this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
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I think return to office mandates are silly. Regardless, it's more about maintaining the office market values, right? So basically need to accept that's where things are going and that will inevitably happen.
I'm not an economist, so I don't know the full implications of it all, but I know things will be in for a ride.
I don't know how this property values thing just became accepted knowledge, but it's nonsense. Most companies don't own their own office space, and for the ones that do, it's a cost centre they'd prefer not to have on the books.
I've also seen absolutely no evidence that this is a factor in their decisions, and you'd expect at least one CEO to let the truth slip if this was the case.
And yet people keep parroting it.
Commercial leases are not always a 1 year lease though, like an apartment. They could be in a 10 year lease so I think it's still valid a lot of times. Obviously there are also additional factors but some companies are still stuck paying for a building they can't use.
Sunk cost fallacy. This is not difficult to grasp. The money is gone regardless of whether people are in the building.
It's parroted because it's correct. It doesn't matter if companies own the building or not, because leases are often on 7 or 10 year terms--sometimes more. They're stuck paying that and associated baseline heating, electrical, etc. costs.
That's exactly how the Sunk Cost fallacy works. CEO's don't let it slip because nobody wants to admit they've fallen for a fallacy; that's assuming they recognize where they've gone wrong in the first place.
Conversely, look at what evidence they're providing that return to office mandates are better. Lots of vague statements about "ideas coming out of random encounters in the hallway" with no actual evidence to back it up. It's certainly none of the reasons they provide, so we should go looking for others. Sunk Cost of real estate fits their behavior pretty well.
There was an article a while back about how RTO brings profits to stores inside the office buildings - gift shops, restaurants, etc. Externally speaking: oil companies. There is a lot of vampirism involved in RTO that is obvious... and far more that's not.
Iirc a key problem is a lot of these companies used their office space as collateral for loans. They literally cannot afford to have the value of that office space degrade so forcing everyone back into the office seems like the only solution to them.
Nevermind that it's not a sustainable tactic long term but smart business decisions isn't something I expect from companies operating with permanent debt anyway.