The idea that we have to give up the only good part of the collective trauma we've all suffered because some real estate idiot made a bad investment is infuriating.
The link to the French website for Bullshit jobs (?) Seems to go nowhere, FYI
I actually had this conversation a week or two ago - though it was more focused on what those companies would need to do to get people to give up anywhere between 2-3 hours of time people realized the were functionally sacrificing between preparation and getting to/from work not to mention the stress.
The solution we came up with - for those who do want to come back - is "Pay your employees more. A *lot* more, 40-50% more
Because it isn't just those 2-3 hours of preparation, travel and stress, its also the parking, the "we're going to go get lunch (and if you want to still be a team player, you'll join us)", it's the babysitters, childcare.
Yep, it's awful they present that ultimatum, but many people are still better off even with unfair pay cuts. My university cut me loose, even after getting me to concede to lower pay and more work. They just don't get it. Yet another reason why we're in such a mess.
Another contributing factor is that employer’s like control. And when you’re in the office they can directly monitor you and have you on demand. Whenever a boss can’t reach someone the instant they want them, no matter how trivial of a request they might have, they childishly react and reform rules to suit their desires. I’ve directly witnessed this multiple times.
Employers think they own you once they hire you. It’s not enough to complete their tasks. They want to be able to tell you how to dress, speak, and behave while you’re “on their time” They want full spectrum domination and gratitude for throwing a few dollars at you while taking the majority of your time and free will away.
Even worse my company hired many, many offshore and non-local employees during Covid. My so called team is now not even in the same building. I’ve gone back to the office to sit in my cubicle area taking zoom meetings from there. Also, wasting 2-4 hours commuting everyday. Make me understand how this makes sense.
I get that the local coffee shops, restaurants and dry cleaners are hurt when office workers stay home. But can you clarify how does it help or hurt the corporations that leased the buildings to be filled with warm bodies or not? They have to make rent either way. Probably obvious, but I don’t get it.
It's the banks and billionaires who own the buildings that are hurt the worst, but if they fail it takes out large swaths of the economy with them. Some companies will just ditch their leases because they don't care, but many of them don't want banks to fail for a wide range of reasons. They don't want their stocks to tank in a market free fall, etc. Many of the CEOs, ex-CEOs, boards of directors, and major corporate investors also happen to own a lot of commercial real estate. They're all in bed with each other. Does that make sense?
Thanks for taking the time to reply. I understand that it’s bad to have a lease. You don’t need. But I’m not sure how filling the space with people makes a difference. I worked for IBM for several years. They concluded that they could be equally efficient and save money by reducing their office footprint. They actually encouraged people to do whatever made sense. Work in person when required and not when unnecessary. Obviously, the companies you are talking about, went in a different direction. But it’s still not clear to me how they make more money or lose more money if the office buildings are filled or not. They still have to pay for the leases that they contracted for, either way.maybe they want to justify those leases, but it doesn’t seem like justifying the leases actually earns them additional revenue. Or decreases their costs. Apologies for being so thick still.
Many local governments gave corporations like Amazon tax cuts because their office was going to bring a lot more local business, jobs and indirect taxes to them. These local governments are now threatening to withdraw those tax cuts because there's no critical mass of employees in office and hence the local businesses have to shut down and jobs are lost. These tax cuts represent a significant extra cost these corporations will have to bear.
I spent the last 12 years of my work life as a non-engineer working with a lot of engineers who designed many of the systems in place.
No engineer who designed a system that was proven to be flawed will ever allow it to scrapped and replaced. There were always new "patches" to address problems that should have been obvious from the outset.
Egos control so much of the corporate environment.
What about environment protection? Employees hit the roads, many times in private vehicles, not public transport and cause unnecessary pollution. Governments invest huge money to reduce CO2 emission... Work from home is not an obvious and "easy" solution to achieve it?
Yeah, i understand WFH implications on the economy and taxation, however Govs hire very talented people to raise new and new taxes, charges to compensate the loss, so I am not worried that I "contribute" less at the end...
You are missing tax abatements. Especially in southern states, corporations are already being given big deals on their real estate taxes. The expectation is the companies will hire people and bring them local. Those people will pay the taxes that fund infrastructure.
With workers realizing they do not have to be near tech hubs (often located in pretty citizen hostile states like Texas, Arizona and North Carolina), and can live in much nicer areas, this plan is backfiring as well.
I was in Berlin recently and that stuff happens here too, probably not 100% caused by the same factors but there is a recession here and the employers are following the US lead by forcing everyone to return.
And many of us are getting back which in turn puts even more pressure on those of us who can't entertain that idea any longer.
And I don't know what can be done about those practices.
What happens when the next pandemic comes? Or another war but closer this time?
I really like flex. I like being able to work from home, but when I really need to focus on something it does help to go to a dedicated environment. But that is for me! I have coworkers that I see maybe once a month if the weather is nice and I have other coworkers I see most days. It is a shame that I only have the office option because other teams are forced into the office.
In the EU country I live in, about 50% of the petrol cost is actually taxes going back to the government. So as much as they say we need to cut out on CO2 emissions*, absolutely no effort was made to help remote workers to stay WFH actually.
(*...I know there are EVs too, but their price is much less affordable, electricity costs has gone through the roof over the last couple of yrs, and we're too much north for PV pannels to help much for half of the year...)
You cannot go wrong quoting Bullshit Jobs about anything. Brilliant work by Graeber, and a refreshingly honest window into the toxic, wasteful and very costly aspects of capitalism culture, in both financial and human terms. He never says this outright in the book, but it is screamingly obvious that the cruelty is the point of bullshit jobs.
Do you have a source on the millions of working age Americans dead or disabled due to Covid? I could only find less than 300k under the age of 65 dead due to Covid (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/), would be curious to see a source on the other 700k unable to work due to COVID related disabilities.
Loathe as I am to reference the CDC, even they admit 7% of adults have reported having had Long COVID and 3.5% of which still did as of 2022, and that was before the more recent and more virulent strains. and it is considered a disability for the "long haulers"
The idea that we have to give up the only good part of the collective trauma we've all suffered because some real estate idiot made a bad investment is infuriating.
The link to the French website for Bullshit jobs (?) Seems to go nowhere, FYI
I actually had this conversation a week or two ago - though it was more focused on what those companies would need to do to get people to give up anywhere between 2-3 hours of time people realized the were functionally sacrificing between preparation and getting to/from work not to mention the stress.
The solution we came up with - for those who do want to come back - is "Pay your employees more. A *lot* more, 40-50% more
Because it isn't just those 2-3 hours of preparation, travel and stress, its also the parking, the "we're going to go get lunch (and if you want to still be a team player, you'll join us)", it's the babysitters, childcare.
It's a lot of things that all add up.
Thanks, I replaced the link with his book.
Never going back :) I’ll take pay cuts to stay remote if need be. Forget driving to Atlanta once a day! Those days are over for me. Good article.
Yep, it's awful they present that ultimatum, but many people are still better off even with unfair pay cuts. My university cut me loose, even after getting me to concede to lower pay and more work. They just don't get it. Yet another reason why we're in such a mess.
Have you read “The Honest Sorcerer” on Substack Jessica? Check that out if you haven’t
Another contributing factor is that employer’s like control. And when you’re in the office they can directly monitor you and have you on demand. Whenever a boss can’t reach someone the instant they want them, no matter how trivial of a request they might have, they childishly react and reform rules to suit their desires. I’ve directly witnessed this multiple times.
Employers think they own you once they hire you. It’s not enough to complete their tasks. They want to be able to tell you how to dress, speak, and behave while you’re “on their time” They want full spectrum domination and gratitude for throwing a few dollars at you while taking the majority of your time and free will away.
Even worse my company hired many, many offshore and non-local employees during Covid. My so called team is now not even in the same building. I’ve gone back to the office to sit in my cubicle area taking zoom meetings from there. Also, wasting 2-4 hours commuting everyday. Make me understand how this makes sense.
Good piece. Thanks for the insight, Jessica.
Meanwhile, inside the belly of the American propaganda construct, the gaslighting goes on and on.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2024/09/21/americas-happiest-employees-work-in-office-5-days-a-week-in-2024/
Super interesting read!
I get that the local coffee shops, restaurants and dry cleaners are hurt when office workers stay home. But can you clarify how does it help or hurt the corporations that leased the buildings to be filled with warm bodies or not? They have to make rent either way. Probably obvious, but I don’t get it.
It's the banks and billionaires who own the buildings that are hurt the worst, but if they fail it takes out large swaths of the economy with them. Some companies will just ditch their leases because they don't care, but many of them don't want banks to fail for a wide range of reasons. They don't want their stocks to tank in a market free fall, etc. Many of the CEOs, ex-CEOs, boards of directors, and major corporate investors also happen to own a lot of commercial real estate. They're all in bed with each other. Does that make sense?
Thanks for taking the time to reply. I understand that it’s bad to have a lease. You don’t need. But I’m not sure how filling the space with people makes a difference. I worked for IBM for several years. They concluded that they could be equally efficient and save money by reducing their office footprint. They actually encouraged people to do whatever made sense. Work in person when required and not when unnecessary. Obviously, the companies you are talking about, went in a different direction. But it’s still not clear to me how they make more money or lose more money if the office buildings are filled or not. They still have to pay for the leases that they contracted for, either way.maybe they want to justify those leases, but it doesn’t seem like justifying the leases actually earns them additional revenue. Or decreases their costs. Apologies for being so thick still.
Many local governments gave corporations like Amazon tax cuts because their office was going to bring a lot more local business, jobs and indirect taxes to them. These local governments are now threatening to withdraw those tax cuts because there's no critical mass of employees in office and hence the local businesses have to shut down and jobs are lost. These tax cuts represent a significant extra cost these corporations will have to bear.
I spent the last 12 years of my work life as a non-engineer working with a lot of engineers who designed many of the systems in place.
No engineer who designed a system that was proven to be flawed will ever allow it to scrapped and replaced. There were always new "patches" to address problems that should have been obvious from the outset.
Egos control so much of the corporate environment.
To put it another way, the CEOs who are actually doing their fiduciary duty to the corporations are not doing this. But how often does that happen?
The CEOs who are taking bribes from corporate real estate interests are doing this.
What about environment protection? Employees hit the roads, many times in private vehicles, not public transport and cause unnecessary pollution. Governments invest huge money to reduce CO2 emission... Work from home is not an obvious and "easy" solution to achieve it?
Yeah, i understand WFH implications on the economy and taxation, however Govs hire very talented people to raise new and new taxes, charges to compensate the loss, so I am not worried that I "contribute" less at the end...
You are missing tax abatements. Especially in southern states, corporations are already being given big deals on their real estate taxes. The expectation is the companies will hire people and bring them local. Those people will pay the taxes that fund infrastructure.
With workers realizing they do not have to be near tech hubs (often located in pretty citizen hostile states like Texas, Arizona and North Carolina), and can live in much nicer areas, this plan is backfiring as well.
It is a very sad article.
I am that white collar guy but from EU.
I was in Berlin recently and that stuff happens here too, probably not 100% caused by the same factors but there is a recession here and the employers are following the US lead by forcing everyone to return.
And many of us are getting back which in turn puts even more pressure on those of us who can't entertain that idea any longer.
And I don't know what can be done about those practices.
What happens when the next pandemic comes? Or another war but closer this time?
I really like flex. I like being able to work from home, but when I really need to focus on something it does help to go to a dedicated environment. But that is for me! I have coworkers that I see maybe once a month if the weather is nice and I have other coworkers I see most days. It is a shame that I only have the office option because other teams are forced into the office.
Another major chunk that will be hurt is car sellers and oil companies. Imagine no more commuting to office so less oil consumption.
In the EU country I live in, about 50% of the petrol cost is actually taxes going back to the government. So as much as they say we need to cut out on CO2 emissions*, absolutely no effort was made to help remote workers to stay WFH actually.
(*...I know there are EVs too, but their price is much less affordable, electricity costs has gone through the roof over the last couple of yrs, and we're too much north for PV pannels to help much for half of the year...)
You cannot go wrong quoting Bullshit Jobs about anything. Brilliant work by Graeber, and a refreshingly honest window into the toxic, wasteful and very costly aspects of capitalism culture, in both financial and human terms. He never says this outright in the book, but it is screamingly obvious that the cruelty is the point of bullshit jobs.
Do you have a source on the millions of working age Americans dead or disabled due to Covid? I could only find less than 300k under the age of 65 dead due to Covid (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/), would be curious to see a source on the other 700k unable to work due to COVID related disabilities.
Loathe as I am to reference the CDC, even they admit 7% of adults have reported having had Long COVID and 3.5% of which still did as of 2022, and that was before the more recent and more virulent strains. and it is considered a disability for the "long haulers"
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db480.htm#section_1
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/15/long-covid-symptoms-cdc
https://www.the-sentinel-intelligence.com/p/everything-that-friend-wants-you
https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/as-recommendations-for-isolation-end-how-common-is-long-covid/
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/survey-18-million-americans-say-they-have-long-covid
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/ahrq-survey-7-us-adults-reported-having-long-covid-early-2023