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Comment by lkdfjlkdfjlg | Hacker News Reader

This is what I'd really like to know.

What really REALLY is behind managers/executives pushing for RTO.

My theory so far is that they believe that employees working from home take advantage of decreased supervision to slack. Now on HN you'll read "doesn't matter that I'm working fewer hours if I'm delivering work". But I think managers/executives fear they're not very good at assessing how much tasks are meant to take. If a task is mean to take 1 day and I take 3 days and I explain why it took me longer, some times it's really difficult to assess whether the explanation is true or I'm BSing. (Of course, they don't admit this. They use their own BS to justify RTO. Enhanced collaboration or whatever.)

Bottom line, managers/executives don't know how much output they can realistically expect, but they suspect it will be lower from home.

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There are broader implications for the economy if a large percentage of people continue to WFH. In larger cities, many smaller businesses, like food outlets, are sustained by workers coming to their city offices most weekdays.

Many such businesses failed during COVID knockdowns due to lack of customers. Some are still struggling to become viable again with a low RTO percentage.

For some medium to large businesses, these struggling smaller businesses or business owners are their customers. So there is some self interest from many companies to go back to the way things were.

Arguably the failed or struggling businesses could be being replaced by other services, eg home food delivery, but I've not personally noticed anything like that happening.

> There are broader implications for the economy if a large percentage of people continue to WFH. In larger cities, many smaller businesses, like food outlets, are sustained by workers coming to their city offices most weekdays.

The opposite is true as well. Many (likely more) small businesses have gone bankrupt because of people concentrating to other locations due to urbanization.

> Arguably the failed or struggling businesses could be being replaced by other services, eg home food delivery, but I've not personally noticed anything like that happening.

It already happened before and during covid (that's what the gig economy created/captured). That has its own problems, not the least of which is the overhead costs passed to consumers. Overall, the scale required of such businesses keeps small ones from flourishing in any large numbers compared to brick and mortar.

> There are broader implications for the economy i

Irrelevant, the motivations of middle managers and executives is not the broader economy. It's their companies results and/or they are perceived by their bosses.

The person I was responding to asked "what drives RTO?". Everything you said might be true, but it doesn't drive RTO. Yes, of course if you own a restaurant you want more foot traffic. But that's irrelevant for an office worker having his boss pushing RTO.

Using your restaurant example, if the restaurant closes it may not have much obvious effect on other nearby businesses. However, that restaurant would have given business to various food and consumables suppliers, to waste management companies, to an accountant etc. All those businesses have now lost a source of income and may be less profitable.

Perhaps the restaurant was leasing the premises from a landlord. The landlord may still have a loan for the business premises. That loan could be at risk of going into arrears if no other person decides to try their luck running a restaurant in a location that doesn't have sufficient patronage.

Consider now that the office workers who have refused to RTO work for the bank that holds the loan for the business premises. There is a risk to the bank now that the premises is less valuable because it can't be leased and is less attractive for a future purchaser.

The point is that most businesses don't operate without having other businesses as suppliers or clients. When one business does badly it can affect other businesses in their network. A small number of isolated businesses failing doesn't cause knock on effects. However, if a larger number of smaller retailers, dependent on foot traffic close in the same locality it will have a ripple effect out to many other larger businesses.

Business owners and executives have an interest in trying to maintain a healthy business network. Some will believe that pushing for RTO should help other local businesses in their business network and thus will be beneficial for their company in the long term.

Completely irrelevant. A manager at a bank is not pushing for RTO at the bank because a restaurant has a loan.

You're missing the point of this conversation.

> In larger cities, many smaller businesses, like food outlets, are sustained by workers coming to their city offices most weekdays.

My gut tells me that's mostly nonsense, considering how much I see delivery drivers driving around neighborhoods and picking up orders (when I'm picking up my takeout, for example).

The demand didn't go anywhere, it's just that the people are now getting delivery to their suburban home, rather than walking to the food place from the office during lunch.

A far bigger decrease in demand is due to some crazy price increases in outside-of-home dining options. A single mediocre burger will now easily run you $12, whereas pre-COVID you used to be able to get a whole meal for $10. Basically, if you feel "bad" for the small restaurants guy, your first place to look should be in the delivery app corporate grift, not blaming the WFH employees.

> My theory so far is that they believe that employees working from home take advantage of decreased supervision to slack

I would take this a step further:

My observation has been that many managers (at all levels) subscribe to a very feudal and classist belief that every employee (with the possible exception of those who actively brown-nose) is always looking for as many ways to screw the company as possible. If not being constantly monitored, they will slack off; if they claim to have a disability they need accommodations for, that's just a way of getting you to endorse their slacking.

Essentially, it's a mindset that views the manager-subordinate relationship as a fully adversarial one, at all times, no matter how good a performer any given subordinate is.

Managers should just set their expectations with the expectation that they would get bad information from time to time. Maybe you lie, maybe it actually took 3 days, in either case the shop shouldn’t be so brittle where it matters either way.

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