Google and JPMorgan have each told staff that office attendance will be factored into performance evaluations. The US law firm Davis Polk informed employees that fewer days in the office would result in lower bonuses. And Meta and Amazon both told employees they’re now monitoring badge swipes, with potential consequences for workers who don’t comply with attendance policies – including job loss. Increasingly, workers across many jobs and sectors appear to be barrelling towards the same fate.
In some ways, it’s unsurprising bosses are turning back to attendance as a standard. After all, we’ve long been conditioned to believe showing up is vital to success, from some of our earliest days. In school, perfect attendance is often still seen a badge of honour. The obsession with attendance has also been a mainstay of workplace culture for decades; pre-pandemic, remote work was largely unheard of, and employees were expected to be physically present at their desks throughout the workday.
Yet after the success of flexible arrangements during the pandemic, attendance is still entrenched as a core metric. What’s the point?
“Too expensive. Too difficult” they say… it’s fucking bullshit. Those are stalling words. They’re waiting on a plan to maximize the investment. My guess, money and/or tax credit from the government.
To be honest, that’s most likely a valid concern. Office buildings don’t meet the criteria for normal housing. If you look at the distribution of bathrooms and kitchens in these skyscrapers, you need to do quite some construction work to meet the requirements of apartments for housing.
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Yes, they are starting with buildings, that are more suited to refurbish them as residential area. Smaller buildings are better suited, because you can actually get light into them. The center rooms in one of these giant skyscrapers would be without windows. Just to name another reason, why it is not that simple.
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How does this in any way counter my points? They even get subsidized to do it, meaning, that it is too expensive else. And I already stated, that there are buildings, that are more suitable than others. Just look at the absolute numbers, they are talking about 20k units in the next decade. That’s literally nothing.
It’s a consern buy it’s not impossible. Take greed out if the picture and it wouldn’t be an issue. We’ve got to stop encouraging this maximi return on investment shit.
If the developers, that attempt this, all go bankrupt, it does not help at all. If you want to push private companies into doing something unprofitable, you need to subsidize it or the government to do it on its own. For some of these buildings its cheaper to just build a new apartment complex instead of retrofitting them.
A while back someone in the know said how it could be done at a reasonable cost: each floor has small apartments built on the outside walls (one bedroom, two bedroom and family units … possibly different floors for each) with the interior centre section as a common space with a large kitchen, rec room, small kids area, etc. Bathrooms should already be on each floor, just need to tie in showers (and add more stalls if required).
There are towers doing this in a few areas, but the naysayers yell loudly when riled.
Would still be nicer to have sunlight for the communal areas, but that sounds like a working solution. Probably profit goes into the drain though, because you get less units you can rent out and people will pay less for apartments with only a shared bathroom and kitchen.
If it’s a choice between not having a place to live or apartments like that, which would you choose?
I mean Canada is accepting refugees who end up on the streets because there’s no housing for them!