I am sorry your last company didn't have profits. If making a better office bankrupts your company maybe the whole business wasn't very good.

If giving your workers agency over where work is performed is against a company's values, again, the whole business might not be very good at all. Companies are allowed to say no, but workers can also unionize and support reps who will codify remote work as a right. They can also leave, potentially putting the business in peril depending on role.

We can't argue this from data, because the data is mixed, so we are left with arguing from a position of power asymmetry ("I am the boss so I make the rules") and working conditions at somewhere workers spend a third of their life. Workers are left to flex whatever is available to them. Change happens slowly, and then all of a sudden.

If businesses must die in the process, and commercial real estate investment losses are enormous, so be it. Work to live, don't live to work (and quality of life and working arrangement is a significant component of that). Meaningful work is nice, but no one is showing up if you didn't provide the check.

Perfection. You've just confirmed that an office is an ego thing. Your goal with an office is to prove your business is good by the ability to waste resources on that office. "If making a better office bankrupts your company maybe the whole business wasn't very good." That means that if you can have a better office your business is good. That's the goal - to broadcast that. It has nothing to do with building a good business. It's a trophy.

All I am saying is, we have enough profits that we can invest in people. We are not trying to increase profits to make a better office. That is such a silly statement.

If your business is so successful that building a nice office is a rounding error then that's fantastic. I just know that, like a real time strategy game, if you spend some resources on something, you aren't spending it on something else. It's called opportunity cost and it's the first thing you learn in intro microecon, which, despite being a developer, I have taken. Spending X dollars on an office is a decision to not spend that somewhere else in the business. That might be the right decision, I don't know, I'm just a developer. But yeah, I guess it's more complex than that, as I suppose one wouldn't want to slip into a scarcity mindset, either.

Making a better work environment for your employees is good for the bottom line and the employees. It is not that complicated.

> a better work environment for your employees

By whose definition? Home can be a great work environment with a modest investment.

Exactly , all the money put into the office could go towards ensuring that workers have the best WFH setup.

I agree. That's why we made a choice and want to work from home (or wherever we chose from, not you).

If I can decide between a fancy office with a pool table, free snacks, innovative spaces and all that

vs

My employer gives me a generous stipend to keep my home setup ergonomic and comfy

I'll pick the latter every time.

I feel like what you're really saying is that you don't think offices are worth investing in. I don't think you'd say “Invest in your people not your stuff and things” if you were talking about how well equipped a lab was for research or engineering.