Steve Schwarzman of the Blackstone group said staff want to work from home so they can save money
Steve Schwarzman of the Blackstone group said staff want to work from home so they can save money
The boss of the world’s biggest commercial landlord has accused remote workers of staying away from the office because it means they “don’t work as hard” and can save money.
Steve Schwarzman, the chief executive of investment firm the Blackstone group, made the claims about hybrid staff while speaking on a panel at the Future Investment Initiative summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
In remarks first reported by Bloomberg, he said employees had kept working from home because “they didn’t work as hard, regardless of what they tell you” and also due to the savings they make on their daily commute, lunches and work attire.
Haha that’s hilarious! Seriously though, I bolt my dogs kennels to the roof of my car when I have our chauffeur drive us from Denver airport to our Aspen ski chalet, just like any common man would.
Let's assume for the sake of argument he's correct. So fucking what? Wealth concentration is wage theft. Profits are at historic highs. They owe it to the workers to put down the fucking whip. It's better for the environment. Every worker who wants to telecommute (in jobs where it's possible) should be allowed to do so. It's unethical not to. It should be made illegal, IMO.
Oh, well, we’ve been over producing by taking in extra tasks and not getting raises for many years with extra work while in the office. I guess this is just our reciprocity and evening out our personal time.
I wonder if I sent him a pizza, would he feel better about it all?
Oh. And you expect me to be in the office? Then you should make an appearance daily in the office. I don’t care if you’re halfway across the US - you better show up to say hi and prove you’re there you fucking slacker.
Oh. And you expect me to be in the office? Then you should make an appearance daily in the office. I don’t care if you’re halfway across the US - you better show up to say hi and prove you’re there you fucking slacker.
This is the biggest reason people don't respect the Return to Office mandate of some companies. If the C-suite jabronis can't be arsed to show up and it's okay for them to telecommute, they've given away the game. It's rules-for-thee-not-for-me and it's as simple as that. Treating adults well into their professional careers like children who must be watched endlessly is a slap in the face to these professionals. It's why more often than not they're just finding a different job that does respect them.
This is such short-term thinking. They're going to lose their most productive and most valuable employees to this, and then their business will slowly fold like a flan in a cupboard.
Did you stop learning French history when you hit 1789? The French Revolution didn't really work out so great in the long run. Napoleon took over within a few years.
People don't like you to know this but the revolutionary war was very violent. What did the revolutionaries want anyway? Representation. Hmm. I wonder if there is a place that has an underclass that has increasingly less representation in government.
Maybe we can gamify that a little. Every time a worker-bee completes a task, the machine delivers a slap and a photo to the worker. We can collect them like sortie markers on WWII bombers. Boss gets feedback on how productive his employees are, and employees get to compete for points.
There are no metics to support any drop in productivity. There are lots of metrics to support making people go back to the office is bad for the environment. The traffic were I live is pretty much back to what it was before. It's gross just watching the haze of fumes knowing it is there so these dickheads can maintain their property portfolio.
Anecdotally, I clock more hours WFH than I ever did going into the office- the matter of having to catch the last train out of town put a hard limit on how long I could crank code.
Without those extra 4 uncompensated hours in my day (plus the overhead time and mental energy monitoring the timeline of my day vs. just doing what I do), I get more done and I have more time to do it. Being autistic, I appreciate having uninterrupted time-blocks I can use to hyperfocus and get things done- and having to be aware of when to tie things up and GTFO in time to catch that train interrupts that.
Schwarzman isn't really concerned with my well-being or with my productivity at work- he's concerned with maintaining high demand for commercial real estate like my company's office. He can pound sand.
I still go in every once in a while just to show my face and get some IRL time with co-workers, but my employers aren't pushing the 'get back to work and do real work' line, they're aware that working in the office (we're mostly coders and such) will cost us productivity if anything and they're just encouraging us to get in a few times a year and do some face to face social stuff.
I work a job where our metrics are extremely easy to analyse, since switching to 100% remote work instead of 60% max at will remote work our productivity has increased by 15%... How much are companies willing to spend to increase productivity by 15%? Imagine being able to get that boost by saving money instead!
The company I work for experienced significant growth during COVID and has more employees at the corporate office than they have desks. They're literally saving craploads of money on building a new office by maintaining a hybrid and remote workforce
Yeah, but notice that his whole point was about "working hard" which is not at all the same as "being productive" and about employees "saving money", which something that's not up to an employer to decide on.
It's not at all about the kind of metrics a competent manager would be worrying about.
And, when you notice that he's one of the biggest commercial landlords, you realize that by "employees working hard," he means "employees sitting in offices I've rented out and thus making companies give me money."
The more companies that allow employees to work from home, the less his properties are worth. You might as well ask Exxon-Mobil whether electric cars are good or not. Or ask a political candidate whether you should vote for their opponent or not.
It's more like. I can't micro manage and control this aspect of their lives. I need them to be dependant on the meager scraps I give them so they keep crawling back. Also I want to go into people's homes while they're away and it's harder to do when they're home all the time.
I mean, it's true? I used to have to spend 11 hours a day to get 8 hours in my workplace. Now I spend 8 hours a day to get 8 hours in my workplace. And I start earlier and finish later because I can take longer breaks during the day when no one needs me to be there. And I get more done because I'm not knackered all the time from commuting 3 hours a day.
They're quids in (unless they've based their finances on the capital gains from owning property in a ridiculously expensive city while shunting the costs onto lower paid workers who are forced to commute long hours at their own expense).
They're quids in (unless they've based their finances on the capital gains from owning property in a ridiculously expensive city while shunting the costs onto lower paid workers who are forced to commute long hours at their own expense).
Well they have to have their side hustle too, gig economy and all!
And companies used to know this. Pre-COVID, I got told on multiple occasions I wasn't being picked for a job due to my commute distance because they were afraid I would be tired or unreliable due to having to travel to work.
I left a company because traffic got worse and commute sucked, only to discover that they shut their doors a few years later because remote workers were getting more done.
Yes, well, he's saying the quiet part out loud. In his mind workers should know they are finite resources for the company to suck dry at their whim and spit out once they're done with them.
This is the type of person who would ban lunch hours and eight hour days given the chance. They're an embarrassment to their companies and to humanity in general.
Don't even have to delve into movies. The book "Way of the Turtle" is a first hand account of some of the early algorithmic traders. While there's nothing mentioned that's even close to Wolf of Wall Street, the actual work they did hardly filled a full day. Mid-day office ping pong tournaments were common.
They’re either fulfilling their job responsibilities or they’re not.
I agree, but the problem is that they still have no way of determining that aside from chair to ass ratios because all of the upper layers of these organizations don't know how to do their jobs.
he said employees had kept working from home because “they didn’t work as hard, regardless of what they tell you” and also due to the savings they make on their daily commute, lunches and work attire.
It’s almost as if people enjoy having extra disposable income!
I've said it before and I'll keep saying it, one of the fastest ways to pull cars off the road is to pass strong incentives/taxes on businesses to encourage them to adopt a hybrid or remote work model. I live in a rural area where you frequently need to drive to the next town over for this that or the other thing and my hybrid work schedule has allowed my family to become a single car family in about the most eternally car dependant kind of living situation there is
That is not their lot in life! They ought to be thankful for the pittance they receive as it is, and they are entirely ungrateful wretches to think of saving and trying to improve their situation!
That's why when people start making a bit more money suddenly "fake inflation" gets introduced. We are always supposed to be on the edge of death. That's the only thing that makes the owner class hard, and fucking kids.
Remote workers can live in locations with cheaper rent. Blackstone has invested far too much money buying up overpriced housing in densely populated areas to allow that. A spread out population is bad for their bottom line.
He’s essentially saying that companies need employees to come work at the office because the real estate investors depend on it.
Question what do the models say will happen if commercial real estate values crash because everyone is wfm? Can it really cause an macro economic issue?
The short version is yea, they (and we) are pretty fucked if they can't fill their commercial leases.
The long of it: apparently in 2020 a whole lot of property owners took out new loans/cash-out refinanced when interest rates hit record lows before COVID hit. A lot of those (maybe most of them) were balloon loans, meaning they were short term (about 5 years usually) with small payments for the duration, and a larger balloon payment at the end.
We are coming up on the end of 5 years, and commercial real estate prices have still not recovered. They could be in a situation where they owe the bank more than what the property is worth, and if enough properties default because of that, we could be in a similar situation as in 2008.
Frankly though: they can fuck off. They gambled (again) with our economy, they don't deserve to be catered to our bailed out for their reckless decisions. I say nationalize the defaulted properties and convert them to housing, much like we should have done in 2008 instead of bailing out the banks who caused the crisis.
I will happily watch them squirm from my comfortable home office
Headline in a reality literate world: "Remote employees 'don't work as hard' says obscenely biased and out of touch person with a vested interest in the abolishment of remote work."
The evidence says otherwise. He can go fuck himself. I personally prefer going in but I understand people wanting to work from home or at the very least do hybrid work. Childcare is fucking expensive and if you can work while watching kids, that can really help combat the massive rise in housing costs.
Remote work offers significantly more flexibility especially if both parents work remote. Many are able to work it just fine. It may not work for you but there are a ton of people that are just as productive when given that flexibility.
I have not seen any remote work policy mention childcare at all.
You know who actually doesn't work hard at all? steve schwarzan. Fuck these lazy ass execs and share holders. I think we outta put em all in metal tubes and drop em in the ocean.
Half of it, in my experience as an old white guy, is old white guys (not me) dumping their emotional shit on people who can't afford not to listen to it.
The other half, and I forgot what it's called, but there's a rule in resource management that a particular office task will always expand to fill the time allotted for completion.
That all said, a very well balanced individual might be able to do serious focus work for six hours per day before their brain turns to shit, before their memory, recall, intuition, logic, and rationality get all fuzzy.
I like that I have the choice to use those 1-2 hours to get stuff done for work, to clean up something at home, or just go onto the patio and stare at the sky for 5-30 minutes.
All of those bring me far more satisfaction than riding the train, and I'd happily do any of them instead.
Business saves money: "the goal of a business is to make money"
I loathe this definition that has become the norm. The goal of a business used to be to provide a good or service, with profit as the reward for success. The profit being the purpose is what leads to the constant, unnecessary enshitification.
I mean, at work I'm probably just going to play Pokemon on my phone until an actual assignment shows up, then do it and back to Pokemon.
If I worked from home I can't imagine I would do my job any differently, except it would probably be playing Pokémon Violet on the switch instead of Pokemon Masters on my phone
This revolting bottom feeder, Steve Schwarzman, would say that. He's a commercial realtor, if remote working takes off he loses out. What else would he say?
While on a particularly stupid project that I knew was destined for failure, I actually requested to come into the office on a constant basis because I knew that it was going to fail horribly and I didn't want my non-presence to become the scapegoat for the manager's pitifully bad choice.
I mean, I was there all the time, right? How can I have been the cause of this otherwise perfect project failing so miserably?
When you factor in things like getting ready for work, commuting and even just the emotional labor that goes into dealing with workplace idiots face to face and keeping up appearances, it makes perfect sense