I have posted this on Reddit (askeconomics) a while back but got no good replies. Copying it here because I don't want to send traffic to Reddit.
What do you think?
I see a big push to take employees back to the office. I personally don't mind either working remote or in the office, but I think big companies tend to think rationally in terms of cost/benefit and I haven't seen a convincing explanation yet of why they are so keen to have everyone back.
If remote work was just as productive as in-person, a remote-only company could use it to be more efficient than their work-in-office competitors, so I assume there's no conclusive evidence that this is the case. But I haven't seen conclusive evidence of the contrary either, and I think employers would have good reason to trumpet any findings at least internally to their employees ("we've seen KPI so-and-so drop with everyone working from home" or "project X was severely delayed by lack of in-person coordination" wouldn't make everyone happy to return in presence, but at least it would make a good argument for a manager to explain to their team)
Instead, all I keep hearing is inspirational wish-wash like "we value the power of working together". Which is fine, but why are we valuing it more than the cost of office space?
On the side of employees, I often see arguments like "these companies made a big investment in offices and now they don't want to look stupid by leaving them empty". But all these large companies have spent billions to acquire smaller companies/products and dropped them without a second thought. I can't believe the same companies would now be so sentimentally attached to office buildings if it made any economic sense to close them.
Yeah I think the floor weight is the actual concern and reason it doesn't happen rather than zoning, but if it's possible to renovate it within something close to the same cost as starting again, they should renovate it. We need to start taking into account things like the pollution for stuff like this but it not being considered doesn't mean someone isn't getting the bill. I don't think people who would prefer to demolish and start again consider amount of shit that will be put into the air if you knock down a good portion of the office buildings, even if it doesn't effect much on a grander scale it will effect the actual cities.
Would be interesting if a structural engineer did a video on all the problems and solutions etc of converting office buildings. Maybe even getting away with the bottom few floors on all office big buildings would be a good start.