1y ago

Return to office is ‘dead,’ Stanford economist says. Here’s why

www.cnbc.com Return to office is ‘dead,’ Stanford economist says. Here’s why

The share of workers being called back to the office has flatlined, suggesting remote work is an entrenched feature of the U.S. labor market.

Return to office is ‘dead,’ Stanford economist says. Here’s why::The share of workers being called back to the office has flatlined, suggesting remote work is an entrenched feature of the U.S. labor market.

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Return to office is ‘dead,’ Stanford economist says. Here’s why

www.cnbc.com /2023/11/30/return-to-office-is-dead-stanford-economist-says-heres-why.html

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I know you guys are going to hate this, but I’m seeing a trend develop that no one is talking about. Work in our office is being divided up differently, jobs are morphing. There’s the work that can be done from home, and the work that can’t. Guess which one the bosses are talking about farming out to third world countries.
In my opinion hybrid is the way. Go in three days a week, do the things that require a physical presence, don’t worry about your job getting off shored.
- My guy did you already forget all the manufacturing jobs that got off shored over the past few decades?
- They've been trying to offshore for decades. They're gonna keep trying. It's little more than a dog whistle to tell you what kind of dysfunctional they are.
- IMHO hybrid is the worse. Before Covid, when we worked in the office, I had my own desk, my parking space and all the meetings were held in meeting rooms. Now I have to be in the office 3 days a week and we have hot desk system, limited parking spaces and everyone is on a video call all the time. The office is now super loud and just not a nice place to work. There's not enough desks for everyone because the company can hire more people without expanding office, Parking spaces are reserved using some appa and disappear in 10 seconds. Hybrid just add some much hassle without any real benefits. Just bring everyone to the office or let everyone work from home.
  
  We only go in once/week and I do all my people catchups at that time + whiteboard brainstorming/planning etc.
  It works out ok with flexible desks in that case.
  
  If think it should be up to the team. If they think it's useful to meet at the office they go be it weekly, monthly or quarterly. My commute is like 15 minutes so I don't mind going to the office at all but the experiences is way worse now that it's hybrid.
- Guess which one the bosses are talking about farming out to third world countries.
  guess what quality will be affected.
  There's amazing workforce in those countries. But also some very bad. And companies that try to sell you their cheap labor generally aren't known for good QC
- Guess which one the bosses are talking about farming out to third world countries.
  🥱 It's 2023 dude, if they could offshore work they likely have already. Hell, in the last reduction in force at my company they fired a bunch of employees at our "third world country" office.
- This (outsourcing) was already done 20 years ago in my industry. WFH changes nothing.
- I've thought this occasionally, but at least in my job, we've had lots of "remote work" for years by dint of being in a different building than other people. If that was going to be outsourced, I think they would have tried by now. It's really surprisingly hard to get effective consultants when they're based in the same country, but as you go overseas, you quickly end up with paying simply for "check the box", which probably is already mostly self service clicking and AI at the cutting edge (Amazon support "chat" anyone?). The problem is, you can tell an auditor you have function X, but in many cases that function becomes useless to others in the org.
  IDK, I think there's been multiple indicators we're not currently on an offshoring swing.

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