And real estate. Don't forget real estate.

To be honest, it is also a bit about productivity. Doing full remote will in time become less efficient, at least I notice an uptick in how smooth interactions go after we have been physically together a bit more. There is no reason why it has to happen all the time, though.

But the task for management should really be to make people want to come to the office. I.e. make it a better place to be than at home, and ensure commutes are short and flexible. In my team, the typical commute is about 10 minutes, and most of us will go to the office to meet, have lunch, and get a break from home. We are social creatures, and meeting people is good for us.

It probably wouldn't work, but I've been wondering whether it would be possible to use the shareholders of publicly traded companies against them in these situations.

I've seen people mention that companies are obligated to maximize profits for their shareholders (might not be true everywhere, and my knowledge on the subject is extremely limited).

If there was data available for a given company that showed that profits were increased during a period where a substantial part (or all) of the employees worked from home, and then the company starts forcing the employees back to the office, could the board not be called upon to force the company to keep people in work-from-home-mode? Would the company not be obliged to do that, to maximize the profits? It seems to me that this would be in the best interest of the shareholders.

Now's the perfect time for competitors to arise that haven't wasted enormous amounts of resources on that kind of thing, and who can draw on a nice big pool of talent looking to leave Amazon.

As to conspiracies, it's not really the businesses, it's the property.

Hilariously, the data don't back them up, my wife does research on this very topic for a company. The dollar signs do though, they have to justify the property expenditures.

Don't most companies have Blackrock on their board, who had been buying real estate for the better part of the last 5 years.

whatever terrible reason sounded good to them

Commercial property values. They want the offices full so their investment retains value. Dassit.

What really amazes me as a european is that while I still think we have to work too much for our modern times we only do a fraction of your average work hours and that cases no issues whatsoever.

It's funny, because the original purpose of that phrase was "There is a period during which you can voice your concerns about new or changed ops and procedures, and once the dust has settled, you'll feel better about what comes out of the oven because you had a hand in making it." Instead, the new age Jack Welch management types saw the phrase and decided it means "You don't have to like what we say but you have to obey it."

Surprisingly, the latter interpretation does not lead to a happier healthier workplace with high retention rates. Who would've thought?

Small convenience? A lot of goods these days can only be bought online, and buying them from a no-name website is a great way to get your card number stolen. Using Amazon is basically mandatory.

This is an important point. What cloud providers are flexible on engineer working conditions? I’d imagine they’d all be smaller scale providers?

Time for unionized office work

If we've learned anything from recent real estate crises, it's that once again, the losses will be socialized, with golden parachutes aplenty.

Alright I'm in. What do we do for the world?