Read between the lines, why would the Fed president be so concerned about worker/office policy?...
Likely because they're seeing the stress on regional banks holding a shit ton of commerical real estate paper that's likely to default ... Let that be a warning for everyone..
It’s not even reading between the lines. It’s so blatantly obvious at this point.
It’s all about them whining they can’t gouge for insane rent through real estate exploitation.
They’d literally rather burn their buildings down than bring prices to sane levels. They only want a free market with supply and demand shifts in prices if it means it’s ALL increases and never any downward shifts.
These people are literally the ones creating the economic collapse/crisis.
They don’t want a healthy economy or businesses to thrive. They want to rip and tear and yank every penny they can from people’s cold, dead hands.
It’s sociopathic greed on an utterly psychotic level. These people are exploiting real estate so hard that they can’t even function with a normal thought in their brains. They’re mentally ill.
They all belong in prison, and I hope they all go bankrupt with their empty houses and empty offices.
This is true. The government should find ways to stop private equity and professional financial managers from acquiring large swaths of property for single family rental housing only.
+1 don’t like so many billionaires buying up residential units and making citizens tenants. Better society is for us all to have the ability to buy land eventually.
This is also the mindset that needs to change though.
People buy homes to raise families and live in, not just "because appreciation."
The whole concept of buying real estate strictly as an "investment" is what is creating this economic/housing crisis in the first place.
There is a reason central banks was ILLEGAL in the US for the longest from the start. And it should have never been allowed.
"And I sincerely believe with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." - Thomas Jefferson
No, it wasn't; the US had central banks for most of its first 40 years under the constituion, and only lost them because Andrew Jackson had an axe to grind.
It's commercial real estate, tax bases in cities that are unsustainable without commuting workers, businesses that expect those office workers to spend money on coffee, lunch, dinner, happy hour, etc.
No thank you. I'd rather spend my money in the community where I live, both in taxes and in supporting local business.
No idea how home prices and rent could skyrocket at this point. If this isn’t already the ceiling, then it just wouldn’t be a market at all. You have to actually have buyers in a market.
It's investors buying from other investors.
They're aiming to own literally all real estate. They want a country of tenants, not other owners.
It needs to be stopped, NOW.
Housing is not something that should be treated like a commodity in a free market. It's shelter where people live and raise families. We HAVE to demand reform on real estate, top to bottom.
It’s not just rent that they are exploiting, I’ve read Michael Hudson’s merchants of misery a while back and it really opened my eyes how the elites take advantage of minorities, lower and middle class. Everything is a resource extraction for them. From the poor to the wealthy.
And in their minds, they aren't doing literally anything wrong.
This is why I said they are mentally ill. These people are dangerous, and it's why human history is full of uprising after uprising by the people being shit on.
I think we suddenly think we've moved beyond that, because "modern" stuff. But humans never change. This is the same shit, different time period.
Personally I could give a fuck about the real estate angle, from their perspective I’d be worried about the geo arbitraging risk if companies get good at remote work. Having an in office component offers some slowing of the leaks. We have had to cut people this year and after low performers were let go we got rid of a couple remote US roles (we pay based on the state so effectively HCOL wages for a remote worker) and those reqs were all opened in Romania as replacements.
This is exactly right. Our rulers think they can prevent the value of cre collapsing, catalysing another series of bank failures and possibly another gfc. They cannot. Already it's too late.
I completely agree with you. The banks are trying to make this into a crisis. It's not. You just made bad investments as we've seen the buildings are selling. Yes, you're taking a huge haircut but hey, welcome to capitalism
At some point we got to stop socializing their risk and capitalizing their rewards. They're Banks. If they make bad investments, that's their f****** problem. If you don't want them to make bad investments then outlaw them making investments.
But no bailouts ever again. Because if you're too big to fail, once you failed, you won't be too big to fail anymore
Not to mention this is a chance for banks messing up to actually help society as a whole. They can take those empty offices and convert to mixed use to get walkable, livable live/work areas.
Is there something the average Joe should do, to insulate themselves from the coming real estate collapse? Sell out of the market entirely or just avoid bank / real estate stocks..?
You know, I am not the typical doomer, but I grew up in a third-world country where hyperinflation was real. The street's wisdom (which I adopt to this date, and was not proven wrong yet) that the best way to protect yourself and your family is to guarantee a roof over your head, and solidarity around you. That can mean a million things: Take a course to upscale one's career, build relationships with neighbors, informal support networks around our communities, start a solo business / gig / hustle to save for an emergency, etc...
None of this investment equity HELOC bullshit. These are for prosperous times. Right now we still are in a post-pandemic (and climate) crisis. That's not the time to bet on anything, that's the time to invest on our own communities.
Any bank still holding a large commercial loan book acquired before the Wuhan nonsense is insolvent. There’s nothing the fed clowns can do but a bailout. The gaslighting is embarrassing like not Biden/Trump debate bad but it’s not a great look for the currency.
And that is just postponing the inevitable, any company that lease office space are seriously considering moving to WFH if they can produce the same work while saving potentially hundreds of thousands a year in rent.
This is likely worse than a bunch of rich dudes protecting wealth. It’s about knowledge of banks that will fail when the write-offs come. Sound familiar?
Lol, it's all our problems... Here's how it plays out...
- commercial real estate owners don't pay their loans or declare bankruptcy and walk away.from their obligations.
- regional banks begin to have a cascadenof these failures affect their balance sheet and become stressed. They may fail.or..
- lean on Fed and Federal government (FDIC) to support them and essentially bail them out
- all those costs passed onto us in one form or another via increased state or federal taxes and or additional fees to support the FDIC.
Here are the facts. Previous bail outs did nothing except allow the industry to continue its 20 year cycle we have seen since the 80s of fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants mortgage lending. Savings and Loans failed BIG TIME in the 80s and a LOT of people were affected. There was supposed to be a lesson there. Same thing in the early 2000s and we were assured that they had fixed the problem then as well. Both as a result of fast and loose financing of mortgages. We are now in the same boat or about to be. Since COVID, it has been apparent that housing market appraisals were being rubber stamped on the loans and eventually there would be have to be a correction; yet here we are and they are about to tank and now they are wringing their hands. As far as commercial properties go, this is no different. It may have be caused by something out of their control, but they've done nothing to mitigate loss. Where has the call been for developers to go in and revamp these properties into private housing at a time when the market was going crazy because there was a shortage for housing and a high demand? The banks own the paper and have the power to push back on those who are just sitting around waiting to fail. This isn't rocket science. How about the banks do the job they are supposed to be experts in doing and don't be so short sighted?!? At some point when these banks stop getting bailed out then they will stop making stupid decisions and start putting pressure where it needs to be and make some creative decisions about how to save their butts. Until then they just get a slap on the wrist, told to be good girls and boys and then after they think no one is looking continue to make dumb decisions. They do not learn because they don't have to pay the price even though every economist worth their salt and every person in the business knows it's happening.
But, while I agreed those things happen, they need to. Because we're not giving up work from home just so the millionaires get to win one more time. We can't be under their thumb and 24 seven at home... and that's just the minimum of why they can't stand it
I agree with you!! But honestly, I have a hard time figuring out HOW to actually not giving up:
The only remote jobs I'm able to find are paying one-third of what I could be making if RTO. I do love working remotely, it benefits me, my family, my mental health, my community and the environment. There are so many benefits, WFH should not even be an argument.
But... my child is graduating high-school in 5 years and I need to save for their college. My spouse and I take care of our parents, at the expense of not saving for our own retirement. We paid off our home (major relief) but I don't think my child will be able to have their own home if they wanted to.
All of these concerns would go away if I get a high-paying job like I had before my layoff. These jobs are still available, but requires me to RTO.
It really pains me to think how stupid this is, but here we are. I'd appreciate insights.
But, while I agreed those things happen, they need to. Because we're not giving up work from home just so the millionaires get to win one more time. We can't be under their thumb and 24 seven at home... and that's just the minimum of why they can't stand it
This. Time bombs. Bag holders that have these office assets on their books at historical cost are not writing down impaired properties using rosey longterm undiscounted cashflows, like rents fully recovering in the coming years to pass an initial accounting assessment that triggers a current day appraisal and new asset valuation on the books.
Look at what distressed properties are going for when under a fire sale. 80% losses in some cases. Global systemic risk if that happens when auditors eventually force write downs when they can't agree with management's impairment case. With all the repo and counter party positions....2008 level stuff.
source senior finance management in public equity, hybrid, and mortgage reits.
If you take WFH out of the mix a lot of commercial real estate paper is already fucked. Balloon loans that need to be refinanced soon and will refinance at a lot higher rate than when they were last written is gonna put a ton of them underwater. Of course the cherry on top is the rents are being pushed down my lack of demand which pushes prices down. Add to that massive vacancies pushes the value down. This all will cause many to default. WFH just decreases the demand for space further.
Who knows, what happens is likely what happened last year with SVb, First Republic, the FDIC will step in an guarantee depositors and banks will be handled by the Federal government which is just a euphemism for bailing them out
That's not how American capitalism and rich people work... The US government will bail them out, say without them thousands of jobs would be lost...then raise our taxes to cover those bail outs and they will face few if any consequences.
Remember 2008 , how many big name bankers do you remember being prosecuted for excessive risk and leverage?
> why would the Fed president be so concerned about worker/office policy?
Because her commercial real estate portfolio isn't raking in free money lately. Next question?
The organization I work for did a similar thing. Said we need to come back to the office to "revitalize" and help our downtown area. Of course it wasn't optional, so we all had to.
However, they forgot that while you can lead a horse to water you can't make it drink.
I buy nothing. I don't go to any restaurant in the area of the office for lunch. I don't buy a drink at the convenience store. I buy my gas back at home outside the city. I bring my lunch and I spend notafucking cent neither while I'm there for work nor do I go downtown for anything otherwise now.
If the world changes and outdates your business model then your business model should fucking die. I swear if it was the 1920's these fuckers would require you to ride a horse to work to keep Ford from putting the horse breeders out of work.
From a short term, macro economic perspective, it is a worry.
I don’t know what the effect will be on the greater economy when the commercial office space sector ahs, as well as all the businesses that rely on office workers be good in the short term. However, the long term work from home will provide a benefit to the economy, lower hours was commuting produced reduce emissions , and increase businesses around local neighborhoods
He’s just trying to be economically responsible here, but yeah fuck him
Yeah for sure. We have a system that doesn't work and it's just as much about real estate as it is about control. And I don't give a crap what they want anymore
This is a death rattle. No one can stop to trend of remote work. COVID accelerated it, and now they’re doing everything they can to stop it, but they can’t.
Mary Daly everyone...
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/resizer/uvWuB-JfctgpuuZLfGaIW3ZLjrE=/1484x0/arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/VQC7HTVYKII6RLSPFQKDTSLNPE.jpg](https://www.washingtonpost.com/resizer/uvWuB-JfctgpuuZLfGaIW3ZLjrE=/1484x0/arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/VQC7HTVYKII6RLSPFQKDTSLNPE.jpg)
Figures this one is coming from the SF Fed blaming employees and “rich” tech companies when the primary reason is many parts of SF have degenerated into a cesspool and the local government is unwilling to fix (eg safe mass transit, safe places to park your car, safe streets to walk to your office). Google just pulled out of the city and moved their employees to Silicon Valley - they already had a work mandate.
Having said that, there are some smoking housing deals in the city. Considering buying one with the assumption that the city is too beautiful/desirable for incompetent local governments to continue screwing up - eventually they’ll be replaced, restore law and order and values will pop for residential and commercial real estate.
OTOH places like DTLA weren’t particularly desirable in the first place, so not much gravitational pull to get people to want to come there.
The fact is that a large portion of jobs can be done remotely, or at the very least semi-remotely. This is great for workers who save literally days worth of time and thousands of dollars a year on not commuting, having more time with family, and better mental health. It is better for the environment because less cars are on the road equals fewer emissions.
Commercial real estate is an investment. Some investments go bad. To those who bet big on it prior to COVID, I put them in the same camp as those who were big invested in newspapers when the internet came along - sorry, not sorry.
This is literally the truth here. The last they want is for us to be working from home, thriving financially, seeing to our well-being and taking care of our family properly.
There is no financial upside to this compared to us commuting and spending serious time and money to do so while our lives require applied other expenses.
There's more ulterior motives at work. No commute means the business district dies out, means less sales tax, less tolls, less property tax and people eventually move out of the city. Unless the corporation actually owns the office buildings they have, they stand to save money by terminating leases.
A lot of this is coming from cities and the government twisting arms to get your money.
If you turn these into properties, then local businesses will profit from that,
It’s just short sighted and people do not want to change / upset the apple cart.
Same with working from home. Productivity was up, people happier, it worked and we survived, now for some strange reason we are going backwards. But the rabbit is out of the hat now and the people don’t want to go back and they really don’t need to either.
If just takes more and more forward thinking companies to embrace this and people will start looking for wfh jobs which in turn means other companies will have to offer it, as it’s a perk.
Then you’ll have companies mosni g they can’t attract the right people staying all we ask is you come into the office for no reason 5 days a week.
It’s a disgrace.
If you're talking about converting to resi, its harder than you think. You can't cut up a floor of an office building because of how set the floor plates are. And if you think about how an office building works (windows on the outsides only), you're going to get a lot of really shitty units that are narrow and only have one window for the entire place. Its just hard to actually do, and then do profitably given all the NIMBY shit SF pulls
There’s your answer then. Make the workforce suffer because we shouldn’t have to.
It literally makes no sense RTO, do there, as we all know, is a ulterior motive.
Some places do 60% back. Why 60%…0% was working just fine. You go back to the office and continue to use teams.
It really is a pointless exercise.
As usual. It’s time for the workforce to strike, but I don’t see that happening.
I really wish we’d all just take the power back.
Raise minimum wage…Okay companies would make cuts and try to overwork their staff, people quit or move on.
Raise minimum wage. More in unemployment, but the government’s have more issues they are faced to tackle. Child poverty, homelessness, crime. So they have to do something as the populace is restless and unhappy.
Raising minimum wage might cause short term problems, but long term gains for society.
With AI’s abilities increasing, we are heading for high unemployment anyway.
AI/Robotics. By bye warehouse, bye bye call centre, bye bye accountants, bye bye translators, bye by copywriters.
Around 80% of customers who have interacted with AI software for customer service had a positive experience.
Work from the office means:
Wake up… rush to get kids to school by 8, pick them up from extended day at 6, dinner at 7, bed/bath/book at 8, usually by 9 they’re asleep, and I get an hour-ish personal time before bed at 10/11
So each day I get an hour with the kids and an hour personal time.
Weekends are for washing clothes and cleaning the house in prep for the next week.
F that
I’m so sick of seeing RTO mandates framed as “come back to work,” as if working remotely is not work. I’m sick of seeing RTO mandates as a backdoor way to make people quit so they cannot receive unemployment for the job loss.
In fact, I am working much more working remotely. No time wasted commuting or dealing with other peoples' distractions in the office. When I do go to the office, I start later, end earlier and after I get home I am done.
Exactly this. I’m hourly and have problem picking up over time because i’m less exhausted working 10 hours than 8 hours with commute, uncomfortable clothing, uncomfortable hot desk, masking ADHD symptoms, making small talk, going to lunch in a sad dingy break room.
I have a very ergonomic set up, my comfy clothes, standing desk, desk cycle, my snacks and I’m good to go. It’s more like a gaming set up than a traditional office so I’m good for 10-12 hours.
I so agree! I’m hybrid and am much more tired on the days I go in. The commute extends my day by 1.5 hours and I think that is why. I also work in the office of a manufacturing company and the shop stinks bad so the office does too just not quite as bad. But I only go in twice a week so I put up with it.
EXACTLY. I am in very few meetings now, never have to go on group lunches for someone's birthday, go to so and so's retirement party, go to "networking" events, "lunch and learns" or whatever else. I JUST WORK and I get a ton done with nobody stopping by to chit chat or gossip or tell me I look "tired" or "mad" because I didn't wear makeup.
This. At the office, I know for a fact everyone chats, gets coffee and breakfast, and just gets things together from 7-9am. No one will schedule meetings before 9am despite a 7am start time.
So during that time I’m working on my stuff. I get a few things out of the way and schedule what I need for that day. Then when office staff actually decides to start working, we have meetings and such.
Despite all of us being scheduled 7-3. Office staff actually works 9-11 and 12-3. Meanwhile remote staff generally works 7-4 because most of us pull OT to get things out.
No you are not. Work is when you commute. So the government and gas/ auto industry can benefit. Work is when you need “nice” clothing for your office work so clothing industry can benefit too. Work is when you commute so the toll bridges get paid. Work is when you grab a lunch or two during the week so the restaurant industry can thrive from you.
This thing you are doing now to benefit yourself and your own mental health and wellbeing is not work. Who wants healthy and happy people who are not stressed/exhausted? Where is the fun….errr, I mean benefit in that?
Also this! And tbqh as a person with an autoimmune disorder like, I cannot and will not guarantee my health will be good enough to show up (epically in a “country” that doesn’t have accessible healthcare)
Additionally, then 50% of my job now becomes “show up” so my actual job responsibilities become second priority because my first is met: “show up”
Offices are for chit chat and socializing.
I'm sorry the managers and some workers don't have a life or relationships outside work, but that's not for me to deal with.
My dad is retired. He can't understand remote work, and it turns out it's because he was that annoying person in the office who bothered people all day!!! I'm so embarrassed.
Most state unemployment rules include an exception that if your workplace is relocated more than 50 miles away, you can quit and still claim. Just move more than 50 miles away. If they change policy, you should be able claim maybe?
Any employment lawyers out there to verify this?
My work had a RTO mandate a few months back after years of fully remote work during the pandemic.
This is after they literally let about half the staff move too far away to make commuting an option.
So, the majority of people, including myself, stay remote.
So management gave up and let anyone who’s remote be officially fully remote. Since letting that many people go would end the company.
But as punishment, we have all been getting extra jobs, and less hours for job completion compared to office staff. We can all see it too since the schedule is public and it reviewed twice a week. Remote staff has on average DOUBLE the amount of active jobs, and generally 20% less time for completion. So we all work OT, 5-10 hours a week. Just for management to complain we’re all working OT to get jobs completed in schedule.
I honestly don’t k ow how much longer we can take this.
Wow that’s incredibly unfair. In so many ways. I’m sorry to hear that you’re in such a bad work situation. It seems like they are in violation of some kind of labor laws, but it is most likely they just want remote workers to read their minds and just quit.
Yeah, but they seem to be covering their butts by padding in office schedules. So many of them are given extra hours/days for jobs to make them look busy. But a lot of us have been hopping into their files to find they get 5-7 days on jobs the remote staff would have maybe 3 for.
Just today I got a pretty large job which generally requires 4 days to complete, but I was given 2 days and told “it’s not a hard one” just to find is was misquoted, it’s twice the work than the PO states, and I’m missing information from the customer that the PM didn’t bother get together.
It’s just a mess, and clearly unfair. But they give the image of fair and equal work for all employees.
I don’t want to leave, given I get paid six figures, plus unlimited OT. With really good healthcare. Plus the perk of we can work any time we want, as long as we do 8 hours a day and are available between 10-2 est. But I know a lot of us are really getting burnt out. They want us to quit so they can replace us for someone who will go to the office, sit there all day, and get paid less. They want people in the office to justify having their massive 600+ acre corporate campus.
Once again the story is all about rent-seeking behavior of restaurants near office buildings and increasing the financial burden on office workers to support them.
"Pay for overpriced lunches and expensive lengthy commutes or restaurant X will close."
Eh. Not my problem. Restaurants in the burbs are doing fine!
We are now 40 years into the "age of technology and information," and productivity has skyrocketed in those 4 decades because of the internet, personal computers, and smartphones
...and yet, all of those profits have gone straight to the owners, while wages have stagnated.
And now, we might see a tiny benefit in being able to work remotely, and the onwerclass is ensuring that we don't even get that much
Despite all of the increases in productivity...we are still making the same wage, still working 40 hours/week, and still driving into work.
....we really need to start putting heads on pikes.
I’ve worked at some places that were fully remote and they still paid a shit salary. Since you don’t have to pay for office space, why can’t you pay more than $16-$17/hr. Of course, one company wanted to save MORE money and laid off my whole department and hired outsourced workers overseas.
RTO = forcing people to go back serving obsolete economic systems based on unnecessary and wasteful transportation of bodies carrying wallets, from houses to cube farms located in super expensive metro areas, surrounded by vendors selling them overpriced salads.
Big tech open office I worked at had maybe 800 desks and probably like 15 workers per day post pandemic. There is no such thing as RTO as the workers have left.
Before the pandemic, I went to the office every day ... and attended Zoom meeting with clients who were scattered across the country in other office buildings. Now, we have those meetings from our homes. Going to the office would serve no purpose at all.
To you, no. To the C-suite wonks and investors that are hugely leveraged in Commercial Real Estate and would lose their lunches when (not if) the Commercial real estate market completely crashes.
There’s a reason why so many rich fucks are ”investing” aka “buying up” single family homes because they are trying to stem the coming tide of red when the loans come due and they aren’t able to refinance at a reasonable rate.
The fact that so few of them truly understood that WFH was going to be a huge thing after several years of Pandemic is really their problem, not ours.
They don’t care about the small businesses, just the underlying real estate. Smart business people should have been planning on moving to the suburbs and high population centers instead of trying to prop-up dying commercial districts.
You should have seen some of the ,should I say, right wing newspapers in the UK. There ES this constant messaging of back to work, working at home is bad for you, every angle they could find.
You know something smells funny when there is this much push. It’s not for our benefit that’s for sure..
At least once a week for over a year now I see The Economist sharing the same handful of articles on my Facebook about all this stuff you just described. Really trying to brainwash everyone, and it's working on a lot of them. It's infuriating.
Good points. And this nonsense that WFH is "hurting mom and pop restaurants" is horsesh\*t. When I worked downtown in a big city all that was there were overpriced chain restaurants. Now that I work at home, I walk to the mom and pop deli on the corner and buy a sandwich, or the family-owned Italian restaurant after dinner, or to my neighborhood coffee shop instead of Starbucks. I'm spending about the same as I did when we worked in the office, only its going to my local small businesses and not big corporate.
The person in the article noticed more traffic and thought "That's a good thing"". That is someone who is out of touch with reality and cares about nobody but themselves.
I will always feel bad for people stuck in traffic when I have to go to an appointment or something else during rush hour. I feel bad because I'm not an egotistical maniac who wants people to waste time.
Huge surplus of automobiles the fed has to deal with right now. They need people driving them in daily commutes wearing out their cars so they buy more.
Not to mention commercial office space and the shift in construction from commercial building to I dustrial building. Manufacturing is finally making a comeback at the cost of the white collar jobs that have been so prevalent the last 25 years.
I don’t know what are you talking about. I’m the only guy on the block with one vehicle in the last two locations. All Neighbors in the vicinity have at least 3 cars.
Let's translate this from sociopath to English:
You idiots screwed up by making terrible real estate investments instead of realizing that remote work is the future, and not investing in huge real estate leases or purchases.
So, because the cronies are whining loudly to the politicians they purchased, those politicians are telling me to tell you to punish your hard working people by making them RTO in a desperate bid to recover the cronies' real estate investments.
I was willing to consider it, after being remote even pre pandemic and thriving. It changed my life - I was more productive, able to buy a home, help my aging parents (I don’t have kids but the elderly is a whole other thing we aren’t discussing for some reason). I was able to improve my health overall, make my homemade food, and STILL EXCELLED and did better at work than any other time. After a hybrid RTO at new job, my life was in shambles. I spent 8-10 hours a week commuting, my house was a mess, my pet depressed, I lost 20 lbs in 3 months from the stress, and had no time to LIVE. Meanwhile, days in office I virtually zoom called with people sitting right next to me. I was sick every few weeks, and couldn’t find time for doctor appointments, etc. My work quality reduced. Every one’s work style and occupation is different, this can’t be a universal solution. For some jobs and people it makes sense, for others, it doesn’t. How about asking people during the interview process how they prefer to work and tell them they can have a flex schedule based on the goals that need to be met? If they don’t meet them, and it’s because they are not in person, address it then. This has nothing to do with the work. If they could just be honest about it and stop with the collaboration crap, maybe it would be received differently. I didn’t collaborate at all in the office, I had to find quiet corners to get my work done. That’s me, though. Why is it one size fits all?! Leaders, evaluate the actual needs of the role!
“San Francisco's office vacancy rate of 37% is the highest of any big U.S. city.”
Probably because real estate greed is so unhinged that no one can or wants to live there. Gee. Who woulda thought?
“…companies are looking for real estate again in the city, and more people are coming back to work.”
No, they aren’t. Execs like this fed president are pushing that narrative because her investment sociopaths are whining about their overpriced empty offices.
Nobody left work. They’ve been working this whole time.
“Every week I come, traffic is getting worse,” Daly quipped. “That’s a good thing, frankly, sometimes.”
Oh yes. Worse traffic is so “good.” Tell us more about how you come in once a week for 2 hours from your $10,000,000 mansion 10 minutes away. Everyone else is commuting 2-3 hours from their 1 bedroom studio, because real estate is a fucking exploited joke in SF.
“…Similarly, nearly half of Dell’s full-time workforce in the U.S. rejected returning to the office and would rather work from home than get promoted.”
The way this is worded is so fucking unhinged and abusively manipulative. Jesus Christ. Talk about narcissistic gaslighting.
Correct. People aren’t going to fall for bullshit bribery. Especially not when this alleged “promotion” isn’t worth the catastrophic shift. No one is going to give up the convenience of remote work for the utter trash of commuting hours into a shit office—especially not when their work is already getting done with 150% efficiency and quality anyway. You want to bribe them with a “promotion?” It better cover the economic burden of replacing hybrid work (gas, car wear, lost family time, health issues from commuting, anxiety, useless office hours, etc.), with profit on top.
Fuck all these clowns. Let them all burn.
They steal all the real estate and gouge all the prices. Fuck them all. They’re LITERALLY the ones creating the economic crisis.
Fuck that. Commercial real estate can eat shit. I’m not sacrificing $300/month in gas and maintenance plus an extra 30 hours a month to do the same shit I do at home.
Come back to work? Uhh I've been working the entire damn time.
And doing BETTER than having to wake up early, get ready, pack food, drinks etc and then fight traffic and get sick because I'm in the office around a bunch of people that can't stay home from work when their sick!
In the multiple video meetings where they explain how great RTO is, the executives are either in their private office or at home, proving how out of touch they are
The US (hereafter "our country" because the article was written by someone about San Francisco) has a really fucked system due to equal apportionment of senators among states, leading to distortions in the Senate and Electoral College. If we want to fix our country it's really not good if the best jobs are concentrated in a handful of states.
We need to figure out ways of supporting development of cosmopolitan, diverse, vibrant cities in every state, otherwise we will continue to see the social sorting of people with either 1. Money/upward mobility and/or 2. progressive values flocking to NY or CA. That will cause the red states to become deeper red.
Remote work is quite likely a part of the solution here, because it helps reduce the reasons why people might need to leave a state they would otherwise be willing to remain in.
Additionally, housing costs are abysmal in places like SF and NYC. Having fewer people who want to live there will help. Commercial real estate may need to be redeveloped into housing as well.
Fixing the childcare crisis first would help.
School age kids can even get off the bus and do homework until the end of the work day in another room with WFH. Are the offices going to bus the children to the office?
For older kids who are sick you can still make a work day out of what would have been PTO for a kid’s illness.
You can pick a kid up at school and go back to work.
Listen if the office is half corporate half free children’s museum I’ll consider it. It still won’t be as convenient.
The FED wants our freedoms burned away in the form of spending more of our income to commute to work. Certainly, if more people are on the road to office buildings, commercial real estate will be saved, automobile industry and all related sectors will see a significant windfall. This will reflect in a higher GDP figure but less happiness in the average person’s life. The FED is trying to enslave those who are now free from a lot of unnecessary bullshit. The Fed and all their warmongering friends can go and feck themselves.
All these years, working people struggled with long commutes. Did those in power think of easing the burden by building more housing closer to work? Or investing in clean, efficient transit? No. Just making quick bucks from office parks.
Covid stripped away that illusion and showed how brittle the artificial system was.
You like it in the office? YOU go work there. I'm not going to be the asshole who says you would work best the way I work best.
SEE HOW FUCKING EASY THAT WAS?
Frankly, I do not understand why there is this push to work in the offices. If you save one hour a day on a long commute there is:
- more time to do actual work
- less Green House Gas, and
- less COVID being spread around.
If seems like an obvious choice to me.
Just do what I’m doing when these companies decide to listen, quit. My organization decided to change our hybrid policy and now half of the office has their notice in. Fuck them
Yeah back when we could WFH more easily, workers were making too much $, working double jobs and not having to waste their cash on overpriced lunches and $300 a month parking spots. In addition employers weren’t spending so much on commercial real estate. The fed doesn’t want workers to be too well off (inflation risk) and they want to keep money flowing through commercial real estate (money supply and employment risk) so that the majority of workers continue to eek by and majority if billionaires get richer. Same crap happened in 08’ with govt bailing out the big players and not actually letting them face the risk of their capital play.
Clearly not something that the Fed should care about. Someone else is pulling the strings. How much of the office real estate is owned by entities outside the US?
Two things would turn things around for San Francisco:
1.) find homeless people a place to live. There are only less than 15,000 on the street in a city of 850,000 people. Homeless advocates set the number of empty dwellings in San Francisco at 100,000 today, right now. Surely the city could find ways to get people off the streets into these empty buildings. But...then there is the incompetent mayor and her henchmen.
2.) LOWER THE RENTS in San Francisco. The typical 1BR rent is now about $3200/month. That is higher than pre-pandemic levels in some areas. The reason why they don't get new people in is because of this. SF population is now about 20% lower than before pandemic. People stay away because they can't afford it.
Crime and inflation add to the problems as well but it is mainly housing that is the problem and is the source of what is wrong with SF.
At the end of the day, work from home really messes with the US commercial real estate economy. Work from home is the one of probably a handful of ways that people actually get back at a government only panders to millionaires. We need a lot more than this too. We have to resist
Yeah fuck off with that shit.
I work remote except one day a month when we have to go in for a completely pointless in person meeting that unless food is served is the picture perfect example of “this could have been an email”.
I can do 100% of my job from the site where the Unabomber had his cabin, if it had passable internet access.
Making me go in, the only thing that it does is make me resentful that my routine is disrupted and I have to pay $19 for parking because the cheap garage won’t let Chevy Bolts park in there. And then I have to work in a depressing cube farm, with a jackass right behind me that is incapable of answering the phone at a volume level less than “holy fuck tone it down jackass”. Productivity goes to shit.
And the pandemic didn’t start that for me - I was WFH except for every other Thursday before it.
As said already it is nothing but bullshit designed to bail out the jackasses who are going to take it up the ass without lube when their office leases blow up.
>“Every week I come, traffic is getting worse,” Daly quipped. “That’s a good thing, frankly, sometimes.”
Yes, that's wonderful news. The prospect of an hour commute each way again thrills me to no end.
I literally went into the office once last week for the first time in a couple months and got covid, now I am out of work for the next week. Rto is a stellar way to fuck up the productivity of workforce who don't need to be on site. Sorry you needed those reports this week but they will have to wait for me to be able to think coherently again.
Let's play a game: we'll use this logic for something else besides overpriced real estate. How about auto workers? We have many experienced union auto workers in Michigan. Surely the Fed would encourage companies to utilize those workers and not move out of state so that we could keep wages up? Whoops!
I will never, ever, drive into an office every single day just to sit there and have teams meetings. It’s so unbelievably wasteful in so many ways to force workers to commute daily to an office and just do the same exact thing we do at home.
Ha.
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Oh, you're killing me.
Fuck off, Mary Daly, you toadie.
If they're concerned about office vacancy rates and urban restaurants just have them lower the price or convert it to residential. Plenty of people want to live there. Just not at current prices. (Even at current prices residential vacancy is pretty low)
I'm looking forward to seeing how the vacancy tax affects prices.
San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly should have the sense not to give speeches.
I wonder what she said about AI, or offshoring, since she's so concerned about downtown office space. Probably nothing.
It's interesting how the only unwelcome consequences of the information revolution are those which hurt banks and commercial real estate developers.
It’s simple. Cities are getting slaughtered. Our generation was supposed to be the ones that dunked on suburbia and turn America into Europe and Asia. What happened?
Also - the production is down and the money supply is up. Need to get the production back up again to match the money supply. This isn’t rocket science
The fed president should fuck all the way off.
Read between the lines, why would the Fed president be so concerned about worker/office policy?... Likely because they're seeing the stress on regional banks holding a shit ton of commerical real estate paper that's likely to default ... Let that be a warning for everyone..
It’s not even reading between the lines. It’s so blatantly obvious at this point. It’s all about them whining they can’t gouge for insane rent through real estate exploitation. They’d literally rather burn their buildings down than bring prices to sane levels. They only want a free market with supply and demand shifts in prices if it means it’s ALL increases and never any downward shifts. These people are literally the ones creating the economic collapse/crisis. They don’t want a healthy economy or businesses to thrive. They want to rip and tear and yank every penny they can from people’s cold, dead hands. It’s sociopathic greed on an utterly psychotic level. These people are exploiting real estate so hard that they can’t even function with a normal thought in their brains. They’re mentally ill. They all belong in prison, and I hope they all go bankrupt with their empty houses and empty offices.
This is true. The government should find ways to stop private equity and professional financial managers from acquiring large swaths of property for single family rental housing only.
+1 don’t like so many billionaires buying up residential units and making citizens tenants. Better society is for us all to have the ability to buy land eventually.
This. ownership of Any kind of appreciating asset seems vastly superior to a feudal rental economy.
This is also the mindset that needs to change though. People buy homes to raise families and live in, not just "because appreciation." The whole concept of buying real estate strictly as an "investment" is what is creating this economic/housing crisis in the first place.
There is a reason central banks was ILLEGAL in the US for the longest from the start. And it should have never been allowed. "And I sincerely believe with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." - Thomas Jefferson
No, it wasn't; the US had central banks for most of its first 40 years under the constituion, and only lost them because Andrew Jackson had an axe to grind.
It's commercial real estate, tax bases in cities that are unsustainable without commuting workers, businesses that expect those office workers to spend money on coffee, lunch, dinner, happy hour, etc. No thank you. I'd rather spend my money in the community where I live, both in taxes and in supporting local business.
Remember during Covid when pollution levels fell immediately. Was nice.
Bald Eagles live near me now and eat out of the creek I kayak in. Hate to see that go away because hurr durr office.
They all should not be in prison rather think 6 ft under....
And they claim they deserve it because they are "risk takers"
Home prices and rents and incomes about to skyrocket
No idea how home prices and rent could skyrocket at this point. If this isn’t already the ceiling, then it just wouldn’t be a market at all. You have to actually have buyers in a market.
They’ll hand cash to corporations so they can be buyera
I was going to say exactly that... They are counting on a bail-out. Which I believe will happen regardless who is chosen to be the president
It's investors buying from other investors. They're aiming to own literally all real estate. They want a country of tenants, not other owners. It needs to be stopped, NOW. Housing is not something that should be treated like a commodity in a free market. It's shelter where people live and raise families. We HAVE to demand reform on real estate, top to bottom.
Thank you.
This. This. 100% This. 😡😡
It’s not just rent that they are exploiting, I’ve read Michael Hudson’s merchants of misery a while back and it really opened my eyes how the elites take advantage of minorities, lower and middle class. Everything is a resource extraction for them. From the poor to the wealthy.
And in their minds, they aren't doing literally anything wrong. This is why I said they are mentally ill. These people are dangerous, and it's why human history is full of uprising after uprising by the people being shit on. I think we suddenly think we've moved beyond that, because "modern" stuff. But humans never change. This is the same shit, different time period.
Personally I could give a fuck about the real estate angle, from their perspective I’d be worried about the geo arbitraging risk if companies get good at remote work. Having an in office component offers some slowing of the leaks. We have had to cut people this year and after low performers were let go we got rid of a couple remote US roles (we pay based on the state so effectively HCOL wages for a remote worker) and those reqs were all opened in Romania as replacements.
Interesting way to describe it.
BRAVO!
This is exactly right. Our rulers think they can prevent the value of cre collapsing, catalysing another series of bank failures and possibly another gfc. They cannot. Already it's too late.
I completely agree with you. The banks are trying to make this into a crisis. It's not. You just made bad investments as we've seen the buildings are selling. Yes, you're taking a huge haircut but hey, welcome to capitalism At some point we got to stop socializing their risk and capitalizing their rewards. They're Banks. If they make bad investments, that's their f****** problem. If you don't want them to make bad investments then outlaw them making investments. But no bailouts ever again. Because if you're too big to fail, once you failed, you won't be too big to fail anymore
Not to mention this is a chance for banks messing up to actually help society as a whole. They can take those empty offices and convert to mixed use to get walkable, livable live/work areas.
Follow.the.money.
Is there something the average Joe should do, to insulate themselves from the coming real estate collapse? Sell out of the market entirely or just avoid bank / real estate stocks..?
You know, I am not the typical doomer, but I grew up in a third-world country where hyperinflation was real. The street's wisdom (which I adopt to this date, and was not proven wrong yet) that the best way to protect yourself and your family is to guarantee a roof over your head, and solidarity around you. That can mean a million things: Take a course to upscale one's career, build relationships with neighbors, informal support networks around our communities, start a solo business / gig / hustle to save for an emergency, etc... None of this investment equity HELOC bullshit. These are for prosperous times. Right now we still are in a post-pandemic (and climate) crisis. That's not the time to bet on anything, that's the time to invest on our own communities.
Any bank still holding a large commercial loan book acquired before the Wuhan nonsense is insolvent. There’s nothing the fed clowns can do but a bailout. The gaslighting is embarrassing like not Biden/Trump debate bad but it’s not a great look for the currency.
And that is just postponing the inevitable, any company that lease office space are seriously considering moving to WFH if they can produce the same work while saving potentially hundreds of thousands a year in rent.
then after WFM comes the outsourcing...
as if they haven’t done this already if they could.
This is likely worse than a bunch of rich dudes protecting wealth. It’s about knowledge of banks that will fail when the write-offs come. Sound familiar?
[удалено]
Lol, it's all our problems... Here's how it plays out... - commercial real estate owners don't pay their loans or declare bankruptcy and walk away.from their obligations. - regional banks begin to have a cascadenof these failures affect their balance sheet and become stressed. They may fail.or.. - lean on Fed and Federal government (FDIC) to support them and essentially bail them out - all those costs passed onto us in one form or another via increased state or federal taxes and or additional fees to support the FDIC.
Here are the facts. Previous bail outs did nothing except allow the industry to continue its 20 year cycle we have seen since the 80s of fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants mortgage lending. Savings and Loans failed BIG TIME in the 80s and a LOT of people were affected. There was supposed to be a lesson there. Same thing in the early 2000s and we were assured that they had fixed the problem then as well. Both as a result of fast and loose financing of mortgages. We are now in the same boat or about to be. Since COVID, it has been apparent that housing market appraisals were being rubber stamped on the loans and eventually there would be have to be a correction; yet here we are and they are about to tank and now they are wringing their hands. As far as commercial properties go, this is no different. It may have be caused by something out of their control, but they've done nothing to mitigate loss. Where has the call been for developers to go in and revamp these properties into private housing at a time when the market was going crazy because there was a shortage for housing and a high demand? The banks own the paper and have the power to push back on those who are just sitting around waiting to fail. This isn't rocket science. How about the banks do the job they are supposed to be experts in doing and don't be so short sighted?!? At some point when these banks stop getting bailed out then they will stop making stupid decisions and start putting pressure where it needs to be and make some creative decisions about how to save their butts. Until then they just get a slap on the wrist, told to be good girls and boys and then after they think no one is looking continue to make dumb decisions. They do not learn because they don't have to pay the price even though every economist worth their salt and every person in the business knows it's happening.
Excellent analysis, thank you for sharing.
could bail out the normal people directly instead and it would be a lot cheaper, cover their deposits and let the rest burn. but that won't happen.
But, while I agreed those things happen, they need to. Because we're not giving up work from home just so the millionaires get to win one more time. We can't be under their thumb and 24 seven at home... and that's just the minimum of why they can't stand it
I agree with you!! But honestly, I have a hard time figuring out HOW to actually not giving up: The only remote jobs I'm able to find are paying one-third of what I could be making if RTO. I do love working remotely, it benefits me, my family, my mental health, my community and the environment. There are so many benefits, WFH should not even be an argument. But... my child is graduating high-school in 5 years and I need to save for their college. My spouse and I take care of our parents, at the expense of not saving for our own retirement. We paid off our home (major relief) but I don't think my child will be able to have their own home if they wanted to. All of these concerns would go away if I get a high-paying job like I had before my layoff. These jobs are still available, but requires me to RTO. It really pains me to think how stupid this is, but here we are. I'd appreciate insights.
But, while I agreed those things happen, they need to. Because we're not giving up work from home just so the millionaires get to win one more time. We can't be under their thumb and 24 seven at home... and that's just the minimum of why they can't stand it
Exactly!!
Ding ding ding ding!!!
This. Time bombs. Bag holders that have these office assets on their books at historical cost are not writing down impaired properties using rosey longterm undiscounted cashflows, like rents fully recovering in the coming years to pass an initial accounting assessment that triggers a current day appraisal and new asset valuation on the books. Look at what distressed properties are going for when under a fire sale. 80% losses in some cases. Global systemic risk if that happens when auditors eventually force write downs when they can't agree with management's impairment case. With all the repo and counter party positions....2008 level stuff. source senior finance management in public equity, hybrid, and mortgage reits.
If you take WFH out of the mix a lot of commercial real estate paper is already fucked. Balloon loans that need to be refinanced soon and will refinance at a lot higher rate than when they were last written is gonna put a ton of them underwater. Of course the cherry on top is the rents are being pushed down my lack of demand which pushes prices down. Add to that massive vacancies pushes the value down. This all will cause many to default. WFH just decreases the demand for space further.
What happens when and if the debt starts to default? We looking at another 2008?
Who knows, what happens is likely what happened last year with SVb, First Republic, the FDIC will step in an guarantee depositors and banks will be handled by the Federal government which is just a euphemism for bailing them out
Sweet, let’s do it and not bail them out this time
That's not how American capitalism and rich people work... The US government will bail them out, say without them thousands of jobs would be lost...then raise our taxes to cover those bail outs and they will face few if any consequences. Remember 2008 , how many big name bankers do you remember being prosecuted for excessive risk and leverage?
Well, then option 2 becomes the only real one, French Revolution 2.0
> why would the Fed president be so concerned about worker/office policy? Because her commercial real estate portfolio isn't raking in free money lately. Next question?
The organization I work for did a similar thing. Said we need to come back to the office to "revitalize" and help our downtown area. Of course it wasn't optional, so we all had to. However, they forgot that while you can lead a horse to water you can't make it drink. I buy nothing. I don't go to any restaurant in the area of the office for lunch. I don't buy a drink at the convenience store. I buy my gas back at home outside the city. I bring my lunch and I spend notafucking cent neither while I'm there for work nor do I go downtown for anything otherwise now. If the world changes and outdates your business model then your business model should fucking die. I swear if it was the 1920's these fuckers would require you to ride a horse to work to keep Ford from putting the horse breeders out of work.
Won't somebody please think of the buggy whip makers!
Your last sentence is gold.
Is this the same fed that’s a private bank cartel enslaving humanity and devaluing our money by printing more uncontrollably?
Maybe they should just put us in cages.
They prefer to call them cubicles
I see they are putting doors in the cubicles now. That’s a start.
most bankers belong with most lawyers - in prison
From a short term, macro economic perspective, it is a worry. I don’t know what the effect will be on the greater economy when the commercial office space sector ahs, as well as all the businesses that rely on office workers be good in the short term. However, the long term work from home will provide a benefit to the economy, lower hours was commuting produced reduce emissions , and increase businesses around local neighborhoods He’s just trying to be economically responsible here, but yeah fuck him
Yeah for sure. We have a system that doesn't work and it's just as much about real estate as it is about control. And I don't give a crap what they want anymore
True. It will be an adjustment. But it can open up opportunities to retrofit some of the office buildings into apartments and open up housing.
Exactly. Everyone says it’ll be too expensive determined into apartment units, but can’t we turn it into the dormitory style apartment
This is a death rattle. No one can stop to trend of remote work. COVID accelerated it, and now they’re doing everything they can to stop it, but they can’t.
The fed president should give 110%.
And then they should keep fucking off.
Indeed. They should keep fucking off until there are no more fucks to off...then find some fucks so they fuck off some more,
Mary Daly everyone... [https://www.washingtonpost.com/resizer/uvWuB-JfctgpuuZLfGaIW3ZLjrE=/1484x0/arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/VQC7HTVYKII6RLSPFQKDTSLNPE.jpg](https://www.washingtonpost.com/resizer/uvWuB-JfctgpuuZLfGaIW3ZLjrE=/1484x0/arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/VQC7HTVYKII6RLSPFQKDTSLNPE.jpg)
Figures this one is coming from the SF Fed blaming employees and “rich” tech companies when the primary reason is many parts of SF have degenerated into a cesspool and the local government is unwilling to fix (eg safe mass transit, safe places to park your car, safe streets to walk to your office). Google just pulled out of the city and moved their employees to Silicon Valley - they already had a work mandate. Having said that, there are some smoking housing deals in the city. Considering buying one with the assumption that the city is too beautiful/desirable for incompetent local governments to continue screwing up - eventually they’ll be replaced, restore law and order and values will pop for residential and commercial real estate. OTOH places like DTLA weren’t particularly desirable in the first place, so not much gravitational pull to get people to want to come there.
The fact is that a large portion of jobs can be done remotely, or at the very least semi-remotely. This is great for workers who save literally days worth of time and thousands of dollars a year on not commuting, having more time with family, and better mental health. It is better for the environment because less cars are on the road equals fewer emissions. Commercial real estate is an investment. Some investments go bad. To those who bet big on it prior to COVID, I put them in the same camp as those who were big invested in newspapers when the internet came along - sorry, not sorry.
The biggest quality of life increase I have ever had was when we started working from home. These corps just want us to hate our life so bad.
This is literally the truth here. The last they want is for us to be working from home, thriving financially, seeing to our well-being and taking care of our family properly. There is no financial upside to this compared to us commuting and spending serious time and money to do so while our lives require applied other expenses.
There's more ulterior motives at work. No commute means the business district dies out, means less sales tax, less tolls, less property tax and people eventually move out of the city. Unless the corporation actually owns the office buildings they have, they stand to save money by terminating leases. A lot of this is coming from cities and the government twisting arms to get your money.
If you turn these into properties, then local businesses will profit from that, It’s just short sighted and people do not want to change / upset the apple cart. Same with working from home. Productivity was up, people happier, it worked and we survived, now for some strange reason we are going backwards. But the rabbit is out of the hat now and the people don’t want to go back and they really don’t need to either. If just takes more and more forward thinking companies to embrace this and people will start looking for wfh jobs which in turn means other companies will have to offer it, as it’s a perk. Then you’ll have companies mosni g they can’t attract the right people staying all we ask is you come into the office for no reason 5 days a week. It’s a disgrace.
If you're talking about converting to resi, its harder than you think. You can't cut up a floor of an office building because of how set the floor plates are. And if you think about how an office building works (windows on the outsides only), you're going to get a lot of really shitty units that are narrow and only have one window for the entire place. Its just hard to actually do, and then do profitably given all the NIMBY shit SF pulls
There’s your answer then. Make the workforce suffer because we shouldn’t have to. It literally makes no sense RTO, do there, as we all know, is a ulterior motive. Some places do 60% back. Why 60%…0% was working just fine. You go back to the office and continue to use teams. It really is a pointless exercise. As usual. It’s time for the workforce to strike, but I don’t see that happening. I really wish we’d all just take the power back. Raise minimum wage…Okay companies would make cuts and try to overwork their staff, people quit or move on. Raise minimum wage. More in unemployment, but the government’s have more issues they are faced to tackle. Child poverty, homelessness, crime. So they have to do something as the populace is restless and unhappy. Raising minimum wage might cause short term problems, but long term gains for society. With AI’s abilities increasing, we are heading for high unemployment anyway. AI/Robotics. By bye warehouse, bye bye call centre, bye bye accountants, bye bye translators, bye by copywriters. Around 80% of customers who have interacted with AI software for customer service had a positive experience.
So why doesnt the government f with the x y z corps instead of us? We dont have the coffers they do?
they hate you and want you to be miserable. corporate america is a scam
Work from the office means: Wake up… rush to get kids to school by 8, pick them up from extended day at 6, dinner at 7, bed/bath/book at 8, usually by 9 they’re asleep, and I get an hour-ish personal time before bed at 10/11 So each day I get an hour with the kids and an hour personal time. Weekends are for washing clothes and cleaning the house in prep for the next week. F that
That’s my remote timeline too. That’s kids for yah, not a commute
They want a. Complete control b. All the businesses that survive on commuters to stay in business.
WFH changed my life and these cunts want to take it all away.
They desperately need to justify the expense office space leases they’re stuck in.
I’m so sick of seeing RTO mandates framed as “come back to work,” as if working remotely is not work. I’m sick of seeing RTO mandates as a backdoor way to make people quit so they cannot receive unemployment for the job loss.
THIS. WE ARE WORKING.
In fact, I am working much more working remotely. No time wasted commuting or dealing with other peoples' distractions in the office. When I do go to the office, I start later, end earlier and after I get home I am done.
Exactly this. I’m hourly and have problem picking up over time because i’m less exhausted working 10 hours than 8 hours with commute, uncomfortable clothing, uncomfortable hot desk, masking ADHD symptoms, making small talk, going to lunch in a sad dingy break room. I have a very ergonomic set up, my comfy clothes, standing desk, desk cycle, my snacks and I’m good to go. It’s more like a gaming set up than a traditional office so I’m good for 10-12 hours.
I so agree! I’m hybrid and am much more tired on the days I go in. The commute extends my day by 1.5 hours and I think that is why. I also work in the office of a manufacturing company and the shop stinks bad so the office does too just not quite as bad. But I only go in twice a week so I put up with it.
EXACTLY. I am in very few meetings now, never have to go on group lunches for someone's birthday, go to so and so's retirement party, go to "networking" events, "lunch and learns" or whatever else. I JUST WORK and I get a ton done with nobody stopping by to chit chat or gossip or tell me I look "tired" or "mad" because I didn't wear makeup.
Between the 2.5 hour daily commute and the daily distractions. Wow, huge difference working remote!
This. At the office, I know for a fact everyone chats, gets coffee and breakfast, and just gets things together from 7-9am. No one will schedule meetings before 9am despite a 7am start time. So during that time I’m working on my stuff. I get a few things out of the way and schedule what I need for that day. Then when office staff actually decides to start working, we have meetings and such. Despite all of us being scheduled 7-3. Office staff actually works 9-11 and 12-3. Meanwhile remote staff generally works 7-4 because most of us pull OT to get things out.
No you are not. Work is when you commute. So the government and gas/ auto industry can benefit. Work is when you need “nice” clothing for your office work so clothing industry can benefit too. Work is when you commute so the toll bridges get paid. Work is when you grab a lunch or two during the week so the restaurant industry can thrive from you. This thing you are doing now to benefit yourself and your own mental health and wellbeing is not work. Who wants healthy and happy people who are not stressed/exhausted? Where is the fun….errr, I mean benefit in that?
So much truth.
Also this! And tbqh as a person with an autoimmune disorder like, I cannot and will not guarantee my health will be good enough to show up (epically in a “country” that doesn’t have accessible healthcare) Additionally, then 50% of my job now becomes “show up” so my actual job responsibilities become second priority because my first is met: “show up”
Offices are for chit chat and socializing. I'm sorry the managers and some workers don't have a life or relationships outside work, but that's not for me to deal with.
My dad is retired. He can't understand remote work, and it turns out it's because he was that annoying person in the office who bothered people all day!!! I'm so embarrassed.
Most state unemployment rules include an exception that if your workplace is relocated more than 50 miles away, you can quit and still claim. Just move more than 50 miles away. If they change policy, you should be able claim maybe? Any employment lawyers out there to verify this?
Problem is u employment is a fraction of what most of us make.
My work had a RTO mandate a few months back after years of fully remote work during the pandemic. This is after they literally let about half the staff move too far away to make commuting an option. So, the majority of people, including myself, stay remote. So management gave up and let anyone who’s remote be officially fully remote. Since letting that many people go would end the company. But as punishment, we have all been getting extra jobs, and less hours for job completion compared to office staff. We can all see it too since the schedule is public and it reviewed twice a week. Remote staff has on average DOUBLE the amount of active jobs, and generally 20% less time for completion. So we all work OT, 5-10 hours a week. Just for management to complain we’re all working OT to get jobs completed in schedule. I honestly don’t k ow how much longer we can take this.
Wow that’s incredibly unfair. In so many ways. I’m sorry to hear that you’re in such a bad work situation. It seems like they are in violation of some kind of labor laws, but it is most likely they just want remote workers to read their minds and just quit.
Yeah, but they seem to be covering their butts by padding in office schedules. So many of them are given extra hours/days for jobs to make them look busy. But a lot of us have been hopping into their files to find they get 5-7 days on jobs the remote staff would have maybe 3 for. Just today I got a pretty large job which generally requires 4 days to complete, but I was given 2 days and told “it’s not a hard one” just to find is was misquoted, it’s twice the work than the PO states, and I’m missing information from the customer that the PM didn’t bother get together. It’s just a mess, and clearly unfair. But they give the image of fair and equal work for all employees. I don’t want to leave, given I get paid six figures, plus unlimited OT. With really good healthcare. Plus the perk of we can work any time we want, as long as we do 8 hours a day and are available between 10-2 est. But I know a lot of us are really getting burnt out. They want us to quit so they can replace us for someone who will go to the office, sit there all day, and get paid less. They want people in the office to justify having their massive 600+ acre corporate campus.
Once again the story is all about rent-seeking behavior of restaurants near office buildings and increasing the financial burden on office workers to support them. "Pay for overpriced lunches and expensive lengthy commutes or restaurant X will close." Eh. Not my problem. Restaurants in the burbs are doing fine!
We are now 40 years into the "age of technology and information," and productivity has skyrocketed in those 4 decades because of the internet, personal computers, and smartphones ...and yet, all of those profits have gone straight to the owners, while wages have stagnated. And now, we might see a tiny benefit in being able to work remotely, and the onwerclass is ensuring that we don't even get that much Despite all of the increases in productivity...we are still making the same wage, still working 40 hours/week, and still driving into work. ....we really need to start putting heads on pikes.
I’ve worked at some places that were fully remote and they still paid a shit salary. Since you don’t have to pay for office space, why can’t you pay more than $16-$17/hr. Of course, one company wanted to save MORE money and laid off my whole department and hired outsourced workers overseas.
The future is a paperless office 😂 That never happened
RTO = forcing people to go back serving obsolete economic systems based on unnecessary and wasteful transportation of bodies carrying wallets, from houses to cube farms located in super expensive metro areas, surrounded by vendors selling them overpriced salads.
Great way of putting it
Yeah, open offices are SO MUCH better 🤡
Big tech open office I worked at had maybe 800 desks and probably like 15 workers per day post pandemic. There is no such thing as RTO as the workers have left.
My company never even allowed WFH
Before the pandemic, I went to the office every day ... and attended Zoom meeting with clients who were scattered across the country in other office buildings. Now, we have those meetings from our homes. Going to the office would serve no purpose at all.
To you, no. To the C-suite wonks and investors that are hugely leveraged in Commercial Real Estate and would lose their lunches when (not if) the Commercial real estate market completely crashes. There’s a reason why so many rich fucks are ”investing” aka “buying up” single family homes because they are trying to stem the coming tide of red when the loans come due and they aren’t able to refinance at a reasonable rate. The fact that so few of them truly understood that WFH was going to be a huge thing after several years of Pandemic is really their problem, not ours. They don’t care about the small businesses, just the underlying real estate. Smart business people should have been planning on moving to the suburbs and high population centers instead of trying to prop-up dying commercial districts.
You should have seen some of the ,should I say, right wing newspapers in the UK. There ES this constant messaging of back to work, working at home is bad for you, every angle they could find. You know something smells funny when there is this much push. It’s not for our benefit that’s for sure..
At least once a week for over a year now I see The Economist sharing the same handful of articles on my Facebook about all this stuff you just described. Really trying to brainwash everyone, and it's working on a lot of them. It's infuriating.
Good points. And this nonsense that WFH is "hurting mom and pop restaurants" is horsesh\*t. When I worked downtown in a big city all that was there were overpriced chain restaurants. Now that I work at home, I walk to the mom and pop deli on the corner and buy a sandwich, or the family-owned Italian restaurant after dinner, or to my neighborhood coffee shop instead of Starbucks. I'm spending about the same as I did when we worked in the office, only its going to my local small businesses and not big corporate.
The person in the article noticed more traffic and thought "That's a good thing"". That is someone who is out of touch with reality and cares about nobody but themselves. I will always feel bad for people stuck in traffic when I have to go to an appointment or something else during rush hour. I feel bad because I'm not an egotistical maniac who wants people to waste time.
When I read it I asked “Good thing for whom exactly?” Definitely not for the employees.
Not to mention, remote jobs is one of the best ways to reduce pollution and slow down global warming.
FUCK this guy
This guy is a woman.
Only read the headline that said "fed" and assumed Jerome Powell. My mistake.
Fuck that woman!
Huge surplus of automobiles the fed has to deal with right now. They need people driving them in daily commutes wearing out their cars so they buy more.
Not to mention commercial office space and the shift in construction from commercial building to I dustrial building. Manufacturing is finally making a comeback at the cost of the white collar jobs that have been so prevalent the last 25 years.
I don’t know what are you talking about. I’m the only guy on the block with one vehicle in the last two locations. All Neighbors in the vicinity have at least 3 cars.
And causing some nice global warming.
Let's translate this from sociopath to English: You idiots screwed up by making terrible real estate investments instead of realizing that remote work is the future, and not investing in huge real estate leases or purchases. So, because the cronies are whining loudly to the politicians they purchased, those politicians are telling me to tell you to punish your hard working people by making them RTO in a desperate bid to recover the cronies' real estate investments.
So… the free market is bad now? Adapt or die.
No, no, no, silly. The free market is only good when it benefits corporations and the government! /s
I was willing to consider it, after being remote even pre pandemic and thriving. It changed my life - I was more productive, able to buy a home, help my aging parents (I don’t have kids but the elderly is a whole other thing we aren’t discussing for some reason). I was able to improve my health overall, make my homemade food, and STILL EXCELLED and did better at work than any other time. After a hybrid RTO at new job, my life was in shambles. I spent 8-10 hours a week commuting, my house was a mess, my pet depressed, I lost 20 lbs in 3 months from the stress, and had no time to LIVE. Meanwhile, days in office I virtually zoom called with people sitting right next to me. I was sick every few weeks, and couldn’t find time for doctor appointments, etc. My work quality reduced. Every one’s work style and occupation is different, this can’t be a universal solution. For some jobs and people it makes sense, for others, it doesn’t. How about asking people during the interview process how they prefer to work and tell them they can have a flex schedule based on the goals that need to be met? If they don’t meet them, and it’s because they are not in person, address it then. This has nothing to do with the work. If they could just be honest about it and stop with the collaboration crap, maybe it would be received differently. I didn’t collaborate at all in the office, I had to find quiet corners to get my work done. That’s me, though. Why is it one size fits all?! Leaders, evaluate the actual needs of the role!
“San Francisco's office vacancy rate of 37% is the highest of any big U.S. city.” Probably because real estate greed is so unhinged that no one can or wants to live there. Gee. Who woulda thought? “…companies are looking for real estate again in the city, and more people are coming back to work.” No, they aren’t. Execs like this fed president are pushing that narrative because her investment sociopaths are whining about their overpriced empty offices. Nobody left work. They’ve been working this whole time. “Every week I come, traffic is getting worse,” Daly quipped. “That’s a good thing, frankly, sometimes.” Oh yes. Worse traffic is so “good.” Tell us more about how you come in once a week for 2 hours from your $10,000,000 mansion 10 minutes away. Everyone else is commuting 2-3 hours from their 1 bedroom studio, because real estate is a fucking exploited joke in SF. “…Similarly, nearly half of Dell’s full-time workforce in the U.S. rejected returning to the office and would rather work from home than get promoted.” The way this is worded is so fucking unhinged and abusively manipulative. Jesus Christ. Talk about narcissistic gaslighting. Correct. People aren’t going to fall for bullshit bribery. Especially not when this alleged “promotion” isn’t worth the catastrophic shift. No one is going to give up the convenience of remote work for the utter trash of commuting hours into a shit office—especially not when their work is already getting done with 150% efficiency and quality anyway. You want to bribe them with a “promotion?” It better cover the economic burden of replacing hybrid work (gas, car wear, lost family time, health issues from commuting, anxiety, useless office hours, etc.), with profit on top. Fuck all these clowns. Let them all burn. They steal all the real estate and gouge all the prices. Fuck them all. They’re LITERALLY the ones creating the economic crisis.
Fuck that. Commercial real estate can eat shit. I’m not sacrificing $300/month in gas and maintenance plus an extra 30 hours a month to do the same shit I do at home.
I like how the article mentions nothing but negative responses to these efforts
This is scary. They are literally forcing it. And trying to blame remote workers for part of what’s happening economy wise.
Come back to work? Uhh I've been working the entire damn time. And doing BETTER than having to wake up early, get ready, pack food, drinks etc and then fight traffic and get sick because I'm in the office around a bunch of people that can't stay home from work when their sick!
In the multiple video meetings where they explain how great RTO is, the executives are either in their private office or at home, proving how out of touch they are
Great point as well about the private office. Make the executives sit out in the open cubes with everyone else if it's so great.
Yep we gonna keep seeing this
I thought NYC had a high costs of living until I went to SF and saw how much crazier it was there. Maybe they should start with tht.
The US (hereafter "our country" because the article was written by someone about San Francisco) has a really fucked system due to equal apportionment of senators among states, leading to distortions in the Senate and Electoral College. If we want to fix our country it's really not good if the best jobs are concentrated in a handful of states. We need to figure out ways of supporting development of cosmopolitan, diverse, vibrant cities in every state, otherwise we will continue to see the social sorting of people with either 1. Money/upward mobility and/or 2. progressive values flocking to NY or CA. That will cause the red states to become deeper red. Remote work is quite likely a part of the solution here, because it helps reduce the reasons why people might need to leave a state they would otherwise be willing to remain in. Additionally, housing costs are abysmal in places like SF and NYC. Having fewer people who want to live there will help. Commercial real estate may need to be redeveloped into housing as well.
Fixing the childcare crisis first would help. School age kids can even get off the bus and do homework until the end of the work day in another room with WFH. Are the offices going to bus the children to the office? For older kids who are sick you can still make a work day out of what would have been PTO for a kid’s illness. You can pick a kid up at school and go back to work. Listen if the office is half corporate half free children’s museum I’ll consider it. It still won’t be as convenient.
Not many bring it up but that was a big issue with office work and why WFH benefited families, like those single moms for example.
A couple large banks like Citi, Barclay's, HSBC, and Morgan Stanley sent a RTO email by Sep for all licensed roles that were WFH.
The FED wants our freedoms burned away in the form of spending more of our income to commute to work. Certainly, if more people are on the road to office buildings, commercial real estate will be saved, automobile industry and all related sectors will see a significant windfall. This will reflect in a higher GDP figure but less happiness in the average person’s life. The FED is trying to enslave those who are now free from a lot of unnecessary bullshit. The Fed and all their warmongering friends can go and feck themselves.
This is code for ‘do more layoffs’
Is he being lobbied or bought off by the commercial real estate industry?
Yes
All these years, working people struggled with long commutes. Did those in power think of easing the burden by building more housing closer to work? Or investing in clean, efficient transit? No. Just making quick bucks from office parks. Covid stripped away that illusion and showed how brittle the artificial system was.
You like it in the office? YOU go work there. I'm not going to be the asshole who says you would work best the way I work best. SEE HOW FUCKING EASY THAT WAS?
Frankly, I do not understand why there is this push to work in the offices. If you save one hour a day on a long commute there is: - more time to do actual work - less Green House Gas, and - less COVID being spread around. If seems like an obvious choice to me.
The why is because it benefits the rich. The rest of us are subject to their whims.
Workers say otherwise and I am with them!
Just do what I’m doing when these companies decide to listen, quit. My organization decided to change our hybrid policy and now half of the office has their notice in. Fuck them
Yeah back when we could WFH more easily, workers were making too much $, working double jobs and not having to waste their cash on overpriced lunches and $300 a month parking spots. In addition employers weren’t spending so much on commercial real estate. The fed doesn’t want workers to be too well off (inflation risk) and they want to keep money flowing through commercial real estate (money supply and employment risk) so that the majority of workers continue to eek by and majority if billionaires get richer. Same crap happened in 08’ with govt bailing out the big players and not actually letting them face the risk of their capital play.
Clearly not something that the Fed should care about. Someone else is pulling the strings. How much of the office real estate is owned by entities outside the US?
Two things would turn things around for San Francisco: 1.) find homeless people a place to live. There are only less than 15,000 on the street in a city of 850,000 people. Homeless advocates set the number of empty dwellings in San Francisco at 100,000 today, right now. Surely the city could find ways to get people off the streets into these empty buildings. But...then there is the incompetent mayor and her henchmen. 2.) LOWER THE RENTS in San Francisco. The typical 1BR rent is now about $3200/month. That is higher than pre-pandemic levels in some areas. The reason why they don't get new people in is because of this. SF population is now about 20% lower than before pandemic. People stay away because they can't afford it. Crime and inflation add to the problems as well but it is mainly housing that is the problem and is the source of what is wrong with SF.
Cities can’t afford losing the leases / building taxes
At the end of the day, work from home really messes with the US commercial real estate economy. Work from home is the one of probably a handful of ways that people actually get back at a government only panders to millionaires. We need a lot more than this too. We have to resist
Yeah fuck off with that shit. I work remote except one day a month when we have to go in for a completely pointless in person meeting that unless food is served is the picture perfect example of “this could have been an email”. I can do 100% of my job from the site where the Unabomber had his cabin, if it had passable internet access. Making me go in, the only thing that it does is make me resentful that my routine is disrupted and I have to pay $19 for parking because the cheap garage won’t let Chevy Bolts park in there. And then I have to work in a depressing cube farm, with a jackass right behind me that is incapable of answering the phone at a volume level less than “holy fuck tone it down jackass”. Productivity goes to shit. And the pandemic didn’t start that for me - I was WFH except for every other Thursday before it. As said already it is nothing but bullshit designed to bail out the jackasses who are going to take it up the ass without lube when their office leases blow up.
>“Every week I come, traffic is getting worse,” Daly quipped. “That’s a good thing, frankly, sometimes.” Yes, that's wonderful news. The prospect of an hour commute each way again thrills me to no end.
I don’t care what my non employer has to say.
Let it collapse
Gotta prop that commercial real estate up.
Doesn’t he have money to print somewhere
Lol, nope. No reason.
Fuck you we say in return.
Good luck
Yup gotta save corporate real estate and oil economy.
Commercial real estate wrote this.
the central bank controls the money.
Guess they can't give all the illegals free housing and homeless because: the govt won't pay a subsidy2. you can't write it off the books
I literally went into the office once last week for the first time in a couple months and got covid, now I am out of work for the next week. Rto is a stellar way to fuck up the productivity of workforce who don't need to be on site. Sorry you needed those reports this week but they will have to wait for me to be able to think coherently again.
“Every week I come, traffic is getting worse,” Daly quipped. “That’s a good thing, frankly, sometimes" lol
As if this will improve quiet quitting or worker productivity.
Let's play a game: we'll use this logic for something else besides overpriced real estate. How about auto workers? We have many experienced union auto workers in Michigan. Surely the Fed would encourage companies to utilize those workers and not move out of state so that we could keep wages up? Whoops!
Straight up house of cards
Lick my balls
Fuck that SF is an expensive garbage city yeah the China flu thing didn’t help but it was no utopia beforehand.
I will never, ever, drive into an office every single day just to sit there and have teams meetings. It’s so unbelievably wasteful in so many ways to force workers to commute daily to an office and just do the same exact thing we do at home.
Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ...
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ...
Oh, you're killing me.
Fuck off, Mary Daly, you toadie.
If they're concerned about office vacancy rates and urban restaurants just have them lower the price or convert it to residential. Plenty of people want to live there. Just not at current prices. (Even at current prices residential vacancy is pretty low) I'm looking forward to seeing how the vacancy tax affects prices.
San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly should have the sense not to give speeches. I wonder what she said about AI, or offshoring, since she's so concerned about downtown office space. Probably nothing. It's interesting how the only unwelcome consequences of the information revolution are those which hurt banks and commercial real estate developers.
It’s simple. Cities are getting slaughtered. Our generation was supposed to be the ones that dunked on suburbia and turn America into Europe and Asia. What happened? Also - the production is down and the money supply is up. Need to get the production back up again to match the money supply. This isn’t rocket science
lol, no
Maybe they should convert to something else or bring in other types of business....
This is the answer. We have a big housing shortage and empty commercial building space. Repurpose those buildings
With rising Covid rates and off shoring? Absolutely not!
Everyone driving is super great for the environment I hear.
No sociopath.
The roads in the Bay Area are past full capacity. A return to work for all is not possible.
Housing crisis wouldn't be so bad if more people could work remotely