Bad managers and CRE bagholders lost, competent employees and internet-savvy teams won ...arbitrary authoritarian control over your work-life is so 1900s
Middle Managers want RTO to justify their jobs and be shown how to Print to PDF for the 200th time. Losing your best employees because the MM want to micromanage is a long term loser strategy. The winners will be flexible/nimble companies who can hire and retain the top performers and keep getting awesome results.
Somewhere a Boomer is pitching more pizza parties as an incentive to get people back into the office.
I agree with much of what you've written. I have an personal anecdote and a suggestion.
When I worked at Ford around 2000, the "All Hands Meetings" at World Headquarters involved a massive auditorium where executives would show presentations to the employees about how the company was doing and where it was going. The meetings were broadcast to other offices around the world. A new president decided to use video streaming and skip the employee gathering. His rationale was similar to what you comment about here. The reasons for a large employee gathering are a microcosm of working remotely. But a side comment I overheard really stuck with me: 'mostly these meetings serve as a way for the other executives to get an ego boost over how many people work for them.' I think requiring a staff to work from the office serves the ego similarly.
As for my suggestion, I request that you avoid using acronyms as much as possible. I had to skip over and reverse engineer what some of them meant. I don't think you have a short character limit on your posts and I know people can read fast enough that reading "commercial real estate" versus CRE is just easier to absorb.
Interesting take, but I’ve been credibly informed that there are massive competitive advantages to being able to have regular team pot-luck lunches. Yes, top talent may migrate to companies offering remote work, but the office will win out with “synergy” and teamwork, galvanized by the thrill of seeing each other’s smiling faces. The truth of this is simply obvious to anyone with a substantial investment in CRE.
Let's consider the main paper Adam cites: it uses an RTO announcement as a binary, which is not present for all or even most RTO companies. It's focused on the S&P 500, which has a wider margin for error given existing success + remote-enabling resources. It uses satisfaction data from Glassdoor, which has a mega-negative UGC bias that is well-documented. DiD is also probably the wrong approach here without very specific cohort breakdowns and analysis, given these companies are vastly different from one another. There's no consideration for equivalence.
This also likely isn't causal, needs to be longitudinal, doesn't consider confounding variables that are easily tagged, and is a working paper, which means it is not peer-reviewed.
They leak their bias in the abstract, stating that their work is consistent with managers using RTO to "reassert control" and "blame employees," claims which are not supported at all in their paper and their one citation on the matter is a Business Insider article that is a glorified blog post + opinion piece.
I would appreciate if you did similar homework before you posted easy-to-retweet takes to your large audience that feeds them what they want to hear. Your post is not well-cited, at all.
You say "research" constantly, despite the fact there is no significant research backing your claim. You just kind of handwave at it. 'Everybody knows.' Right.
And the entire market has shifted to hybrid and in-office work over the past 6 months, which you seem to conveniently ignore.
For everyone else: Adam is a friend, but I find the way he writes on major trends that are important to our sense of self, righteousness, belonging, wellbeing, fulfillment, etc. to be majorly detrimental to his readers. I hope you challenge yourself to read closely and find other, counter-positioned sources when digesting his newsletter.
If you're a spouse of someone in the Armed Services, remote work is a godsend. Your career won't be upended every time your wife or husband's posting changes. You can actually build a career.
I know a few places where not only do 99% of the people work remotely 99% of the time (the physical offices are essentially mail drops with scanners and conference rooms rented out for the occasional training session), but they haven't hired a single person who even lives in the same state, much less what used to be the commuting area, since 2020. Hiring processes that used to take months are now done in less than a month, and better people are hired as a result.
All those people and corporations reaping the “ benefits “ of work from home need to bail out the banks holding the mortgages on the empty office space. Your glib talk of “ re-purposing “ that space needs to be done by those who created the problem- the corporations and their wfh employees.
Your glib remark “ all this can be repurposed “ refers to the huge volumes of now-empty office space threatening bank balance sheets, and which taxpayers will be told they must bail out. Here’s an idea, Adam: How about all the people reaping the “benefits” of work from home, private and corporate, bail out the banks?
For instance, all the highly profitable firms who abandoned downtown San Francisco, and their very well-paid, now work from home employees, need to pay up! The American taxpayers do not owe them a thing! In Asia, property occupancy is reported to be back near 100%. Let’s emulate them!
I think you are correct, although I think remote work will continue to trend up, just at a slower rate, for a number of reasons.
1) Once a certain number of people work from home, there is a centrifugal force pulling the in-office people away from WFO. Why go into the office if many people won't be there? WFH is a hassle & you stand out if you're one of a few, but not if a decent share of your co-workers are WFH.
2) The real estate market is still adjusting. Many companies have big office buildings or long leases of big buildings and they will need time to downsize. As they downsize, there will be less incentives for WTO and reduced amenities in offices.
3) Downtowns face a negative feedback loop. Fewer people and reduced tax revenue in downtowns means less money for public amenities, less public safety, and a less enjoyable experience for people working there.
These different factors reinforce each other and seem likely to cause a continued longer run increase in remote work.
The early jobs I had out of college and then MBA school were both retail then corporate offices. Not only did I learn a ton from my coworkers, I have memories that will last a lifetime from funny incidents and lunches. That cannot be replicated working remotely.
Remote work doesn’t work in all situations. We have a hybrid arrangement where the days in office are absolutely critical to team building, camaraderie and knowledge transfer.
Middle Managers want RTO to justify their jobs and be shown how to Print to PDF for the 200th time. Losing your best employees because the MM want to micromanage is a long term loser strategy. The winners will be flexible/nimble companies who can hire and retain the top performers and keep getting awesome results.
Somewhere a Boomer is pitching more pizza parties as an incentive to get people back into the office.
Spitting fire
Here's hoping that some percentage of old office space is eventually remodeled to become new housing.
Hi,
I agree with much of what you've written. I have an personal anecdote and a suggestion.
When I worked at Ford around 2000, the "All Hands Meetings" at World Headquarters involved a massive auditorium where executives would show presentations to the employees about how the company was doing and where it was going. The meetings were broadcast to other offices around the world. A new president decided to use video streaming and skip the employee gathering. His rationale was similar to what you comment about here. The reasons for a large employee gathering are a microcosm of working remotely. But a side comment I overheard really stuck with me: 'mostly these meetings serve as a way for the other executives to get an ego boost over how many people work for them.' I think requiring a staff to work from the office serves the ego similarly.
As for my suggestion, I request that you avoid using acronyms as much as possible. I had to skip over and reverse engineer what some of them meant. I don't think you have a short character limit on your posts and I know people can read fast enough that reading "commercial real estate" versus CRE is just easier to absorb.
thanks,
jon
Interesting take, but I’ve been credibly informed that there are massive competitive advantages to being able to have regular team pot-luck lunches. Yes, top talent may migrate to companies offering remote work, but the office will win out with “synergy” and teamwork, galvanized by the thrill of seeing each other’s smiling faces. The truth of this is simply obvious to anyone with a substantial investment in CRE.
Growth of WFH mirrors the growth of the economy
When economy is in expansion, WFH is in expansion
When economy is in recession, WFH is in recession
In the long run, the economy and WFH point up and to the right
Thanks for this! Preparing some research on this for my dissertation (for Ireland at least...)
@edzitron
This post is lazy.
Let's consider the main paper Adam cites: it uses an RTO announcement as a binary, which is not present for all or even most RTO companies. It's focused on the S&P 500, which has a wider margin for error given existing success + remote-enabling resources. It uses satisfaction data from Glassdoor, which has a mega-negative UGC bias that is well-documented. DiD is also probably the wrong approach here without very specific cohort breakdowns and analysis, given these companies are vastly different from one another. There's no consideration for equivalence.
This also likely isn't causal, needs to be longitudinal, doesn't consider confounding variables that are easily tagged, and is a working paper, which means it is not peer-reviewed.
They leak their bias in the abstract, stating that their work is consistent with managers using RTO to "reassert control" and "blame employees," claims which are not supported at all in their paper and their one citation on the matter is a Business Insider article that is a glorified blog post + opinion piece.
I would appreciate if you did similar homework before you posted easy-to-retweet takes to your large audience that feeds them what they want to hear. Your post is not well-cited, at all.
You say "research" constantly, despite the fact there is no significant research backing your claim. You just kind of handwave at it. 'Everybody knows.' Right.
And the entire market has shifted to hybrid and in-office work over the past 6 months, which you seem to conveniently ignore.
For everyone else: Adam is a friend, but I find the way he writes on major trends that are important to our sense of self, righteousness, belonging, wellbeing, fulfillment, etc. to be majorly detrimental to his readers. I hope you challenge yourself to read closely and find other, counter-positioned sources when digesting his newsletter.
If you're a spouse of someone in the Armed Services, remote work is a godsend. Your career won't be upended every time your wife or husband's posting changes. You can actually build a career.
I know a few places where not only do 99% of the people work remotely 99% of the time (the physical offices are essentially mail drops with scanners and conference rooms rented out for the occasional training session), but they haven't hired a single person who even lives in the same state, much less what used to be the commuting area, since 2020. Hiring processes that used to take months are now done in less than a month, and better people are hired as a result.
I'm a people person, dammit!
All those people and corporations reaping the “ benefits “ of work from home need to bail out the banks holding the mortgages on the empty office space. Your glib talk of “ re-purposing “ that space needs to be done by those who created the problem- the corporations and their wfh employees.
Your glib remark “ all this can be repurposed “ refers to the huge volumes of now-empty office space threatening bank balance sheets, and which taxpayers will be told they must bail out. Here’s an idea, Adam: How about all the people reaping the “benefits” of work from home, private and corporate, bail out the banks?
For instance, all the highly profitable firms who abandoned downtown San Francisco, and their very well-paid, now work from home employees, need to pay up! The American taxpayers do not owe them a thing! In Asia, property occupancy is reported to be back near 100%. Let’s emulate them!
I think you are correct, although I think remote work will continue to trend up, just at a slower rate, for a number of reasons.
1) Once a certain number of people work from home, there is a centrifugal force pulling the in-office people away from WFO. Why go into the office if many people won't be there? WFH is a hassle & you stand out if you're one of a few, but not if a decent share of your co-workers are WFH.
2) The real estate market is still adjusting. Many companies have big office buildings or long leases of big buildings and they will need time to downsize. As they downsize, there will be less incentives for WTO and reduced amenities in offices.
3) Downtowns face a negative feedback loop. Fewer people and reduced tax revenue in downtowns means less money for public amenities, less public safety, and a less enjoyable experience for people working there.
These different factors reinforce each other and seem likely to cause a continued longer run increase in remote work.
The early jobs I had out of college and then MBA school were both retail then corporate offices. Not only did I learn a ton from my coworkers, I have memories that will last a lifetime from funny incidents and lunches. That cannot be replicated working remotely.
Remote work doesn’t work in all situations. We have a hybrid arrangement where the days in office are absolutely critical to team building, camaraderie and knowledge transfer.