Office Jobs
In my younger, more vulnerable days, I worked 5 days a week in an office space I would describe as beige, with re-circulated air-conditioning and accessible with an ID badge.
A ping pong table with 1 paddle and no balls sat within ear-shout of the MD’s desk. It certainly sounds enticing but it was not anything I’d gloat to a girl about on a first date either.
Definitely not a trading floor.
I often said, “If I left here at 5PM, went home, then… just…. never…. returned, I wouldn’t think twice. “
No personal objects at my desk. (Fuck it — Keep the phone charger USB cord)
No work friends I would miss dearly
No burning need to get out that last email.
I never imagined that would happen for real
But in March 2020, I left my Manhattan office to setup a BCP trading desk in Brooklyn for 2 weeks, until the pandemic “ended”.
We watched Bill Ackman scare the hell out of everyone on CNBC with a (very wrong) report on Pandemic Projections from Imperial College.
We watched Andrew Cuomo on TV (The Italian; not the pervert) give us the daily rundown
Then Bill De Blasio locked down the city.
So we went home.
The following Monday, I logged in from my laptop in my apartment and the rest as they say, … is history.
And now companies wants us back. For real. But workers don’t want to go back. They worked from home or wherever they were for over 2 years and everything got done….for the same pay. So now what?
Here’s The Problem:
Measuring Remote work productivity, putting a value on face-to-face time and compensating for the very act of being in the same, specific place regularly is the first 21st century labor fight. It’s on par with the 8 hour work day, or union creations from the early 20th century.
History books 100 years from now may actually talk about the post-pandemic remote work policy fights at Tesla or Facebook on par with the Gilded Age’s labor union strikes or work safety standard laws passed in the Progressive Era
Just like when those innovations were normalized and legalized 100 years ago, labor and management are fighting tooth and nail against each other because they are incentivized for opposite outcomes.
What are the incentives ?
Like almost everything in life, remote work policies are fights over resources. For both sides. Employee and Employer.
It’s money
It’s power
It’s time
This fight also exposes a need to fundamentally re-define the value add and compensation metrics for knowledge work and the associated productivity measures
Remote work policy is not one fight. It’s a million tiny fights which over time will move the needle of power towards one side or the other for years to come.
What drives each side in the fight?
Check out Part 2 next week where I dissect the Management side of this fight.
What incentives companies in today’s “bottom line” accounting culture?
The management tactics and productivity measures in a remote work environment
The compensation rates assigned to them.