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> If you're a C-level at a Fortune 50 company, some massive percentage of your personal assets, if they're invested in the stock market or private equity, are in commercial real estate. > There's no mystery here. People with assets want those assets to remain valuable, and act directly to reinforce it. This is why we don't let athletes bet on their own games.

Wouldn't Leadership's financial incentive be stronger to increase the value of the company rather than "the whole commercial real estate market" that a single company only has a small effect on?

WeWork seems like an obvious exception - but Adam Newmann was self-dealing by renting his own real estate out to his own company. It was a hugely perverse incentive, and I suspect most boards aren't so captured by things like that.

> Wouldn't Leadership's financial incentive be stronger to increase the value of the company rather than "the whole commercial real estate market" that a single company only has a small effect on?

Yes, but those are not necessarily conflicting values. As you say, I wouldn't expect them to crash their companies, but... If it's approximately neutral or RTO has only a mild negative effect they may do it anyway, or they may be boneheads and do it despite a negative effect on the company itself because they do not believe in the negative effect.

Also it's very clear that our oligarchs are not always thinking clearly, based on Twitter's spectacular implosion. People do make mistakes, especially in domains that are hard to evaluate.

For CEOs their compensation is based on their company's stock performance and probably also most significant part of their holdings is also same company stock. So optimising for price of that stock either in short or long term is much more important than any other investment.

So most decisions are taken to increase that stock value, if RTO negatively affects it, but props up other investments it is probably sub-optimal for them.

> if RTO negatively affects it, but props up other investments it is probably sub-optimal for them.

What if it doesn't? What if they believe it's neutral, or the effects are unknown?

> act directly to reinforce it.

any real evidence of this will be easily evidence for a breach in fiduciary duty of the ceo towards the shareholders. RTO can be seen as costing more money, and likely reduce productivity, force attrition (of the best employees), etc.

> RTO can be seen as costing more money, and likely reduce productivity, force attrition (of the best employees), etc.

Or they can say "We think it will be mildly accretive for the investors and create synergies in collaboration and creativity" and if the board agrees, who will gainsay them? We're not talking about drastic shifts in policy for most of these companies, it doesn't take much more than a little bias one way or the other to tip the decision.

It doesn't even have to be deliberate and conscious, if their wealth managers say "Boy the commercial real estate market is tanking, remote work is a disaster" that's enough to mildly influence behavior.