If only there was some solution to unused corporate office space and the housing crisis that has tents in every city?!?
Oh well. Better give the bank a bailout and stop thinking about it.
Wait...are you suggesting we solve a problem? Or even two problems simultaneously? That's absurd! We need tax cuts, deregulation, and corporate bailouts....I may not know the problem, but I know the solution. /s
If they can't afford to lose money, they should stop being poor.
They should stop buying avocado toast and make their coffee at home!
It’s really not that hard.
They should sell the buildings...
Damn, squatting on real estate is backfiring. I'm heartbroken
I will never have sympathy for landlords.
Easiest 'job' on the planet.
Fuck em
For sure. Business investments go up and down all the time. That’s business
I’m more concerned about trains/transit. After all these years, we (US) are finally investing in improving transportation within and between cities, just as commutes have been cut and many cities may be depopulating.
Apparently literally everything is technology according to lemmy
RTO/WFH definitely impacts tech workers the most, I think that’s just obvious.
The pandemic triggering a cultural shift to WFH is a big part of the problems in the commercial real estate market. Basically, America becoming 10% more technologically sophisticated may have unhinged the financial system. Story about the impact of tech on society, I guess?
The logic seems to be, "if it impacts tech workers or people interested in tech in any way, it's technology".
All I can think about is that Ali G skit about how his friend "ain't got no techmology" and the expert asks "does your friend live in a house? A house is technology."
In a way it is. Modern buildings are only possible due to technological advancement.
I just ate ravioli. I’m sure they were packaged in an automated fashion. I’m gonna now post about ravioli in c/technology since it’s all the same. For now here’s some recipes https://www.tasteofhome.com/collection/ravioli-recipes-thatll-fill-you-with-joy/
Where's the meandering SEO-optimisation backstory-rambling before the recipe/link?
This is simply sunk cost fallacy. Companies signed leases. Now they regret it but can't back out so they've got to try to pretend it's worth it even if it costs their employees money out of pocket.
It's not really about owners it's more about leases and the company leasing the property "not getting their money's worth"
Often they have signed leases with themselves. With original owners, holding companies etc.
This is a way of extracting value from a corporation without paying it as a dividend or salary. Dividends go to all shareholders. Lease payments go to one specific one.
So obviously if there's no reason to pay these leases anymore, somebody powerful is going to be very upset.
Let those banks burn. I could not care less. Let the commercial real estate market burn with em.
We don’t need them.
It's sad that problems for banks are never problems only for banks. They always turn into problems for everybody else
So more or less, since many businesses are only keeping their offices because they have multi-year leases preventing them from simply packing up and going fully remote or downsizing to a smaller office, we can expect occupancy rates to continue falling and slow-burn exacerbating the commercial real estate crisis. And really, the problem here is just that banks are overinvested in commercial real estate, not knowing that a pandemic would alter work patterns in a lasting way. So again, we're all in for a fun ride on the roller coaster that is capitalism, literally because of problems caused by real estate speculation.
Because banks fucked up and we have to solve it
Yep, been saying this for years now, the vicious and irrational hatred against work from home employees is driven by two main factors:
At a systemic level, despite work from home being obviously less costly in the long run than maintaining an office space, if work from home were allowed to proliferate it basically pop the commercial real estate bubble and then basically every corrupt mayor and idiots in upper management would be shown to be corrupt idiots.
At a more personal level, upper and middle management people essentially get their kicks from seeing busy little worker bees near them, and they would personally have existential crisis when they realize that 90% of what they do is negging and then ommitting or misrepresenting that in actual meetings. Actual meetings which can easily take place in zoom, or often replaced with just an email.
Another part of #2 is they can no longer be toxic and verbally abusive, like they could in person. Anything virtual might be recorded and every email is a record.
If you're holding onto something useless and eating up your budget, like, that's on you, bro.
That doesn't make sense. The companies that want people to come back to the office are the ones paying rent. That rent doesn't get better or worse if people come back to the office.
I had to start going back to the office today. I'll eventually split time between two buildings, but my main office is practically empty. Been here 3 days in a row, and I'm the only one in my area that stayed the entire day. The first day 4 of 5 other people left at lunch. The last person left about 4:15pm.
Yestersay I was by myself until about 10am and that person left at 4. I'm here by myself today and I don't suspect anyone will show up late.
On the other side of the floor where the breakroom is, there's maybe been 7 people total across the 3 days I've been here lol.
Yeah it's like that now. People come in late and leave early. I do that too since it's fine. Only one office day is required and I make sure to come in late and leave early to beat traffic. Everyone does. :)
I use it as a day of socializing with the team. Just talking. Not much work.
For me, it’s important as a mental health thing. Working from home, I tend not to see other humans and not go anywhere I don’t need to. I’m also poor at establishing work-life boundaries.
Meanwhile, going into work means getting presentable, interacting with people, not forgetting a lunch break, and I tend to stop working when the place empties out.
It’s also important for career advancement. I’m poor at self-promotion, so working from home is “out of sight, out of mind” no matter how much I do. It’s easy to say that management needs to figure that out, but it’s in my self-interest to make sure they realize when I get shit done
I'm a union commercial electrician where I spent a decade building and improving tenant spaces in commercial towers in Seattle and Bellevue. There's a huge dip in our work now that there aren't high rises being occupied. I'd like people to work from home, but my blue collar job can't be done from home. If we can change what these buildings are used for I wouldn't be worried.
Google here in Fremont area on the other hand is expanding their space by occupying a larger foot print with a smaller work force per square foot. That's a good way to keep us working.
What's that you say? Rezone these as residential and make more housing you say?
Fwiw, turning most of these buildings into livable spaces is a lot harder and more expensive than you'd expect. For many of them, it would actually be cheaper to just raze it and create a new residential building, even if it maintains the same outer dimensions.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
