JPMorgan reportedly ending remote work for more than 300k employees
64 comments
·January 11, 2025josephcsible
bdangubic
In America??? That is funny and also sad that it is funny…
bdndndndbve
People have theorized that RTO mandates are shadow layoffs, but I think they might actually be commercial real estate investors trying to prop up the office market. If large companies are able to force RTO those working conditions will trickle down to smaller employers, which will stop the bleeding of tenants for small and midsized buildings. Those commercial office buildings are owned by REITs and investment banks.
It's like if the landlords that own malls were allowed to ban online shopping.
mingus88
Amazon is full RTO in my city and there are now lines down the block for the food trucks this week at lunchtime.
I’m sure every business owner is conspiring together to get those captive office workers back in city centers where their wages can be siphoned.
threatofrain
IMO remote work should be evaluated on a role-by-role basis because remote team coordination really is that much harder. The prima facie incentives actually lean hard in the direction of employers because you access the global market of developers, driving down cost big time and real estate is expensive.
Thus remote coordination is so hard... that employers would rather pay for expensive real estate and expensive talent, including the burn on time for employees driving around.
evujumenuk
So what you're implying is that for roles where other companies do have managed to establish functioning remote work protocols, we should interpret RTO mandates as a public display of organizational dysfunction if they were unable to emulate those within the span of, oh, five years?
Also I'm pretty sure employers don't generally pay for, or care about, the commute times of employees…
threatofrain
Yes employers do care about commute. Commute time is one of the leading predictors of turnover, and it has a more dramatic effect on employee happiness vs higher salary. Also, it's de facto culture for programmers to work a little everywhere, on and off the clock (I'm not saying that's right, but it's reality).
A certain well known big defense company used to subsidize rent if you agreed to live closer.
spacemanspiff01
Yes, especially for something creative and collaborative like engineering. Creating a culture where remote work works as well as in person is hard, and takes explicit effort and buying from management.
8note
at least where im working, team coordination was already dying to dead before covid lockdowns started because all the realted teams were moving to far off locations. the coordination improved with dedicated remote compared to conference room to conference room remote meetings
itake
Why do the landlords have control over tech ceos?
kcb
JPMorgan are the landlords. They just finished building one of the biggest skyscrapers in NYC for their use https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/270_Park_Avenue_(2021%E2%80%...
Someone needs to at least be able to portray a return on that investment.
senderista
Institutional investors in Big Tech also have investments in commercial real estate?
tootie
That really doesn't seem plausible. Why would JPM bother propping up commercial real estate? I think the answer is much simpler. Jamie Dimon is very opinionated and conservative and wants people back in the office because thinks they're slacking off at home.
t-writescode
Our entire banking system is built on trusting that companies and individuals will keep paying their loans.
If enough people don’t want commercial real estate, then those empty buildings will, at least for businesses, eventually start to default because they have no money.
At least that’s my “off the top of my head” theory.
It doesn’t change the fact that the US’s car-centric, NIMBY, segregated behavior has resulted in a world where in-office work is about as unpleasant as can be and greatly desired against.
tootie
Commercial real estate bottomed already. The market isn't going to collapse. Besides they obviously didn't make any similar hedges when it was residential real estate in 2007. Nor does it make sense for them to spend hundreds of millions on real estate so they can not lose money. There is no 4d chess. It's just old people making bad decisions.
bdndndndbve
I'm not saying they're single-handedly propping up real estate, but they benefit from "number goes up" in the economy. If WFH becomes a durable trend and a bunch of commercial properties get written down it's going to have a big impact on a lot of investors. Many large companies either have real estate investments, or their owners are diversified into real estate. It makes sense for companies collectively to push in this direction not out of nostalgia but to avoid a massive correction.
rr808
I like remote work but literally the most successful banks are all in the office. Citadel never really left. Goldman Sachs was pretty quick back to RTO. JPM is probably the next successful bank. The ones that are most remote really are second tier, I'm not sure if its because they need to try to keep people or its a symptom of the company.
gaws
This is stealth layoffs. Full stop. How many people in upper management will still work remotely?
chuckwolfe
JP Morgan has 60,000 developers for context (I’m biased and only care about developers)
zxcvbn4038
Jamie Dimon's "office" is a 2,500 sq. ft. apartment on Park Avenue in New York. It's paid for by the company, and he lives there with his wife during the week. It's so hypocritical that the guy pushing hardest for a return to work is himself working from home every day.
NomDePlum
The odd thing about working in an office for global companies like JPMorgan is that so many daily interactions happen with colleagues who are in a different location and/or timezone. Remote communication is part and parcel of the setup so much more than many/most other companies.
The associated benefits of being in a company owned location are almost negligible, at least in the areas I've experienced. Having worked in these types of companies almost all meetings are online anyway even if some of the people are sitting close by, not all are.
nulbyte
> many daily interactions happen with colleagues who are in a different location and/or timezone
I don't work for JPMorgan, but I experience this every day. My boss is in another state. Fellow team members are in other states. Folks in departments we work closely with are in other states or even countries.
The top brass loves to talk about the supposed benefits of talking shop with colleagues in line at the coffee shop in the lobby. But they tend to forget a few things: a) I'm not interested in talking shop standing in line for coffee, b) I'm not paid enough to live near or commute to HQ, and c) normies like me make up the majority of the company.
I like my job. I like my company. I just wish the bigwigs would get a clue that they don't, in fact, have all the answers, and they never will.
johnnyb9
Well, they did just spend an enormous amount on building a new tower on Park Ave.
xeox538
Well, maybe when the next pandemic hits, there will be no more remote work. Since you do not believe it is an option, if it worked then, why wouldn’t it work now?
OutOfHere
> end remote work and require more than 300,000 employees to work from the office five days a week.
Ending remote work is one thing. Requiring workers to come to the office five days a week is a whole other thing! There is a wide spectrum between the two. The two are not the same.
Whenever this happens, the reason is the same. They want to lay off people without having to pay severance and unemployment benefits.
monero-xmr
Remote work is the absolute easiest way to hire the best people for cheap. I love when more companies go RTO, the startups can get more talent.
t-writescode
We need to get more startups, then. So many software devs have been forced RTO or laid off and I haven’t heard of many new companies that aren’t crypto scams or dubiously and maybe-legal gambling sites.
Admittedly, I’m trying to start my own company and can’t afford employees (and refuse to take VC money); but I figured we’d see plenty more companies with all the layoffs.
saagarjha
I have bad news for the kind of company ‘monero-xmr is interested in.
realusername
Let's not sugarcoat it, it's just a way to fire a large number of employees, it's never been a debate about remote work.
The issue for them is that usually it's the best employees leaving when done this way and the company is then stagnating.
AngryData
Also easier to do shady shit when you don't have as much documentation or potential recordings of your meeting discussing nefarious schemes.
KumaBear
That’s what I keep hearing but the remote job market is getting very competitive. With all these RTO mandates it’s going to be a tough market for many to find work.
realusername
Sure, that's the market at play. The companies still opened for remote working have an even more unfair advantage than before. And that'll continue until those policies are reverted.
Why haven't any environmentalist politicians tried to pass bills to discourage this, e.g., an "unnecessary commute tax" of $500 per employee per workday that could have been remote but that management required to be in the office?