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Comment by 2d8a875f-39a2-4 | Hacker News Reader

It was never about productivity. It was about power and control. And commercial real estate investments.

Please tell us how you’re so certain companies that have productivity affecting their $1T net worth are more concerned with their $5b real estate.

Please don’t let it be that a VP is manipulating productivity numbers so that their drop in the bucket action will move the price of their SFH they own.

The commercial real estate market is a lot bigger than $5B.

But FAANG doesn’t care about the commercial real estate market, so why would they make any decisions based on it?

Why single out FAANG? FAANG companies aren’t the only ones pushing RTO. The study analyzed 43 different industries.

FAANG are the best case scenario for your argument, with billion dollar real estate portfolios and more RTO-heavy. Just because this study reached a conclusion doesn’t mean that it’s the same conclusion other companies’ reach. Especially when those companies’ have their bottom line at stake, “skin in the game.”

Again, by what plausible incentive do you think non-FAANG companies, with tiny real estate assets, usually leases for a multi-billion company, would impact their productivity for tiny help in the overall real estate market?

I admit I was being a bit flippant. But there's a case to be made from the "same people owning all the companies" argument that the investors in all these tech companies are also invested in commercial real estate returns. So basically it's Larry Fink who wants you back in the office, and hey he owns your co so the board will listen to him (being flippant again here).

Larry Fink and BlackRock don’t own the 6% of Google managed by BlackRock index funds. Nor does Google or other co’s decide to make adverse decisions to their morale and productivity because of a very minority shareholder. What you’re describing is conspiracy theory.

Occam’s razor. These co’s came to the same conclusion co’s like OpenAI did, that in persons benefits outweighed the negatives. Only when the conclusions don’t agree with the preferences people like you have, that the cope, conspiracy, and rationalizing come out. Also, what may be good for the individual, doesn’t mean it’s good for the org.

Not at FAANG - but my company was scaling up and bought a much larger office space right before covid, so a lot of the push does seem to be "We just spent a bunch of money on this and need to justify it to investors, it looks bad when they come in and the office in 90% empty desks"

FAANG as an amorphous blob of business doesn't care about commercial real estate. The very real people that make decisions at and for FAANG absolutely have concerns and interests outside of FAANG'S stock price in the decisions they make.

Be specific. I’ve already pointed out the absurdity of the case people try to make that someone with the intellect of a Google VP is fudging numbers in hopes of moving their SFH price. It’s pretty damning that there are many replies with no specifics, only vague insinuations. Ya, that’s about how well these criticisms have been thought out, of course.

How is this about real state investment?

If you own a big office building and companies don't need as much office space then you can't charge as much for rent, and the property loses value. Similar to how online shopping has led to a bunch of malls closing down

Do you mean that the landlord is instructing the employees of it's tenants to RTO so that he can keep his income and property value? How does that work?

"Hello CEO of Awesome Inc, it's me CEO of Rentalz Co. Your people have to return to office so that I can keep collecting the rent".

CEO of Awesome Inc: "No."

CEO of Rentalz Co.: "shucks!"

This is something that gets trotted out every time this topic comes up. It's got little to do with the actual conversation, and it only relevant to some companies.

Basically, some companies own buildings that need to be leased out and some companies have long leases which would mean money "down the drain" if they're not utilised. That's wrapped up to equate being told to come into the office as a profit driven thing, rather than a productivity driven thing. As a blanket statement it's not true as not all companies care about it, and when we're talking just about productivity, it's irrelevant as it's not actually a consideration.

If we're talking about motivations for coming back into the office, then sure, it's a very relevant topic there.

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