[ilyanep]

People need to stop with this whole "only commercial real estate supports working from the office" nonsense. Some of us simply want our job to provide us with a space where we can work that isn't 10 feet away from where we spend the rest of our day, the same way that our job provides us with other tools we need. Not that I'm necessarily defending forced RTO but I hate this framing of the issues.

Also if your vision of WFH is that everyone sprawls out then it doesn't solve some of your other issues: people will still need to use their vehicles to get places (because unless we solve the root issue of 'too few homes' then those people will be spread out from each other or services to not create more cities with too few homes) and their sprawled out suburban communities will not suddenly become more walkable. They'll just drive everywhere.

[labcomputer]

> Also if your vision of WFH is that everyone sprawls out then it doesn't solve some of your other issues: people will still need to use their vehicles to get places (because unless we solve the root issue of 'too few homes' then those people will be spread out from each other or services to not create more cities with too few homes) and their sprawled out suburban communities will not suddenly become more walkable. They'll just drive everywhere.

Partially disagree.

Maybe I'm not representative, but most of my family's driving is specifically _commuting_. All other weekly errands add up to less than one day of commute driving. Actually, less than one way of one day of commuting.

Unless you compare a "fully rural" drive-60-miles-to-get-groceries lifestyle to basically a "downtown manhattan" walk-to-the-office one, I'm skeptical that total car-miles will increase when transitioning from WFO to WFH.

Most "completely non-walkable" suburbs will still have a grocery store within a few miles, usually in a so-called super center with a bunch of other stores. I don't have data to back this up (other than talking with coworkers), but my sense is that people who talk about transitioning to a "rural" WFH really mean "move to a small town" or "move to the outskirts of an exurb".

So, even if they become completely car dependent, they're still reducing from 50 commuting miles per day to 2-3 "errands" miles.

[burnte]

That's fine, but we're trying to make sure going back to the office isn't a REQUIREMENT but a luxury. You go to the office, I get more done here.

[JumpCrisscross]

> we're trying to make sure going back to the office isn't a REQUIREMENT but a luxury

There are multiple equilibria. I like hybrid work. That doesn’t mean others shouldn’t be allowed to require office time. The market will work this out in tech; employees have bargaining power.

[throwbadubadu]

> people will still need to use their vehicles to get places

Hmm ... walkable neighborhood has even become more livable and walkable, all my car uses could now be public transport or car sharing.. needing one now maybe at most once or twice.per month, sometimes less.

> we solve the root issue of 'too few homes' then

Yes.. but on the other hand you can mix only so many homes around offices.. which would make my neighborhood less walkable again.

Also I neither want to be location dependent for job selection, nor do I want to move due to jobs? Kind of arrogant privileged view, on the other hand, why not just leave the space for people that actually really need to live nearby their working location, like the merchant, the doctor, etcetc?

> Some of us simply want our job to provide us with a space where we can work that isn't 10 feet away from where we spend the rest of our day

If you really have that luck to be able to live that close to your office, great.. but how long will this hold? I idiot actually moved pre-pandemic closer to the job, just that they wanted a cheaper location and reorganize and moved then farer away, lol, so I had 2 month of 10 minutes to work :) Until I get that back I prefer not to was so much time travelling for barely nothing.

[add-sub-mul-div]

It's also ridiculous because it demonstrates a lack of understanding of sunk costs. If a company with an office is that concerned about costs, it's cheaper to keep the office closed without paying for utilities and all the other overhead.

A lot of people here just want to work from home and the range of social and economic problems they work backward to have WFH solve is astounding.

[ghaff]

I don't actually believe in the whole commercial real estate conspiracy. The employers who actually have the agency here are presumably mostly not so stupid as to be making decisions based on (often relatively short-term) sunk costs.

But if those same employers are OK with employees who want to and can productively work from home, they're also justified in largely ignoring the preferences of employees who would prefer a bustling in-person office.

[adam_arthur]

Most employers don't own any real estate at all... they lease it. It's extremely uncommon for companies not directly in the business of Real Estate to own their own buildings... there's probably some single digit % of office space owned by the company occupying it.

There may be an incentive for executives tied to local real estate, though. e.g. owning a home in the Bay Area, and seeing it get devalued as everyone is moving away. Residential prices have been falling in the Bay Area... but then NYC has been pretty stable and there's still an urge for BTO there among the banks. Finance is much more relationship driven than Tech, though.

[bugglebeetle]

It’s not so much about individual investments, but how commercial real estate sits as an asset class in wealthy people’s portfolios generally. There’s no scenario where a 2008 for commercial real estate doesn’t cost them a lot of money, so it’s in their material interest to push for back to office.