this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2024
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Technology

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[–] [email protected] 88 points 1 month ago (4 children)

To prevent a crash in the commercial office real estate market.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Meh fuck the commercial real estate market. Turn all the buildings into micro apartments or tear them down and install fields of solar panels.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 month ago

I've been screaming its just wage theft. My city provides tax breaks for occupancy (employees prop up the local economy buying lunch). They are making me pay for gas, time, and car maintenance (and lunch but fuck them, I'll just not eat) for this tax break which goes to C-level bonuses/shareholders. Its just another way of skimming off the top of employee wages.

We worked fully remote for nearly 2 years and the hybrid policy just keeps getting worse and worse. Coupled with quarterly riffs, I also suspect this is to avoid severance pay/unemployment while accelerating the down sizing. Yet our CEO bonus keeps going up and up despite our stock plummeting since the end of COVID lock downs.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Tear them down and build houses. Flood the market of every major city with houses so it becomes unprofitable to buy thousands of houses just to rent.

Then home sales go up, and millenials can ACTUALLY buy houses in their lifetime!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

That would piss off the voting base that actually votes though

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Condos! Best of both worlds. Especially in a dense city, a standalone house isn't really feasible when you can fit 8+ families into the same lot.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Missing the point. The office executives are in bed with the real estate execs.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They are the real estate owners themselves

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Sometimes, sure. Somewhat different disciplines but, some folks high up enough certainly play both investments.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

Why should they care though? It's not like commercial real estate sells more computers. Staff still needs desktops, infrastructure still needs datacenters.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Because all these companies have a shit load of money in the market including real state...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That's the crux of the issue.

Who's going to buy it for a high price, if there is no demand for office space, because workers are all remote?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Property damage is an extremely effective way to fight against money. We should be doing it a lot more.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Cloud infrastructure is great for this. You don't need your own data center when you can just rent space on a farm. As a bonus, it's less work for the IT team who no longer have to deal with server hardware upkeep.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This is what is so fascinating to me about most people, they don't understand that companies hord their assets in my different kinds of investments when they are this large. Having real estate gives them an asset they can can store large sums of money in that generally appreciate in value over time. If a company is under finacial duress, they can fire a bunch of employees, then sale the land where those employees worked and and save themselves from much larger losses on revenue for a given time period.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Both major companies I've worked for sold their commercial real estate and leased it back as one of their very first measures when cost cuts were needed. What we have here is essentially the reverse where tech companies scare off their workforce and industry knowledge and drive up employee costs so they can impart some secondary effect on the commercial real estate market... so yes i remain confused about the priorities in play here.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

So for the past 4 years it didn't matter, but now it suddenly does? I smell bs on that real estate reason

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

During the pandemic they had to choose between go remote or close up shop. They didn’t have much choice.

Seems that once Covid stabilized they’ve been trying to force everyone back.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

But that still doesn't matter if they posted profits during that time.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Who do you think owns the real estate?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Why would Dell care about the commercial office real estate market?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

they bought instead of rented? iunno

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

You do understand that large corporations invest in many kinds of assets in order to diversify them right? Real estate is one of the oldest investments any entity can make, and is often considered a pretty strong investment. Everyone needs land right?