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Comment by A4ET8a8uTh0 | Hacker News Reader

The whole thing is complicated and companies do, eventually, adjust.

Anecdote. I am in process of looking for a full time remote since my mega boss decided that hybrid is good enough for me and no amount of paperwork could convince her otherwise. Right now I am remote until delta dies off or HR changes its mind.

I told no to recruiter 2 weeks ago, because the job was not remote. Just today it seems the company received a lot of nos, because I got a very similar job description and it is now remote.

Now.. the companies are trying to make remote less appealing ( and trying to argue that you should be paid less ), but, quite frankly, remote is worth a lot to me now. You would think smart companies would want to use it to their advantage.

Instead, most of the stories I hear from my social circle goes smth like this 'old guard wants us back in office'.

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I really do think the “old guard” has the most to lose from commercial real estate investments.

Think about who sits on the board for a major company… It’s owners and executives from commercial real estate firms. There is a ton of money around commercial real estate, so letting it all just collapse (or losing even 10% of that market) is billions of dollars shifted around the economy.

Most “normal” people who are working from home have little interest in commercial property (aside from a REIT, maybe), so they don’t care at all if the office buildings go empty.

It’s not hard to imagine the board rooms having these discussions and being pushed toward getting people back in the office. And it’s evident they are pushing the propaganda machine with effectiveness studies and articles about how remote work doesn’t work.

I'm skeptical that executives in commercial real estate have that much leverage over major corporations. I expect things like a bias towards the status quo, sunk cost fallacies, concerns about long-term culture/productivity, and so forth are more than enough to make companies hesitant to go mostly/fully remote.

It depends if said corporations own the building / land or not.

Even if they don’t directly own the land, at some point organizations likely service companies that would be impacted by a drop.

And once an organization gets to a certain size it just makes sense to run and buy your own properties.

I think there is also a lot of commercial real estate tied up in derivatives.

Looking at this in another way. Of the 5 managers i know at the bank i'm working in (and i'm pretty high up since the sbject i'm working on is transversal to 90% of devs teams in the bank), all of them have real estate. Either because they are now old and invested early (in the 2000's), or because they inherited it. I'm not talking about one or two appartments, i'm talking about whole buildings in Paris and Villas on the Cote d'azur. The incentives are here, not only for the executive but also for the middle-high managment.

Exactly - board members / senior executives are the people who can afford to invest in commercial real estate.

What evidence do you have that major companies' boards are filled with "executives from commercial real estate firms?"

Sorry and thank you for calling it out.

I should have written “Executives with interest in commercial real estate”. From heads of consulting firms to executives with commercial real estate in their own organizations, nearly all of them have a strong interest in commercial real estate doing well. I would expect most, if not all large companies to have exposure to commercial real estate and many make a lot of money from building and investing in commercial real estate.

But the people that have the strongest interest in this doing well are the people who are in the boardroom. I really think there are few similar issues where the interest of the board and the interest of employees are opposed (many workers want to stay home, many board members want them back in the office).

Take Google - Robin L. Washington sits on Google’s board and also Honeywell’s. Honeywell has $5 BN on their books in “Property, plant, and equipment”. Not sure how much of that is office buildings vs. manufacturing, but still even 10% is $500 M.

It’s not like it’s some major conspiracy, it’s just that boards are small, you can make hops between large companies, and it only takes a small push to make all large corporations lean toward return to work. For most companies with exposure to real estate it makes sense. Most others’ (I’d argue) have board members with an interest in propping up commercial real estate. Most common people do not have a direct interest, but will feel pain if the commercial real estate market significantly changes.

> Now.. the companies are trying to make remote less appealing ( and trying to argue that you should be paid less ), but, quite frankly, remote is worth a lot to me now.

If remote is itself valuable to you then it would stand that companies could get away with offering a lower salary for remote work, at least in your case.

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