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There’s also a huge excess of general office space.

The problem with commercial real estate is older than the AI runup.

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And remote work made it worse.

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Remote work is a boon. I can't imagine myself teaching again more than a 100 students in the very early hours inside a big classroom.

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It's generally better for the worker but not always preferable to the employer/customer

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Yes you're right. Still I believe ost of the times it's highly unproductive in maximum jobs to be in a office.
I still work, I work from home and I'm 100 times more productive than I used to be. It's worked for me so I think it's a lot better.

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I know what you mean. I do both and I'm much more productive (and happier) working from home, plus it's so much cheaper and I get more parenting time in.

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In India I've hardly found anyone being honest with jobs working inside offices. One they don't get paid enough and secondly they are overworked without any praise for their time. Most of the employers here are of the view that they own the employee if they pay a few bucks to him monthly.

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I think that's a common attitude of employers everywhere

I know what you mean, but I'm not sure "worse" is the right word.

It depends on whether remote work is welfare enhancing on net. If it is, then I think it would be more accurate to say that remote work made the economic problem with commercial real estate more apparent.

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Yeah, I don't care. I just meant it accelerated it

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For many years before I was able to work remotely I thought many people didn't need to commute to an office. It's absurd and an example of how obbssed humans are with mimicking others.

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Which part is mimicking others?

Most of the people I collaborate with don't live in the same place as me, so commuting would basically just be teleworking from a different location.

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Driving to an office to sit at a screen and do work. I pushed to work remote and was ignored. This was the mid 2000s.

Now that remote work is more common companies do it. That's the mimicry

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Gotcha.

The mimicry is also going the other way as firms and governments cut back on remote work, despite having basically no demonstrable reason to do so.

Clearly. If anything, it clarified the mismatch between how office space was valued and how people actually want to work.

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Agreed

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Data Centers Are a ‘Gold Rush’ for Construction Workers
(Paywalled)

DeMond Chambliss used to run himself ragged with the small contracting business he owned in Columbus, Ohio: hanging drywall, chasing clients for payments and managing half a dozen employees.

Since April, Chambliss has worked the night shift overseeing a team of 200 welders, plumbers and electricians at a local data-center construction site he makes more than $100k a year.

But more proof how AI is impacting labor wages in the construction marketplace!

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Exactly. This rush has not yet arrived to India but I'm hearing very soon all beg techs are gonna build data centres accross india too

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Yeah we been tracking this in the Econ territory AI is driving the growth in a lot of sectors.

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Who could have predicted this! LOL. This really started to roll during the lockdowns which forced the trend of remote work to accelerate. The company I work for literally canceled the construction of a massive building. Their existing offices have entire floors that barely get used.

I've been a remote working for 10+ years. This is completely expected. Even without AI this would happen. AI is just a good headline and something CEOs know is what investors want to hear. Not sure how much AI factors in. I don't doubt AI is fueling new datacenters and power generation construction.

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Not surprised. Construction goes in cycles of five years due to the financing and planning. What happened 5 years ago? Demand plummeted due to a particular pandemic. So, planning adjusted. Now, with demand up with RTO etc., we'll probably see the construction pick up again in three to five years accordingly.

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