I would love to have enough time and money to go to an office to work all day
slate.com
slate.com
Every article discussing this issue imagines the commute to be a static, never changing situation as if it were a law of nature.
IOW, even the idea of maybe improving transportation, and housing, so that people can live close to where offices would be located and/or improve transportation options so your commute isn’t a 30 min drive if you’re lucky, but could also be a comfortable and safe bike ride, easy bus transportation in a dedicated lane, or clean and modern subways, isn’t even considered.
The real tragedy isn’t WFH vs RTO. The real tragedy is that Americans have built a country where stepping out of your home once a day is a miserable chore to be avoided at all costs if possible.
This is exactly it for me. The job I've held for many years is in Seattle's city limits and my family has lived in Seattle for even longer. I intentionally looked for a job here because I gave up driving years ago, as did my wife. My children have never learned to drive or have a license.
Meanwhile, many of my colleagues have moved to Auburn or Kent or Edmonds or Snohomish, insisting that it's not possible to raise a child in the city (my kids would beg to disagree) or seeking the "American Dream" of a standalone house. But every single one of them complained about the hours of their lives they were giving away in exchange for that.
I think it's fine to build transit to the suburbs. It doesn't have to be light rail, though there's a well-known rail bias, but we've proven that frequent express buses from regional centers can work. Commuting is a drag, that's why I don't do it.
(My employer also went to open plan spaces for technical and administrative staff before the pandemic. As we are a medical group, doctors still had their own doors, of course. Now, we have sold one office building and given up the lease on another. Technical and admin staff are fully remote but can use a company-paid WeWork account if we like. Medical staff are in the remaining office building and our patient care locations.)
Who's "we"? Seattle's express busses, at least outside the downtown core, have been a joke for a long time. Every half hour at absolute peak for ST routes like the 545/522 and stopping hours before bars and nightlife close so good luck getting home.
Admittedly they were better than the awful suburban alternatives - for a long time the fastest bus route from my eastside house to Microsoft was to take one express bus 45-60 minutes to downtown Seattle and another one 30-45 minutes east to Redmond because the other north/south connections are that bad. I wouldn't call that proof that they can work.
And of course that's ignoring the current light rail split. If you don't want to go somewhere directly on the light rail line (let's say South Lake Union, since we're commuting) you could previously take an bus from Woodinville, Kirkland, or Redmond into downtown Seattle and with a single transfer get where you want to go.
Post-light rail good luck. The 522 will drop you off in Northgate, where you can walk a few blocks to light rail, ride a few stops, walk a few more blocks, and catch another bus. 1h43min with 2 transfers at peak commuting hours or a 28min drive. If that's success I hope never to see failure.
The dedicated bus lanes and app to tell you estimated arrival time based on location data were particularly good touches. I would consider Seattle bus system to be among the best in the states.
Edit: IMO the key to easy commuting in Seattle is to plan your life in a way that you minimize the number of times you have to cross a lake, canal, or bay.
This is despite every-7-minute service and dedicated bus lanes.
Seattle might have some of the best bus service in the US, but bus transit is objectively worse than rail transit on a separated grade. (And on this point, one of Sound Transit's worst decisions was building at-grade light rail, which essentially turns Link into a streetcar for substantial portions of its route.)
Curious about what your mortgage payment is, verses someone who buys it at current value. If it’s more than a few years, can be 2-3x more given property values and interest rate
You mean stepping out of your home early in the morning, and not returning to your home until dusk?
I step out of my home at least four times each day, and I love it.
It's good to hear different points of view.
The generation raised post ww2 lived through the height of the cold War. American supremacy was built into every part of society. In many ways it was true. But America has stagnated in some ways and gone "full capitalism" in others,and so now (from outside) it seems that lead has slipped.
Acknowledging that you're "not the best" is a very sobering day ,a day collective America has yet to experience.
So internally in America messaging stays firm - we're the best at everything,all the time. Sometimes this is true (particularly if you add the phrase "if you can afford it")
Without getting political, you see this in the MAGA movement. There's a desire to return to the psychology of the 50s and 60s ,where we could legitimately feel like we're in front. Or at least if all the whiners would stop complaining,I could go back to believing we're perfect in every way.
Progressiveness implies change,and since we're perfect change can only be bad.
Of course this psychology is not universal.more than half the country believes change is required,and are Psychologically prepared for it. The other half are not yet ready to believe "we can do better ".
That doesn't make any sense. If everything was great there wouldn't be any need to "make America great again".
Psychologically MAGA appeals to the folk who want to "feel like we're perfect" - emphasis on "feel". It's hard to argue that America has every been "great" - for all Americans. But certainly there's a period where a large chunk of the population _felt_ great.
The current political movement is trying to re-create that feeling. Perhaps the slogan is more like "Make (some parts) of America Feel Great Again". MSPAFGA doesn't quite roll off the tongue though.
Again, I'm not trying to be political here, as much as understand the psychology of the era. MAGA is a sub-set of Americans, and I'm not suggesting that it represents the feelings of everyone in a specific party. But clearly there is some proportion of Americans who resonate with the message - absent any actual policy suggestions.
I think focusing on these sorts of domestic social issues misses a huge part of the point. To borrow a phrase from another presidential campaign, "it's the economy, stupid". If there's a downturn and people are getting laid off from their jobs, or if there's inflation, people are going to feel like the country isn't doing well. Especially when you can tell a compelling narrative about how it's the fault of other countries. A huge part of the MAGA narrative was about China and Mexico ripping us off in unfair trade deals because the US government is terrible at negotiating, so we should elect a strong, tough negotiator.
And you can sort of extend this into foreign policy as well. Trump's foreign policy was scatterbrained from a policy perspective, but from a psychological perspective, there was a very consistent theme. Project strength. Don't look weak. Be a tough negotiator. Pull out of deals where we're getting screwed. Play hardball. The core of the MAGA message was about winning. It was a mantra, everything from "America doesn't win anymore" to "you're going to get tired of winning". Nostalgia is part of it, but so is power.
I also think people are nostalgic for the post-war era when the US produced the most steel, the most cars, the most oil, and everyone could get a middle class job and buy a house and a car or two, even on a single income. That nostalgia is almost universal and bipartisan. Some people emphasize stronger unions and lower income inequality, some people emphasize the role of foreign trade, some people emphasize both. It depends on what narrative you're telling and who you want to blame. But at this point, the nostalgia itself is old enough that it isn't directly personal for the majority of voters anymore.
I used to be an urbanist, too. Lived in Seattle and didn’t own a car for many years. But there are some real problems in our cities, and virtually no urbanists are serious about solving them. In fact, many will make fun of you for bringing them up. (Not that it’s easy to tell given the equal lack of progress on housing and transportation.)
Politics is a grotesque dance between the demagogues and the mob. A sane human being’s best interest is probably to just avoid being stepped on.
But it’s not all bad. The commute between the bedroom and the home office is pretty great.
What happens to those of us who have spouses, their work locations, children, their schools and so on to worry about?
Combine that with the constant disruptions to public transport here and it's very common for it to take 2 hours to get into work in the morning.
I would just quit if they mandated RTO, unless they're going to pay me enough to afford a similar standard of living close to the office I'm not interested at all.
i.e. they don't care.
There's plenty of abandoned malls and shopping centers that could become offices, such as what Rackspace did.
Instead these companies locate downtown, where parking is crazy, crime is high, tons of crowds, and everything is expensive.
The suburb model has been done by other companies that aren't hip start ups or tech.
Maybe it's time for these businesses to relocate?
Fordlandia was already tried. Business clusters are the way to stay competitive.
Hold up right there, the length of the commute is not a problem. A 5min walk also means 20min prep, absolute best case you spend 30min/day & 10h month on this.
And that is just one problem.
Tech is so frustrating. You have real solved problems and people resist tech and you have things like being forced to use apps for everything and people are ok with that.
There is the interruptions, inevitable social conflicts, mental health (and physical), and so much more. Even attending a meeting takes much more time and energy.
Even when i try to be lazy i end up working many times more when wfh than office. I am convinced managers are either stuck on old metrics or have no idea how to remotely manage their people for wfh to be an issue.
If I go to the office i will not work when i get home or in weekends (too tired) but since covid I've been working whenever to meet objectives.
Also, no more driving. Good for environment I thought!? And no more being pulled over by cops, accidents,etc...
WFH should be legally mandated if you ask me
Last time I moved, I moved to a place five minutes' walk from my work.
That was four jobs ago.
I'm one of those lifers that went to college and never left, now entering my 5th year as a professor. That's a lie -- I had 3 years in industry, and I just hated it. I mean, the people were okay, but "the real world" seems to be a euphemism for having to put up with the shitty systems and communities that everyone else has to.
But here's the thing (and sorry to rant for a minute), calling academia an "ivory tower" in contrast to the "real world" is an admission that we have to accept the shitty systems and communities past generations have built for us. Because with all of the craziness in the banking sector and tech sector lately, it's hard to convince me that academia is any more divorced from reality than other large industries out there that are trying to run the world. How is academia any more of an ivory tower than silicon valley? And aren't those silicon valley bankers and billionaires the ones who are trying to shape the world in their image, while crashing banks and laying off hundreds of thousands of people? To me, that is a dark tower, and one we should not be trying to emulate at a country scale; whereas my community, the places I walk, the people I work with every day, the relationships I build with them -- that's the real world. Or at least my world. /r
Yes academia is a bubble and unique, but at the same time, that's what allows it to be a place where you can have the things you say you want. Is it sustainable? You know, probably not, but at the same time many of these communities are over a century old. I know my University has plans for sustainable growth for the next 100 years. There's surely still work to do to make such communities more sustainable, less costly to manage, and larger and more widespread. But still, the university town is a model that proves we can at least build walkable communities in America. They definitely exist!
I've seen university towns like you describe (or university areas of other towns), but that's not even close to universal, and many other university towns in my region are also very lacking in public transit.
I will not attempt to defend the bizarre excesses of the tech industry. But over a long enough time scale, tech companies have to either turn a profit or disappear so there is at least some grounding in objective reality. Whereas academia faces no such pressures, and many instructors teaching courses have never even worked outside that environment.
This is exactly what I'm talking about. The US Government subsidizes many industries, to the point where if those subsidies went away, those industries would not be profitable any longer (hence the subsidies). Yet, those industries, like say farming, are called the "real world" because they somehow I guess have a more objective interface with reality? It doesn't make sense.
Well here's some objective reality: as a society, as with food, we understand we have to teach people, and there's no profit in that. On the other side, students demand results, and we give them, and earn a reputation for delivering. Colleges that don't deliver go under, and new colleges are formed all the time, so it's not even accurate that there are no forcing functions or grounding in reality. That some universities have been around for a century or more is a testament to their success in the marketplace, not evidence they are immune from market forces.
And it's interesting that "profit" is always the measure used when one wants to prove that academia doesn't belong in this world. I mean, yeah, you're right. When you frame the world in terms of profit and loss, anything that makes a loss should just be done away with. Problem is then you end up in a world with no schools, hospitals, parks, community centers, museums, orchestras, art galleries, etc. In the real world, we need those things too.
I don't expect schools to turn a profit. It's fine for them to be a bit disconnected from the real world. The point is that we shouldn't take ivory-tower academics seriously when they speak outside their narrow fields of expertise.
The oldest universities tend to be the least subject to market forces. They obtain most of their revenue from grants, donations, and investment (endowment) gains. Relatively little comes from student tuition, and even that is mostly "other people's money". That's not necessarily a bad thing, but when a professor who has always worked in academia gives advice on urban planning I'm going to be highly skeptical.
All of which exhibit market-like forces. Grants are not gifts; universities must attract academics who then produce impactful research, which is then used to gain additional grants. When a professor invents something new or discovers something, the university that hired him/her gains in reputation. The more useful and interesting research a university produces, the more grant money they get. How is this process divorced from reality? Universities and scientists divorced from reality should not be able to make discoveries about it, so it's very important for people in academia to be tethered to the reality, despite what the popular wisdom says.
As for donations, where do they come from? Well they come from rich people, who have made a lot of profits. Earlier you said corporations prove their worth in the long run by earning profits. Wouldn't that apply to graduates of a university as well? Of course there's a lot that goes into the mix, but for those students who go on to be successful and then donate back to the university, aren't they doing so because they attribute their success to the university specifically? So it would seem to me that if a university wants donations, they should do a good job; and if they don't do a good job, they shouldn't expect donations. To me, that seems like a market force right there.
Finally, endowments seem to be the most tethered to reality, if we define reality as "the market". Earnings are invested directly into the rest of the system as with any other business. It's often said that Harvard is a hedge fund with a school as a side hustle. But then isn't Harvard just as attached to reality as any hedge fund?
> The point is that we shouldn't take ivory-tower academics seriously when they speak outside their narrow fields of expertise... when a professor who has always worked in academia gives advice on urban planning I'm going to be highly skeptical.
Sure, I can of course agree we should listen to people according to the expertise they bring to the table. At the same time, we shouldn't discount their input on the basis they aren't practitioners, because the practicing city planners themselves and industry writ large haven't exactly proven they are competent stewards of our cities. Indeed, this story is about how they've failed us all on a wide scale. My point is that the "ivory tower" urban planners actually have a vision for a walkable, livable city, that has been modeled, deployed, and iterated for over 100 years. Maybe we could consider that it's not so divorced from reality, and go from there? It seems it's a complete nonstarter for people, for the reasons you've articulated, and I'm just not convinced.
I mean, people say the suburbs as an entire concept is not sustainable and divorced from reality. Yet we drove that model to the absolute extreme. It sure benefited corporations and big box stores outside of city centers, but what suffered were our communities, social relationships, and of course the environment. We built huge road systems to connect cities and suburbs. We manufacture expensive cars, sell them to people on credit, then expect them to use it to burn gas for hours just to get to and fro their work 5 times a week, all so they can hope to pay off the car one day!
This whole system is absurd but we accept it at face value it seems as "the real world" because it was very profitable for some people. And then we use the fact this industry was profitable to prove ipso facto is was worth it all along, as we wonder why we can't afford to commute to work.
Meanwhile, people building livable, walkable cities where designed for people are pie-in-the-sky idealists. You know, people we probably shouldn't listen to, because what could they possibly have to say? What could they know about city planning? I mean where are all the cars? Where's the Walmart? They call this a town?
I live 15-25 minutes from Central London via tube or cycle, so do loads of my friends.
There are effectively zero in person companies despite this.
People just mostly prefer to wake up 5 minutes before they clock on and work in their pyjamas. I don't get it, but I've accepted at this point that I'm just not going to.
Many cities formed as a result of useful geography. In the UK, at least, that reason is often water-based transport. These locations meant that large scale transport of goods was practical, as well as the ability to have all of the resources necessary to sustain large populations in those areas.
In the modern day, at least in the UK, cities are much less practical. Getting anywhere in them is a pain - road links are too busy, rail is extortionate and over-subscribed. And why are they so busy and expensive? Because everyone has to do it. Why? Because that’s where the high paying companies are. Why? Because the way it has always been done. Why? Because… the place has links to good waterways?
And what do you do when you get there? The same damn thing you’d do at home, but in a noisier and less comfortable environment. You can speak to the same people you could huddle with in Slack, except there’s no mute button. You’re bombarded with a brightly lit, white, open plan room, which could only ever have been popularised by people who don’t understand what a productive environment actually is.
Like many on here, because we have a certain affinity for the tech sector, I have ADHD. I am extremely productive when I’m in an environment that allows me to shut out everything else and focus on what I need to do. Working from home unleashed a level of productivity I wasn’t aware that I was capable of, and once you’ve got that buzz - you aren’t going to let go of it without resistance.
I'm sure I just don't understand something, but all these pro-WFH arguments here at HN give me almost hikikomori vibes.
This doesn’t match my experience. I’m a teleworker with a family and the percentage of my life spent interacting with other human beings is much higher than when I was a single person commuting to the office every day, or even a person with a family commuting to the office every day.
Sure it’s the same few people instead of the dozen or so in an office and the smattering when I went out at night. But those relationships with the fewer people I interact with now are a good deal stronger than those other cases.
I think it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the current norm of commuting in to an office or other workplace is anomalous in the history of humanity. People certainly had varied and meaningful personal relationships before this. The bulk of humanity weren’t essentially reclusive hermits prior to the start of the rat race.
There are certainly benefits and drawbacks to then as now, but people spoke in person with their neighbors, engaged in civic life, found community in their faith, etc. Many of these social outlets have been replaced in bulk for a lot of people by a work social life and a nightlife out at restaurants and bars where relationships may be many but more fleeting. And maybe some of our interpersonal skills have suffered for it. Certainly there are feuds and rivalries of historic proportion before office culture, but I think conflict management is developed more when there are difficult people in your communities that you just need to deal with — think of decades-long neighbors.
But I’m sure some of these are my own biases: I went from living in a city and commuting to work to living in a very rural area and mostly teleworking.
Do I miss the city? Yes, certainly: arts and entertainment events, cuisines of any kind in walking or public transportation distance, etc. Do I miss going into the office every day? Sometimes: I honestly do like some of my coworkers enough to be real friends with. Am I the American equivalent of a hikikomori? No: I have stronger personal relationships with both family, neighbors, and members of my community than ever before — and certainly than more so than when I commuted to an office every day.
I do listen to a lot fewer podcasts and new music without a commute though.
Fuck anything that tries to portray WFH as some sort of laziness, or agoraphobia, or avoidance of travel. Home offices are expensive, mediocre, and mean I have to spend my personal fun time in exactly the same seat I work in, which is detrimental to my mental health.
But all of that is STILL better than the bullshit of working in what modern tech companies call "offices" because we were 5 years away from just being thrown into an empty gymnasium as our offices anyway, usually to just to penny pinch on the renovations of an office that costs ten times as much as it should because it's waterfront property that we never fucking needed as an ecommerce company!
Companies showed their ignorance of this when the political response to Covid switched to downplay mode and companies tried to lure people back with pizza and games. The cringe factor there is extreme.
I understand my colleagues. I empathise with them. I work with them effectively and in general I bear them. But like them? God no. They’re not my friends.
I am no hermit. I have a wife and kid, and would trade spending time with them them every morning and evening over any job on the planet. When I commuted I’d leave before they wake up and get home after my kid goes to sleep - that, to me, is the definition of an isolated existence.
Honestly, Americans are getting hard. They were soft when they allowed themselves to be pushed around, jobs outsourced, sign 4 year non-competes and non-disparage agreements, and put up with crappy bosses with no cost of living increases, and sexually harassed in the office by their boss.
The marketplace is talking, are you listening? Nope.
Oh and Jamie Dimon, looking for some more bailouts? I guess by hustle you mean begging to CYA.
>Americans’ “work ethic” is lacking, Rattner says, especially in comparison to that of the Chinese, which he describes as “extraordinary.” (Rattner did not respond to a request, passed to him through the Times, to discuss his piece.)
You mean the workers that are practically forced labor? Good one. I'll bet you'd love to go back to the good ole slave days, huh? Maybe corporations shouldn't have given away all their IP to make a buck, we wouldn't be in the situation we are in with the supply chain. Keep up that hustle.
Nope, corporations got worse and worse, paid less and less compared to the cost of living, and people finally had enough. I think that's what's happening. The ones that allow work from home will have a much higher chance of survival than the ones that buy your rhetoric.
I'll bet people will be more willing to go back if they had their own offices instead of the travesty that is "open office." "Better for communication!" Ya right. Do that and maybe you'll get some bites.
Anyway, working at home and loving it.
Were living at the mercy of psychopaths here in the US
Couldn't agree more. It's almost comical how these owners and managers are resorting to juvenile, schoolyard bully tactics against workers who are finally standing up for themselves and demanding more.
"Aw, you won't eat that bug? It's because you're scared isn't it? Wow, I didn't know you were so such a scaredey-cat!"
"Aw, 2 hours a day is too much to commute? Sounds like you don't even wanna work. Wow, I didn't know you were so lazy!"
Does anyone, outside the hustle culture folk, hear this stuff and not just roll their eyes?
It was the only time he had to himself all day.
What gives me flashbacks is the expression on the character's face was eerily familiar.
Some wives think it does, though.
As you said, this is incredibly sad. I don't know the answer or what peoples lives are actually like. I have witnessed friends wives have total meltdowns, because we were playing videogames when she wanted him to be cleaning their already spotless house for relatives... I honestly thought he was going to get stabbed.
I've tried that, that definitely doesn't work...
It's desperation. Americans are lacking the desperation necessary to endure unnatural commutes and spaces. What these 'people' want are more desperate workers.
...I do make 6 figures, but I still wear steel toes to work?
Do you really want to be a sloth? Want to eat ants all day? I actually quite like lizards. The crunchy kind.
Those of us that left the cities had the opportunity to save hundreds of thousands of dollars since 03/20. I'll look into commuting if the compensation exceeds the savings.
I also live in an above average COL area and rent the smallest apartment I could find for a monthly rent of about 1/750th the cost of the single family homes next door.
Unless you’re hella wealthy you can’t live in an expensive city and expect the same housing arrangement you’d get in the suburbs. The trade offs are worth it for some people and aren’t for others.
Why not ?
the employer gets the full 40 hours
Regardless, my point is that anyone who says, “I’d have to pay 6x as much for the same house near Manhattan as in Iowa” has a truly unrealistic view of living near Manhattan. You make do with less space than you’d “like” and get the benefits of living near Manhattan. If that tradeoff isn’t appealing to you, keep the remote job and stay in Iowa.
My employer gets the same time in both locations, but in one I get a big house and the other one I get “the smallest apartment available” and ride the subway
If you want to trade your time for money at a job that requires in-office work in Manhattan, either hope that job pays a ton of money so you can get a big place, accept a smaller place, or find a new job.
That's easy to forget for people in the US where land and housing is cheap, but I'm not convinced that it's so exciting in, e.g., Switzerland where residential land is scarce and expensive.
Granted, this is something of a holdover from Japanese society in the late 20th century where lifetime employment was the norm, and nowadays this practice is becoming slightly less common. For instance, a specialist working for a Japanese company (like myself, a few years back), should expect to pay for their own transportation costs. Frankly, it was worth bearing the cost myself, though, as I did not need to reciprocate loyalty to the company in the same way my coworkers did by spending long hours at the office and participating in mandatory-ish social gatherings that lasted late into the night.
[1] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/10/14/business/how-em...
If everyone moved within 3 miles of their office it would massively cleanup the traffic commute situation. But we build huge highways which subsidizes people who live far away from their offices.
This kind of thing happens to people a lot. My wife's then employer moved from downtown Washington to Rosslyn, Virginia--not a great difference in distance, but a worse commute. [Edit] I should add that this employer then moved back to Washington, DC. The Rosslyn location had the merit of being close to a Metro station, the new location was a mile or more from one.
If you factor in time savings from not commuting, it becomes very expensive to commute to an office every day.
Another way to look at the same situation is an employer is bonusing 1+ hours of non-work life each day previously spent preparing for and then commuting by an employee when they work from home.
Whether or not this is a cost-effective transaction is a per-individual decision IMHO.
In cities with small apartments, such space is a luxury. Often unaffordable luxury when you have children who also need space to sleep and play and do homework.
I would prefer a smaller apartment (less to clean, less stuff, etc) in a high rise. But now I can’t afford that since I need 2 desks at home. Our employers didn’t pay us more and now there’s no office to go to if we didn’t want to work at home.
This is also why I have advocated for a “net worth” tax (kinda like property tax but for all net worth) instead of income tax. If you spend money on an experience or disposable item (good for the economy) you aren’t taxed on that money.
Noooo! High income people are not sucking money out of other workers.
It's landlords and property owners who reap the benefits of progress in today's world.
Why? Distributed work seems to convey a higher standard of quality, thought, care in communicating well for the companies trying to do it.
While new employees generally do much better starting off at the office and then transitioning to distributed work (they have a chance to learn what the culture of "how we do it here" in person)
For those who insist on 100% wfh may be consenting to some employers accepting it and being ok to list the jobs 100% remote to the best value and performance globally, instead of the current pool.
Distributed work, that maybe is hybrid may be the best of both worlds.
Startups typically work better and faster in person too.
To be clear , I’ve worked remotely for the better part of 10-15 years. To help tip things towards the flexibility I like, I invest and make sure my own setup is much more productive than anything I’ll be provided.
The pandemic shift to egg was a non issue for me, I felt like the world came to me. Still, an in person component at one time or another has been indispensable to make things much easier - be it roll out, training, or upfront discovery. People are much more open to change or collaboration when you’ve got a foundation of some kind in person even if it’s team building.
While I like working from home in general I tend to find it utterly boring, and go into the office at least one day a week. I find it easier to maintain relationships and stay up to date on projects by talking, and in person works best for me.
No shit Sherlock. Now please do show me where did I sign to work for "growth and prosperity"? I do not give a flying fuck about it. Never have. Never will. As for his likes the "prosperity" means rich fucktards buying more yachts and owning more of the world while the rest enjoys inflation eating into their money.
If employees work from home, these types of managers feel emasculated.
EDIT: a word
Please stop and look where you're going, the news can wait.