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RTO is filled with ulterior motives. Layoffs by another name, local city government want their tax base back, Real estate companies (not mom and pop stuff, rea

RTO is filled with ulterior motives. Layoffs by another name, local city government want their tax base back, Real estate companies (not mom and pop stuff, real holding companies with reits etc) want to keep real estate from "crashing", ny/ca/ma type states don't want their white collar workers moving to low tax states and working from there , middle managers want to be seen and "preside over their kindgom" etc. The only group not benefitting from RTO are the actual workers.

jzb 3y ago
I'd add that underlying all that / in addition to that is the fear that people aren't putting their jobs first. That's what drove all the "quiet quitting" bullshit. The pandemic made people stop and take stock of their lives. A lot of people realized that they were putting work first and life is too fucking short to put everything else second to work. The tech layoffs have further emphasized the futility of putting work first. You might have put your career first but your employer sure as shit wasn't putting you first. Why live far from the rest of your family in a high cost-of-living area to have your life dominated by work if BigCorp is just going to throw you overboard at the first sign of a dip in profits? Not even a cut to save the business, just a cut to ensure that activist shareholders and top-line execs preserve obscene profits, bonuses, and salaries. RTO is there to remind you that they control your life, right down to where you live. Be thankful to have a job or they'll take it away from you and your health insurance, too.
- borroka 3y ago
  RTO is there to remind you that despite claims of talent shortages and after taking into account the fact that a substantial portion of the workforce is okay with returning to the office, for many companies the supply of talent is greater than the demand for talent.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    It is more convenient to attempt to unionize in person I suppose.
    - borroka 3y ago
      Unionization is more likely to occur when the variance of workers' wages (in the technology sector, this is total compensation) is low. In tech, the variance of workers' wages is high.
      - toomuchtodo 3y ago
        Only need a simple majority. By definition, the majority isn't high earning in a cohort. Agree we're just arguing over likelihood, won't know how serious people are until they're tired of being ground down by people like Jassy.
        robertlagrant 3y ago
        > By definition, the majority isn't high earning in a cohort I don't think that's true here. A cohort doesn't have to have a particular distribution, and even if it does in this case, that doesn't mean the cohort isn't high earning relative to the rest of the population.
        borroka 3y ago
        Most workers in the tech sector are young, and young people earning below-median salaries are salivating at the idea of moving, at some point in the near future, due to their skills, market conditions, luck or wishful thinking, into the above-median bracket. Add to that the fact that the job market for tech workers is extremely fluid, and I don't think unionization is going to happen anytime soon.
      - tuna74 3y ago
        Works pretty well in (US) professional sports and entertainment which has a really large wage variance.
        borroka 3y ago
        Comparing one or two thousand workers in one industry (say NFL) with hundreds of thousands in another (tech) is rather daring
  - JSavageOne 3y ago
    Hilarious that companies were complaining about tech shortages while simultaneously having interview processes consisting of multiple rounds of absurd competitive programming questions that require months of preparation for and have nothing to do with the job. There was never a talent shortage, that's just a narrative companies pushed to increase labor supply, lobby for more visas, and justify outsourcing
    - screwturner68 3y ago
      A lot of this is because of WFM, 5 years ago when you applied for a job you had to compete with all the bozos within 50 miles looking for a job but now you have to compete with all the bozos in the country looking for a job. five years ago they'd get 20 CVs for a job and now they are getting 1000. Even if they job market is tighter companies don't notice because they are getting 50X the number of resumes for a job. Further they can hire some guy in South Dakota who will happily work for half of what some guy in Manhattan will work for. In short WFH has fucked things up, it's a lot like how online dating hasn't helped people find love people are lonelier than ever even though they have a much larger selection. We work better in person and in smaller groups.
      - sarchertech 3y ago
        I haven’t noticed hiring has gotten any worse since 2020. If anything I think 2020 was the peak of multiple rounds of ridiculous competitive programming challenges. The last few interviews I’ve had didn’t have any leet code style problems.
        throwaway5959 3y ago
        Those companies should be celebrated.
      - plorkyeran 3y ago
        This isn't a new thing that just started in the last few years. The tech job interview process five years already had all of the bad things that it does today. Cracking the Coding Interview was published in 2008.
- giantg2 3y ago
  Been quiet quitting since before it was a name
- stetrain 3y ago
  We laid off half of our employees, and the other half seem demoralized. We have no idea why so we're going to try making everyone come back to the office. Also hey everyone we made record profits this year! Great job! Pay raises are on hold though due to economic uncertainty. Remember, we're a family!
  - bluefirebrand 3y ago
    This is what's really getting under my skin. The messaging is not even hidden anymore. It's right out in the open that many companies are making enormous profits and giving out astonishing executive bonuses, at the same time as freezing salaries and layoffs. It's not adding up, and I'm kind of just waiting to see if more people are going to become as fed up with it as I am, or if we're all just too comfortable.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/08/25/t-mobile-layoffs-cut-workers-jobs-nationwide/70680602007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/08/25/t-mobile-lay... (T-Mobile to lay off 5,000 people nationwide, after Sprint merger promised more jobs) https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/t-mobile-announces-shareholder-return-program-up-19-bln-2023-09-06/ https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/t-mobile-anno... (T-Mobile US announces $19 bln shareholder return program) https://apnews.com/article/amazon-layoffs-jobs-cuts-jassy-0e857f39702de134c8f677c5b5731688 https://apnews.com/article/amazon-layoffs-jobs-cuts-jassy-0e... (Amazon cuts 9,000 more jobs, bringing 2023 total to 27,000) https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-reports-6-7-billion-net-income-as-cloud-computing-stabilized/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-reports-... (A year after historic loss, Amazon posts $6.7 billion quarterly profit)
      - GiorgioG 3y ago
        It's almost as if corporations only care about their shareholders and give zero shits about their employees.
- fatnoah 3y ago
  > I'd add that underlying all that / in addition to that is the fear that people aren't putting their jobs first. I'm a terrible manager. I openly admit that "real life" comes first, and constantly remind people on my team that it should for them, too. Only you know what you want and need, and the company will do what's best for itself, so it's only fair that you do the same for yourself.
- RestlessMind 3y ago
  Imho, all the buzz around "quiet quitting" and stupid tiktok videos bragging about how little work one does in a day have contributed somewhat to the current RTO backlash. Workers were rubbing it in. Time to show minions their place! /s
Terr_ 3y ago
I think it is illuminating to consider how these debates would go very differently if employers where the ones whose budgets paid for all the hours/fuel spent in office commutes, and clearly showed that change with RTO. There's no inherent reason commute costs are usually borne by employees, it's just tradition--and perhaps what is/isn't an appealing alternate-compensation expense under tax-code.
- rhaway84773 3y ago
  I’m pretty sure employers are paying a lot more for workers to be in office than for them to work from home. The commute would be a tiny fraction of the electricity office space and other costs they pay for workers to be in office.
  - bluefishinit 3y ago
    I think paying for a car + insurance + gas is pretty substantial.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - Terr_ 3y ago
    Hmm, just to prime the pump with some quick napkin-math... If it's an average of 200 ft²/employee [0] and $45/ft²/month [1] that gives a cost $108k/employee/year. In comparison, lets imagine someone already making $80k/yr, a 40-mile heavy-traffic roundtrip commute taking 2 hours (1.25x time) and adds $10 in daily gas... That's about +22.5k in costs. So yes, in direct math it's probably not as big, but having a physical office probably satisfies other hard-to-quantify priorities of corporate executives, such as personal prestige, sense of control, and how things look to investors. [0] https://blog.naiop.org/2018/05/top-trends-and-metrics-to-watch-in-u-s-office-space/ https://blog.naiop.org/2018/05/top-trends-and-metrics-to-wat... [1] https://www.commercialcafe.com/office-market-trends/us/wa/seattle/ https://www.commercialcafe.com/office-market-trends/us/wa/se...
colmmacc 3y ago
I work at Amazon, so I have that bias, but I'm very very skeptical of that line of argument. Remote work has the potential to save companies truly enormous sums of money, both on real estate, and on reduced salaries. For many companies, being able to freely hire anywhere would absolutely reduce mean compensation, instead of paying massive tech hub salary premiums. The interests of city and state governments, real estate companies, hardly come into it. I find it very easy to believe the straight-forward motive given; that leaders are concerned by the impacts of remote work on collaboration, innovation, mentorship and other kinds of productivity that come through group work. That's been my experience too. At the same time, I think remote work can be very successful, maybe even more effective than traditional office work, but it almost certainly takes skills and practices that are attuned to that way of working. It's not unreasonable to believe that an entire workforce wouldn't simply adapt to that in the long term in just a 3 year time frame driven by a pandemic.
- PreachSoup 3y ago
  As a follow faang+er I totally understand the need for rto. Im perfectly fine with 3 days rto like my company and many others adopted which is perfect medium for everyone. In my team we get 3 days intense meetings done from Tuesday to Thursday. The devs have at least 2 days alone times for shipping the code. The company sold the buildings and the remaining building utilization is very high therefore the cost saving is also there. Everyone is happy in the end. The question is what's the reason to increase from 3 days to 5 days? My guess is that unlike other tech companies, Amazon has high offline presence especially with a global logistic network. They are pressured by the local governments and other parties that if they don't mandate 5 days rto to prop up the cities, they are gonna lose many benefits or deals. So it's probably cheaper for Amazon choose 5 days rto instead.
  - bluefishinit 3y ago
    > Im perfectly fine with 3 days rto like my company and many others adopted which is perfect medium for everyone. It's not the perfect medium because it requires living in some of the most expensive real estate markets on the planet. How much does a house for a family of four cost by your office?
devmunchies 3y ago
> The only group not benefitting from RTO are the actual workers. That depends on the worker’s goals. If your goal is to have work/life balance or “personal” productivity then, yeah, I empathize. But there is more investment I put back into my team when I’m in person. It’s not just my code output. I find it very hard to mentor young engineers remotely. Also, if you are a stockholder, like many engineers, and if teams do in fact have more “synergy” (bleh) then it’s also good for the workers via stock based comp.
- screwturner68 3y ago
  When I was young and learning my trade I had a group of older co-workers who decided they liked me enough to invite me to join their lunch group. It was a very informal mentorship, they showed me the ropes, provided guidance and generally made me better at my job. This was all because they knew me enough and liked me enough to put in the effort, they got little out of it other than enjoying watching another guy come up in our field. Now I'm a grey beard with less than a decade left and I'd like to return the favor but to whom? I don't work in an office and I have no relationship with most of my co-workers, I do my job and they do theirs. Management could force me to mentor one or more of the engineers but that probably wouldn't work out very well for anyone. There's no relationship with my co-workers anymore because we never see each other and while slack and zoom is great for a 20 something it just doesn't work for me and in the end I'm the one with the institutional knowledge that I won't be passing along to the loss of both the employee and the company.
- sqeaky 3y ago
  > That depends on the worker’s goals. If the worker's goals aren't pro-worker then the business certainly won't be. Your goal of training others is admirable, but that can be often be remote and won't stop them from getting rid of you the moment it is convenient.
  - devmunchies 3y ago
    I prefer working in person so from my PoV requiring RTO is pro-worker.
sharadov 3y ago
I read somewhere that big cities ( SFO) with tech concentration are giving tax breaks to companies that will bring their employees back in-office. Cities like SFO with estimated 30% vacancy which primarily rely on corporate taxes will collapse!
- mulmen 3y ago
  Is that bad? SFO isn’t known for being a well run city. A dose of bitter medicine might be exactly what it needs for long term health. Seattle is the same. We spend absurd amounts of money and get very meager results. This is what happens when your only tax revenue is property tax. If they taxed income they’d be incentivized to increase wages and employment. Instead they’re incentivized to drive up property values and barely keep the working class alive.
jsjohnst 3y ago
> ny/ca/ma type states don't want their white collar workers moving to low tax states and working from there NY doesn’t care where you live, they’ll gladly tax you and aggressively pursue said taxes no matter if you get any benefit from those tax dollars or not.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  While it is a travesty that the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to the “convenience rule”, NY state only taxes income from work performed outside of NY state if the worker sometimes works within NY state and could have worked in NY state. https://www.tax.ny.gov/pdf/memos/income/m06_5i.pdf https://www.tax.ny.gov/pdf/memos/income/m06_5i.pdf The premise is: >If a nonresident employee . . .performs services for his employer both within and without New York State, So if you never worked in NY state, or move away from NY state, then you are not liable for NY income taxes.
  - WkndTriathlete 3y ago
    I've read through the NY state convenience rules. They are written so poorly that Albany, in theory, can tax someone who attends on-site meetings in NY for two days out of the year that otherwise works remotely from Fairbanks, Alaska, which is utterly ridiculous. At some point I expect SCOTUS will slap that law down based on the Interstate Commerce Clause but the correct challenge has not reached the docket yet. But I also expect that almost everyone that might be affected by this has just worked around the NY state law by now. But for those of you considering working remotely for a company based in New York state you should be aware of the convenience rules. Based on my reading of them I would recommend against working remotely or ensure that the company helps you comply with the convenience laws so you don't fall afoul of them.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      > They are written so poorly that Albany, in theory, can tax someone who attends on-site meetings in NY for two days out of the year that otherwise works remotely from Fairbanks, Alaska, which is utterly ridiculous. Every state has the right to collect tax from income earned from work performed within the state’s boundaries. Sports players and performers often pay a ton of state income tax while only working in a state for 3 hours. Are you suggesting that people who travel to work to NY owe NY income taxes on ALL of their income, even that which was earned outside of NY? > At some point I expect SCOTUS will slap that law down based on the Interstate Commerce Clause but the correct challenge has not reached the docket yet. I am not so sure about this. With the South Dakota Wayfair ruling, and the proliferation of “market based sourcing” rules for determining taxable revenue, even this conservative Supreme Court does not seem to be leaning towards canceling that. Right now, if you have a business in one state (including just you working by yourself as a 1099 contractor), and sell your services to a recipient in a state with market based sourcing rules, then you will owe business taxes to the state where the benefits of your work was received, even though you never stepped foot or even shipped anything physical to that state. See this for example: https://www.withum.com/resources/new-jersey-legislation-implements-major-tax-changes-including-market-based-sourcing-for-partnerships/ https://www.withum.com/resources/new-jersey-legislation-impl...
gamblor956 3y ago
RTO is not some huge secret conspiracy. Companies have long-term leases on their offices. Office space is the single most expensive line-item on most companies financials. They want to maximize the use of these very expensive assets, and having workers in the offices accomplishes this. From a more practical perspective, working from home is great for more senior workers who are already established in their careers and know what they're doing, but it's hugely detrimental to the career development of younger workers, who largely learn from working alongside their older/more senior counterparts. Communicating over email, slack, zoom, etc., just isn't the same, and you can see this across pretty much every white collar domain--even programming. This is why companies have pretty much settled on hybrid schedules; it allows for the in-person collaboration while still allowing workers greater freedom in where they work. And while you're complaining about "the workers" consider that essentially all blue-collar jobs have been on-site full-time even through the pandemic.
- heleninboodler 3y ago
  > They want to maximize the use of these very expensive assets, and having workers in the offices accomplishes this. This is the same rationale as finishing your dinner after you're full because you don't want to "waste it." The food is still wasted; it's just wasted on needlessly making you fatter. If you don't actually need the office space to make the company run, you're wasting the same amount of money whether you force someone to sit in it or not (except when you force them to sit in it, you're not only wasting the money but burning employee morale).
  - JambalayaJim 3y ago
    Sunk cost only works under the assumption that in office work adds zero or negative value for the company. Clearly corporate leaders don’t believe that.
    - heleninboodler 3y ago
      it's really the assumption that it adds zero or negative value or less than the employee morale is worth. I believe it adds value, but that value is very, very small.
slillibri 3y ago
Just as an FYI, neither the city of Seattle nor the state of Washington has an income tax.
oarabbus_ 3y ago
I am not sure I find this explanation convincing. If a corporation thinks it could increase profits without RTO and after eating office real-estate losses, it'll do so. The real estate companies and the middle managers do not make decisions for these companies. If wasted office costs are $10M, but more happy, productive, and efficient remote employees make an additional $20M, there wouldn't be RTO. Are certain cities (like NYC) taxing unoccupied office space? If so, how much? This information is much more convincing than a claim that companies are enforcing RTO to make middle managers feel like they are "presiding over their kingdom".

jzb 3y ago

I'd add that underlying all that / in addition to that is the fear that people aren't putting their jobs first. That's what drove all the "quiet quitting" bullshit. The pandemic made people stop and take stock of their lives. A lot of people realized that they were putting work first and life is too fucking short to put everything else second to work. The tech layoffs have further emphasized the futility of putting work first. You might have put your career first but your employer sure as shit wasn't putting you first. Why live far from the rest of your family in a high cost-of-living area to have your life dominated by work if BigCorp is just going to throw you overboard at the first sign of a dip in profits? Not even a cut to save the business, just a cut to ensure that activist shareholders and top-line execs preserve obscene profits, bonuses, and salaries. RTO is there to remind you that they control your life, right down to where you live. Be thankful to have a job or they'll take it away from you and your health insurance, too.

borroka 3y ago
RTO is there to remind you that despite claims of talent shortages and after taking into account the fact that a substantial portion of the workforce is okay with returning to the office, for many companies the supply of talent is greater than the demand for talent.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  It is more convenient to attempt to unionize in person I suppose.
  - borroka 3y ago
    Unionization is more likely to occur when the variance of workers' wages (in the technology sector, this is total compensation) is low. In tech, the variance of workers' wages is high.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      Only need a simple majority. By definition, the majority isn't high earning in a cohort. Agree we're just arguing over likelihood, won't know how serious people are until they're tired of being ground down by people like Jassy.
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        > By definition, the majority isn't high earning in a cohort I don't think that's true here. A cohort doesn't have to have a particular distribution, and even if it does in this case, that doesn't mean the cohort isn't high earning relative to the rest of the population.
      - borroka 3y ago
        Most workers in the tech sector are young, and young people earning below-median salaries are salivating at the idea of moving, at some point in the near future, due to their skills, market conditions, luck or wishful thinking, into the above-median bracket. Add to that the fact that the job market for tech workers is extremely fluid, and I don't think unionization is going to happen anytime soon.
    - tuna74 3y ago
      Works pretty well in (US) professional sports and entertainment which has a really large wage variance.
      - borroka 3y ago
        Comparing one or two thousand workers in one industry (say NFL) with hundreds of thousands in another (tech) is rather daring
- JSavageOne 3y ago
  Hilarious that companies were complaining about tech shortages while simultaneously having interview processes consisting of multiple rounds of absurd competitive programming questions that require months of preparation for and have nothing to do with the job. There was never a talent shortage, that's just a narrative companies pushed to increase labor supply, lobby for more visas, and justify outsourcing
  - screwturner68 3y ago
    A lot of this is because of WFM, 5 years ago when you applied for a job you had to compete with all the bozos within 50 miles looking for a job but now you have to compete with all the bozos in the country looking for a job. five years ago they'd get 20 CVs for a job and now they are getting 1000. Even if they job market is tighter companies don't notice because they are getting 50X the number of resumes for a job. Further they can hire some guy in South Dakota who will happily work for half of what some guy in Manhattan will work for. In short WFH has fucked things up, it's a lot like how online dating hasn't helped people find love people are lonelier than ever even though they have a much larger selection. We work better in person and in smaller groups.
    - sarchertech 3y ago
      I haven’t noticed hiring has gotten any worse since 2020. If anything I think 2020 was the peak of multiple rounds of ridiculous competitive programming challenges. The last few interviews I’ve had didn’t have any leet code style problems.
      - throwaway5959 3y ago
        Those companies should be celebrated.
    - plorkyeran 3y ago
      This isn't a new thing that just started in the last few years. The tech job interview process five years already had all of the bad things that it does today. Cracking the Coding Interview was published in 2008.
giantg2 3y ago
Been quiet quitting since before it was a name
stetrain 3y ago
We laid off half of our employees, and the other half seem demoralized. We have no idea why so we're going to try making everyone come back to the office. Also hey everyone we made record profits this year! Great job! Pay raises are on hold though due to economic uncertainty. Remember, we're a family!
- bluefirebrand 3y ago
  This is what's really getting under my skin. The messaging is not even hidden anymore. It's right out in the open that many companies are making enormous profits and giving out astonishing executive bonuses, at the same time as freezing salaries and layoffs. It's not adding up, and I'm kind of just waiting to see if more people are going to become as fed up with it as I am, or if we're all just too comfortable.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/08/25/t-mobile-layoffs-cut-workers-jobs-nationwide/70680602007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/08/25/t-mobile-lay... (T-Mobile to lay off 5,000 people nationwide, after Sprint merger promised more jobs) https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/t-mobile-announces-shareholder-return-program-up-19-bln-2023-09-06/ https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/t-mobile-anno... (T-Mobile US announces $19 bln shareholder return program) https://apnews.com/article/amazon-layoffs-jobs-cuts-jassy-0e857f39702de134c8f677c5b5731688 https://apnews.com/article/amazon-layoffs-jobs-cuts-jassy-0e... (Amazon cuts 9,000 more jobs, bringing 2023 total to 27,000) https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-reports-6-7-billion-net-income-as-cloud-computing-stabilized/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-reports-... (A year after historic loss, Amazon posts $6.7 billion quarterly profit)
    - GiorgioG 3y ago
      It's almost as if corporations only care about their shareholders and give zero shits about their employees.
fatnoah 3y ago
> I'd add that underlying all that / in addition to that is the fear that people aren't putting their jobs first. I'm a terrible manager. I openly admit that "real life" comes first, and constantly remind people on my team that it should for them, too. Only you know what you want and need, and the company will do what's best for itself, so it's only fair that you do the same for yourself.
RestlessMind 3y ago
Imho, all the buzz around "quiet quitting" and stupid tiktok videos bragging about how little work one does in a day have contributed somewhat to the current RTO backlash. Workers were rubbing it in. Time to show minions their place! /s

Terr_ 3y ago

I think it is illuminating to consider how these debates would go very differently if employers where the ones whose budgets paid for all the hours/fuel spent in office commutes, and clearly showed that change with RTO. There's no inherent reason commute costs are usually borne by employees, it's just tradition--and perhaps what is/isn't an appealing alternate-compensation expense under tax-code.

rhaway84773 3y ago
I’m pretty sure employers are paying a lot more for workers to be in office than for them to work from home. The commute would be a tiny fraction of the electricity office space and other costs they pay for workers to be in office.
- bluefishinit 3y ago
  I think paying for a car + insurance + gas is pretty substantial.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- Terr_ 3y ago
  Hmm, just to prime the pump with some quick napkin-math... If it's an average of 200 ft²/employee [0] and $45/ft²/month [1] that gives a cost $108k/employee/year. In comparison, lets imagine someone already making $80k/yr, a 40-mile heavy-traffic roundtrip commute taking 2 hours (1.25x time) and adds $10 in daily gas... That's about +22.5k in costs. So yes, in direct math it's probably not as big, but having a physical office probably satisfies other hard-to-quantify priorities of corporate executives, such as personal prestige, sense of control, and how things look to investors. [0] https://blog.naiop.org/2018/05/top-trends-and-metrics-to-watch-in-u-s-office-space/ https://blog.naiop.org/2018/05/top-trends-and-metrics-to-wat... [1] https://www.commercialcafe.com/office-market-trends/us/wa/seattle/ https://www.commercialcafe.com/office-market-trends/us/wa/se...

colmmacc 3y ago

I work at Amazon, so I have that bias, but I'm very very skeptical of that line of argument. Remote work has the potential to save companies truly enormous sums of money, both on real estate, and on reduced salaries. For many companies, being able to freely hire anywhere would absolutely reduce mean compensation, instead of paying massive tech hub salary premiums. The interests of city and state governments, real estate companies, hardly come into it. I find it very easy to believe the straight-forward motive given; that leaders are concerned by the impacts of remote work on collaboration, innovation, mentorship and other kinds of productivity that come through group work. That's been my experience too. At the same time, I think remote work can be very successful, maybe even more effective than traditional office work, but it almost certainly takes skills and practices that are attuned to that way of working. It's not unreasonable to believe that an entire workforce wouldn't simply adapt to that in the long term in just a 3 year time frame driven by a pandemic.

PreachSoup 3y ago
As a follow faang+er I totally understand the need for rto. Im perfectly fine with 3 days rto like my company and many others adopted which is perfect medium for everyone. In my team we get 3 days intense meetings done from Tuesday to Thursday. The devs have at least 2 days alone times for shipping the code. The company sold the buildings and the remaining building utilization is very high therefore the cost saving is also there. Everyone is happy in the end. The question is what's the reason to increase from 3 days to 5 days? My guess is that unlike other tech companies, Amazon has high offline presence especially with a global logistic network. They are pressured by the local governments and other parties that if they don't mandate 5 days rto to prop up the cities, they are gonna lose many benefits or deals. So it's probably cheaper for Amazon choose 5 days rto instead.
- bluefishinit 3y ago
  > Im perfectly fine with 3 days rto like my company and many others adopted which is perfect medium for everyone. It's not the perfect medium because it requires living in some of the most expensive real estate markets on the planet. How much does a house for a family of four cost by your office?

devmunchies 3y ago

> The only group not benefitting from RTO are the actual workers. That depends on the worker’s goals. If your goal is to have work/life balance or “personal” productivity then, yeah, I empathize. But there is more investment I put back into my team when I’m in person. It’s not just my code output. I find it very hard to mentor young engineers remotely. Also, if you are a stockholder, like many engineers, and if teams do in fact have more “synergy” (bleh) then it’s also good for the workers via stock based comp.

screwturner68 3y ago
When I was young and learning my trade I had a group of older co-workers who decided they liked me enough to invite me to join their lunch group. It was a very informal mentorship, they showed me the ropes, provided guidance and generally made me better at my job. This was all because they knew me enough and liked me enough to put in the effort, they got little out of it other than enjoying watching another guy come up in our field. Now I'm a grey beard with less than a decade left and I'd like to return the favor but to whom? I don't work in an office and I have no relationship with most of my co-workers, I do my job and they do theirs. Management could force me to mentor one or more of the engineers but that probably wouldn't work out very well for anyone. There's no relationship with my co-workers anymore because we never see each other and while slack and zoom is great for a 20 something it just doesn't work for me and in the end I'm the one with the institutional knowledge that I won't be passing along to the loss of both the employee and the company.
sqeaky 3y ago
> That depends on the worker’s goals. If the worker's goals aren't pro-worker then the business certainly won't be. Your goal of training others is admirable, but that can be often be remote and won't stop them from getting rid of you the moment it is convenient.
- devmunchies 3y ago
  I prefer working in person so from my PoV requiring RTO is pro-worker.

sharadov 3y ago

I read somewhere that big cities ( SFO) with tech concentration are giving tax breaks to companies that will bring their employees back in-office. Cities like SFO with estimated 30% vacancy which primarily rely on corporate taxes will collapse!

mulmen 3y ago
Is that bad? SFO isn’t known for being a well run city. A dose of bitter medicine might be exactly what it needs for long term health. Seattle is the same. We spend absurd amounts of money and get very meager results. This is what happens when your only tax revenue is property tax. If they taxed income they’d be incentivized to increase wages and employment. Instead they’re incentivized to drive up property values and barely keep the working class alive.

jsjohnst 3y ago

> ny/ca/ma type states don't want their white collar workers moving to low tax states and working from there NY doesn’t care where you live, they’ll gladly tax you and aggressively pursue said taxes no matter if you get any benefit from those tax dollars or not.

lotsofpulp 3y ago
While it is a travesty that the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to the “convenience rule”, NY state only taxes income from work performed outside of NY state if the worker sometimes works within NY state and could have worked in NY state. https://www.tax.ny.gov/pdf/memos/income/m06_5i.pdf https://www.tax.ny.gov/pdf/memos/income/m06_5i.pdf The premise is: >If a nonresident employee . . .performs services for his employer both within and without New York State, So if you never worked in NY state, or move away from NY state, then you are not liable for NY income taxes.
- WkndTriathlete 3y ago
  I've read through the NY state convenience rules. They are written so poorly that Albany, in theory, can tax someone who attends on-site meetings in NY for two days out of the year that otherwise works remotely from Fairbanks, Alaska, which is utterly ridiculous. At some point I expect SCOTUS will slap that law down based on the Interstate Commerce Clause but the correct challenge has not reached the docket yet. But I also expect that almost everyone that might be affected by this has just worked around the NY state law by now. But for those of you considering working remotely for a company based in New York state you should be aware of the convenience rules. Based on my reading of them I would recommend against working remotely or ensure that the company helps you comply with the convenience laws so you don't fall afoul of them.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    > They are written so poorly that Albany, in theory, can tax someone who attends on-site meetings in NY for two days out of the year that otherwise works remotely from Fairbanks, Alaska, which is utterly ridiculous. Every state has the right to collect tax from income earned from work performed within the state’s boundaries. Sports players and performers often pay a ton of state income tax while only working in a state for 3 hours. Are you suggesting that people who travel to work to NY owe NY income taxes on ALL of their income, even that which was earned outside of NY? > At some point I expect SCOTUS will slap that law down based on the Interstate Commerce Clause but the correct challenge has not reached the docket yet. I am not so sure about this. With the South Dakota Wayfair ruling, and the proliferation of “market based sourcing” rules for determining taxable revenue, even this conservative Supreme Court does not seem to be leaning towards canceling that. Right now, if you have a business in one state (including just you working by yourself as a 1099 contractor), and sell your services to a recipient in a state with market based sourcing rules, then you will owe business taxes to the state where the benefits of your work was received, even though you never stepped foot or even shipped anything physical to that state. See this for example: https://www.withum.com/resources/new-jersey-legislation-implements-major-tax-changes-including-market-based-sourcing-for-partnerships/ https://www.withum.com/resources/new-jersey-legislation-impl...

gamblor956 3y ago

RTO is not some huge secret conspiracy. Companies have long-term leases on their offices. Office space is the single most expensive line-item on most companies financials. They want to maximize the use of these very expensive assets, and having workers in the offices accomplishes this. From a more practical perspective, working from home is great for more senior workers who are already established in their careers and know what they're doing, but it's hugely detrimental to the career development of younger workers, who largely learn from working alongside their older/more senior counterparts. Communicating over email, slack, zoom, etc., just isn't the same, and you can see this across pretty much every white collar domain--even programming. This is why companies have pretty much settled on hybrid schedules; it allows for the in-person collaboration while still allowing workers greater freedom in where they work. And while you're complaining about "the workers" consider that essentially all blue-collar jobs have been on-site full-time even through the pandemic.

heleninboodler 3y ago
> They want to maximize the use of these very expensive assets, and having workers in the offices accomplishes this. This is the same rationale as finishing your dinner after you're full because you don't want to "waste it." The food is still wasted; it's just wasted on needlessly making you fatter. If you don't actually need the office space to make the company run, you're wasting the same amount of money whether you force someone to sit in it or not (except when you force them to sit in it, you're not only wasting the money but burning employee morale).
- JambalayaJim 3y ago
  Sunk cost only works under the assumption that in office work adds zero or negative value for the company. Clearly corporate leaders don’t believe that.
  - heleninboodler 3y ago
    it's really the assumption that it adds zero or negative value or less than the employee morale is worth. I believe it adds value, but that value is very, very small.

slillibri 3y ago

Just as an FYI, neither the city of Seattle nor the state of Washington has an income tax.

oarabbus_ 3y ago

I am not sure I find this explanation convincing. If a corporation thinks it could increase profits without RTO and after eating office real-estate losses, it'll do so. The real estate companies and the middle managers do not make decisions for these companies. If wasted office costs are $10M, but more happy, productive, and efficient remote employees make an additional $20M, there wouldn't be RTO. Are certain cities (like NYC) taxing unoccupied office space? If so, how much? This information is much more convincing than a claim that companies are enforcing RTO to make middle managers feel like they are "presiding over their kingdom".