Almost all remote-work news is negative now but was positive in the beginning of the pandemic. Have you noticed this or am I going crazy?

Earlier in the pandemic many news and magazine organizations would proudly write about how working from home always actually can lead to over working and being too “productive”. I am yet to collect some evidence on it but I think we remember a good amount about this.

Now after a bunch of companies want their remote workers back at the office, every one of those companies are being almost propaganda machines which do not cite sound scientific studies but cite each other and interviews with higher ups in top companies that “remote workers are less productive”. This is further cementing the general public’s opinion on this matter.

And research that shows the opposite is buried deep within any search results.

Have you noticed this? Please share what you have observed. I’m going paranoid about this.

DarkMessiah ,

Yup, corporations need to justify owning the big-ass office buildings they bought out, so they’re paying to make their own opinions be reported on over the actual truth. As usual.

jonne ,

It’s not just the corporations renting those offices, it’s the politicians of downtown areas that fear a downturn in tax revenue due to more empty offices and less people getting their daily coffee/lunch/after work drinks.

And of course, if everyone’s working remotely, this means it’s a lot easier to find a better job without even needing to leave the house to interview, which gives employees a better bargaining position (downside is that employers will start looking at employees in lower paying countries as well).

Sharpiemarker ,

downside is that employers will start looking at employees in lower paying countries as well).

Tale as old as time

Yearly1845 ,

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    jonne ,

    Eh, all those cities are Democrat run. Economically they’re essentially the same.

    Buelldozer ,
    @Buelldozer@lemmy.today avatar

    Republicans did a shitty job of planning New York City? When did this happen?

    lemmyseizethemeans ,

    It’s the commercial mortgage backed securities market.

    Remember 2008 when they bundled up all those home mortgages that were based on shitty unpayable loans and sold off securities to retirement funds etc? But then people couldn’t pay and the entire economy imploded resulting in massive bank failures?

    Same deal. All those office space loans have been collateralized into securities. The 1% and the banking industry understand perfectly that if they don’t force people to return to office, the entire system will implode again. Even after Dodd Frank the regulations on over the counter derivatives are still mostly non existent.

    jonne ,

    I wonder why they bother, considering they’ll probably get bailed out again anyway.

    lemmyseizethemeans ,

    There’s always money in the banana stand

    gornar ,
    @gornar@lemmy.world avatar

    And the proven financial benefit of having people work from home must not be as profitable as corporate real estate, or companies wouldn’t be requiring in-office work again!

    Eldritch ,
    @Eldritch@lemmy.world avatar

    I find it real fascinating how many people are blindsided by the fact that the people who own things that focus on making a profit skew the information they put out to benefit themselves. Did they think they were impartial or something? I mean they claim their neutral they don’t ever show that they’re neutral.

    eramseth ,

    Yeah its the PR machine in action.

    ninbreaker ,

    Real estate tycoons have a huge microphone

    Ddubz ,
    @Ddubz@lemmy.world avatar

    In my observation it has been industry and sector dependent.

    Corporate tech and finance are calling for remote work to end. Most of the articles I see where going back to the office is touted are all “silicon valley” type companies and finance/investment firms writing opinion peices.

    PR, marketing, and news media, comms fields - which I am in - are doing the opposite. I work in digital media with government clients and my office just had a building contractor come in and walled off 2/3 of our empty cube space that was full pre-pandemic but is now vacant because all those employees remained remote. The positions in that area of the office were mostly copy editors, graphic design, and technical writers. The building owner turned that area into a new office but hasn’t rented it to anyone new yet.

    Many of my colleagues are active duty military and government civilians. They all telework as much as 3-4 days a week currently. All of their jobs are administrative in nature and almost all of the military people are officers.

    It is important to note that the military has loosely instructed liberal telework at unit level discretion because of record low retention rates. I’ve been working in/for government for a long time and even before 2020, federal contractors and DoD civilians have usually had telework of some kind provided what they did was something that could be taken home.

    When I worked in DC in the mid-00s it was common to see offices engage rotating flex schedules because of the insane traffic and hours long commutes in the DMV corridor.

    But, I suppose it’s all anecdotal. Where you live and what you do for work are going to impact reality more than anything. Watching the MSM speculate and reading nonsense opinion articles in the Atlantic or Times aren’t going to give you any real information.

    All I can say for sure is my office has fully remote and hybrid only. We are guaranteed two days WFH a week but all salaried employees have optional flex schedules and can work non-concurrent hours as long as deadlines are being met. But again, I work for a massive international fed contractor that does largely administrative and PR consulting. So all things that have a history of WFH schedules already.

    rubberducky182 ,

    not only industry and sector dependent, also dependent on the country. at least in my personal bubble (in Germany), remote work is still very common. I also heard from companies who openly advertise remote work and get much more job applications because of it.

    wintermute_oregon ,

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    Anticorp ,

    It’s about money. Large corporations get city tax breaks to build their headquarters. The government gets a lot of money from the employees that report to those offices. The catch is that those tax breaks usually require minimum occupancy of the building. If everyone works from home then the government doesn’t get all their road tolls, gas tax, parking fees, sales tax on food, speeding tickets, parking tickets, etc. Since the government isn’t getting their kickback they stop giving the company tax breaks. So basically millions of people are being forced to do stuff they don’t want to do, just so really rich entities can be richer.

    lemmyseizethemeans ,

    It is mostly about the commercials mortgage backed securities market

    platysalty ,

    I'm split in the middle. I manage projects and also help with sales administration. I prefer in-person meetings for bigger discussions because human communications are built for face to face.

    Deep discussions are just much more effective when you can read the room.

    ItsMeForRealNow OP ,

    Yeah I think its about the control too. So fucked up.

    Feathercrown ,

    I’ve actually still been seeing positive news

    Strayce ,

    A lot of these companies are locked in to 5,10 or 20 year leases. If they were sensible they’d just eat the loss and take the extra productivity and happier staff, but that’s not how the corporate hivemind works. They’re paying rent so they have to justify it by having bums on seats, or they’re bleeding money for what looks like no reason.

    Anticorp ,

    Most of them get tax breaks from the city, but only if they maintain a minimum occupancy. So they’ve lost their tax breaks and they want them back. As always, it comes down to money.

    Vlyn ,

    That easy, beginning of the pandemic: Companies panic that all their employees would call in sick. Or some even die (not that they’d care, but a lot of companies have a bus factor of one). So remote work gets tolerated or praised, everything works great.

    Now the pandemic is “over”, it’s safe to go back into the office. Companies have massive real estate costs, so they want to put their employees back into the office. Besides middle managers being afraid of their jobs as they seem to have become useless if they can’t look over your shoulder and micromanage you.

    It’s never about facts, it’s always what the companies and managers want in the moment.

    ItsMeForRealNow OP ,

    I agree with this the most.

    monobot ,

    Me too, what I have learned is to avoid all media promoting going back to office, since they are just PR tool and can not br trusted.

    Blamemeta ,

    The news is propaganda. Welcome to the club.

    Snekeyes ,

    The best is this article using AI to show what a remote worker would look like after 70 years working from home. So ridiculous it’s laugable. The propaganda is strong. Lol

    indiatimes.com/…/model-shows-what-remote-workers-…

    They also made another article about what the worker looks like after 20 years w life-size model too news.sky.com/…/life-sized-model-shows-what-office…

    cheesemonk ,

    Is the argument here that employees won’t buy ergonomic furniture and desks? Because with all the gas money I’m saving I’ve bought a nicer chair and monitor than I had in office…

    Snekeyes ,

    The content was made by office furniture companies… which probably took a hit w wfh… but … like you noted. You bought better. Same here. My place had chairs from the 60s

    AdamEatsAss ,

    I think it’s partially rage bait at this point. At the start of the pandemic remote work was a new idea and it was easy to get views on an article about it. Now you need a shocking title that’ll enrage people to get engagement on the topic.

    TurdFerguson ,

    New idea? I remember it being a new idea in the early 2000s

    AdamEatsAss ,

    Since companies adopted computers and the Internet it’s been possible. I remember my dad working from home every now and then. But the idea that almost any desk job could be done remotely full time is new.

    TurdFerguson ,

    The pandemic definitely pushed companies into finally adopting it, but believe me, it was not a new concept. I remember reading an article 20 yrs ago about Best Buy adopting it, for example, and how it increased productivity and morale, etc. Since then, it’s been catching on, I’ve had plenty of friends that have worked from home since long before the pandemic, it’s just that a lot of companies were still afraid of giving their employees that much autonomy.

    gmtom ,
    @gmtom@lemmy.world avatar

    If you could look into the investment portfolios of big companies and the rich people that run them you would see that the biggest sector is commercial real estate. In the UK pre pandemic, 40% of investments went into commercial real estate. So thats the main reason they are pushing it.

    rambaroo ,

    It wasn’t a new idea and it wasn’t rage bait. My company internally praised us for increased productivity during the pandemic, and now they’re trying to gaslight us into RTO.

    This isn’t about productivity. These companies are lying. This is 100% about real estate investments, tax breaks, and flexing power over their employees’ lives.

    circuitfarmer ,
    @circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

    Corpos actively trying to get people back to the office so middle management doesn’t feel as useless.

    Commutes are a detriment to the worker, but not to the company.

    GrabtharsHammer ,

    I think it’s not so much about middle management. They implement the policies of the actual decision makers.

    I think it’s because the people who actually make these decisions perform their work mostly via face-to-face meetings, handshakes, projecting personal charisma, reading body language, and personal networking. This leads to an overestimation of how much of other jobs depend on time spent in the same room with others.

    The executive imagines the meetings they missed, leading to lost opportunities. So they see a loss of productivity.

    They don’t appreciate how much easier it was to edit that manual or analyze that data without Joe the human tuba trying to breathe around his phlegm in the cube next door, or without the folks three rows over arguing about which director’s vision of Superman was best.

    circuitfarmer ,
    @circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

    The executive imagines the meetings they missed, leading to lost opportunities. So they see a loss of productivity.

    This is a fantastic point, and one I had not considered.

    From this standpoint, the side pushing for return to office really does feel like they’re in the right. I think I would argue that a subset of those folks are still pushing a return for the wrong reasons (e.g. thinking that remote work lowers productivity naturally, not just based on an observation of their own missed meetings or face time), but otherwise I agree entirely.

    Snekeyes ,

    They need to fake working and that’s hard to do when remote is based on output. Ie, did the work get done or not. Being a middle manager w people to bother in office means they can fake it or have issues all day and be talking …

    Tsubodai ,

    This hits the nail on the head at my work. Immediate manager couldn’t care less where we are, and has said frequently that the team is more productive from home.

    It’s the higher ups that are pushing for return to office, constantly sending out surveys, arranging free-form “open door” meetings and things like that because they’re lost without seeing people face to face.

    I can concentrate far more effectively at home, where I’m in full control of my environment, and I spend up to half of my day in video calls with people in different locations anyway.

    jhulten ,

    You are forgetting the value of commercial real estate portfolios. If the buildings are empty and no one wants to use them, they drop in value.

    newsweek.com/crash-worse-2008-crisis-predicted-co…

    monobot ,

    Commutes are a detriment to the worker, but not to the company.

    It should be, count commuting in my eighth hour work day and let’s see how much they prefer WFH.

    MisterRoboto ,

    There’s money in real estate. There’s even more in commercial real estate. There’s less money in commercial real estate that’s vacant because people work from home.

    Deiv ,

    It’s not only real estate…cities give incentives to companies that meet a quota of in-office employees since it drives the local economy

    ScrivenerX ,

    It’s because a huge amount of business is centered around made up things for going to work.

    Things you need to work in an office: suits, dry cleaning for the suits, dress shoes, a car (because public transportation is woefully inadequate for this reason), gas for the car, maintenance for the car, lunch, daycare, a dog walker, you have less time so you are more likely to eat out for dinner, also more likely to hire maids, you are stuck in a commute and radio is awful, so a music subscription, maybe a new phone, and might have to go out for drinks with the coworkers on the way home.

    Staying at home, and much of the country on highly limited income, taught us how much we spend on the “privilege” of work. Everyone is still shocked at the emotional and opportunity cost work had, we’re just starting to realize that most of what it sold to us either isn’t real or isn’t needed.

    If people don’t go back to work a sea of businesses will fail.

    BeHappy ,

    I love the “might HAVE to go out for drinks with the coworkers on the way home”. This is my most dreaded fear.

    Edit: and clothes/getting ‘ready’ (hair, makeup, underwear, etc.) is double time for women.

    Azzu ,
    @Azzu@lemm.ee avatar

    You missed the most important thing. Real estate investments that aren’t allowed to go down in value, which they would if offices became superfluous. Just imagine how many buildings would become “worthless”/could be used for something else.

    gmtom ,
    @gmtom@lemmy.world avatar

    Yeah, this is BY FAR the biggest reason. Pretty much all the rich people and most big companies have huge investment in portfolios that contain a lot of commercial office spaces. If we were all allowed to work from home those investments would plummet and all the rich people and big companies would take MASSIVE losses on those investments. Which is why all the media and even companies like Zoom are trying to pull a 180 on working from home.

    Blaze ,
    @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    Zoom forcing employees back to offices still baffles me

    bemenaker ,

    The video conferencing software that saved the world during covid and made all the companies survive the lockdown.

    AttackPanda ,

    I feel like we need to talk about this more. Their whole model is promoting remote experiences and yet they are also forcing folk back to the office. I can’t think of a reason outside of external pressures that would happen.

    Dagwood222 ,

    In the Wall Street area of Manhattan, some of the biggest buildings are already being converted to apartments. It’s been a trend for a while, because the older buildings are too expensive to rewire for computers/HVAC.

    ScrivenerX ,

    That is a huge pressure, but it’s less obvious why a company in a business unrelated to real estate would want real estate prices high.

    The secret is that companies aren’t in the business of making a good or providing a service, they actually are just giant schemes for raising money for “investments”. For example, airlines don’t make their money off of selling tickets, but through prospecting jet fuel. Most companies aren’t as direct and clear about what their business actually is.

    Also the link between real estate and all of jobs isn’t very clear and is very abstract. It’s easy to see the costs and interactions with companies forced by working in an office, it’s difficult to see how a building losing value effects anyone.

    Iamdanno ,

    A forward-thinking wealthy person would start buying these buildings at fire-sale prices and converting them to residential buildings.

    Revan343 ,

    You have to be very choosey, because most office buildings aren’t easily convertable

    Dagwood222 ,

    Pre-pandemic. Maybe 2005 [?] one of the big American news companies assembles a team of financial experts to study various big companies. Then they deicde to apply all that brain power to an average American family. Husband and wife with three kids, two jobs and two cars. Both have middle class jobs. After running the numbers, the experts told the wife to quit her job. The savings on childcare, running the second car, no fast food dinners, etc. more than made up for the second salary.

    AnalogyAddict ,

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    Dagwood222 ,

    If you read what I wrote, the experts looked at all aspects of the couple’s situation. The experts decided that the wife’s job was the one to go.

    If you’re having a problem finding dates, maybe you should look at what common factor all your relationships have.

    AnalogyAddict ,

    I don’t have a problem finding dates. I don’t want to date. Men aren’t worth the cost, in my experience. But nice attempt, trying to attack me personally to cover up your misogyny and the misogyny of the “experts”" you quote. Such a “surprising” tactic. Too bad for you that I’m quite comfortable in my choice to live relatively male-free.

    Tacking the words “expert” and “study” onto misogynistic propaganda doesn’t make it scientifically rigorous. And even though there is still truth in women making less in general, that’s changing. Women need men less and less every year. Thankfully.

    Dagwood222 ,

    You funny.

    If you look up the actual article you’ll see it went as I wrote. In that particular case, the wife was earning less, so it made sense for her to give up her job.

    Anything you’ve added is on you.

    If you’re not dating because ‘men aren’t worth it’ that says more about you than it does about the men.

    Professorozone ,

    This is why it costs a lot less than people think, to retire. A lot of the costs of working go away.

    SigmarStern ,
    @SigmarStern@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    I have noticed that working remotely really opened up the job market for me. Instead of being limited to where public transportation can bring me within 45 minutes, I can work for any company within Europe from the comfort of my home office. It makes switching jobs so much easier and I am willing to tolerate much less shit before I quit. That degree of freedom might scare companies. They can’t trap me anymore with the costs of uprooting my life for a better job.

    Professorozone ,

    I’ve never worked from home, but it seems to me that even if everything else were kept equal, you just saved an hour and a half commute plus the cost of doing so, every day! When you add in the lower cost of food and healthier diet eating at home and a whole host of other advantages. It’s a huge win! Congrats.

    uranibaba ,

    I worked from home for ~6 months full time, my experience was that I will never do it full time again. For me, it was waking up, watch the same four walls for 8 hours, eat dinner, sleep, repeat. Perhaps my office could have been better but because I was working with support and had to be available on the phone, I could not really leave my computer for an extended period of time (except for lunch break).

    A lot of people make it out to be heaven, working from home. I really missed having people to talk to. I believe that it would have been a much better experience if I could have worked from home 0-5 days per week as I saw fit. Bad morning? Work from home. Waking up fresh? Go to work. I’m assuming that you can walk or bike to work. Few things are worse than being stuck in traffic or being on a crowed bus/train, or missing the bus with 1 min, having to wait 15 min for the next one, when with the bike I can leave whenever I want.

    demlet ,

    I think it’s very situational. I’m already a big shut-in. Working full time at home might not be great for my mental health. It’s sad to admit I use work for social contact, but it’s true. If you have good social connections outside of work, great.

    All that said, this whole debate is very classist. There are loads of jobs, including mine incidentally, that require physically being there. I mostly haven’t paid attention to this debate because it doesn’t apply to me or the people I know, and probably never will.

    EssentialCoffee ,

    Conversely, I found out just how many spoons I was using to function interacting with folks on a daily basis and that the strains my extroverted colleagues were talking about without having people were things I’d just lived with and normalized for my entire life because our society forced you to be around people all of the time.

    Give me my four walls, pls. I spend every waking hour on a computer anyway, either working or personal, so it’s going to be four walls one way or another.

    RedstoneValley ,

    I’d say it’s not all black or white. In my industry (software) most of my friends and colleagues have strong opinions about staying remote. It’s mostly along the lines of “either let me continue to work from home or find someone else”. Also most of the headhunter messages I get on LinkedIn offer up to 100% remote jobs. Of course this is all anecdotal and depends heavily on the field of work. But maybe it’s worth considering that you have the power to shape your own future. If you do not want to work in an office, you’ll find something else. Don’t let those corporations fool you.

    assassin_aragorn ,

    I think remote work is here to stay exactly because of what you’ve said. Companies always want highly skilled workers and experts. Those people have a lot of leverage when it comes to offers and hiring. Offering and maintaining remote work is a big plus when weighing offers, especially when you consider who these knowledge workers are.

    They’re at least 5 years out of college and many have started families. And they’ve realized that they want to spend more time with their family and kids and not waste it commuting to work. Most are probably 10+ years of experience in their relevant industry and with 12-15 year olds. I feel like that demographic had a massive awakening with COVID about where their priorities lie.

    I think it’s unlikely for remote work to stay at just the experienced knowledge professional level. Hell with 3 years of semi relevant experience I was able to leverage +$5000 on my salary for a remote job. Companies need more and more skilled office workers. This opposition to remote work won’t last, I think.

    McScience ,

    See I’m in software dev and I am constantly getting recruiter calls asking me for in-office work. I’m the guy saying “you literally cannot pay me enough to go back in an office”… but I’d gladly take 2/3 or maybe even 1/2 my current pay for a 4-day, 32 hour work week.

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