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.
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.
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 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 😉
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.
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.
I'd pay a dollar to watch that! Screw the dunk tank!
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.
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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!!!
It's more like. I can't micro manage and control this aspect of their lives. I need them to be dependant on the meager scraps I give them so they keep crawling back. Also I want to go into people's homes while they're away and it's harder to do when they're home all the time.
That's their boss, this is a corporate landlord crying because he's losing tenants to corporate office space downsizing because of remote work.
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).
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.
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.
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!
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
Get this asshole a submarine too
A carbon fiber one
Fuck that. Make his out of concrete.
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.
