Working From Home

[Josquius]

Turn office blocks into affordable housing for the poor.

In terms of people going into empty offices, in Guardian comment sections over the years I noticed three reasons: no suitable WFH space at home (flatsharing would suck for it to be fair), lack of social life yet desiring one and instead of creating it latching onto colleagues to provide it, and wanting to be away from their own family.

Except for the lack of WFH options I have zero sympathy for these. Fix your own god damn life don't force me to do it for you.

This isn't a solution.
As mentioned a lot of offices don't convert into homes very well.
But even aside from this it's still hollowing out the city and destroying the centre's sense of place. It transforms cities into nothing but a decentralised suburban mess.

You are such a conservative. 

The conservatives are the ones happy with the country just consisting of faceless car centric sprawl where nobody needs to interact with anybody else and people just appear aged 50+ ready-made, completely skipping that horrible stage of being young.

[Tamas]

Conservatives are anti-change. You are anti-change.

City centres developed to address limitations to making a living/prosper by the need to be in physical contact. Socialising norms developed from there. There is no universal truth and value to crowded city centres. To the extent they actually want to, people will continue to get together and the infrastructure to facilitate that (such as city areas full of clubs/other entertainment which we already have) will remain/emerge.

Also, this might shock you, but "decentralised" places such as towns and villages have social life as well.

[Josquius]

Conservatives are anti-change. You are anti-change.

No, I'm anti THAT change.
I'm for change for the better.

City centres developed to address limitations to making a living/prosper by the need to be in physical contact. Socialising norms developed from there. There is no universal truth and value to crowded city centres.

Loads of research has shown the value of third places. Eliminate these and you're creating a whole host of problems for society.

To the extent they actually want to, people will continue to get together and the infrastructure to facilitate that (such as city areas full of clubs/other entertainment which we already have) will remain/emerge.

Except they won't. Without footfall centres decline massively, this has been seen time and again around the world. You do get fringe car-centric spaces emerging but these are not clustered and as such tend to be fewer and number and a lot shitter.

Also, this might shock you, but "decentralised" places such as towns and villages have social life as well.

I'm from a small town.
They do not.

[Tamas]

So what's the solution? Make it illegal to work from private residences? How else do you want to prevent what is a natural process thanks to the benefits of modern technology?

[HVC]

Conservatives are anti-change. You are anti-change.

City centres developed to address limitations to making a living/prosper by the need to be in physical contact. Socialising norms developed from there. There is no universal truth and value to crowded city centres. To the extent they actually want to, people will continue to get together and the infrastructure to facilitate that (such as city areas full of clubs/other entertainment which we already have) will remain/emerge.

Also, this might shock you, but "decentralised" places such as towns and villages have social life as well.

Without a dense hellscape he can't force people not to drive. That's his end goal, all other considerations are just for that goal

[Josquius]

Yeah...dense hellscape. Barcelona, Vienna, Amsterdam... No no no. What you need to be replicating is St Louis.

So what's the solution? Make it illegal to work from private residences? How else do you want to prevent what is a natural process thanks to the benefits of modern technology?

The solution to what?
The whole situation? I wish I knew.
I suspect its not one single policy and rather a whole collection of small ones. A reform in business rates would be a key for instance.

[HVC]

They drive in Barcelona, so not dense enough for your dreams

[Gups]

What annoys me about the whole debate is the bottomless pit of cynicism on the part of those resisting the return to office.  The conspiracy theory about RTO being a ploy to stop the slump in commercial real estate prices, the implications that managers want the workers back so that they could justify their existence, and so on... 

I really feel sorry for people whose life turned out in a way that makes them so cynical, but my take on the debate has also been colored by that.  I think the simple reality is that WFH may be a good deal to some workers, but it's probably a bad deal for the overall productivity of all workers, and it's definitely a bad deal for employees just entering the workforce.  When they don't even acknowledge that arguments for RTO can be made, regardless of where you think they fall in the balance of things, it makes me discount everything that they have to say.

Sure arguments can be made for RTO, there are few things in life that arguments can't be made for.

One thing you can be sure of though: there would have been a stronger push for RTO and less inclination for employees to stay in WFH, if productivity across the board slumped the way you claim. Decreased productivity not only shows up as decrease in profit on the employer's side it also manifests as more chaos and frustration on the employee side (in white collar jobs anyhow, but then again blue collar ones will never be WFH). However I suspect, most people, like me and my company, found that productivity does NOT, in fact, suffers.

Government being influenced by commercial real estate investors isn't a very far fetched theory, in the UK at least they are major donors not to mention politicians with actual investments.

Managers being frustrated by having it more difficult to feel in control both in terms of the challenge and the ability to drain some power trips from it isn't far-fetched either.

What Government policies have been made that require RTW?

Looking at company donors to the Tories, I couldn't find a single commercial real estate investor. The biggest donor (JS Bloor) is a house builder.

https://www.datasmoothie.com/@datasmoothie/who-funds-the-conservative-party/


I'm with Jos on this. City centres are important. I prefer London to LA

[Gups]

So what's the solution? Make it illegal to work from private residences? How else do you want to prevent what is a natural process thanks to the benefits of modern technology?

The balance is fine at the moment IMO. Commercial space is doing fine in terms of rent. I don't know about other cities but Central London is constantly busy.  It's down to companies to decide how often their staff need to be in the office. If staff don't like it, they can vote with their feet.   

[Tamas]

So what's the solution? Make it illegal to work from private residences? How else do you want to prevent what is a natural process thanks to the benefits of modern technology?

The balance is fine at the moment IMO. Commercial space is doing fine in terms of rent. I don't know about other cities but Central London is constantly busy.  It's down to companies to decide how often their staff need to be in the office. If staff don't like it, they can vote with their feet.   

You have to convince Josqs that cities are fine, not me.

[DGuller]

We're closing down the office in the New Year for six weeks for refurbishment and I'm not looking forward to it at all.

I enjoy being in the office although the cycle in during the winter isn't great. I do tend to be more productive at home though - at least in terms of getting stuff done.

My short-run productivity is better at home.  If there is shit that needs to be done, and full accountability on me getting it done, it gets done quicker when I'm at home. 

In the long run, though, the intangibles that eventually contribute to productivity are much better in the office.  That chance conversation that would never happen by text may point me to a different and much more productive direction 6 months later on a project that hasn't been a thing yet, or a human connection will be established that will come in handy later.

I suspect that this dynamic is also responsible for productivity figures not unambiguously supporting RTO just yet.  If you're already worked in the company for years and have all the social relationships established, you're drawing down on that capital, but over the years, as more and more employees have started their employment as remote employees and continued it, the drag on productivity would only get worse and worse.

[crazy canuck]

What annoys me about the whole debate is the bottomless pit of cynicism on the part of those resisting the return to office.  The conspiracy theory about RTO being a ploy to stop the slump in commercial real estate prices, the implications that managers want the workers back so that they could justify their existence, and so on... 

I really feel sorry for people whose life turned out in a way that makes them so cynical, but my take on the debate has also been colored by that.  I think the simple reality is that WFH may be a good deal to some workers, but it's probably a bad deal for the overall productivity of all workers, and it's definitely a bad deal for employees just entering the workforce.  When they don't even acknowledge that arguments for RTO can be made, regardless of where you think they fall in the balance of things, it makes me discount everything that they have to say.

Sure arguments can be made for RTO, there are few things in life that arguments can't be made for.

One thing you can be sure of though: there would have been a stronger push for RTO and less inclination for employees to stay in WFH, if productivity across the board slumped the way you claim. Decreased productivity not only shows up as decrease in profit on the employer's side it also manifests as more chaos and frustration on the employee side (in white collar jobs anyhow, but then again blue collar ones will never be WFH). However I suspect, most people, like me and my company, found that productivity does NOT, in fact, suffers.

Government being influenced by commercial real estate investors isn't a very far fetched theory, in the UK at least they are major donors not to mention politicians with actual investments.

Managers being frustrated by having it more difficult to feel in control both in terms of the challenge and the ability to drain some power trips from it isn't far-fetched either.

Juniors develop more slowly when based from home as they are less likely to want to 'interrupt' to ask questions.

Yep, and turnover increases when there is nothing attaching a junior person to the workplace other than a laptop. It's easy just to switch laptops. Much better to develop personal connections and that only occurs in the office.

Employers are not requiring people to return to the office for shits and giggles. It's more expensive to have people in the office and so why do it?

Because of all the intangibles that make good business sense to bring people together in one place.

[Tamas]

When was the last time in history when it was possible (within practical limitations) to build remote teams?

Oh wait, never before. So perhaps not put too much weight into the fact that it's how it used to be done.

[crazy canuck]

When was the last time in history when it was possible (within practical limitations) to build remote teams?

Oh wait, never before. So perhaps not put too much weight into the fact that it's how it used to be done.

I'm not sure anybody is putting weight on how it used to be done. Rather there's a lot of good data about what happened when everybody went work from home and the extreme turnover that occurred during that period of time.

Also, employers have had ample opportunity to make judgements about whether it is worthwhile keeping costly overhead in offices or have everybody work from home. The results are overwhelmingly in favour of having people in the workplace.

As we've discussed before, I think a lot of folks on languish are in niche areas where work from home might make more sense, but we are talking about the workplace in general here not folks who mostly do coding work that seems to be more conducive to a solitary workday.  Not much in the modern workplace occurs that way.

Think about it another way, most of our educational system, both in high school and in universities teaches people to work collaboratively. There's a reason for that.

[frunk]

As I've said previously my experience is completely the opposite.  Personal productivity is up and I can control when I respond to people's requests.  It's been easier to get in touch with people through messages rather than interrupting them when they are doing something else.  As long as the managerial/experienced members make sure to check in on and guide newer members of the team it hasn't been a problem for their development.

It's about establishing a working environment outside of the office environment rather than pining for what isn't there.  People can adapt if they want to rather than treating it like they are in an isolation booth.