2 hours ago, TBideon said:

Second, commercial tenants pay a lot more money indefinitely, so commercial owners would rather let a buidling and space sit empty during the bad days, then make it back when things pick up when/if white and blue collars return.

 

This is the part that I wonder if it might be changing--if residential rents go up and commercial rents go down, you'd think you'd get to a point that this isn't the case anymore.  But maybe the difference is still too much and the shift has been too small (and maybe won't shift much more in favor of residential).

20 minutes ago, mrnyc said:

 

you moved the goalposts. "there are times" is not the same thing as full on leading an asocial lifestyle as you advocated. "there are times" is not a majority of time spent in a bubble. in other words, "there are times" you need to work alone awhile or read a book quietly, of course, but more than that is anti-social, unhealthy personally and bad for your community. 

 

I didn't advocate it as much as I defended it.  Anti-social is being actively and assertively obnoxious.  I'm going to side with the preferences of individuals over artificial concepts of "rude" or some semi-hypothetical "community" every day.   The world changes constantly.

22 hours ago, E Rocc said:

 

I didn't advocate it as much as I defended it.  Anti-social is being actively and assertively obnoxious.  I'm going to side with the preferences of individuals over artificial concepts of "rude" or some semi-hypothetical "community" every day.   The world changes constantly.

 

side stepping fail -- and btw there is nothing "hypothetical" about your community. its literally right outside your door step. hypothetical would be for example your dark web 'sources' that you seem to gravitate to. there is no way spending the majority anyone's daily life in a bubble is healthy. the covid lockdowns should be proof enough.

 

On 3/2/2023 at 12:58 PM, mrnyc said:

 

side stepping fail -- and btw there is nothing "hypothetical" about your community. its literally right outside your door step. hypothetical would be for example your dark web 'sources' that you seem to gravitate to. there is no way spending the majority anyone's daily life in a bubble is healthy. the covid lockdowns should be proof enough.

 

The virus accelerated a lot of trends that were already in play.  One of them was remote work.  Others were online shopping, carryout/delivery versus sit down dining, and streaming versus theaters.

 

In fact, I can't think of too many innovations, going back to the ATM, that reduced the need for extraneous interaction and failed.   Unless of course it was a parallel innovation that won out.

 

People still interact but it's on their terms, some more than others.  Communities form based on criteria other than geography.  Some are national and even global.  In some ways, this is one of them.

Just because those trends were already there doesn’t automatically make any of them a positive for society. 
 

 

2 hours ago, amped91 said:

Just because those trends were already there doesn’t automatically make any of them a positive for society. 

 

They become trends by being a positive for the people making those decisions.   I suppose the "positive" is in the eye of the beholder, depending on if one has a libertarian or communitarian mindset.

3 hours ago, E Rocc said:

In fact, I can't think of too many innovations, going back to the ATM, that reduced the need for extraneous interaction and failed.   Unless of course it was a parallel innovation that won out.

Speaking of the ATM, banks have been trying to get rid of tellers completely since their inception.   The consumer feedback has been severe, and in recent years we've seen banks ADDING human-staffed retail locations in places like grocery stores and gas stations to respond to their customers needs.  

2 minutes ago, Cleburger said:

Speaking of the ATM, banks have been trying to get rid of tellers completely since their inception.   The consumer feedback has been severe, and in recent years we've seen banks ADDING human-staffed retail locations in places like grocery stores and gas stations to respond to their customers needs.  

Not to mention the way that grocery stores are starting to walk back self-checkout.  For a while, a lot of stores were going down to 1 or 2 cashier aisles and lots of self checkout, but that seems to be reversing.

1 hour ago, E Rocc said:

 

They become trends by being a positive for the people making those decisions.   I suppose the "positive" is in the eye of the beholder, depending on if one has a libertarian or communitarian mindset.

Convenient, yeah. “Positive,” in most cases, remains to be seen. 

Direct deposit is a positive.  Banks used to be absolutely swamped on Fridays. 

5 hours ago, X said:

Not to mention the way that grocery stores are starting to walk back self-checkout.  For a while, a lot of stores were going down to 1 or 2 cashier aisles and lots of self checkout, but that seems to be reversing.

 

The shrinkage is too high on self-checkout. They were actually more expensive than human cashiers -- at least at 2010s labor costs. Not sure if that has changed due to today's higher wage rates.

20 hours ago, Lazarus said:

Direct deposit is a positive.  Banks used to be absolutely swamped on Fridays. 

 

As are ATM cards.    Not a positive for businesses that used to cash checks for a fee, though.

 

To keep this more or less on topic, remote work is a positive for employers and employees, not for commercial property owners (including parking lots), gas stations, restaurants in business districts, and others.

Edited March 5, 20232 yr by E Rocc

17 hours ago, GCrites80s said:

 

The shrinkage is too high on self-checkout. They were actually more expensive than human cashiers -- at least at 2010s labor costs. Not sure if that has changed due to today's higher wage rates.

 

Not just shrinkage, but customer pushback.   The "I don't work here" comeback.

 

Plus they always seem to have someone "checking reciepts" which is either ineffective or takes as long as the old school registers, and is an intrusion not a service.

^ you should have to procure a basic competency license to use a self checkout machine.

 

If I'm buying 5 or so items, the whole transaction takes less than 90 seconds. I've been stuck behind people who struggle for 5-10 minutes because it's apparently their first time ever scanning groceries, using a touchscreen, or using a credit card terminal, or money in general. And they have nowhere to be for the next hour while they figure it out. God forbid there's alcohol or some item scans wrong, you're stuck waiting for the most elderly and least mobile employee to shuffle over and scan their badge. 

 

 

44 minutes ago, E Rocc said:

To keep this more or less on topic, remote work is a positive for employers and employees,

 

No way.  People can deny it all they want, but "workers" like remote work because it's easy to hide from the boss.  Employers only like remote work if they can reduce their office rent and those savings outweigh all of the lost productivity from people hiding from their boss and crossing their signals because they aren't physically sitting in a meeting together. 

 

When you have an in-person meeting with 8+ people, there are often times when multiple conversations occur simultaneously.  That can't happen with a zoom meeting.  It's also so easy to come over and physically show somebody a problem and go physically look at an object. 

 

To that point, people forget that tons of companies still physically manufacture, distribute, modify, repair, etc., physical objects that occupy physical space.  It's necessary for sales, purchasing, design, etc. to physically look at the stuff every day.   

 

Increasingly, we're going to see low-level remote jobs pay less and less while companies value and pay employees higher wages who are eager to physically show up and be an active part of the company. 

 

 

 

 

23 minutes ago, originaljbw said:

 I've been stuck behind people who struggle for 5-10 minutes because it's apparently their first time ever scanning groceries, using a touchscreen, or using a credit card terminal, or money in general. And they have nowhere to be for the next hour while they figure it out.

 

 

 

Now imagine those people working remotely. 

22 minutes ago, Lazarus said:

 

No way.  People can deny it all they want, but "workers" like remote work because it's easy to hide from the boss.  Employers only like remote work if they can reduce their office rent and those savings outweigh all of the lost productivity from people hiding from their boss and crossing their signals because they aren't physically sitting in a meeting together. 

 

When you have an in-person meeting with 8+ people, there are often times when multiple conversations occur simultaneously.  That can't happen with a zoom meeting.  It's also so easy to come over and physically show somebody a problem and go physically look at an object. 

 

To that point, people forget that tons of companies still physically manufacture, distribute, modify, repair, etc., physical objects that occupy physical space.  It's necessary for sales, purchasing, design, etc. to physically look at the stuff every day.   

 

Increasingly, we're going to see low-level remote jobs pay less and less while companies value and pay employees higher wages who are eager to physically show up and be an active part of the company. 

 

 

In person meetings are inherently wasteful as the cost is the combined salaries of everyone in the room for the time required, including prep, getting there, and of course waiting around for it to start and through topics where not everyone is contributing.    Even 20 years ago, I introduced on a semi-guerilla basis the use of e-mail lists, or as I called them virtual meetings.   Only in the direst emergencies do things need to happen in real time, to the point that doing more background is less important.

 

My company "still physically manufactures, distributes, modifies, repairs, etc., physical objects that occupy physical space. ".  Even though most of us can't work remotely, we've gotten away from meetings.   The place I was before was tied into a division of a large corp.   Ridiculous number of meetings.  We're more efficient.

 

Output can be measured more easily with remote work.   People can work extra hours if they wish, at their own pace.

 

The people who benefit from "back to the office"?   The so called "soft skills" people: talkers, "facilitators', gatekeepers, shmoozers, behind kissers, and small p politicians who love meetings because they can ambush people with queries from unexpected directions that can be easily looked up with a decent IT/MIS system.   

 

Since the tech revolution, the hard skills people have challenged their dominance.   Of course they are going to push back.   Office politics has always been one of the ways they did so.   If the office has less relevance, that's tougher to do.

 

 

Edited March 5, 20232 yr by E Rocc

21 minutes ago, Lazarus said:

Increasingly, we're going to see low-level remote jobs pay less and less while companies value and pay employees higher wages who are eager to physically show up and be an active part of the company. 

 

 

That's the trend in Europe and Asia, but not here.   Work from home is also better for work life balance.

1 hour ago, E Rocc said:

In person meetings are inherently wasteful as the cost is the combined salaries of everyone in the room for the time required, including prep, getting there, and of course waiting around for it to start and through topics where not everyone is contributing.    Even 20 years ago, I introduced on a semi-guerilla basis the use of e-mail lists, or as I called them virtual meetings.   Only in the direst emergencies do things need to happen in real time, to the point that doing more background is less important.

I have had jobs with far too many meetings, and unproductive meetings (a lot more facilitator training, please!)  But not all meetings are "inherently" wasteful, particularly when the purpose of the meeting is interaction and vetting new ideas.  Email and Zoom meetings tend to provide very limited interaction -- they're good for talking to/training/informing your employees, not so great for having a lot of conversation and interaction.  I suspect that fewer (and better run) meetings are a good thing for manufacturing (as long as you're not looking for a lot of new ideas), but fewer in-person meetings probably would not be so great for a marketing company. 

 

I think we are in a transition period, where meetings that are educational or directional will continue (and more often by video rather than in-person), more people will work from home (ultimately for lower pay in some cases), and creatives and people who need to interact will still be working in the office at least a few days a week.  New ways of seeking efficiencies will be found, the structure and function of office space will change, and probably decrease.  But I don't think the "office" will entirely disappear.

On 3/4/2023 at 7:58 AM, E Rocc said:

 

The virus accelerated a lot of trends that were already in play.  One of them was remote work.  Others were online shopping, carryout/delivery versus sit down dining, and streaming versus theaters.

 

In fact, I can't think of too many innovations, going back to the ATM, that reduced the need for extraneous interaction and failed.   Unless of course it was a parallel innovation that won out.

 

People still interact but it's on their terms, some more than others.  Communities form based on criteria other than geography.  Some are national and even global.  In some ways, this is one of them.

 

none of these modern convenience trends allay that your misguided efforts in bubble boying is healthy for you and your irl community, unless you like ghost towns. i mean people love smart phones too, now everyone is fat.

 

also, its ironic you use atm’s as your example. for one thing i go into the bank far more often over the last several years than i ever did before for various services. as for atms themselves the trend is they are beyond archaic. as someone i was talking to going back even several years pre-covid once noted, “only drug dealers use cash.” i mean after all going cashless is soooo convenient for me, me, me — and gee i can’t think of any downsides to that trend at all.

7 hours ago, Lazarus said:

 

Increasingly, we're going to see low-level remote jobs pay less and less while companies value and pay employees higher wages who are eager to physically show up and be an active part of the company. 

 

 

 

 

This 100%. Although it’s going to be a four-box with an axis of how well accepted remote working is for the job at hand. If you’re a product manager at a company making bearings, you need to be there. If you’re at the same company in charge of e-commerce software architecture, remote is ok. This is already well underway. 

1 hour ago, roman totale XVII said:

This 100%. Although it’s going to be a four-box with an axis of how well accepted remote working is for the job at hand. If you’re a product manager at a company making bearings, you need to be there. If you’re at the same company in charge of e-commerce software architecture, remote is ok. This is already well underway. 

 

it most certainly is — all the tech people in my spouse’s company dont need to be there, but the agency people actually do — like 3/5 days. and speaking of communities the young agency people actually came in on their own quite awhile back like on wednesdays before the company recently pushed it.

11 hours ago, E Rocc said:

 

In person meetings are inherently wasteful as the cost is the combined salaries of everyone in the room for the time required, including prep, getting there, and of course waiting around for it to start and through topics where not everyone is contributing. 

 

The time spent physically walking to a meeting or waiting for it to start are irrelevant as compared to the amount of time wasted by miscommunications.   Most people are far better at communicating in-person as compared to use of the written word. 

 

We have 12+ years of reading/writing English class and not 12+ of speaking English class because a ton of people who talk all day long are simply never going to be able to read emails or write emails that make sense.  Ask these people a question via email and you get a poorly-written response that further confuses the situation.  Pick up the phone and the problem is usually resolved quickly.  Speak in person and you see that there was no intentional malice. 

 

Zoom/Teams meetings continue suck because the technology continues to suck.  The audio pops like crazy.  You get guys calling into meetings while walking through grocery stores.  I have sat in meetings where some bigwig has to repeat himself 4-5 times in order for people to understand the audio because for whatever reason the guy feels the need to be on speaker phone while hanging out in his car in a customer's parking lot. 

 

People used to show themselves on Zoom/Teams meetings but now they're just a crackly voice identified by CN or BT or AC inside an Easter Egg-colored dot.   

 

We have a convention business which compels companies to spend $100k on booths and fly their staff around the globe because meeting people in person is profoundly more impactful than via zoom or by phone or by email.  Yet we somehow think office work operates entirely outside of this need.  

 

Sounds like your issue isn’t remote work, but just a bad internet connection and folks who can’t figure out how to use their devices/apps.

 

Also, conventions and the conversations within are very different than a brief remote meeting/virtual call. That’s a poor comparison. 
 

The pandemic proved that remote work can not only be effective, but that it’s here to stay. 
 

The companies offering such options and flexibility will continue to be better at recruiting than those still clinging to “back in my day” notions. 
 

Edited March 6, 20232 yr by Gordon Bombay

5 hours ago, Lazarus said:

 

The time spent physically walking to a meeting or waiting for it to start are irrelevant as compared to the amount of time wasted by miscommunications.   Most people are far better at communicating in-person as compared to use of the written word. 

 

We have 12+ years of reading/writing English class and not 12+ of speaking English class because a ton of people who talk all day long are simply never going to be able to read emails or write emails that make sense.  Ask these people a question via email and you get a poorly-written response that further confuses the situation.  Pick up the phone and the problem is usually resolved quickly.  Speak in person and you see that there was no intentional malice. 

 

Zoom/Teams meetings continue suck because the technology continues to suck.  The audio pops like crazy.  You get guys calling into meetings while walking through grocery stores.  I have sat in meetings where some bigwig has to repeat himself 4-5 times in order for people to understand the audio because for whatever reason the guy feels the need to be on speaker phone while hanging out in his car in a customer's parking lot. 

 

People used to show themselves on Zoom/Teams meetings but now they're just a crackly voice identified by CN or BT or AC inside an Easter Egg-colored dot.   

 

We have a convention business which compels companies to spend $100k on booths and fly their staff around the globe because meeting people in person is profoundly more impactful than via zoom or by phone or by email.  Yet we somehow think office work operates entirely outside of this need.  

 

 

And an awful lot of people are very good at "I never said that" when they, in fact, said that.   This is not always dishonesty.   It may not be what they meant.

 

Written communications leave a paper/pixel trail.   They can be forwarded.   The recipient doesn't need to take notes.   It's easier for the sender to be vague verbally without being queried about their meaning, with direct quotes.   They can be replied to in detail.

 

When dealing with concrete facts like engineering or accounting, the superiority of written communication over verbal is even more profound.  In medical school I am told, the first lesson on the first day is "If it isn't written down, it didn't happen".   Modern manufacturing quality registration systems such as those certified under ISO 9000 (I have built four of them) strongly emphasize documentation.   

 

"We have 12+ years of reading/writing English class and not 12+ of speaking English class because a ton of people who talk all day long are simply never going to be able to read emails or write emails that make sense."

 

And a lot of people who have very good written skills when they can organize and structure their thoughts are not always able to verbalize them off the cuff.   Whose skills prevail?   IMO, it should be the method less prone to error and that's written.

 

The soft skills/verbal communications people will resist, of course, and they have dominated large organizations in recent history.   It's an example of what I call "Ludd's Law":   People will be highly critical of, and often resist, changes that make their particular skills less important.  That's human nature.

I'm not old enough to have "back in my day" notions, but If your meeting can be as effective, or even more effective if it is held virtually, then it most likely did not need to be a meeting. There are plenty of meetings that are extraneous, but if you're looking to actually collaborate virtual meetings are much worse. This is doubly true if the problem that needs solved exist in the real world. 

 

There are times you need a paper trail, and there are times you need more time to think. But humans are evolved to interact face to face. I've never met a human being who collaborates better virtually. (Even if some people claim to).

 

What always finds a way to be missing in these discussions is differences between industries. Some things like accounting can be fairly easily done remotely. Other things such as engineering (possibly excepting software engineering) need in person collaboration. 

 

The other thing forgotten about is that while some talent may preferentially choose work from home positions, in person communication has benefits in to teamwork, and possibly retention (it's hard to make meaningful friends with virtual coworkers).

 

If I were to guess hybrid work makes the most sense and will become predominant. Flexibility will help attract talent, but still allow in person meetings and collaboration. Fully remote work only makes sense in a small number of industries, and those outside of those industries will probably be outcompeted by their hybrid or in person competitors. 

 

 

I think the difference here is between people who are working their jobs for the opportunity to work with technology versus the people who merely deal with technology the minimum amount in order to get their work done.

1 hour ago, Ethan said:

What always finds a way to be missing in these discussions is differences between industries. Some things like accounting can be fairly easily done remotely. Other things such as engineering (possibly excepting software engineering) need in person collaboration. 

 

Software engineers are not an exception. Though, everything else you wrote above is my experience as well. I'm a senior level programmer. We need to have a software "architecture" meeting about every other day. Virtual meetings  take at least twice as long to accomplish what we did in person. I'm losing on average 6 hours a week to that inefficiency. Only after we have these meetings do we document in writing and use email to transmit or more likely a wiki. Email is more for HR, not normal person conversation in my field. I think for programmers the best formula is a 4 day work week, 2 days in office to devise and communicate the plan and two at home to put you're head down and code it. I bet that would translate to other jobs as well. 

Edited March 6, 20232 yr by viscomi

As a civil engineer, I can do a vast majority of my job on my own.

 

When I was first starting out, being in the office with people around me who could come over to my office and answer questions was extremely important. Now, I rarely need to collaborate on a daily basis, and the pandemic actually encouraged way more cross-office collaboration, which has helped our company tremendously. Many offices have 3-4 engineers, and asking questions to the group at large has increased collaboration vs. keeping it within your local office.

 

If I was a direct supervisor for a new hire, I would likely want to be in the office for several months as they get up to speed instead of handling everything remotely. Outside of that, there's no reason to be in the office every day for me. It's a waste of my time.

My wife is in sales management with a fortune 500. company, and is almost 100% remote to this day.   She complains that since the pandemic and the advent of remote work, it seems like everyone tries to fill their daily calendars with calls so if the boss looks at it they appear busy.   The problem is it leaves her little time to do the other aspects of her job when she is stuck on calls 8-9 hours a day.  

1 hour ago, Ethan said:

I'm not old enough to have "back in my day" notions, but If your meeting can be as effective, or even more effective if it is held virtually, then it most likely did not need to be a meeting

 

 

This is so often the case even with in person meetings, it's more obvious with virtual but in person are more wasteful.   

 

If you don't need a decision that is implemented immediately after it's done, it could have been a group e-mail.   Meetings are all too often a tool of those trying to control the agenda without understanding what is needed, those who don't understand that things sound easy when one doesn't need to make them happen, are skilled buck passers, or are simply trying to make themselves look more important than they are.

 

On 3/4/2023 at 9:01 AM, Cleburger said:

Speaking of the ATM, banks have been trying to get rid of tellers completely since their inception.   The consumer feedback has been severe, and in recent years we've seen banks ADDING human-staffed retail locations in places like grocery stores and gas stations to respond to their customers needs.  

 

On 3/4/2023 at 9:04 AM, X said:

Not to mention the way that grocery stores are starting to walk back self-checkout.  For a while, a lot of stores were going down to 1 or 2 cashier aisles and lots of self checkout, but that seems to be reversing.

 

Would like to see numbers/rates on if this is true or not.  I did hear on the radio this week that the number of ATMs in the US is continuing to decrease, from a peak in 2019 I believe.  That seems to be correlated with cash being less of a requirement nowadays, though.  In my experience, self-checkout is still increasing, and I haven't seen any big issues with it yet, but I obviously have a very small sample size.  As far as tellers, my credit union is out of state and I don't recall the last time I used in person services with them; but I'm sure there are use cases that require people to help navigate. 

 

---

 

In regards to remote work - I manage a team of data engineers, I've previously managed a team of product managers/owners, a cloud operations IT team, and also a team of project managers.  Every one of those teams worked better in person.  They do lose time and money commuting to work, but from an effectiveness perspective, they are clearly more effective in office.  My current boss disagrees that remote work is a disadvantage, and her defense of it is that if you have a good manager of that team, they can overcome the remote work obstacles with ease using technology and mechanisms/processes.  My counter is simply that the vast majority of people who say that try to replicate what it's like to be co-located with all your teammates - The simple fact that you have to put in extra effort to try and replicate what it's like to be in the office (usually with glaring gaps) means it's inherently less effective.  The fact you have to 'overcome' obstacles, means it's inherently disadvantaged. Having a camera staring at you all day is not equivalent to sitting at a desk next to someone else.  Being on a virtual meeting is not the same as being in a conference room.  There are multiple more gates you have to cross remotely vs in person, and some people don't mind crossing those gates, but many people do and you see a fall-off in communication and an increase in assumptions.   

 

Meetings are often extremely inefficient, and you lose concentration on what you're working on, agreed.  Context-switching is a productivity killer.  I do try and keep engineers out of meetings, and if they simply got a list of requirements and had to build solutions in a silo that didn't depend on any other service or package or team, then yes they could probably be just as effective or more so remotely.  However, in my industry, and across the varied teams I've led, this is almost never the case.  Engineers perform multiple roles, just like most of us do.  They do need to talk to the customer, they do need to build consensus on designs, they do need to go over to someone's else's desk to confirm their assumptions, and they just don't do that as well remotely, probably because they don't want to bother someone and can't clearly see if they're busy or not when virtual.  

 

Anyway, I'd love a 3 and 2 day split for engineers, but the 2 days should not be consecutive.  

 

14 hours ago, Ethan said:

 

 

There are times you need a paper trail

 

 

 

The owner, some execs, and most sales people are usually absolutely terrible writers.  You groan when their name appears in the inbox because HERE WE GO.  HOURS AND DAYS OF CONFUSION BECAUSE THESE CLOWNS ABSOLUTELY CAN'T WRITE AN EMAIL THAT MAKES EFFING SENSE.  Ask them to clarify and WE WADE EVEN DEEPER INTO THE SWAMP. 

 

Attached is one such message I got at a previous job....

 

 

^ thats a great example of why full remote bubble boying will never work for most office work jobs. i bet those people even have trouble getting it during irl meetings, but at least their clarity struggles can be much more quickly identifed and dealt with in person by the team than going back and forth online all day. expectations and deadlines are other issues where in person often helps.

Edited March 7, 20232 yr by mrnyc

Cleveland is one of the few cities that jumped on the office-to-residential conversions early on. It had to after its many companies with headquarters here were swallowed up by bigger fish.

 

Opinion | To revitalize downtowns, cities need to stop making this big mistake

Opinion by the Editorial Board March 4, 2023 at 7:00 a.m. ET

 

Cities across the nation face a dilemma: Downtown office buildings are empty as workers prefer to stay home. Nearly all local leaders agree part of the solution is an office-to-apartment conversion boom. Cities have started rolling out tax incentives to encourage developers to begin this transformation. This strategy is straight out of the playbook that revived center city Philadelphia and Lower Manhattan in the past quarter century. But there’s a problem: City leaders aren’t doing enough.

 

No mayor or city council member wants to hand a lavish deal to real estate developers. But the urgency and scale of the downtown crisis in many major metro areas mean local leaders need to give away a bit more than they probably would prefer. Consider the nation’s capital city. Downtown D.C. is more than 90 percent commercial buildings. The vibrancy and workers are largely gone. Crime and grime are increasing, while property tax revenue is quickly decreasing as building values plummet. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) has put out an ambitious “Comeback Plan” that calls for 15,000 new residents living downtown by 2028. To make that a reality, the city needs developers to convert roughly 7 million square feet of office space to apartments and condos. Her team estimates about 1 million square feet is on track for conversion so far. There’s a long way to go. The situation is similar in Chicago, San Francisco, New York and Atlanta, among other cities.

 

MORE

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/04/downtowns-cities-convert-offices-residential/

 

 

2 hours ago, KJP said:

Consider the nation’s capital city. Downtown D.C. is more than 90 percent commercial buildings.

 

 

Hmmm.....are they including governmental offices as "commercial"?  If not, this number does not make sense.   If so, one would think DC is a place it would work, if it would work anywhere.

"Downtown DC" is NW DC and doesn't have much in the way of government buildings. It's the business district including offices for many lobbying organizations and other NGOs.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/11/upshot/office-conversions.html?searchResultPosition=1

 

Sweet article today in online NY Times on office building conversions to residential.   Lots of architectural detail about the challenges of converting a modern office tower with a large floor plate vs. an early 20th Century building.  

WFH seems to be permanent now - no going back. So with the excess office space either gone begging or candidates for residential conversions l wonder what the impact will be on new office building construction in our downtowns?

 

It seems at best any new construction will have to be either some combination of office/hotel/residential or the occasional signature headquarters building. At any rate l wonder what that does to the construction momentum all those hot sun belt cities were undergoing? Have we seen skyline stabilization? It's hard to believe something so ubiquitous to America (the highrise office building) is going extinct but that appears to be the case.

30 minutes ago, cadmen said:

WFH seems to be permanent now - no going back. So with the excess office space either gone begging or candidates for residential conversions l wonder what the impact will be on new office building construction in our downtowns?

 

It seems at best any new construction will have to be either some combination of office/hotel/residential or the occasional signature headquarters building. At any rate l wonder what that does to the construction momentum all those hot sun belt cities were undergoing? Have we seen skyline stabilization? It's hard to believe something so ubiquitous to America (the highrise office building) is going extinct but that appears to be the case.

 

Funny timing - just found out my law firm (of over 1,000 lawyers) will have a 3 day mandatory in-office policy moving forward. Out Atlanta and Orlando offices are mandatory 4 days (for some reason)

13 minutes ago, YABO713 said:

 

Funny timing - just found out my law firm (of over 1,000 lawyers) will have a 3 day mandatory in-office policy moving forward. Out Atlanta and Orlando offices are mandatory 4 days (for some reason)

I suspect hybrid will become the norm rather than full WFH.  This will still result in reduction in office space. 

1 hour ago, cadmen said:

WFH seems to be permanent now - no going back. So with the excess office space either gone begging or candidates for residential conversions l wonder what the impact will be on new office building construction in our downtowns?

 

It seems at best any new construction will have to be either some combination of office/hotel/residential or the occasional signature headquarters building. At any rate l wonder what that does to the construction momentum all those hot sun belt cities were undergoing? Have we seen skyline stabilization? It's hard to believe something so ubiquitous to America (the highrise office building) is going extinct but that appears to be the case.

One thing I read was new commercial high-rise construction will have to be designed in a way that residential conversion would be doable and relatively painless. Makes sense.

I didn't mean to imply that WFH is going to be the norm for everyone. Just that the option will become more mainstream. Of course many of those people will be required to show up in the office a few days a week. Even then there will be some jobs (or companies) that won't allow it at all but it does look like it's here's to stay in one form or another. 

Interesting take:

 

SVB employees blame remote work for bank failure
 

“Why it matters: In the aftermath of the collapse of the 16th biggest bank in the country everyone is trying to understand what happened. 

 

Whether remote work led directly to a bank failure, or whether poorly-managed remote work was simply a sign of bigger problems at the company, we may never know. Either way, what happened at SVB will likely enter the broader debate about returning to the office.

 

Details: The banking industry has led the return to office charge for a while, and SVB was an outlier in its commitment to something different.”

 

https://www.axios.com/2023/03/17/svb-employees-blame-remote-work-for-bank-failure

Remote work may be decimating city businesses, public transportation and indirectly contributing to criminal activity and behavior, but it sure as s-hit isn't responsible for the higher interest rates, bond losses and bank run last week. 

 

 

Edited March 17, 20232 yr by TBideon

If nobody can communicate because they look and sound like they are using a PXL2000 it can cause a lot of problems.

3 hours ago, TBideon said:

Remote work may be decimating city businesses, public transportation and indirectly contributing to criminal activity and behavior, but it sure as s-hit isn't responsible for the higher interest rates, bond losses and bank run last week. 

 

 

Just me, but I wouldn't let the risk management team work remotely.  

3 hours ago, amped91 said:

Interesting take:

 

SVB employees blame remote work for bank failure
 

“Why it matters: In the aftermath of the collapse of the 16th biggest bank in the country everyone is trying to understand what happened. 

 

Whether remote work led directly to a bank failure, or whether poorly-managed remote work was simply a sign of bigger problems at the company, we may never know. Either way, what happened at SVB will likely enter the broader debate about returning to the office.

 

Details: The banking industry has led the return to office charge for a while, and SVB was an outlier in its commitment to something different.”

 

https://www.axios.com/2023/03/17/svb-employees-blame-remote-work-for-bank-failure

 

Complete and utter cop out.  If anything, WFH requires better documentation trails.  If they did not have that, that asking for trouble in any case.

3 hours ago, GCrites80s said:

If nobody can communicate because they look and sound like they are using a PXL2000 it can cause a lot of problems.

 

Written communication is superior to verbal communication, especially when documented facts are important moving forward and double especially when $$ is involved.