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Ask HN: What’s the real reason employers are ordering us to return to office?

33 points by moneycantbuy ↗ HN
“Innovation” from random hallway interactions is the official reason from my employer, but “innovation” is also the euphemism they use for “profits”, so I am wondering what you all think is the real reason why many employers are now ordering employees to return to office.

42 comments

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downrightmike
They are just grabbing at anything to justify what they want. Typical. I know my company just spent a lot of money on a new campus before covid. But other than that they just want it so they act like feudal lords, lording over serfs. Odds are they are narcissistic extroverts that need to justify their own existences. No one I work is in my time zone, let alone state. Completely pointless expectations, how high can you jump? How about if you're on fire?
chad_strategic
"narcissistic extroverts" I think you should copyright that term. Because if you don't mind I going to be borrowing it a lot.
bruce511
There are no doubt companies that fall into this category.

But to lump all office-bound companies by this metric is to miss the nuance and deliberation that (in many companies) goes into this decision.

There are upsides to remote work (mostly, but not exclusively for the employee) and upsides to office work (mostly but not exclusively to the employer) and most companies are somewhere along that spectrum.

LinuxBender
There are likely many factors but I was expect taxes to be one of them. I am not a tax expert. Buildings can't be vacant for {n} period of time in some states before there are tax implications but I am not a tax expert. The definition around occupancy also appears to vary by state.
mikewarot
There is a permanent structural change underway, Covid accelerated that change, it didn't cause it.

The people who want to return to the prior status quo are under the illusion that Covid caused the change, and things will revert back afterward.

There is a vicious spiral about to take place in our largest urban cores. The business value associated with those specific locations has taken a permanent hit. Thus, rents will be harder to justify, but the way commercial real estate loans are written prevent lowering the rent. Thus a larger and larger cost DISadvantage will emerge, forcing all but the most location dependent of entities to migrate away from those punitive rents.

Our largest cities will implode, fiscally, as a result. Corrective action could be taken, but would require the Oligarchs give consent to actions against their self interests. Thus, it is essentially inevitable.

Kon-Peki
> Our largest cities will implode, fiscally, as a result. Corrective action could be taken, but would require the Oligarchs give consent to actions against their self interests. Thus, it is essentially inevitable.

Are you talking about the USA?

San Francisco is an outlier - there was a Bloomberg piece about it just a few days ago - their "recovery" from pre-pandemic office utilization is worst among large cities.

So remove San Francisco from the list and look at the rest of the large cities. Residential population in the "downtown" have been growing for decades, "class c" office space has been torn down or converted and companies move to new "class a" office towers, etc. Office vacancies are going to accelerate this trend and open up opportunities for more affordable urban living - especially in converted buildings. Beautiful lobbies, 12 foot ceilings, massive windows, fiber internet already present, etc. The large cities that survive the next 3-4 years are going to be blossoming.

mikewarot
You make an interesting case. Yes, I was talking about the USA. If you filter out the empty housing that is owned as a "investment", is that still true?

I would like it to be true, that gives me hope.

tamaharbor
You are taking too many breaks and your productivity is poor.
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dave4420
Why do you need a reason beyond the one you started with: that they believe it is more profitable?
moneycantbuy
Yeah I guess it’s rational to assume owners believe RTO is more profitable than WFH, but if true I wish they would share the financial specifics, like if it’s only for some real estate debt then it is harder to comply than if it were an objective metric of reduced productivity. Personally, I prefer working fully remote and see how it can be a competitive edge for both employees and employers.
Jtsummers
Because my employers never went all-in on remote anyways. Telework was used to achieve social distancing goals (office at 1/4-1/3rd capacity, then 1/2). It isn't possible to do all technical work remotely (for various technical or regulatory reasons).

Also, mentoring new hires absolutely sucks when you're working remote.

fnordpiglet
Because the people in charge built their careers by ingratiating themselves in an office culture and can’t wait to get back to their comfort zone.
fargle
the capital savings on electricity and floor space is not thought to make up for lost productivity.

realize most employers are leaching off your wifi, electricity, and floorspace. for free and that alone should have saved a bundle. the fact that they didn't glom on to that trick is evidence that it was thought to be not worth it.

some jobs are perfect or amenable to remote work. some aren't. some employees abuse that "privilege". many employees just need face-to-face interactions to be productive and integrated into a team, even if they also like working from home.

it could also cause a little friction if things happen like bob from FANG is still making CA $$$$ (or even $$$$ - 30%) and has moved to another state while jane from FANG who worked in that same state but was only making $$. now they live in the same city and both work remote. it's just a whole new continent of unexplored human resource problems - might just not be worth it.

some companies are liberal and want to push the envelope of new things and ways of doing things to maybe get an edge. some companies are conservative and were working with on site employees just fine thank you before this.

i don't really think it's a conspiracy of evil middle-manager toadies trying to cling on to their way of life - they aren't in charge.

von_lohengramm
> the capital savings on electricity and floor space is not thought to make up for lost productivity.

For a lot of companies, there were no savings on floor space. They were stuck with a ton of huge leases and weren't getting any value out of them. Even if these companies are okay with remote workers, they need to push the non-remote workers back to the office to get what they're paying for.

rco8786
I don’t buy “to get what they’re paying for” as a motivation at all. It’s a simple sunk cost fallacy. If a company is doing just as well or better with people at home at no extra cost to the company, it makes no sense to make everyone come back against their wishes. At best it’s making a decision that pisses off your employee base and has no upside.

The only thing that makes sense is that something is going worse with everyone remote. Something important enough to make an unpopular decision to fix.

von_lohengramm
> I don’t buy “to get what they’re paying for” as a motivation at all. It’s a simple sunk cost fallacy. If a company is doing just as well or better with people at home at no extra cost to the company

To be fair, you and I don't have the metrics of these large companies. Plus, there are plenty of yet-to-be-seen consequences of remote-work. My team has recently hired a few new people, and so far their onboarding has been noticeably rougher. There's significantly less passive knowledge sharing, and Slack has not proven itself to be a good replacement of wheeling your chair to your neighbor's desk.

> it makes no sense to make everyone come back against their wishes. At best it’s making a decision that pisses off your employee base and has no upside.

Anecdotally speaking, almost every single coworker of mine is dying to go back to at least partial in-office. Personally, I love being able to work half the hours and avoid wasting a couple hour each day commuting, but I don't think I'm representative of the majority.

rco8786
> every single coworker of mine is dying to go back to at least partial in-office

That's a decent reason, if that is true for folks at your company.

Where I work offices have been back open for months but they're ghost towns.

My only point is that we can't assume that CFO offices are pushing for something unpopular just because there happens to be a lease with a few years left. Note, this would also imply that once that lease is up they would not renew and send everyone home again...which I think we can all agree is not on anyone's roadmap.

fargle
no immediate savings, maybe. but if they chose to remain remote, they'd downsize, cancel or not renew leases, etc. they're not dumb - they know this and if they wanted to do it they would.

bottom line - follow the money. it wasn't thought (correctly or not) a good value proposition.

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prirun
All the middle managers are wringing their hands about losing their jobs if there are no people in cubes to "manage".
cyanydeez
Right. I'd wager the wealth inequality is going to vacate the middle managers
octokatt
Some companies put in the extreme effort to make remote work useful.

A lot of companies didn't, and never wanted to, and have been trying to count down the days until they can attend a meeting without their toddler screaming in the background.

Remote work _cultures_ are harder to create, and if you're a low performing company, even two years wasn't enough time to change.

altdataseller
Nobody is talking about the elephant in the room: remote work has led to a lot of people slacking off, working less, doing errands, taking more time for lunch, etc. while you may not do this, I think we vastly underestimate how many people are using remote work as an opportunity to work less, and coast through the day
austincheney
I don’t work more going into an office. I just fill the gaps in more satisfactory ways while working from home instead of shorter office hours with long walks around the campus.
Wiseacre
For those this is true for there is another elephant in the room: Are companies that embrace remote work simply better at finding mature employees? Otherwise remote employers would clearly be getting outperformed by in-office ones if remote workers were actually less productive.
jdrc
working less doesnt mean producing less
gnz11
Nobody is talking about it because in-office workers run errands, slack off and coast through day as well. This is nothing new. The movie Office Space even made jokes about this back in 1999 [1]. However, what you seem to be advocating for, whether intended or not, is more micromanagement.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBfTrjPSShs

crate_barre
I got news for you, I have perfected not doing shit in the office.
ozzythecat
I see the same problem. Reviewing some internal metrics, at least half the team members were basically producing nothing. No artifacts of any kind over months on end.

Overall productivity was the same. The remaining folks were producing significantly more and burning out. They actually lost work life balance, working way beyond 9-5 hours.

In this case, I don’t think my company has figured out how to manage remote workers. Even the direct managers appear checked out, delegating their own responsibilities to this group of ICs who are burned out.

joegahona
I hate to admit it, but this is what I see too -- and it's not only the coasting employees who are doing this. WFH has made it OK to join meetings from a crappy cellphone connection while en route to karate class or whatever, and all this corner-cutting is diminishing the quality of communication and interactions. I can't recall how many times I've had something important to walk through on my screen during a meeting, but half the call can't see it because they're on a phone. (And yep, it's shared before the actual meeting, but not everyone prepares.) All other things being equal, does anyone think a remote team will out-perform a company who's all in the same office? We might be in for a giant game of Chicken as companies keep tabs on what their competitors are doing, and copy.
andrei_says_
At my company, productivity has close to doubled. I know for myself that I’m more focused and more tenacious from home. Our profits are through the roof.

I think people are delighted to skip their 2+ hour commutes and double down on work instead.

tomcam
I worked at Microsoft a quarter century ago. I can tell you that an incredible amount of work happened in the hallways and in the cafeteria. Also, try putting yourself in the shoes of an employer. Imagine two equally good employees, but one comes into work more often. Which would you imagine to be the more dedicated or interested in promotion?

I am not trying to dis people who work at home. I am also making no judgments about how well they work at home. I say this as a person who has worked for himself for many many years and prefers to do so. Just letting you try on a different perspective.

jdrc
It seems there is going to be a class divide between seasoned employees (who are better at remote) and newbies. Who knows, this might even reverse the job-hopping trend because people prefer the stable comfortable remote job to having to put up a performance to gain the trust of the new employer .
daltonlp
One simple factor is that many companies value their physical property and don't want to sell it.

A company that leases space might have an expensive multi-year lease. If the office sits unoccupied, that looks like an inefficiency.

These are both examples of reactive thinking.

faangiq
Just boomerism / psychopaths at their worst.
iExploder
When you are big bad wolf owning a holding company sucking out cash from your other risk facing companies by renting them office space, material and vehicles, you will understand why u need peons in the office.
welcome_dragon
Communication. I see this every day. We're a distributed company but communication has gone to sh!t with no one in the office.

Or it could be because many people prefer to use teams over slack and teams just isn't suited to long term discussions.

It's just awful now. I really hope people going back to the office changes this but maybe this is the new norm.

... and before all this we relied heavily on slack and didn't have these problems.

mbrodersen
Middle managers are desperate to get people back in the office so that they can justify their jobs by looking busy. Constantly interrupt the productive people with meetings, stand ups and other BS work.