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An article was recently posted on Windows Central about some recent comments by Microsoft’s CEO who claims that while employees love work from home, managers think people are slacking off. Is this true, though? How many bulldozers’ worth of salt should we take this with? Is there a legitimate drop off in productivity? Color me skeptical, but I think there are other things at play here.

Doubtlessly, there are people who completely took the piss when work from home became the norm during the pandemic. The question then becomes whether they were also the sort of person constantly getting coffee, popping out for a cigarette, or mindlessly perusing Reddit when everyone was in the office. Statistically speaking, there are going to be a few slackers in a given cohort, especially with the rapid expansion in software development over the last decade or so.

There are also plenty more people who get their work done just fine and get on with their day. If they’re doing so at home, steamroll through their projects by lunch and have the rest of the day to themselves, there shouldn’t be anything wrong with that. The question of “What are people being paid for?” is becoming much more important now that work from home has become popular. Being paid to sit in an office from 9-5 toiling away is now antiquated. People are being paid first and foremost for their expertise. If they are able to get projects done quickly and to a high standard of quality, good for them. They shouldn’t be penalized for that.

It's unrealistic to expect employees to be going pedal to the metal 9-5. That's exploitative nonsense that should be stamped out wherever it tries to emerge. Productivity-obsessed managers may want it, but that's a good way to create a horrifically toxic work environment with comical levels of employee turnover.

It seems like some office managers have a weirdly hybridized way of looking at their employees, as though they are being paid a wage rather than the reality that these people are on salary. Workers aren’t banging out code at Microsoft for X dollars per hour. They’re paid a salary because they have a skill set that will benefit the company.

I’m left wondering how many of these managers at Microsoft are being honest that slacking off has become a problem. If work from home were to continue for years to come, how many of these managers would be let go because it turns out they’re not necessary in this new system? This brings about the possibility that many of these managers are being dishonest in order to preserve their jobs.

Another possibility is that Microsoft is taking this stance against work from home because right before the pandemic the company was either opening or beginning construction on several new offices. They just opened a 132,000 square foot office in Toronto, are planning a 20-storey office hub in Vancouver, are doing major renovations to their Redmond offices, lavish new offices near New Delhi, and so forth. Then there are also all of the other offices that the company already own. When all of this is taken into account, one can see that the company has quite the vested interest in real estate. If most of their work force suddenly just works from home forever, all of these investments in office space are for not.

As such, I’m left wondering just how much of this talk by MS CEO and the company’s management about work from home being a spawning ground for slackers is total BS. Microsoft has a lot of money riding on real estate, and the company could well be making up excuses in order to get people back into the office that MS spent a small fortune on.