Elon Musk said remote working was “immoral”. Other corporate savants say people should come to the office, with or without a reason. Another view is that the usually overpriced commercial office space property prices will take a hit if rents collapse.
This is typical of corporate culture, madness, and stupidity on the grand scale. Never mind the inefficiencies and waste; let’s prop up some antiquated business model at great expense. Try to translate physical realities into some abstract ideological war. Or, in this case, support someone else’s antiquated property portfolios.
Musk has hit some flak for unpaid rents. Twitter’s admittedly lavish rental spaces were no great asset. …And now he’s saying people should work in offices for the sake of working in offices? He might as well say people should return to horses and carts in his role as driving force at Tesla.
How far out of touch can you get? For decades, commuting has been an expensive waste of time and money in the US. The notorious logjams have also cost everyone else in the country big money though delays and time expenses. Now it’s a “moral stance”?
Meanwhile, back in the barnyard, office spaces are rotting away empty simply because nobody can afford to rent them. Did someone forget about that? Commercial rental is big, sometimes, huge, money straight out the window.
The lucky employees get to figure out how to pay for commuting. An average of two hours are removed from their lives just getting from A to B and doing nothing productive. Productivity is a big word at chimp level management. Pity they have no idea what it means.
Wasted time is not productive. Wasted money is not productive. Commercial space costs a fortune to rent. The market is ridiculously overpriced and a lot of credit is involved in owning those properties, driving rents up.
It’s just another no-brainer that the corporate cretins can’t figure out. You talk about cutting costs with layoffs when you’re literally paying a fortune for office space you don’t need? So you can sit in a bland, diner-like space and “impress” someone?
In competitive terms, remote working beats office work any way you look at it. Top people don’t work in other people’s offices. It’s too inefficient. They get more done working remotely. They know how to manage their time, space and money a lot better. If they need to physically go anywhere, it’s on their terms.
For those wondering – The phone has been invented. That’s the only place you do need to be, most of the time. Massive amounts of time and office space are devoted to unnecessary meetings, etc. No amount of amateur theatricals at a meeting will pay those prices.
The workplace is bad enough in terms of stress alone without dictates from the past making it worse. Remote working is the only way to solve these issues and actually cut costs.
Meanwhile, why are you trying to make the people gouging you for office space feel good? The much smarter move would be to generate competitive office rental prices.
You can either go broke or do remote work. Game over.
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
