Ehhh I think everything bad about Covid is permanent and any silver lining is being wiped out gradually …It’s just more bad on top of bad. They’ll make up that profit in some sinister way …
Corporations: get your booty back into the office so it’s not empty
Also corporations: we’ve laid off your team in favor of AI, it was a tough but necessary choice due to costs
The empty office building: ???
I mean to be fair even though corporations fucking suck. Most commercial leases are typically longer than what you would do for residential. So it can range from 3-10 ish years(3-5 seems to be a common number). There is always the option to exit them early but there are typically pretty costly negatives to doing that.
I guess my company has been lucky so far. Our management team saw the chance to save money by reducing how many buildings we need and they rolled that money into hiring more remote workers.
It’s funny / sad how much good / bad management can affect a company. Anyone with half a brain can see the benefit of remote work. You just need to figure out how to keep your workers accountable in different ways now that you can’t stand behind their chairs and look over their shoulders.
The smart companies are saving money and getting better workers. The rest can all go fuck themselves.
I think it’s important to note here that it’s not necessarily great for everyone if the companies everybody works for lose a bunch of money. Companies will try as hard as possible not to realize that loss, and after that happens, lots of office buildings aren’t really built in a way where they can be converted to do anything useful, so they’re just gonna sit there. Normal people are probably going to end up paying for this - personnel are some of the easiest things to let go of for a balance sheet.
to who? this video has a pretty good explanation of why so many buildings can’t be converted or just won’t make sense to convert. youtu.be/imyPVFFACTk
That’s a very interesting video. But I still have to ask WHY is it ok for an office to lack the lighting and escape routes when the same is not ok for residential areas (which was the main reason given)? It makes no sense to me. Water and sewage poses no problem because large office buildings have to account for mutiple toilets on each floor. Electricity is also a non issue (I’d argue electricity usage would vastly decrease when coverted). That just leaves shared air circulation and conditioning which also shouldn’t be an issue since it would just be maintained through the landlord (and could even be cheaper for the individual since they don’t have to pay for their own systems but just a flat fee on the rent).
With rent prices in this kind of fantasy land in bigger metroploes like San Fran or NYC , I’d doubt you’d find tenants. Maybe in rural laboratories it might be an issue but not the cities. That’s just my thoughts. Might be wrong.
Here’s the sneaky part: A company that isn’t utterly brain dead can save money with WFH. My startup doesn’t even have an office to go into, we’re all WFH. Know what we’re not spending money on? A commercial lease. There’s opportunity here for companies to go and save a grip of cash by going WFH and either relocating to a smaller campus or dropping it altogether. In this situation, the only party who loses is the asset holder, and I have no problems with that. You win some, you lose some, that’s the free market.
Yeah but it would add localised - and extremely high efficiency in terms of water, yield, etc. - food supply that’s more resilient to climate shifts, needs no pesticodes, etc., and for those of us on islands like the UK where we import lots of food it would be good.
Might also help those countries we import from build up more food supply resiliency because thry have more excess. Or massively reduce land use for food ^.^. And a lot of the places food gets imported from or otherwise farmed are also at large risk for climate change, so perhaps using vertical farms or other climate controlled farming techniques would be a good idea for them too nya
Furthermore it makes the supply chain more auditable, so you can reduce the reliance on questionably or very unethically sourced stuff. A controlled environment might also allow for even more automation.
I’m a pretty big fan of vertical farming for lots of reasons though to the point of writing an article on it, so I’m a little biased ;p. The main obstacles are land/building price and energy (and also some techniques for growing staples, though I think that is not a fundamemtal limitation, and I think the other two are solvable)
Edit: also I think it’s desirable to return agricultural land to less managed environments like forests. Moving more human infrastructure into cities would enable more of this sort of “rewilding” (though I think that’s a bit of a misnomer as environments everywhere have all been fundamentally altered by people, and a lot of people’s idea of “nature” is the very sanitised version that avoids the constant slaughter and death, like cityparks and stuff which are actually very human managed - good for mental health, but not really ““nature”” in the same way)
They absolutely can. If Canadian cities can do it with less people and money then certainly some of these massive multi-billion dollar real estate companies can do it too.
Cities, you just said keyword there cities, you can do it in cities because people want to live in cities. They don’t want to live on the outskirts. Most of these offices are not in the city centre because the city centre is a really expensive place to have an office, only massive corporations are based there.
The vast majority of office space is in low rent districts on the periphery of cities. Because no one lives there there’s no shops, no leisure centres, no schools, no parks or other green spaces. You can’t just convert every building into a housing unit without considering the surrounding environment.
It would be infinitely cheaper to just build homes where you actually want them, than to try and convert a building that was never designed for the task.
I know it’s not trendy or hip or exciting to say that, but when you look at the economics it just doesn’t make sense outside of some very limited circumstances.
If only Amazon wasn’t forcing me to go back into the office soon…
Even my manager hates the idea. Out team is split on different coasts, so we’re gonna have to be in class anyway, so why am I forced to go into the office? I went in before I was going to be forced because it was fun, but now I’m staying out until I’m forced. It’s bullshit.
Amazon and Bezos himself has pretty close ties to Wall Street. You being herded in is the returned backscratch for very favourable stock market “accidents” that led Amazon to an insane valuation and competitors on the short side of the investments.
I guess that explains why they’re going to such great lengths to convince us that talking about Game of Thrones around a water cooler is such a tremendous benefit to humankind…
At our office they are really pushing the “socializing” aspect by having a “gaming lunch” once a month. And by gaming lunch I mean they put out a few board games in the kitchenette that no one touches because we get 30 minutes to eat before having to work at a soulless corporation. But hey at least middle management is happy now they can walk around making sure you are working instead of being at home.
All workers are required to enjoy 30 minutes of mandatory social engagement at a designated “Fun Area”. Enjoyment activities can include: hearty laughter, corporate value appreciation, appropriate camaraderie. If the enjoyment you wish to experience is outside of these allowed forms, please speak to your department’s Enjoyment Adjustment Officer.
In the first half I thought that sounds at least kind of cool to have a lan party, but its one of those gaming table in office that only for decorations and no one touch….
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