I really wonder how boneheaded micromanaging you have to be to not even want the massive bonuses from saving on all that real estate, heating and power bills from removing a giant portion of your office space. Nevermind how much money you can get from cities due to making space available for housing.
The class of person heavily invested in commercial real estate happens to overlap pretty heavily with the executives pushing for a return to office. It has little to do with work or productivity and a lot more to do with commercial real estate investments going tits up.
I completely agree with you and am happy that my employer peddled back when the decided we should all come back to the office. Going to the office has many more negatives than benefits for everyone. I sadly learned that a lot of local city councils give incentives and tax breaks for companies to bring back the people so they can stimulate the local economy by eating the unhealthy shit that we can usually find around offices and be stuck in traffic for an hour.
Damn, I had not thought of that. It's the opposite here as the public transport network is overburdened and underfunded, so they don't mind the daily commuters working from home instead. But of course I hadn't considered eateries. 🤔
I’m not looking for work but make sure to reply to ever recruiter who tries to get me to move to London telling them I’m only interested in remote work 🫡
I've been doing this for awhile, as well. I realized it's not negotiable for me. Both because I like where I live, and because any leader who can't handle having remote team members is a leader that I don't want to work for.
This is not defeat. It’s a strategic retreat on their part.
It’s embrace, extend, extinguish. Get workers used to going to the office one or two times a week whilst making it seem like they conceded, then slowly return to the legacy status quo.
Edit: lol why the downvotes? Do people really believe “the CEOs” have been “defeated”?
Got the same feeling. "Conceding thst HYBRID work is here to stay" - how is this a win? RTO started with "come in a few days a week", this is the narrative that was being pushed all this time.
100%. The C suite is so useless, they could easily be replaced by AI. But they want to see warm bodies in their buildings they wasted too much money on so they can feel useful, while threatening actual employees that they could be replaced with AI, which they can’t in a lot of roles. So they create these manipulation cycles to try and get their way, rather having to learn, adapt, and actually lead.
Hybrid is still a step back. It makes no sense to not be fully remote at that point. Sure, not each job can get away with that but why should we suffer because someone else needs person to person interaction? Who needs it is free to do so.