Real Estate Crash thread

[Mustonen]

I work for a global company. Most employees on-site, but certain roles are almost exclusively remote. Has been like that for 30+ years.

I’ve been remote for about 15 years, in a role that isn’t typically remote, since they wanted to keep me even though I was moving across country regardless.

The idea that your job is going to be in jeopardy just because it’s remote is a bit naive I think. I just lost a co-worker in a similar role to me, who had been with us for a few years, because he couldn’t perform. He was in office full time.

I do agree that on-boarding is more difficult with everyone being remote. I worked on-site for 5+ years before going remote.

Where I work remote is primarily a privilege for established employees who have some skillset we can’t easily hire off the street. They’ve mostly been people who did exactly what you did - moved and we made them remote to keep them. Good people are hard to find and nice to keep.

A lot of it comes down to who you work with. Most of us here are pretty comfortable with expressing ourselves on a keyboard, and we’d probably be able to collaborate effectively on a project together and get to know each other and establish rapport. That is not my boss, though, so I’m in the office 4-5 days a week. Is what it is.

If people can fall in love online, they can do just about any job that doesn’t require lifting and carrying online. It’s just not for everybody.

[AdironRider]

As one of those soul sucking corpo bean counters I can guarantee you that it has nothing to do with commercial real estate. The savings on a commercial lease is peanuts compared to the potential of hiring a bunch’s of Gerrys from Kansas at half the big city rate. The problem is productivity loss and on boarding efficiency. Remote only results in a new employee taking twice as long to get up to speed (if they get up to speed at all) which is incredibly expensive and then the established employees almost universally regress in terms of productivity which costs even more, outside of sales guys who were home office based for the most part to begin with. A bad manager is a bad manager regardless of whether their staff is remote or not, but after three years it is almost a universal regression in production from employees that are fully remote. Upper management isn’t blind and sees everyone fucking off skiing on pow days. One missed impromptu zoom call and the gig is up.

That said, hybrid with shared workstations seems to be the sweet spot. 2-3 days remote keeps employees happy and allows them to do the more menial but necessary tasks and 2-3 days in the office keeps people accountable and production and advancement levels high.

[Foggy_Goggles]

That said, hybrid with shared workstations seems to be the sweet spot. 2-3 days remote keeps employees happy and allows them to do the more menial but necessary tasks and 2-3 days in the office keeps people accountable and production and advancement levels high.

...and this is what you want. If's you've got a high paying job in a location you want to live that probably has a high cost of living, you don't want the competition for your job to be able to live in Bangladesh or Tulsa. I know you think that your awesomeness will overcome and in the short term that may work on an individual basis but that's not sustainable.

There are certainly jobs that can be largely remote. One's I know of are financial analyst, medical imaging reader and construction estimator. But same goes, I'd be proactively looking to schedule in person team meetings, lunch reviews with my boss, trips to introduce myself to new hires and so on. Not because it is necessary or valuable, but because this work this is a fucking game and that's part of playing the game to win.

[J. Barron DeJong]

For the record, I’ve never just ghosted work for a powder day. I have taken PTO on short notice for a powder day.

If you’re not actually at your computer doing your work, that’s going to catch up with you. (I’d hope. Bad sign for the company’s future if you can get away with it.)

For a long time I’ve told people my ideal situation would be two days in the office, three at home. If my office was only a 10-15 minute commute, not 30 minutes, or an hour, or on the other side of the country in a city I don’t want to live near.

[J. Barron DeJong]

...and this is what you want. If's you've got a high paying job in a location you want to live that probably has a high cost of living, you don't want the competition for your job to be able to live in Bangladesh or Tulsa. I know you think that your awesomeness will overcome and in the short term that may work on an individual basis but that's not sustainable.

There are certainly jobs that can be largely remote. One's I know of are financial analyst, medical imaging reader and construction estimator. But same goes, I'd be proactively looking to schedule in person team meetings, lunch reviews with my boss, trips to introduce myself to new hires and so on. Not because it is necessary or valuable, but because this work this is a fucking game and that's part of playing the game to win.

So our company actually has offices in China, with Chinese engineers in the same role as me. Has been that way for 10+ years. No sign of a threat for them displacing our North American or European counterparts in any way. It just doesn’t work like that, at least for our organization, and our business.

If I worked for a company that required ‘playing the game’ like you’re suggesting, I’d be looking for a new place of employment.

[schuss]

For the record, I’ve never just ghosted work for a powder day. I have taken PTO on short notice for a powder day.

If you’re not actually at your computer doing your work, that’s going to catch up with you. (I’d hope. Bad sign for the company’s future if you can get away with it.)

For a long time I’ve told people my ideal situation would be two days in the office, three at home. If my office was only a 10-15 minute commute, not 30 minutes, or an hour, or on the other side of the country in a city I don’t want to live near.

Yeah, honestly most remote problems are just lazy management. It takes longer, but the talent pool is bonkers compared to local. I went from 20-30 resumes to 600+

[oldnew_guy]

As one of those soul sucking corpo bean counters I can guarantee you that it has nothing to do with commercial real estate. The savings on a commercial lease is peanuts compared to the potential of hiring a bunch’s of Gerrys from Kansas at half the big city rate. The problem is productivity loss and on boarding efficiency. Remote only results in a new employee taking twice as long to get up to speed (if they get up to speed at all) which is incredibly expensive and then the established employees almost universally regress in terms of productivity which costs even more, outside of sales guys who were home office based for the most part to begin with. A bad manager is a bad manager regardless of whether their staff is remote or not, but after three years it is almost a universal regression in production from employees that are fully remote. Upper management isn’t blind and sees everyone fucking off skiing on pow days. One missed impromptu zoom call and the gig is up.

That said, hybrid with shared workstations seems to be the sweet spot. 2-3 days remote keeps employees happy and allows them to do the more menial but necessary tasks and 2-3 days in the office keeps people accountable and production and advancement levels high.

I'm waiting to see the numbers on the fully remote productivity. I keep seeing/read it said, but I've yet to see the numbers. You are a self-described bean counter, so no reason to think your company isn't seeing this actually happening.

The reporting on this seems really mixed, with some articles describing productivity increases and some describing productivity decreases. I'm a little suspicious of the timing of the "recession is coming!" and "remote work hurts productivity" headlines nearly coinciding. The productivity thing in particular seems to coincide with switching from full remote to hybrid, not just a decline in remote work productivity. It also seems like it's not the remote workers productivity, its the whole picture of developing staff across the organization.

My organization produced more projects, for more money, with less people and more turnover than it ever did in it's history during full remote work.

Other factors that obviously come in to play:

- Did the company drag their feet regarding setting up policies and their systems for remote work, or was there always a posture of "we will be coming back to the office some day"?
- Does your job require constant interface with people or long sustained periods where you actually get work done? (I'm in the latter camp, so working in the office typically means I schedule all my meetings and plan on lots of interruptions those days)
- Are your co workers and project owners actually co-located? Most of my in office meetings are via teleconference anyways because at least one person isn't physically located there anyways IE - the project owner/client is in another state.

I tend to agree that hybrid is the way to go. For me I can deal with traffic a couple days a week so I can do the same work and have the same teleconference meetings to make the bosses happy, gets the new people up to speed faster and gives me the flexibility I want.

I know that if they make me commute 3-5 days a week versus 2 I'll be finding a job much closer to my current living situation.

[Mustonen]

If I worked for a company that required ‘playing the game’ like you’re suggesting, I’d be looking for a new place of employment.

These games exist at every company. They’re not setup to be games and they vary between companies, but they’re still games and you describe the games at your company in your posts. Honestly, sounds a bit boring if there’s literally no way to maximize what’s important to you.

[Foggy_Goggles]

That game is called work. That's why you don't do it for free. Get paid, try to enjoy it, minimal impacts to the rest of your life, sleep well, don't hate your customers & go workers, be able to get and enjoy time off and so on. If that shit is on auto pilot and you don't consider it a game, you are in the minority.

No pay increased or chance for advancement, being chained to the desk for no reason, having contempt for everything and everybody, taking your baggage home. That shit is losing the game. We are all trying for some type of balance.

[altasnob]

Other than control and work force reduction I believe there are philosophical reasons. Look what remote work has done to sf and ny. Economic structures completely gutted; local money velocity gone. It may be the wrong ideal but I wouldn’t underestimate the macro reasoning. Mobility, even if it is forced, creates demand for services.

From NYTimes this morning:

[anotherVTskibum]

So our company actually has offices in China, with Chinese engineers in the same role as me. Has been that way for 10+ years. No sign of a threat for them displacing our North American or European counterparts in any way. It just doesn’t work like that, at least for our organization, and our business.

If I worked for a company that required ‘playing the game’ like you’re suggesting, I’d be looking for a new place of employment.

For what it's worth, in my previous role I was doing software engineering and went from in person to remote (submit story to what someone else mentioned, I was moving regardless and they wanted to keep me on). The company did already have about 30% fully remote workers as a result of a merger a few years before I started, where the company they acquired was located on the opposite coast.

We outsourced bigger development projects, as we simply didn't have the staff in house to maintain existing stuff and build the next big thing. We used both foreign (Eastern European, Indian, and Australian) and domestic contractors. The domestic (and Australian) ones were way more expensive and, despite management hating their rates, we tended to keep going back in that direction--each time we tried to save money I spent more time fixing the stuff they built. As a result, I'm strongly of the mind that those contractors aren't a significant threat to my job prospects, and the American contractors charge enough that a company that wants in-house staff can make a convincing economic argument and still pay decently.

[I Skied Bandini Mountain]

From NYTimes this morning:

I hope all those californians that moved to Austin during Covid are enjoying the 107 degree temps in mid June.

[oldnew_guy]

From NYTimes this morning:

Portland, OR population actually declined the last few years due to out migration.

[skaredshtles]

These games exist at every company. They’re not setup to be games and they vary between companies, but they’re still games and you describe the games at your company in your posts. Honestly, sounds a bit boring if there’s literally no way to maximize what’s important to you.

Maximizing not working is what's important to me.

[nickwm21]

Different jobs are… different.

The closer your role is to the production of tangible goods or physical services the more you need to be near the action.

The younger / less experienced you are or the more you are in a position that trains and mentors the young / less experienced, the more benefit there is to be there in person.

The “conversations between conversations” matter when you are in a high risk industry; either life & limb risk, or money risk.

FTWFH went from approximately 4% to 12%. So, yeah, massive change but still quite a minority.

Hybrid is obviously where a lot of standard office jobs have ended up, which seems correct. I’m full time in person, I have no choice with my career. I have noticed the traffic differences based on the hybrid work, y’all seemed to all decide to come in on Tuesdays…


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[Danno]

. I have noticed the traffic differences based on the hybrid work, y’all seemed to all decide to come in on Tuesdays…

Funny, my office is hybrid, with people working anywhere from 1-4 days/week in the office. I was told that the day that had by far the most logistics difficulties re offices was Tuesdays.

[nickwm21]

Tuesdays are the most common day to schedule recurring meetings; Monday has the most US holidays, Thursday and Friday are the most common PTO days, and Wednesdays, fuck Wednesdays


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[XXX-er]

Different jobs are… different.

The closer your role is to the production of tangible goods or physical services the more you need to be near the action.

I honestly don't know how I could have lasted if i wasn't always leaving as oposed to driving a desk in an office

I probably left about 10,000 times so like a 30yr road trip.


I hear alot of ex Cali types are moving to Nevada

[rideit]

AI is gonna take away the office jobs anyway...

[mud]

The smart people will be OK, the idiots are going to have a hard time but hey we haven’t had any labor riots lately so maybe something good will happen from the fallout.

[J. Barron DeJong]

That game is called work. That's why you don't do it for free. Get paid, try to enjoy it, minimal impacts to the rest of your life, sleep well, don't hate your customers & go workers, be able to get and enjoy time off and so on. If that shit is on auto pilot and you don't consider it a game, you are in the minority.

No pay increased or chance for advancement, being chained to the desk for no reason, having contempt for everything and everybody, taking your baggage home. That shit is losing the game. We are all trying for some type of balance.

What I’m saying is that people at our company seem to advance based on competence/performance, not schmoozing and sucking up to the higher ups. Those types don’t seem to stay around for very long.

[californiagrown]

What I’m saying is that people at our company seem to advance based on competence/performance, not schmoozing and sucking up to the higher ups. Those types don’t seem to stay around for very long.

It's not schmoozing and sucking up to your boss, it's learning how to develop relationships with clients and who at the client to develop relationships with and then also how to get credit internally for the wins. It's really rare that someone advances very far past where merit alone would place them ime.

[Mustonen]

What I’m saying is that people at our company seem to advance based on competence/performance, not schmoozing and sucking up to the higher ups. Those types don’t seem to stay around for very long.

Those that suck up without building relationships fizzle out = game.

It’s all a fucking game. Get off your high horse.

[liv2ski]

Maximizing not working is what's important to me.

In that we are in agreement...

[m2711c]

ditto...