter floor is collapsing. Two areas are closed due to vermin being exterminated. Charmed life.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

my wife has to go in 3 days a week as of January. she's off this week as she said, quoth: "The fan that kept making more and more noise finally stopped working so I'm home all this week"

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


We have met in person only twice in the year that the production has been up and running, and we have put out dozens of highly produced episodes, often featuring multiple guests, which go through many rounds of edits.

Banks like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase and tech giants like Meta are demanding that their staff be back at the office several days a week.

Those return-to-office demands are often couched in non-falsifiable claims about the necessity of having chance encounters at the office where folks bounce creative, productive ideas off of each other.

The return-to-office demands also make little sense from an overall economic perspective at a time when a third of Americans who can do their job remotely now only work from home, up from only 7% before Covid, according to the Pew Research Center, yet the economy is very strong in terms of low unemployment and GDP growth.

This arrangement gives me a lot more time to spend with my kids, and if there is any kind of unforeseen emergency, I can be there for them in a way that, during the era of the office, I couldn’t be.

In fact, I have written several hundred of these columns over the past dozen years and I have never met most of the editors I work with, and yet I still have a warm, productive relationship with them.


The original article contains 820 words, the summary contains 219 words. Saved 73%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] Cosmicomical 13 points 10 months ago

Did we really need spmeone to say this? Is it not self evident? If a company requires hybrid work for me it's a huge red flag

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Rich people are having their fee-fees hurt because no one wants to (unnecessarily) come to the office

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Rich people's real estate investments would lose value if we suddenly didn't need massive office buildings.

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