Return to office is ‘dead,’ Stanford economist says. Here’s why

3 years ago by L4sBot to c/technology

Return to office is ‘dead,’ Stanford economist says. Here’s why::The share of workers being called back to the office has flatlined, suggesting remote work is an entrenched feature of the U.S. labor market.

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4grams 266 points 3 years ago

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ilinamorato 164 points 3 years ago

This is the thing. Remote work as an option helps everyone. Lower costs for the employer, happier employees, the people who do want to work in an office have a better time because it's less crowded, the people who need to care for kids or parents have an easier time...it's entirely a win for everyone.

Except real estate companies, and therein lies the problem.

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_number8_ 55 points 3 years ago

nothing has made me more sick recently than learning that these investor scum are trying to flog people back into the office because they gambled too much money on office buildings, so obviously this is the correct next step. never mind eating the fucking loss, never mind gambling on sports like a normal human being, these fucking vampires think they get THAT much control over your life for THAT petty and convoluted and i am sorry COMPLETELY FUCKING MADE UP reason like 'we gambled on offices too much'

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bobs_monkey 42 points 3 years ago

What gets me is that in this mad dash to address climate change, WFH is a valuable tool to reduce emissions from commuting. I remember driving during the early lockdowns and thinking it would be possible to skateboard down the freeway. You'd think Democrats would be encouraging WFH as a part of their green initiatives, but I can see that having donors in real estate and fossil fuels might run counter to that.

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KnightontheSun 42 points 3 years ago

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gravitas_deficiency 17 points 3 years ago

It’s even good for the environment! The amount of time, money, and energy (and that energy needs to be generated somehow) used to support everyone’s daily commute is IMMENSE. More than a few cities noted significantly improved air quality when the quarantines were in effect in 2020, and there’s still a noticeable difference in a lot of places.

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laurelraven 3 points 3 years ago

That said, where I work, our policy explicitly forbids us from taking care of people at home during our work day...

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ciferecaNinjo 14 points 3 years ago

it’s about time we restructure the workforce.

I suppose a big part of that will be managers learning how to measure productivity more accurately than your clocked-in hours. That’ll be the most interesting change.. the “corporate welfare” program of just getting paid to occupy a desk space will have to be replaced with more sophisticated real performance measurements.

I have no idea how that pans out in software. Every bug is vastly different so they can’t merely count the number of bugs you fix. SLOC is a bit of a sloppy measure too.

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Enigma28 37 points 3 years ago

I'm a manager of an entirely WFH team, it's easy. I have weekly one on one catch-ups with everyone in my team, where we discuss the work they are doing any blockers or anything like that that has come up. And a fortnightly team meeting.

And if anything urgent does come up they just call or message me at the time.

You measure the output not some BS KPI or how long they worked that day. I trust my people to be adults and come and go from work as needed, as long as they are still getting their work done idgaf how many hours a day/week they work.

Ultimately as their manager I'm there to try to remove as much of the corporate or political BS from my team's lives as possible, so they can focus on doing great work (whilst also being accommodating to any personal issues that crop up for them)

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nickhammes 20 points 3 years ago

Thanks to Goodhart's Law, that doesn't work. Any number used as a performance target ceases to be a useful measure, because people minmax them. You need to be able to look at a feature in a system, and evaluate if they completed it in an amount of time commensurate with their experience.

You need to think of productivity more abstractly, and have a lot of relevant expertise to assess it. Good management is hard, basically.

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thesohoriots 7 points 3 years ago

Sadly, I don’t think so. The pandemic-era cash grab solution was software that’s basically spyware, logging keystrokes, mouse movements, taking screenshots, etc. Some clever individuals just taped vibrators to their mice and walked away for breaks. You’re asking middle management to do real work here, ya silly.

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4grams 1 point 3 years ago

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MotoAsh 6 points 3 years ago

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EmergMemeHologram 11 points 3 years ago

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QuarterSwede 0 points 3 years ago