Return to office is 'dead,' Stanford economist says

Re:Return to office is 'dead,' Stanford economist says by vidarh on Friday December 01, 2023 @10:23AM (#38487766)

Or executives believe it is beneficial for themselves. I've seen plenty of managers over the year manage by "perceived busy-ness", and managers who liked walking the floor and to get a feel for whether people are busy have to actually do real work to check when people work from home. Or execs are more likely to be extroverts who like their job because it provides an opportunity for them to be at the centre of a group of people. Or enough board members are also on the boards of companies that make a living from commercial real estate.

There are many options, and many of them can be true to various degrees at the same time.

When you fundamentally change a balance of anything you're likely to run into all kinds of odd entrenched interests you may never have thought about, in part because many of them may never have needed to assert themselves before.

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Re:Return to office is 'dead,' Stanford economist says by NoMoreNicksLeft on Friday December 01, 2023 @11:38AM (#38488732)

> Or executives believe it is beneficial for themselves.

I don't disagree with this. I do get that feeling that this is part of it...

But executives are often the ones trying to squeeze an extra dollar out of every line on the ledger. Are they really willing to spend so much extra for this perceived personal benefit? Are their bosses willing to indulge them like that?

These aren't insignificant costs. For gigantic companies, the big skyscraper headquarters in some world class city must comprise just as much of the budget as a more modest building for a more modest company in Oklahoma. They're spending millions for it.

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Re:Return to office is 'dead,' Stanford economist says by pgeorgi on Friday December 01, 2023 @11:52AM (#38488931)

But it's a cost they don't bear, it typically ends up in a different section of the balance sheet. And as soon as somebody else pays for it, personal benefit (perceived or real) takes the front seat. See business class pricing in travel, for example.

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Re:Return to office is 'dead,' Stanford economist says by vidarh on Friday December 01, 2023 @02:05PM (#38490791)

If their bosses do the same it won't be seen as indulgent. And indeed cargo cutting what their boss does might well be another aspect of it.

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Re:Return to office is 'dead,' Stanford economist says by tucnak on Friday December 01, 2023 @10:33AM (#38487904)

>Or executives believe it is beneficial for themselves.

It doesn't matter, the end-result is the same, and it's completely up to you to either recognise it, or be delusional about it. We all make that choice, it's just the majority of commentators choose to engage in semantics.

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Re:Return to office is 'dead,' Stanford economist says by vidarh on Friday December 01, 2023 @01:40PM (#38490501)

Motivations matter for those who want to understand how to address it.

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