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Comment by losteric | Hacker News Reader

> Big corpo is a modern feodal state, where CEO is an emperor, c-suites are kings, managers are barons

Why do people forget about board members and shareholders?

There's a lot of overlap among the rich. I doubt Satya "wants" to RTO. I would suspect board members / shareholders with real estate interests are forcing the policy. (eg Vanguard holds 10%, with Blackrock close behind).

Big corpo is a feudal state, in the sense of complex incestuous power dynamics. It's oversimplifying to call CEOs emperors.

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>> Why do people forget about board members and shareholders

Board members do not have powers over daily business of the company.

I would add the board to the feodal model as a Church. The head of the board is the Pope.

That's theory. In practice they have power. I've been to many board meetings where they pressured C-suite to do this and that or else.

Because board members are all emperors too, and they have a stated interest in keeping emperors in power. Look at how many board members are C-suite in other companies.

Well, then show the evidence.

If this is a shareholder action, of a publicly-traded company, then (IIUC) shouldn't that be publicly-available information somewhere?

This is probably better evidence than any public filing

https://wolfstreet.com/2025/09/01/office-cmbs-delinquency-ra...

...No?

That shows, if I'm reading it right, that commercial real estate is having trouble. We know that; it's not in doubt.

What's in doubt is whether that is the primary motivator behind the RTO efforts.

I do not understand the real estate investor conspiracy theory. Why would it be better for vanguard if Microsoft paid rent to a real estate firm that managed office space, earned an X% profit margin, and then got taxed on the earnings before they were attributed to shareholders?

It makes much more sense to take a bath on the office investments and have Microsoft pay the difference in dividends or buybacks. The net amount to vanguard is higher than paying insurance, building and grounds maintainence, janitors, utilities, management fees, and property+ income tax before seeing your first dollar.

I don't get why the various tax incentives and such (plus stealth layoffs) aren't enough to explain it.

I've seen companies do some weird shit for those "X workers at location Y at least Z hours per year" tax incentives. I'd believe it's a major motivator for RTO (though probably somewhat behind the layoffs motivation)

The incentives don't pencil out. They don't make an entire separate corporate structure and several extra layers of taxation result in more money for investors instead of just... giving it to investors.

Why the push for RTO? The most simple and boring answer. Most people work and especially learn from each other better in-person than over Zoom and Slack. Practically zero people will try to pretend that remote school was great for the average student during covid, even at the university level. But for some reason everything inverts when it comes to work. I get that there are superperformers that work better in a closed room with zero interruptions ever and require little collaboration to do their jobs, and some students were 3 grade levels ahead during covid. But in a company of 200,000 people you have more average people than lone wolf superperformers, and so going in person is better than 200,000 slack pfps. Simplest yet most hated answer.

> The incentives don't pencil out.

Devils advocating:

If I am already an owner of real estate, I’m interested not only in monthly rent, but also in property value (I can sell it or I can use it as collateral for a loan).

If offices are half empty across whole town, then property values are down.

On the other hand if you somehow would be able to saturate the office space, them property values go up.

Commercial real estate value is directly connected to occupancy. If I own an office building which was valued ten years ago at $10M (to pick a random number) and today is valued at half that because nobody's going in, that's a direct $5M loss on my accounts, and any loans outstanding secured on it are potentially now underwater. Not only that, but it also weakens the rent I can demand from the tenant not just because the value of the building has dropped, but because they demonstrably don't need all that space any more.

Microsoft is almost certainly a special case in a number of ways, but the incentives are absolutely there for commercial landlords to try to force their tenants' hands.

Not a "conspiracy theory". I've been to board meeting at one of companies, where board member was a real estate investor. They insisted that to obtain more investment company has to lease an office from the investor and ensure the office is occupied as part of the lease. Then they used that company in advertising of their property portfolio as in look who leases from us. It's complex.

You are missing the point that Microsoft might be the loss leader, setting an example or simply ensuring that commercial estate gains in value and the gains are greater than the losses.

It's a fact, you can maintain empty offices only for so long and billions invested can potentially vanish.

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