May 13, 2020

"But now, as the pandemic eases its grip, companies are considering not just how to safely bring back employees, but whether all of them need to come back at all...."

"... [T]hey are now wondering whether it’s worth continuing to spend as much money on Manhattan’s exorbitant commercial rents. They are also mindful that public health considerations might make the packed workplaces of the recent past less viable.... In a recent email to employees, JP Morgan Chase, which until last year had been the largest office tenant in New York City, said the company was reviewing how many people would be allowed to return. More than 180,000 Chase employees have been working from home.... Twitter, which has hundreds of employees in its New York office in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, told all its employees on Tuesday that they could work remotely forever if they want to and if their position allows for it.... 'If you got two and a half million people in Brooklyn, why is it rational or efficient for all those people to schlep into Manhattan and work every day?' said Jed Walentas, who runs the real estate company Two Trees Management. 'That’s how we used to do it yesterday. It’s not rational now.'...  Real estate taxes provide about a third of New York’s revenue..."

From "Manhattan Faces a Reckoning if Working From Home Becomes the Norm/Even after the crisis eases, companies may let workers stay home. That would affect an entire ecosystem, from transit to restaurants to shops. Not to mention the tax base" (NYT).

109 comments:

Bay Area Guy said...

" In a recent email to employees, JP Morgan Chase, which until last year had been the largest office tenant in New York City, said the company was reviewing how many people would be allowed to return. More than 180,000 Chase employees have been working from home."

Maybe the NYT should interview the hot dog vendors in Central Park, the Cab drivers, the chefs and waitresses at Cipriani's - you know, the folks who actually work at work, not at home.

I reckon some folks have narrow blinders on ......

Original Mike said...

"Real estate taxes provide about a third of New York’s revenue..."

The world's tiniest violin…

And yes, I know they will be coming to us in the hinterlands to subsidize their way of life.

Rory said...

Norm!

tim maguire said...

If working from home becomes the norm, NYC will tax homes as offices and make the resident prove they don't conduct business there.

MadisonMan said...

Hard times ahead for Local Government spending in NYC. It's not like tourist taxes will help either. I'm in no mood to travel to a COVID Hotspot like NYC.

MayBee said...

See? This is what I love. I appreciate this is the NYT so they should get this right. But notice this article mentions Manhattan, Brooklyn, and even the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan.
Where the earlier WaPo article called Michigan a hot spot.

Owen said...

The government is parasitic on the economy. The economy depends on social habits and structures. Which have been disrupted by Wu Flu. Which disruption has been compounded by the government's actions, particularly the lockdown, and by the media's panic-mongering amplification of true and false signals in an incredibly noisy environment.

We aren't going back to "normal." The adaptation will happen first at the individual and family and "tribal" level. Businesses will adapt or die; and the casualties are already massive. But an economy will re-emerge. A stunted one with too many dependent on government cheese in the form of relief checks, issued by people for whom $trillions are now the standard unit.

How will government cover those checks? Why, with taxes. Except the tax base has vaporized. New York real estate taxes aren't going to work. Payroll taxes aren't going to work. Income taxes aren't going to work.

Maybe Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders will get to try out their Consitution-killing taxes on savings. That'll work nicely.

PM said...

San Francisco's tech community is primed for remote working. Commercial real estate is in for a reckoning - with shock waves spreading outward.

Inga said...

For many working parents, nothing could be better. I know that my daughter and many of her friends with children have enjoyed being able to work from home after an adjustment period. If my daughter could continue to work from home permanently, or go in to work physically less, while still keeping her current wages, she’d be very happy. Eventually when schools open, working from home will be even easier for those who now have their children home and are doing the remote learning thing. My son in law’s job isn’t practical to continue to do from home and requires travel, so if my daughter worked from home full time that would be easier for them as a parenting couple, especially if the children are back in school. For parents paying exorbitant daycare costs, they could save money by cutting back or even eliminating daycare altogether.

Anonymous said...

After the 1993 World Trade Center garage bomb, the J P Morgan security director, Rick Rescorla, recommended that Morgan move out of the WTC to cheaper Jersey digs. Didn't happen. Rick paid full price for that decision.

Achilles said...

dense urban centers were always a stupid idea.

They were only pushed because it gave the aristocracy more control.

Leland said...

Yes, now NYT, explain how a massive federal government spending package changes this dynamic, because I don't see how it does. And where is any government going to get the funds for such spending if the tax base is massively changed in the new normal?

GatorNavy said...

My better half who works with a dozen university researchers running their business unit does not plan on ever returning to the campus

TreeJoe said...

This has been self-obvious since forever (ok, decades).

I shouldn't feel such glee, and the life-disruption this will cause to many triggers my compassionate side, but there's definitely some schadenfreude going on in my head right now.

This is one of the reasons I'm not yet putting money back into the commercial market. We don't yet know how all the disruption is going to play out but some entire economic sectors are not going to have a V-recovery....they are going to crash and burn. Commercial real-estate is one possibility, but city governments - and their bonds - are another.

Was looking at vanguard treasury ETFs today. Up 50% YTD in one of the funds. Shows the level of "omg I don't know where to put my money" going on in the market.

minnesota farm guy said...

You did not have to be a genius to think this might happen. You break the pattern of the daily trudge into NYC and your employees suddenly find that it has been foolish all along. This is just an acceleration of a trend that questions why any company needs a physical presence in NYC. Sure, many do because there is a lot of talent in NY, but Boards of Directors must wonder what the necessity is of paying exorbitant rates to house the worker bees. Of course NYC has not had true competition because its neighboring states are about as expensive as NY. However now that the rest of the US is easily accessible by wifi there is competition from low cost states that can provide all the services that NYC can.

Certainly NYC won't empty out but it will continue to wilt.

Lucid-Ideas said...

I said it once before (almost 2 months ago), and I'll say it again, the pandemic is going to cause people to reassess productivity measurements on the basis of facetime vs. time.

If you can maintain productivity in the economic sense (You provide a 10:1 ratio regarding your productivity vs. your cost or greater) at home vs. 'at the office' than there's no reason to add other ancillary costs like transport, aggravation, suttlery, etc...

...It becomes a bandwith problem. Simple. That's why it won't happen.

It's too simple.

TreeJoe said...

Owen said, "How will government cover those checks? Why, with taxes. Except the tax base has vaporized. New York real estate taxes aren't going to work. Payroll taxes aren't going to work. Income taxes aren't going to work."

Don't forget that the current movement is for local governments to get help from states who are pushing for help from the federal government.

And the federal government can and IS printing money by the trillions.

Our total US money supply is about to go up by ~1/3rd in one years time to cover debts. It's a form of basically saying "here I paid you with money now worth alot less than it was when I told you how much I'd pay you."

Michael said...

Many executives I know will not bring back their entire furloughed workforce but will use C19 as an excuse to trim the less productive. When hotels get back in business you can say goodbye to daily maid service and free breakfasts. Cleaning on checkout and grab and go breakfast. Severely reduced staffing.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

Thanks Wuhan Hillary virus.

Bob Smith said...

Gee, that’s too bad.

Bay Area Guy said...

I think many Gov't employees are non-essential workers and should stay home.

tcrosse said...

But now, as the pandemic eases its grip....

News to me.

Michael K said...

After the 1993 World Trade Center garage bomb, the J P Morgan security director, Rick Rescorla, recommended that Morgan move out of the WTC to cheaper Jersey digs<

Beat me to it. He did save all the employees except a few arrogant traders who refused to leave.

Jupiter said...

"... if my daughter worked from home full time that would be easier for them as a parenting couple, especially if the children are back in school. For parents paying exorbitant daycare costs, they could save money by cutting back or even eliminating daycare altogether."

You might consider, that putting "the children back in school" is an exorbitant daycare cost.

I work from home, and we homeschool our kids, and we haven't really changed our routine much. Except now the kids are on Zoom a lot.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

None of this works if schools don’t open and I hear very very little about that. University of California system fall semester will be online; I haven’t read anything about the public schools there or in New York. The slide between spring break and summer vacation was relatively easy to write off but at some point kids have to actually start receiving an education again and parents cannot work full time and homeschool / entertain their kids all day.

Regarding school, my teacher friend says they are talking about how to keep the kids “socially distant” this fall. Give me a break. Other than preventing licking and sneezing and such, which should always be default, they shouldn’t be doing any such thing. Not only do facilities not allow for it, but what a mindfuck on poor little kids. If kids are taught that they have to be afraid of each other my kids won’t be returning to school. I’m not at all afraid of the virus but I decline to participate in the hysteria programming.

In February I had to pick my son up from school due to a fever. His teacher said that out of 20 students 7 were out with the flu or something like it. Funny how hand washing and general hygiene was seen as adequate then and winter illness was just the cost of doing business.

Leland said...

Maybe the NYT should interview the hot dog vendors in Central Park, the Cab drivers, the chefs and waitresses at Cipriani's - you know, the folks who actually work at work, not at home.

Those are small businesses, the NYT doesn't care about them, because they don't pay enough taxes to matter. Oh wait, not the NYT sees the angle. The small businesses need more government handouts, err spending! Quick, lets find a hot dog vendor who is out of work even though they have been an essential business.

John Borell said...

Rick Rescorla was a hero.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Rescorla

Wince said...

What happens when things are tight and everyone realizes most of these work-at-home people didn't do shit in the first place?

"What... what would you say you do here?"

Big Mike said...

My prediction FWIW is that very large offices will develop small satellite offices where people working from home can come in for a day or a half day or couple of hours and find office space, conference space, robust network support, admin support, and technical support as needed for a project, but they fundamentally will work from home. They already know how to do this for satellite offices that are somewhat distant -- branch offices in other cities -- but now they will do this much closer in.

Just a prediction; let's see what the real world has to say.

Hari said...

'If you got two and a half million people in Brooklyn, why is it rational or efficient for all those people to schlep into Manhattan and work every day?' said Jed Walentas, who runs the real estate company Two Trees Management. 'That’s how we used to do it yesterday. It’s not rational now.'

If there is no longer a reason to schlep into Manhattan, there is no longer a reason to live in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island, Long Island, or Westchester.

It's not just Manhattan that faces a reckoning.

Hari said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Geoff Matthews said...

Just think of how much this would reduce green-house gasses.

Scott said...

I work in a large IT group in Bergen County NJ. During the crisis we brought in two contractors who are working permanently from Kansas and Minnesota. I'm hoping that I can continue working from home too, so that when my lease runs out next year, I can move back to the Twin Cities. Now that I know everybody I work with, there is literally nothing I need to go to the office for in order to do my work.

MadisonMan said...

This does make me wonder how a University can continue to charge a lot of overhead -- if its employees are working from home! If I were at NSF, this would be a question I would certainly be asking.

BarrySanders20 said...

This is an entirely rational business decision. Outsource the costs of an office (space, furnishings, equipment, computers, copiers, phones, internet connection, receptionists, admins) and costs like parking, while also decreasing costs already assumed by the employee of getting to and from work (time spent in transit, cost of transportation/gas/car/bus), and both parties win, as long as the employee has a space at home they can permanently convert into an appropriate office space.

Lurker21 said...

Face to face communication was important for most of human history. Markets worked when people got to know each other, traded information, and learned to trust one another. People talk about alcohol as a "social lubricant," but it could be said that sociability and socializing are themselves the "lubricants" of society, that smooth away our rough edges, hostility, and mistrust and make living together possible. It's only in relatively recent times - when you can have "face to face" communication without being in the same physical space - that cities come to seem unnecessary.

Of course cities always were trouble - breeders of disease and crime, dependent on outsiders who actually grow the food, attractive to marauders and conquerors - but when Romans and their subjects turned their back on their cities the results weren't that great either.

rehajm said...

You can't get people up to the office in the elevator. The logistics are too tough. We're fighting with it...

Robert Cook said...

"Maybe the NYT should interview the hot dog vendors in Central Park, the Cab drivers, the chefs and waitresses at Cipriani's - you know, the folks who actually work at work, not at home.

"I reckon some folks have narrow blinders on...."


Yes, perhaps it's you. The story is specifically about workers who do their work in offices or employer-provided spaces away from home,(as well as how the move away from workers working in offices would affect NYC's tax base). The issue of hot dog vendors and restaurant workers, etc. is a different, but related matter that is alluded to in the article.

Bob Boyd said...

If these jobs can be done remotely, how long before they are outsourced to China?

Original Mike said...

"Paper of Record", MayBee.

stlcdr said...

New York City has yet another problem. Color me suprised.

stlcdr said...

New York City has yet another problem. Color me surprised.

stevew said...

My son is a software engineer that works on a team. He works from home in Maine. His teammates are from across the Northeast (MA, NH, CT, NY). They do video meetings when necessary or desired. It works really well for everyone involved.

I lead a sales organization, field or outside sales. We are spread across the Northeast. Customer targets and accounts are assigned generally by geography in that the rep and account are near each other. This facilitates easy in-person engagement. My employer has offices is most major cities and nearby suburbs. We each are assigned to a facility "work location". I have a dedicated office. Most of us visit these offices only occasionally, for me that is once or twice a week, for the others once every couple or few weeks. We are on the road or working from home otherwise.

We have learned over the past 8 weeks or so that we can do our job pretty effectively remotely. Using video calling makes this possible. In some ways it seems to me we are more efficient and able to get meetings on the calendar sooner. I can see this continuing quite easily following the re-opening of the company office space.

But there are many, many people that cannot do the same.

Sebastian said...

"Not to mention the tax base"

Can't they just tax the rich?

Robert Cook said...

"dense urban centers were always a stupid idea.

"They were only pushed because it gave the aristocracy more control."


Mind-boggling.

So, in a time before swift travel and immediate communications via electronic means were possible and widely available--the state of things that existed for nearly the whole of human existence and social arrangements--the congregation of people into dense urban centers was a "stupid idea...only pushed" to give "the aristocracy more control."

Talk about stupid ideas.

Robert Cook said...

"The government is parasitic on the economy."

Without government there would be no economy...or society.

Ryan said...

This should all be great news. Remember ""GLOBAL WARMING!1!""

DanTheMan said...

>>If working from home becomes the norm, NYC will tax homes as offices and make the resident prove they don't conduct business there.

Exactly right. And once your home office becomes "a workplace", OSHA and all the rest of the regulations will soon follow, including "safety inspections" and all the rest.

No matter what, the government is going to collect taxes from *somebody*. The idea of doing without that revenue is unthinkable.

bagoh20 said...

The is nothing that will ever stop governments from finding a way to get their tax money. It's the only challenge they approach with any creativity, vigor or effort. I had to call the CA government yesterday to straighten out a fee due for my company that left there three months ago. The phone system, had a long list of different tax departments available. Tax on just about anything you can imagine, and many of them were redundant charging businesses over and over simply for being there. They have cute distracting names for each tax, but they all come down to: you here, you pay.

Michael K said...

Rick Rescorla was a hero.

The book about him tells you just how much of a hero he really was. The hard bound copy of "We were soldiers once and young" has his photo on the cover. Too bad he was deleted in the movie.

Unknown said...

Wishful thinking

Won't last

Bigcos are run like the army - by the rulebook.

You can't see them you don't know what they are doing.

Only way it goes long terms is a ton more monitoring - like the way uber/amazon use apps to manage the drivers.

But if the office work can be done from home, then it can be done from Vietnam...

say goodbye to your 10x salary

JAORE said...

"If my daughter could continue to work from home permanently, or go in to work physically less, while still keeping her current wages.."

I don't know where your daughter works. But a lot of the wages in large cities are based on the reality of cost of housing, cost of commute, cost of things like lunches and taxes.

Once the new reality come to pass (if it does) you will find a lowering of wages for the on-line staff.

And, as noted above, this change will devastate the property values in the lose-enough-to-commute counties surrounding the cities.

Unknown said...

> If these jobs can be done remotely, how long before they are outsourced to China?

China expensive for skilled labor.

India is cheapest.

Then SE Asia, VN, TH, PH, and then Mexico.

iowan2 said...

I predicted to the better half this morning that the new perk, sign of success, badge of power, will be the privilege of working in the office. The office is were alliances sprout, backroom deals brokered, rivals pushed out, talent showcased.
Face to face, nothing to track.
Flag this post for 2030

Kirk Parker said...

BAG,

"I think many Gov't employees are non-essential workers and should stay home."

Especially our governors! Think how far ahead WA and CA would be if they hadn't been suffocated with a mass lockdown.

roesch/voltaire said...

The new mantra is sell city buy country but that has been obvious for some time, the difference is this time even more folks can work at home, and therefore we will need to rethink our network of how we connect from cultural and sporting events to education to the role of hot dog venders.

doctrev said...

Ooh, schlep into Manhattan. What a curious choice of phrase.

Msot of the urban elite, especially in New York, is being exposed as "non-essential." What they are is a malignancy. Yet as the Democrats scream for the pandemic to be extended, the solution asserts itself. Let the productive parts of the country get back to work, while New York (aka Shithole Prime) scolds whatever action is promising to bring on the "new wave" of corana plague.

And when Babylon is at her weakest- crush her entirely.

Owen said...

TreeJoe @ 10:39: "...Our total US money supply is about to go up by ~1/3rd in one years time to cover debts. It's a form of basically saying 'here I paid you with money now worth alot less than it was when I told you how much I'd pay you.'"

That works fine until it doesn't. See: Weimar Republic.

Birches said...

What Tim Maguire said. The City and State of New York won't stand for the revenue loss without a fight.

Inga said...

“I work from home, and we homeschool our kids, and we haven't really changed our routine much. Except now the kids are on Zoom a lot.”

You don’t mention if your spouse also worked from home. If you were the only working spouse, it’s easier. My daughter is an in house attorney for a large company and is the larger wage earner, her husband’s earnings would not be enough to support the family in the way they’ve been used to. It would mean selling their home and downsizing or moving into a less desirable school district, selling a car, etc.I know that my daughter would keep my youngest grandson age 3 home most of the time.

Lurker21 said...

I predicted to the better half this morning that the new perk, sign of success, badge of power, will be the privilege of working in the office. The office is were alliances sprout, backroom deals brokered, rivals pushed out, talent showcased.

If the disease goes away and another one doesn't replace it.

And that may be true at the higher levels, but right now the more observable divide is between the privileged who can work from home and the ordinary stiffs who have to trudge or shlep to work every day.

Maybe we will have three levels: the working stiffs, the specialists who may as well be working in Bangalore, and the power players who have to see each other sweat to know that what they're doing is real.

narciso said...

Moron Inslee wants to demand an antibody test in order to buy groceries,

narciso said...

the hyperinflation was brief bout, staunched by the dawes act, for a time, the deflation was hulk smash and more permanemt,

Sam L. said...

I'd kinda like to say NYC should be nuked from orbit, but we don't have any up there to drop on NYC. The USAF ought to get working on that.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

BarrySanders20 said... This is an entirely rational business decision.

Outsource the costs of an office (space, furnishings, equipment, computers, copiers, phones, internet connection, receptionists, admins) and costs like parking,

while also decreasing costs already assumed by the employee of getting to and from work (time spent in transit, cost of transportation/gas/car/bus),

and both parties win, as long as the employee has a space at home they can permanently convert into an appropriate office space


It IS rational. What is even more rational and will happen is that the employer will lower the wages or salary paid. Since the employee doesn't have all of the other costs such as travel, parking, eating away from home, the employer will no longer be willing to subsidize or pay for those costs.

This will (in theory) balance out. Employee doesn't have to pay therefore neither does the employer need to pay. Employees better be ready for a reduction in wages or salary.

The BIG DOWNSIDE to working at home is that, unless your employees are disciplined, work can suffer. Too many distractions and how easy it is to put work off in lieu of other more immediate home things. Working from home can also be a huge strain on the family dynamics.

Few industries will successfully be able to fit this model on a large scale.

Michael K said...

But if the office work can be done from home, then it can be done from Vietnam...

say goodbye to your 10x salary


Unless you are a plumber or an HVAC system technician.

hawkeyedjb said...

I started my career in IT consulting 20 years ago. I spent several years on the road, racking up loads of free airline flights, hotel nights, etc. I implemented business systems, and we (customers and providers) all thought you had to be face-to-face. Today, I implement business systems for clients whom I have never met, and probably never will meet. The power of remote computing for all the things you need to do in an implementation (including user training) has expanded greatly, and there simply is no need to go on-site to do anything for most of our jobs. Clients quickly discover that they get more work out of the consultant (no Monday or Friday lost to travel), and the travel cost is eliminated. If I still had to travel, I'd have to give it up. As it is, I can keep doing this forever. I'm happier. The client is happier. I don't see this industry ever moving back to the on-site model. There are likely lots of industries that can move in the same direction, and everyone involved will be better off.

Gonna kill the real estate and travel industries, though. But we've always killed off industries in our highly innovative society. Others arise to take their place.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

No Schlepping Zone

Yancey Ward said...

If you really can do you job from home, then there is a person in India that can do it for a quarter of your salary. Think about that.

Bay Area Guy said...

I say: "Maybe the NYT should interview the hot dog vendors in Central Park, the Cab drivers, the chefs and waitresses at Cipriani's - you know, the folks who actually work at work, not at home.

"I reckon some folks have narrow blinders on...."

Cook responds: "Yes, perhaps it's you. The story is specifically about workers who do their work in offices or employer-provided spaces away from home,(as well as how the move away from workers working in offices would affect NYC's tax base). The issue of hot dog vendors and restaurant workers, etc. is a different, but related matter that is alluded to in the article."


Cook, as long as you're gonna vote Green Party in November, we are cool. Excoriate away:)

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Wince said...

What happens when things are tight and everyone realizes most of these work-at-home people didn't do shit in the first place?

And that could lead to **SHUDDER** management layoffs!!!!


The horror! The horror!

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Yancey Ward said...

If you really can do you job from home, then there is a person in India that can do it for a quarter of your salary. Think about that.

But wait! There's more....

You eventually get hired back to unfuck that person in India's fuck ups!

Trust me, I've see it happen in the wild!

Original Mike said...

Blogger iowan2 said..."I predicted to the better half this morning that the new perk, sign of success, badge of power, will be the privilege of working in the office. The office is were alliances sprout, backroom deals brokered, rivals pushed out, talent showcased."

I think this is right. I couldn't have worked from home (ran a research lab, kept the clinical labs going, …) but I also wouldn't have wanted to. How to keep up with the department politics? And our department was collegial; can't imagine a cut throat clinical department running that way.

Michael K said...

Surgeons will still be OK, at least until genomics gets really going in 30 years.

daskol said...

The thing about work from home productivity is that, yes, many companies new to it are surprised by how well they've maintained productivity as they've adapted to "work from home." But how much of that is because they've already got a culture, camaraderie and strong collaboration within and across teams, and are in effect coasting on that culture now? Onboarding new employees is very difficult, and even onboarded, orienting them and time to ramp up to usefulness is not what it was when we were all going to office. There's a reason for offices, and for cities. Technology has been eroding those reasons so that more and more, people are flexible geographically, but I don't think we're heading to a sudden sea-change on this matter. This is a nasty, new virus, but it's not going to transform millennia of human culture and habit. Get real, people.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

Mr. Pants just reported being in a zoom with a colleague in India and while he was on the phone the police showed up to verify that people in his house were in fact home. They searched the house because why not I guess. No one in the house was wearing a mask (of course) and the police weren’t either. The colleague said it’s the third time the police have been through the neighborhood searching the houses. If you were trying to spread it isn’t that how you’d do it!?

Inga said...

“If you really can do you job from home, then there is a person in India that can do it for a quarter of your salary. Think about that.”

This is a gross generalization, it depends on what your job is as to if some person in India could fo it.

I'm Not Sure said...

Without government there would be no economy...or society.

That's not how it works. California was sparsely populated until gold was discovered. Then, lots of people came. They created an economy and a society before there was much government of any sort. Of course, once it was understood there were buckets of money to be taxed, they got their government good and hard.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Michael K But if the office work can be done from home, then it can be done from Vietnam...say goodbye to your 10x salary

Unless you are a plumber or an HVAC system technician.


True. It is hard to outsource your plumber or your well pump and water filtration provider 😁 Also auto mechanics. Tile setters. Roofers. Truckers. Garbage men. Janitorial staff. Pretty much all trades people in general.

One thing this "lockdown" is doing is exposing who is really "essential", who isn't and who we can totally do without.

Anthony said...

I know one small group of realtors in the Phoenix are has already moved their operations out of the offices to home-based. Dunno how permanent this will be.

Which is unfortunate since one of them is ridiculously attractive.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Michael K But if the office work can be done from home, then it can be done from Vietnam...say goodbye to your 10x salary

Unless you are a plumber or an HVAC system technician.


True. It is hard to outsource your plumber or your well pump and water filtration provider 😁 Also auto mechanics. Tile setters. Roofers. Truckers. Garbage men. Janitorial staff. Pretty much all trades people in general.

One thing this "lockdown" is doing is exposing who is really "essential", who isn't and who we can totally do without.

Michael K said...

Moderation is annoying when the moderators take the rest of the day off.

Whiskeybum said...

Yancey Ward said...
"If you really can do you job from home, then there is a person in India that can do it for a quarter of your salary. Think about that."

Back in the late '90's when my company set up a factory in Bangalore (in parallel to ours here in the US) the given cost ratio for engineers between the two locations was 9:1 for budgeting/accounting purposes. So I guess Indian standards of living have improved greatly since then for technical skills.

loudogblog said...

In the movie, Escape from LA, they gave a reason why the Los Angeles area had been abandoned and converted into a prison. (A major earthquake) But in Escape from New York, they never explained why Manhattan had been abandoned and converted into a prison. A pandemic, like this, could have been the reason for that.

Yancey Ward said...

"This is a gross generalization, it depends on what your job is as to if some person in India could fo it."

No, Inga, it isn't a gross generalization- it is an absolute fact. I don't give a shit what job it is you are doing- there is someone in India (or in Asia, if you prefer) who will be better at doing it, and cheaper to hire. To believe otherwise is just fucking stupid.

Yancey Ward said...

Whiskeybum

The wage differential between the two countries has narrowed- it might not be 1/4th, but it would be in the right area give or take and 1/8th.

Original Mike said...

Perhaps we can outsource the comment moderation.

Kevin Walsh said...

There have been a few times when I worked for a boss that despised me. And what I did at work, in those cases, is watch like a hawk to check for clues whether I'd be in trouble that day, or if there would be peace. When working from home, workers in trouble can't make those observations.

stevew said...

"Moron Inslee wants to demand an antibody test in order to buy groceries"


Um, Mr./Ms. Narciso, I'm going to have to see your PCAB (Proof of Coronavirus Antibodies) card before I can allow you into the store. And your partner's too.

Like that?

Bruce Hayden said...

One problem with replacing workers with Chinese is that they likely won’t integrate well into American work teams. There are both language and cultural issues involved. It’s hard enough dealing with Indians who pretend to speak English and pretend to respect and obey our cultural norms. They didn’t though, essentially telling us what we wanted to hear, and doing what they wanted. We call it lying. They don’t consider it a problem. Worse with the Chinese.

I dealt with foreign development centers around the world when I was an in house patent attorney. It worked decently well as long as you kept the cultural and language interactions very narrow, and let people of similar languages and cultures work together. Email was great, and helped address the time zone issue.

rhhardin said...

I telecommuted from 1987 onwards, at 300 baud and slowly more and more as the bandwidth improved.

The only editor that worked at that low speed was /bin/ed, and I still use it exclusively today. It worked, in particular, even at higher speeds when editing a program on a machine in India, with huge burst delays built in.

Bruce Hayden said...

“No, Inga, it isn't a gross generalization- it is an absolute fact. I don't give a shit what job it is you are doing- there is someone in India (or in Asia, if you prefer) who will be better at doing it, and cheaper to hire. To believe otherwise is just fucking stupid.”

Her point, I .think, is that some jobs require a physical presence. My memory is that she was a nurse. That typically requires a lot more hands on than my professions as software engineer and patent attorney. Same with waitresses, barbers, plumbers, etc. The Indian, the Chinese, etc might be able to do the job more cheaply - if they were here. But they have a hard time changing a bedpan in Madison from somewhere in India. Or fixing our plumbing here in NW MT from somewhere in China.

That said, the brainpower can potentially go offshore. A skilled nurse (e.g. RN, NP, etc) could possibly manage the healthcare of many patients remotely. Ditto with many physicians, as the remote tools get progressively better. One of my kid’s classmates in HS is in a Radiology residency. That is already common. But another is an OB resident, and that is a lot further down the road (worse - her residency is in NYC, and she got reassigned to COVID-19 treatment).

hawkeyedjb said...

" I don't give a shit what job it is you are doing- there is someone in India (or in Asia, if you prefer) who will be better at doing it, and cheaper to hire."

Plumber? Airline pilot? Bedside nurse? Prison guard? Veterinarian? Waiter? Detective? Second story man?

Inga said...

”To believe otherwise is just fucking stupid.”

To assert that no more than 7,500 total in the US would die of Covid 19 was just fucking stupid.

Bruce Hayden said...

“There have been a few times when I worked for a boss that despised me. And what I did at work, in those cases, is watch like a hawk to check for clues whether I'd be in trouble that day, or if there would be peace. When working from home, workers in trouble can't make those observations.”

The flip side is that I have worked for or around bosses that operated through physical intimidation. I remember one guy from my software days. He was 6’9” tall, and you could tell when he was losing an argument with you because he would start leaning over you. The natural react.ion of males to such a show of dominance is to back off. Didn’t work with my ex though. She would just slide down in her chair a bit, until he noted where her foot was placed. Several times bosses have dominated through anger. I remember one powerful VP who was almost morbidly obese, and everyone around the table would back down when his voice would increase in volume, and he would start turning red. Except for one of my brothers, who had similar anger issues, and understood how anger was being used tactically by this guy. In any case, these attempts at physical dominance lose much of their force through seeing them remotely. If someone starts yelling at you you just turn down the volume a bit. And there may be something similar with sexual harassment issues.

Jeff said...

If these jobs can be done remotely, how long before they are outsourced to China?
I'm retired but for about a year I've been testing software part time from home. I've never been to my employer's office, and I've only been to the client's site once.
I'm thinking about moving overseas. As long as I have a decent internet connection, it doesn't matter where I live. But I'm not worried about losing my job to an Indian. They're not supermen.

minnesota farm guy said...

I want the colleges to come back to classes on campus because I selfishly want to see what the new UCONN women's BB team is going to look like with the kids they have added.

However I wonder what's going to happen to all these Deans and Assistant deans of diversity/sexual harassment etc. if on line classes expand. They will have even less purpose in life than they do currently. I would venture to guess that admin budgets at colleges will be cut drastically and there'll be a lot of deans applying for unemployment. Of course, god forbid that the professors might actually have to teach classes!

chickelit said...

What after all are these buildings and skyscrapers now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of Mammon?

Birkel said...

https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2020/05/12/Most-Americans-stayed-home-before-government-COVID-19-mandates/6021589290003/?sl=5

Turns out people acted right before government started issuing edicts.
Now government won't get the fuck out of the way.

Fucking things up, coming and going.

Oh, and I was correct.
It's a fucking trend.

Don't be a Ken B.

cubanbob said...

NYC will be the first and most painful commercial real estate hit. The large office spaces have leases with large companies and those leases will be honored (unless there is a BK) but they will not be renewed. And that will be true in every major city. And then the backoffices in the coastal burbs. As much work that can be realistically done from home will eventually done at home and with that the salary cuts. And that will intensify leaving the big cities and coastal burbs into the less densely populated parts of those states or to other states lower cost of living states. There is gonna be a huge amount of ugly as big city/metro areas face a big reduction in their tax bases. I don't want to be right as this will be very painful for the country but the longer the lockdown stays and the more people can get used to work from home the more likely it will happen.

Michael said...

You need to be in the office to kiss ass and learn how to undermine your work from home rivals. You also need to jump on a plane to meet your clients and take them to super dinners while your competition is sending them Zoom invitations. It will take a while but first movers will set the example.

Francisco D said...

Inga said... To assert that no more than 7,500 total in the US would die of Covid 19 was just fucking stupid.

Let's play Price is Right Inga. Who wins?

Walking next to someone in a protest (or a grocery store or in any line) is going to kill you. That is the drift from the Bedpan Commando and Little Kenny B - histrionic posters who cannot grasp the concept of rates and who treat the WuFlu like the Spanish Flu or the Black Plague.

Is it ignorance or is there an ulterior motive, Inga?

Drago said...

Inga: "To assert that no more than 7,500 total in the US would die of Covid 19 was just fucking stupid."

No.

An early lower guess on mortality rates compared to 2.2 million deaths by the "experts" appears downright prescient.

You wanna know what is really f***ing stupid? Democrats shoving infected elderly back into nursing and retirement homes.

Purposely.

As a matter of policy.

On top of not shutting down subways and and calling for no restrictions on travel and having everyone get together down in Chinatown for a big party!

That, my friends, was f***ing stupid.

Just as believing in Trump Russia collusion/Carter Page is a russian spy/Kavanaugh is a rapist/Hoax dossier is UNBELIEVABLY f***ing stupid.

I mean, really unbelievably stupid.

Robert Cook said...

"I'd kinda like to say NYC should be nuked from orbit, but we don't have any up there to drop on NYC. The USAF ought to get working on that."


Jealousy leads to some bizarre fantasies.

Robert Cook said...

"That's not how it works. California was sparsely populated until gold was discovered. Then, lots of people came. They created an economy and a society before there was much government of any sort. Of course, once it was understood there were buckets of money to be taxed, they got their government good and hard."

That is how it works. Once a cohort of people living close by each other in some form of cooperative activity grows beyond a certain point--for whatever reasons--some form of social management--government, for want of a better term--must be implemented or the very small cohesive and cooperative group of people will become a chaotic, uncooperative horde of all against all. The small society's economy that grows into a larger society's economy must be managed by a governing mechanism to help pay for the social structures that particular society wants or needs, but which no individual (or small band of individuals) can afford to pay for, (and to enforce the social norms desired by the many, including punishing those who harm or take advantage of others). Without a government, all human activities in large groups will become like Wal-Mart on Black Friday...all the time.

That government tends to lead to the few taking advantage of the many economically and otherwise is simply an illustration of human society in action. We are hierarchical creatures by nature, and hierarchies do not function without mechanisms to keep the organization stable.

Michael K said...

Jealousy leads to some bizarre fantasies.

Cook thinks there are people who want to live in NYC whop don't have to.

Ken Mitchell said...

Never be governed by "experts". They know about their specialties, but have problems seeing the bigger pictures. So never vote for a doctor for president. Rand Paul is astounding, because he's a doctor who DOES see the bigger picture.

I'd normally suggest that we should elect engineers as presidents, because engineers are accustomed to looking at the big picture and seeing all the ways that things interconnect and affect each other. (I am myself an engineer.) HOWEVER, the engineers who have been presidents - Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter - have both been disasters as President.

Ken Mitchell said...

Jeff said..."As long as I have a decent internet connection, it doesn't matter where I live. But I'm not worried about losing my job to an Indian. They're not supermen."


No, they're not supermen. But they are a lot cheaper than most American programmers are, even if you move out of the city and work remotely. The real "cost" of hiring Indian programmers is that they are often poorly trained or just incompetent. I've seen a couple of businesses replace their American programmers with contracted Chinese and Indian programmers, and promptly fail, because Indian and Chinese programmers can't be held to the same standards as on-staff American programmers.

Bunkypotatohead said...

" But in Escape from New York, they never explained why Manhattan had been abandoned and converted into a prison"

When that movie was made, NYC was a place you went to get mugged. They made it a prison because it was already full of crooks.