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.
Says WFH is terrible
Is biggest commerical landlord
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.
Haha that’s hilarious! Seriously though, I bolt my dogs kennels to the roof of my car when I have our chauffeur drive us from Denver airport to our Aspen ski chalet, just like any common man would.
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 why we need more unions. Without collective bargaining, workers essentially have zero power in this dynamic.
Raises beer!
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!
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.
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 😉
People don’t like you to know this but the revolutionary war was very violent. What did the revolutionaries want anyway? Representation. Hmm. I wonder if there is a place that has an underclass that has increasingly less representation in government.
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.
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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.
I am. It’s class warfare and they’re already firing shots at us. Well past time we started fighting back.
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Commercial landlord. LOL, like this douchebag has a clue what he is talking about.
Translation: These remote workers are costing me money!!!
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That’s their boss, this is a corporate landlord crying because he’s losing tenants to corporate office space downsizing because of remote work.
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.
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”
They’re either fulfilling their job responsibilities or they’re not.
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.
Really just needs to be common practice or law to pay workers to commute.
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.
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.
It’s almost as if people enjoy having extra disposable income!
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.
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.
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.
Selfish prick wants more money for themselves. story at 11.
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.
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.
