this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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I have posted this on Reddit (askeconomics) a while back but got no good replies. Copying it here because I don't want to send traffic to Reddit.

What do you think?

I see a big push to take employees back to the office. I personally don't mind either working remote or in the office, but I think big companies tend to think rationally in terms of cost/benefit and I haven't seen a convincing explanation yet of why they are so keen to have everyone back.

If remote work was just as productive as in-person, a remote-only company could use it to be more efficient than their work-in-office competitors, so I assume there's no conclusive evidence that this is the case. But I haven't seen conclusive evidence of the contrary either, and I think employers would have good reason to trumpet any findings at least internally to their employees ("we've seen KPI so-and-so drop with everyone working from home" or "project X was severely delayed by lack of in-person coordination" wouldn't make everyone happy to return in presence, but at least it would make a good argument for a manager to explain to their team)

Instead, all I keep hearing is inspirational wish-wash like "we value the power of working together". Which is fine, but why are we valuing it more than the cost of office space?

On the side of employees, I often see arguments like "these companies made a big investment in offices and now they don't want to look stupid by leaving them empty". But all these large companies have spent billions to acquire smaller companies/products and dropped them without a second thought. I can't believe the same companies would now be so sentimentally attached to office buildings if it made any economic sense to close them.

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[–] Frog-Brawler@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you’re going in to talk to people it means you’re not working. Unless… the company pays you just to talk to people. 🤷‍♂️

[–] lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And how does that make you feel?

On a serious note though people who I didn't like and didn't want to talk to would come by my desk daily and spend a minimum of 20 minutes just talking about shit I didn't care about. How they got any work at all done is beyond me because obviously they were doing the rounds and talking to everyone else too. And how I got any work done between the million visits? I hated being in an office. I was so miserable.

[–] Frog-Brawler@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

Same… it’s not my current company, but the company before this one got me interested in noise cancelling headphones. People bullshitting and talking loud all day may as well have been nails on a chalkboard.