Economists say the work-from-home trend, which was widespread during the pandemic, won't diminish to its pre-Covid level because it's profitable for employers.

KEY POINTS

  • Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, whom President-elect Donald Trump appointed to lead a new government efficiency team, said they intend to call federal employees back to the office five days a week.
  • Companies such as Amazon and The Washington Post are adopting a similar policy in 2025.
  • But many companies will keep remote or hybrid work arrangements, largely because they boost profits, economists said.
  • Some view return-to-office mandates as a stealthy way to reduce employee head count.
  • Brkdncr@lemmy.world
    150·
    6 days ago

    Neither of these assholes have ever had a real job. Not even a high paying real job.

    Billionaires are a problem.

    • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
      84·
      6 days ago

      Clearly you’re living a life of luxury and privilege unlike ordinary hard-working folk like… (tries to keep straight face)… Elon Musk.

    • Curious Canid@lemmy.caEnglish
      27·
      6 days ago

      Me too. Musk can’t actually manage people, but he can pretend more convincingly if he can see them in person and yell at them. There are a lot of managers like that and there are far more executives.

      My company looked at the actual business results from the period of COVID remote work. Productivity went up, so they decided to keep things that way. It also allowed them to get rid of all their office space, except for a sparsely populated headquarters building, which is saving them a lot of money.

      Most studies have shown that workers were more efficient when working remotely. Why would any executive want to reduce efficiency and increase infrastructure costs? The Return-To-Office push is not rational. It represents an inability to adapt to changing conditions. If boards were doing their jobs, they would be quietly showing those executives the door and looking for better people to run their companies.

      • krashmo@lemmy.world
        7·
        6 days ago

        It’s not irrational it just has more to do with corporate real estate and control than productivity or employee satisfaction. Large companies don’t do anything solely for the benefit of their employees.

        • Mirshe@lemmy.world
          4·
          6 days ago

          Especially with land prices trending upwards. You don’t want to be the exec who has to explain that yes, productivity is up 15%, but you’re sitting on a skyscraper that nobody wants to buy because it’s worth $60mil or whatever.

        • Curious Canid@lemmy.caEnglish
          21·
          5 days ago

          I think it is irrational, in the sense that executives’ sole legal responsibility, at least in the US, is to make as much money as possible for their shareholders. Favoring control over productivity is a violation of that. They are gratifying their egos instead of doing their jobs.

          Of course, in a sane world, how they treat their employees would be an issue, not just profitability.

      • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
        6·
        6 days ago

        The Return-To-Office push is not rational.

        Like most stupid things in our world, it’s about emotions.

        This topic is funny to me because I worked for a place that was all about data. Data driven decisions. They had tshirts made that said like “Data > Feelings”.

        And yet when people brought up to the CEO stuff like studies showing WFH or 4-day-workweeks were effective, he just said “Nah, we’re not doing that.”. No discussion. No looking at the data. Just no.

        To his credit, that CEO did run a profitable startup with barely any funding, so he wasn’t a total fool. But on that kind of stuff he was a total gutfeel asshole.

        • Curious Canid@lemmy.caEnglish
          6·
          5 days ago

          People who run startups, even the successful ones, tend to be awful to their employees. I should say, especially the successful ones.

      • bitchkat@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        5 days ago

        The owner of a previous company is a lot like that. He is way more comfortable walking around and seeing people toiling away. I told him I’m perfectly capable of sitting in the office and looking busy for 8 hours.

        He treats the place like a convenience store and assumes everyone is stealing from the till.

    • undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch
      91·
      6 days ago

      Me too (exact same year)! It weirds me out when people are like “you never went back to the office?” Back? Why would I go in the first place? 🤣

  • synae[he/him]@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    67·
    6 days ago

    Ok, let’s say it is a covid-era privilege. Why does that mean it has to go away? Why can’t it be a modern day innovation? Isn’t it a curb on vehicle emissions? More spending money in people’s wallets if they’re not paying for gas or coffee or meals on the go due to commuting? What’s the fuckin downside?? We stumbled upon a good thing

    Oh fuck, I forgot the real estate prices. My bad. Yea let’s cancel this whole thing

    • theneverfox@pawb.socialEnglish
      43·
      5 days ago

      You forgot, it saves people 30 mins - 2 hours every day. What are they going to do with that time? Enjoy themselves? Advocate for their own interests?

      No, clearly this cannot stand

      • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
        1·
        5 days ago

        If someone still has secret guilt of this looking like a conspiracy thing - it isn’t, there’s buying and there’s buying out on markets, these are different.

        Also a pretty normal thing for authoritarian governments to make honey pots for intelligent people, so that they’d work in some kinda useful, but more importantly well-paid positions different from where they could make a difference.

        I still think there are 3 other components, all of which can be considered good to some degree - 1) feeling of belonging and, ahem, of hierarchy, people all seeing each other and their employer, 2) less disruption in case of connectivity problems, 3) better understanding of processes and dynamics when in one location. To be clear, 1 is bs, 2 is factual, but can be negotiated for some skeleton group, 3 is bs. But some people make think this way without malice.

        Makes me wonder, though, when they say Musk has ASD, how in hell would he be against remote work. Other than commute being hard, actually being present among all those people, boss or not (even worse when boss), should be exhausting. There is that pop culture idea that ASD is connected to being very intelligent (actually no, just caring about interests above social needs), so perhaps it’s a PR thing and he really doesn’t have it.

        • theneverfox@pawb.socialEnglish
          6·
          5 days ago

          No, you don’t understand… This isn’t a “the government is doing this to control people” kind of conspiracy

          This is a “consulting firms like McKinsey have been quietly but openly pushing the idea of exploiting workers to keep them too busy to advocate for their interests for the last 50 years, using concepts such as corporate culture, surpressing wages, and most recently return to office” thing

          It’s the investigative journalism kind of conspiracy

        • fluxion@lemmy.worldEnglish
          6·
          5 days ago

          Musk didn’t say he was against remote work for himself. This is for peons like the American worker class, not for the ruling oligarchy.

          But I also wouldn’t be surprised if ASD is just PR to help explain away some truly disturbing behavior throughout Musk’s career.

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
      16·
      5 days ago

      Isn’t it a curb on vehicle emissions?

      Welllll, Elon owns a large share of a company that makes vehicles. So the more people drive, the better for him.

    • evilcultist@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      11·
      5 days ago

      It’s also incredibly fucked up that they’re worried about real estate prices falling in an economy where so many are having a problem paying rent or owning a house.

    • fluxion@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      5 days ago

      They thank us by directly using their endless wealth to fuck us out of our last bit of political/economic power

  • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
    451·
    6 days ago

    Can Musk please, please, please, just fucking die already? Preferably burnt to death while trapped in a cybertruck. He’s just so stupid and has too much power, and I’m tired of people treating him like he’s worth more than utter contempt.

    Ramaswamy can go, too. Conspiracy theory peddling sycophant.

  • mint_tamas@lemmy.world
    22·
    5 days ago

    I’ve been working remotely long before the pandemic and I will continue to do so - I’m far from being alone in that. Also, we are still in the “covid-era”, we just collectively decided to pretend we aren’t.

      • Lodespawn@aussie.zoneEnglish
        7·
        6 days ago

        Didnt you hear he personally unlocked the Trump hotel bomb for law enforcement and sent them the surveillance footage of it being charged?

  • apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world
    24·
    6 days ago

    I worked at a national company of some fame for nearly 20 years. They have two main offices, one in the midwest and one in New England. Before COVID, it was common for folks to work from home, spread across the United States. We even had some fringe cases where people lived in England or Japan and worked from there. I don’t work there anymore, but I hear post covid they are forcing people to move and work from the office. It really is leadership brain rot, everywhere, regardless of industry.

  • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
    12·
    5 days ago

    The company I work for is pushing almost all of IT to WFH so they can get rid of all the office space they’re renting. It actually kind of sucks for me because I don’t like working from home.