Remote employees ‘don’t work as hard’, says head of world’s biggest commercial landlord
theguardian.com
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.
Yup, definitely totally unbiased opinion im sure lmfaooo
Not only unbiased, but completely relatable and down to earth. I’m sure he lives just like the rest of us.
He has his servants put his pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us! So relatable.
I only pray that us lowly peons can work as hard as Blackrock execs.
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.
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.
This is why so many people decided to just retire, rather than return to work after COVID.
This is why we need more unions. Without collective bargaining, workers essentially have zero power in this dynamic.
Raises beer!
These people do not care about the environment. They don't care about social debt to the workers. They especially do not care about ethical behavior.
They're the howling ghouls of neofuedalism. They would legalize slavery again in an instant if they could.
Good thing he's not correct though. Remote workers are more productive and save businesses money. This guy is just a greasy greedy fuck.
Yup, I'm with you on that. Just pointing out that he's still on the wrong side of it, either way.
I'm not saying violence is the answer, but I do believe he deserves to be strapped into a machine that just slaps him in the face constantly
I dunno, historically speaking, violence has often been the answer.
Maybe it wasn't always the best answer, but it certainly is effective. Just ask the French!
I never said it wasn't the answer either 😉
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.
Yes and Napoleon used flowers and sunshine and bunny rabbits to take over, didn't he?
Then shall we talk about the French experience with the Germans?
I said ask the French about violence because they are more versed than many in how it had to be used.
You said "violence was the answer" for the French, and I was assuming you were referring to the French Revolution. It was definitely not the answer for them. Pointing out violence committed by Napoleon doesn't really help you
You're incorrectly framing my statement about the French as only pertaining to the Revolution in scope of removing poor leadership. I was talking about violence in general, hence "...it may not be the best answer."
And I don't see how Napoleon sets himself up as an emperor without violence. It was certainly his answer, until he fucked himself in Russia, anyway.
I feel productivity rising already and am behind this initiative.
I feel something else rising...
I've got a raging clue!
I have a throbbing inkling!
Just make sure to do it in an office so the slapping will be more productive.
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.
Is it violence if its automated?
I am. It's class warfare and they're already firing shots at us. Well past time we started fighting back.
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.
Ah, yes, a man with a vested interest in seeing offices full to capacity can clearly be trusted to tell the truth here.
Commercial landlord. LOL, like this douchebag has a clue what he is talking about.
Translation: These remote workers are costing me money!!!!!
Someone is confusing hard work with productivity. Fucking dinosaur.
Even if we accept the premise that remote workers "don't work as hard," so what? They're either fulfilling their job responsibilities or they're not.
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).
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.
"remote workers never leave the office"
This guys manages finance people and stock traders. They probably don't work as hard remotely. I've seen Wolf of Wall Street.
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.
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.
It’s almost as if people enjoy having extra disposable income!
Get this asshole a submarine too
A carbon fiber one
Fuck that. Make his out of concrete.
Really just needs to be common practice or law to pay workers to commute.
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
How dare the common staff attempt to save money?!
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!
Entirely ungrateful!!
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.
This person gets it. This is capitalism working as planned.
"It's very important to me that you head into a large and expensive to rent office. Don't ask me why."
We should remove these people from all levels of power. They are not fit to be in charge of anything, ever.
Obviously, the dude owns commercial real estate. Of course he's talking shit about people that don't want to go to the office.
I'm never going back to an office. Started my own business and never looking back. Information workers don't need offices, period.
Dude probably can't wait to replace his own office staff with AI. Tell him to eat shit.
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.
You know who really doesn't work hard? Shareholders. Why the fuck do they get preferential treatment over the people actually doing the work?
Why do they also get preferential treatment over the customer of the product?
What is… money?
Such bullshit.
These old fux just want to control people.
Imagine a landlord telling the people who actualy do real work they don’t work as hard as a landlord.
Bro, I work harder than landlords in my sleep.
The irony of the hedge fund boss that owns the world's largest corpo land lord complaining about WFH employees not doing real work
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?
It sounds like they are trying to distribute the impact of their poor decisions onto the workers.
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
Selfish prick wants more money for themselves. story at 11.
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 is not free babysitting time. A competent remote work policy will specify that child care is not a part of remote work.
If you can do it without impacting productivity and not get caught then it's probably fine though.
I would not recommend it based on my experience. Remote full time since 2020 and a parent
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.
Many people don't read the policies they agree to, but I did and it is in that remote work policy. Specified that remote work is not a substitute for child care.
I have read several remote work policies in the past few jobs I have had. Zero of them mentioned childcare.
Well get ready for it because people in C-level positions that write policy tend to participate in industry collaboration, and it will likely be standard before long. It's a sensible requirement to make sure your employees are not wasting paid work time on personal tasks. You don't have to like it but that is the truth.
It's an idiotic requirement which is unenforceable. They can't exactly monitor that. Any company pushing for that sounds like they don't have a clue in how to measure their employees' performances.
Again, what I said is the truth even if you don't like it. It's entirely possible to detect when some employees are watching their kids while at work, and if that was against company policy the employee could be sanctioned. Here's an example, an employee is on a conference call with their child in the background, and information available indicates that they are the only person home with the child, therefore they are either providing childcare or neglecting their child.
A parent with a small child under school age should not be watching their kid while working, because it takes a lot of attention to supervise those small children, when work should be the focus of their attention. Older kids who are self-sufficient would be a different situation.
Except that is not the truth as indicated in my experience of it not being mentioned in the several jobs I have had where I worked remote. I'm sorry that that bursts your bubble but that's the truth. In fact I have been on conference calls where there has been a child present and nobody gave a shit since the person was also extremely productive. Again, if it is not affecting productivity, it is a non issue and it sounds like your managers need to learn that basic fact and figure out how to measure very basic KPIs.
There are some cases where it is absolutely not going to affect performance at all for most people. If both parents work from home, they have much more flexibility in handing off interacting with their child. Some parents might have difficulty finding full time daycare or affording it. They still have core hours when they can focus but may also need some flexibility. Those two scenarios are not going to result in decreased productivity for most employees because they can shift some of their work to other hours.
Dude you're not "bursting" anyone's "bubble" with your opinion here. I simply informed you of some facts, and you can ignore them if you please at your own risk.
You have a very loose definition of the word "facts" and show zero evidence backing what you say up.
I can't wait to see these billionaires dragged out of their bunkers and eaten.
Oh shit! And does the CEO of Tyson think vegetarians are malnourished?
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.
Maybe because most office work is meritless horseshit???
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.
Well he can go fuck himself.
I actually work harder (in general) than before because now I don't have to commute, 1-2 hours more a day I can spend getting stuff done
Why? Use those two hours for yourself!
This is the real pro tip.
Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. But even when I do I'm still working, just on my own computer doing totally unrelated stuff.
I've been making sure to sabotage my performance when I'm on site
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.
Working smarter, not harder.
You lost Steve at the first word.
I don't know... I feel like I need some sort of perk if I'm going back to work. How about a pizza party or some Alf pogs?
That gives me an idea. I'll come back to the office... In pog form!
Probably doesn't like WFH because people can clock off when their task is done and he can't ask them to work unpaid overtime.
Probably part of it, but being a commercial landlord is probably bigger. WFH is reducing the need for offices and thus hurting his property values.
Business saves money: "the goal of a business is to make money"
Employee saves money: "you just don't want to pay all the robber barons all the way in and out of work you lazy piece of shit"
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 completely agree and have had this exact argument many times. It is no less infuriating now than it was years ago.
Well overdue pulling "robber baron" back into the lexicon.
How long until we start getting paid in scrip again?
It really annoys me that as a kid I learned about how awful Company Stores were, how lucky we were as a society to be past that history, and now they're back on the table.
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
Steve Schwarzman of the Blackstone group can fuck all the way off.
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?
God bless the chief of Blackstone don't care about money as us petty workers.
Who cares. Go back to being a fuckboy.
did this dipshit ever hear the term "work smarter not harder"
I think he sounds like a loser
Steve-O here should just see how unproductive I can be in the office!
I can ruin the productivity of at least one other person in the process.
Hash tag Colin Robinson did nothing wrong
I know people like you
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?
That sounds pleasing in a malicious compliance kind of way.
Well they don't work as hard...
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
I am sure there are good Steves out there, but first spez and then this waste of oxygen ? Cursed Steves !! /s
Thanks bro. Here's two more Bad Stevies....
I'll bring this up at the next meeting.
Over zoom I hope...
Dumb ass says dumb ass thing. News at 11.
It get's better once you get past the wanking.
Haha, that's hilarious.
Olddipshitsezwha