<story><title>Return to office is &apos;dead,&apos; Stanford economist says</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/30/return-to-office-is-dead-stanford-economist-says-heres-why.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>btbuildem</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s good to see the broad but anecdotal sentiment backed up by data.&lt;p&gt;The RTO&amp;#x2F;WFH struggle is clearly about money (what else could it be about in a corporate world?), and it&amp;#x27;s fascinating to watch some companies chew their own limbs off (metaphorically speaking) to appease investors-at-large.&lt;p&gt;Here I speculate, but the pattern seems to be that board members are involved with multiple organizations, and are stakeholders in even more - and those with ties to commercial real estate (and all the funds heavily invested into it) will do whatever it takes to push for higher office occupancy. At the same time, they&amp;#x27;re doing this (arguably) to a disadvantage to the companies they&amp;#x27;re supposed to steward - forcing best talent out, paying a premium for half-empty office space, and generally eroding morale by this display of duplicity.&lt;p&gt;At the same time, I love seeing the quiet resistance by the rank-and-file and even some middle management. The new reality is here, and there&amp;#x27;s no going back. The % of days WFH has flatlined, and I imagine over time it will begin to slowly but steadily trend back up.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>DrBazza</author><text>In broad strokes, it&amp;#x27;s just old vs new, and an age thing.  I&amp;#x27;ll pick &amp;#x27;40&amp;#x27; as the mid-point:&lt;p&gt;Old = over 40s (myself included) who are senior, their careers have been in offices and commuting, and still believe that &amp;#x27;managing people&amp;#x27; means real-life first person interaction, and are completely invested in offices, and the cost of paying for them, rather than downsizing.&lt;p&gt;Young = under 40s - have grown up with the internet, github, working&amp;#x2F;studying remotely and so on.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve worked in companies where the CEO and senior management are all 50 something, and in a couple of companies where they&amp;#x27;re all approaching 40.  Can you guess which company used PCs and which one used Macbooks?&lt;p&gt;Going back further, I can remember working on Sun boxes, because management was reluctant to use that &amp;#x27;new fangled NT3.51 or even NT4.0&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;The point being, as the workforce demographic changes, so will the opinions and approaches.  And the cycle will repeat.</text></comment>
<story><title>Return to office is &apos;dead,&apos; Stanford economist says</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/30/return-to-office-is-dead-stanford-economist-says-heres-why.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>btbuildem</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s good to see the broad but anecdotal sentiment backed up by data.&lt;p&gt;The RTO&amp;#x2F;WFH struggle is clearly about money (what else could it be about in a corporate world?), and it&amp;#x27;s fascinating to watch some companies chew their own limbs off (metaphorically speaking) to appease investors-at-large.&lt;p&gt;Here I speculate, but the pattern seems to be that board members are involved with multiple organizations, and are stakeholders in even more - and those with ties to commercial real estate (and all the funds heavily invested into it) will do whatever it takes to push for higher office occupancy. At the same time, they&amp;#x27;re doing this (arguably) to a disadvantage to the companies they&amp;#x27;re supposed to steward - forcing best talent out, paying a premium for half-empty office space, and generally eroding morale by this display of duplicity.&lt;p&gt;At the same time, I love seeing the quiet resistance by the rank-and-file and even some middle management. The new reality is here, and there&amp;#x27;s no going back. The % of days WFH has flatlined, and I imagine over time it will begin to slowly but steadily trend back up.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>matthewmcg</author><text>Great point on potentially overlapping board membership. More broadly, there&amp;#x27;s also a theory that growing common ownership by index funds and others with significant commercial real estate exposure is driving this pressure.</text></comment>