Sunday, September 25, 2011

Yglesias is Right and Frum is Wrong

Yglesias is right and Frum is wrong: not everyone will move to Santa Fe.  But I don't think Yglesias the reasons quite right.    I think there are at least two good reasons why worker still want to go to the office--and why employers want them there.

  • One is the wisdom-of-crowds stuff.  Most of what we learn, we learn from each other.  And you can't get it online or at TGIF parties.  You've got to be there; to watch, to listen, to hang out.
  • And two: people just get energized by crowds.  It is why Trafalgar Square and the Spanish Steps and the Île de la Cité are just choked with people come from miles--no, continents--away just to be where the action is. Say what we like, the truth is we want to be in there where we can hear (and feel, yum) the crack of bodies.
More: bank in my bankruptcy days, I remember thinking about how ease of travel and communication might decentralize the deal-making that goes to make a Chapter 11 reorganization.  You could FAX everything (remember FAX?).  And one Ramada Inn conference room looked just like another.  Zap, wrong, of course.  Chapter 11 deal-making has tended to centralize ever more in New York and Delaware.  You can email, you can teleconference, but when it comes to doing the deals, it's the same guys (unisex) around the same tables.


BTW, I've been to Santa Fe often enough to know it can be a pretty boring place.

1 comment:

dilbert dogbert said...

Friends work for Oracle. Penn Valley California. Works for them as they manage co-workers who are in India.
Also they are not going to climb the ladder at Oracle. Just keeping a good job is enough thank you.