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While some of this is murky because the ZIRP period ending also coincides with the RTO movement, I think this bit is interesting: I think its interesting that

While some of this is murky because the ZIRP period ending also coincides with the RTO movement, I think this bit is interesting: I think its interesting that its driven more by RTO policies than it is driven by say, offshoring of jobs, which is the downside risk of full remote companies[0], instead its by the desire for control[1]. One thing RTO should make plain for everyone is executives and their managers value control over substance. Productivity did not decline with the rise of remote work[2], to quote the BLS study >Looking at a more aggregate level to measure the impact of remote work on economic performance across 43 private sector industries, Fernald et al. (2024) find little relationship between labor productivity and the ability of workers in an industry to work entirely remotely, suggesting remote work neither hindered nor helped raise aggregate productivity growth [0]: Said in a different way: when a company becomes efficient at employees being remote, there's less barrier of entry for them to hire workers in different countries. [1]: Companies seem to be using return to office as a two pronged thing: a silent layoff, that is, shrinking headcount that doesn't get replaced but done in a way where they're counting on natural attrition (IE people quitting) and a way for them to take back more control, which ultimately is the point, no matter what the headline reasoning is. [2]: https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-13/remote-work-productivity.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-13/remote-work-productiv...

yojo 1y ago
Re [1]: it’s much better than a layoff (for the business), in that you don’t pay any severance, have 0 exposure to wrongful termination lawsuits, and don’t get the “you just fired my friends/will you fire me next?” culture of insecurity.
- no_wizard 1y ago
  Except nearly everyone seems to be in on the game at this point. My observation is that RTO mandates tank morale similarly to how layoffs do. I'd be interested to see studies on morale before and after RTO. Not to mention the challenges it induces on retaining good talent.
  - toomuchtodo 1y ago
    I have an acquaintance who was forced to RTO (finance), and they’re both looking for a new remote job on company time and sabotaging [1] [2] internally (not illegally mind you) by doing as little as possible to keep the job until they bounce. Don’t blame them in the slightest. [1] https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/the-art-of-simple-sabotage/ https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/the-art-of-simple-sabotage... [2] https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/SimpleSabotage.pdf https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/...
  - keeda 1y ago
    You should look into the work of Nick Bloom, an Economics prof at Standford (active on various social media platforms) who has been researching remote work for quite a while: https://economics.stanford.edu/people/nicholas-bloom https://economics.stanford.edu/people/nicholas-bloom While I can't recall a study on your precise question about morale, he did share a lot of findings strongly supporting hybrid and remote work, including lower attrition.
- ajmurmann 1y ago
  The BIG downside to the business is that you have little to no control over who you'll lose. I'd even go a step further and argue that you are more likely to lose the most competent employee since they have more options. I suspect, however, that the people enacting these policies are unable to see that dynamic and equate eagerness to come to an office with seriousness and commitment to the business.
hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
> In nearly every case of RTO, there was no recorded dip in productivity associated with the move to remote work. I've seen this repeated often, and I've never seen any convincing evidence to support it. The studies I have seen always focus on "task-based" roles, where productivity is easily measured and everything is very well-defined. Think call center employees, stuff like that, where they're simply measuring call volumes. But execs are clearly more worried about the general "disattachment" people have with their job when they're working remotely, and they're worried about reductions in innovation and collaborative idea generation. Those kinds of concerns are much more difficult to measure in a short term study, but I think they're very valid. Since those things are difficult to measure, I'm not saying there is good evidence one way or the other on remote work's effect on those things. I am saying I think it's disingenuous and just a bad argument to say remote work has no impact on productivity.
- msgodel 1y ago
  >general "disattachment" people have with their job At least for me this is a consequence of the instability, extracurricular demands from my employer (signaling our relationship is not important to them) and deterioration in the labor market making my career less of a priority than my side projects (as at least in my mind the expected long term payout has dropped.) Being forced to commute would only exacerbate the situation.
- no_wizard 1y ago
  BLS did a great job here https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-13/remote-work-productivity.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-13/remote-work-productiv...
  - hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
    Everything in that report basically confirms what I was saying. Most importantly, it looks primarily at the data from 2019-2022. Most execs (and many have said this publicly) are not that concerned about the short-term impacts on productivity. Indeed, many have argued that a good reason things were able to transition relatively smoothly during the pandemic is all the personal and professional networks and workflows already existed. But that study can obviously not measure the longer term impacts on overall competitiveness. And again, since I'm talking about longer term impacts, no study that only took place from 2019-2022 could measure these effects. But I think it's important to acknowledge that, rather than just leaning on the "See! Studies prove remote work doesn't hurt productivity!" argument, which is an invalid interpretation IMO.
tossandthrow 1y ago
> One thing RTO should make plain for everyone is executives and their managers value control over substance. As one who manages a remote team - substance doesn't come for free. This sounds great as a dichotomy, but it is not - people who care aniut their work, and collaboration are rare to come across.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- kkfx 1y ago
  We've been talking about learning organisations for years, and the importance of a documental culture has been clear for a long time. However, most companies have never truly implemented these models. Remote work forces them to do so, or they'll fail. So, even though it's been "theorised for a long time" and widely dissected, remote work it's effectively a new thing, and it's sadly normal to encounter many problems, especially with management that lacks even the most basic substantial IT skills to truly work in a virtual company, and not just management, but a large part of all the staff too. I'm one of those who are very productive working remotely, but not out of loyalty or some "ethics/morals". It's simply because, as an engineer, I seek efficiency, and remote work is efficient. I suffer from inefficiencies, rituals created to placate bipedal cattle, and senseless reactionary attitudes. We are few, I imagine, but we are also the cohort that innovates, at various levels and in various sectors, without whom I don't know how much the West could hold on, and this, indeed, is not free. Today, with RTO, a social rift is forming between those who want to truly advance and those who merely muddle through, while the world moves forward. If this trend isn't reversed, the West, which has already lost so much, will lose what little remains and discover that its residual military strength amounts to little more than a Romans legio fantasma. At that point, the cost of "saving money" by not innovating will be so high that it will lead to bankruptcy.
  - RestlessMind 1y ago
    I can understand your sentiment in the first two paragraphs, even though I think remote work was bound to fail for most of the companies simply because it is hard to update the culture. Broadcom mandated in-office work even during COVID as soon as the strictest lockdowns were lifted. And yet Broadcom stock is up 5x since 2022, so they are not missing out on anything by embracing the office. Same with Meta (mandated RTO, stock up 7x). > the West, which has already lost so much, will lose what little remains The West already advanced a lot until 2020 by working from office. If anything, fully remote conditions are a death knell for software jobs in the rich parts of the world. Most of the SW jobs do not require special talent and can be done for a fraction of the cost from Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa or India.
ReptileMan 1y ago
Make a friend of yours buy one share of the company that doesn't allow you to work remotely. Make him sue that by insisting on RTO they are breaching their fiduciary duty by being deliberately inefficient.

yojo 1y ago

Re [1]: it’s much better than a layoff (for the business), in that you don’t pay any severance, have 0 exposure to wrongful termination lawsuits, and don’t get the “you just fired my friends/will you fire me next?” culture of insecurity.

no_wizard 1y ago
Except nearly everyone seems to be in on the game at this point. My observation is that RTO mandates tank morale similarly to how layoffs do. I'd be interested to see studies on morale before and after RTO. Not to mention the challenges it induces on retaining good talent.
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  I have an acquaintance who was forced to RTO (finance), and they’re both looking for a new remote job on company time and sabotaging [1] [2] internally (not illegally mind you) by doing as little as possible to keep the job until they bounce. Don’t blame them in the slightest. [1] https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/the-art-of-simple-sabotage/ https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/the-art-of-simple-sabotage... [2] https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/SimpleSabotage.pdf https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/...
- keeda 1y ago
  You should look into the work of Nick Bloom, an Economics prof at Standford (active on various social media platforms) who has been researching remote work for quite a while: https://economics.stanford.edu/people/nicholas-bloom https://economics.stanford.edu/people/nicholas-bloom While I can't recall a study on your precise question about morale, he did share a lot of findings strongly supporting hybrid and remote work, including lower attrition.
ajmurmann 1y ago
The BIG downside to the business is that you have little to no control over who you'll lose. I'd even go a step further and argue that you are more likely to lose the most competent employee since they have more options. I suspect, however, that the people enacting these policies are unable to see that dynamic and equate eagerness to come to an office with seriousness and commitment to the business.

hn_throwaway_99 1y ago

> In nearly every case of RTO, there was no recorded dip in productivity associated with the move to remote work. I've seen this repeated often, and I've never seen any convincing evidence to support it. The studies I have seen always focus on "task-based" roles, where productivity is easily measured and everything is very well-defined. Think call center employees, stuff like that, where they're simply measuring call volumes. But execs are clearly more worried about the general "disattachment" people have with their job when they're working remotely, and they're worried about reductions in innovation and collaborative idea generation. Those kinds of concerns are much more difficult to measure in a short term study, but I think they're very valid. Since those things are difficult to measure, I'm not saying there is good evidence one way or the other on remote work's effect on those things. I am saying I think it's disingenuous and just a bad argument to say remote work has no impact on productivity.

msgodel 1y ago
>general "disattachment" people have with their job At least for me this is a consequence of the instability, extracurricular demands from my employer (signaling our relationship is not important to them) and deterioration in the labor market making my career less of a priority than my side projects (as at least in my mind the expected long term payout has dropped.) Being forced to commute would only exacerbate the situation.
no_wizard 1y ago
BLS did a great job here https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-13/remote-work-productivity.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-13/remote-work-productiv...
- hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
  Everything in that report basically confirms what I was saying. Most importantly, it looks primarily at the data from 2019-2022. Most execs (and many have said this publicly) are not that concerned about the short-term impacts on productivity. Indeed, many have argued that a good reason things were able to transition relatively smoothly during the pandemic is all the personal and professional networks and workflows already existed. But that study can obviously not measure the longer term impacts on overall competitiveness. And again, since I'm talking about longer term impacts, no study that only took place from 2019-2022 could measure these effects. But I think it's important to acknowledge that, rather than just leaning on the "See! Studies prove remote work doesn't hurt productivity!" argument, which is an invalid interpretation IMO.

tossandthrow 1y ago

> One thing RTO should make plain for everyone is executives and their managers value control over substance. As one who manages a remote team - substance doesn't come for free. This sounds great as a dichotomy, but it is not - people who care aniut their work, and collaboration are rare to come across.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
kkfx 1y ago
We've been talking about learning organisations for years, and the importance of a documental culture has been clear for a long time. However, most companies have never truly implemented these models. Remote work forces them to do so, or they'll fail. So, even though it's been "theorised for a long time" and widely dissected, remote work it's effectively a new thing, and it's sadly normal to encounter many problems, especially with management that lacks even the most basic substantial IT skills to truly work in a virtual company, and not just management, but a large part of all the staff too. I'm one of those who are very productive working remotely, but not out of loyalty or some "ethics/morals". It's simply because, as an engineer, I seek efficiency, and remote work is efficient. I suffer from inefficiencies, rituals created to placate bipedal cattle, and senseless reactionary attitudes. We are few, I imagine, but we are also the cohort that innovates, at various levels and in various sectors, without whom I don't know how much the West could hold on, and this, indeed, is not free. Today, with RTO, a social rift is forming between those who want to truly advance and those who merely muddle through, while the world moves forward. If this trend isn't reversed, the West, which has already lost so much, will lose what little remains and discover that its residual military strength amounts to little more than a Romans legio fantasma. At that point, the cost of "saving money" by not innovating will be so high that it will lead to bankruptcy.
- RestlessMind 1y ago
  I can understand your sentiment in the first two paragraphs, even though I think remote work was bound to fail for most of the companies simply because it is hard to update the culture. Broadcom mandated in-office work even during COVID as soon as the strictest lockdowns were lifted. And yet Broadcom stock is up 5x since 2022, so they are not missing out on anything by embracing the office. Same with Meta (mandated RTO, stock up 7x). > the West, which has already lost so much, will lose what little remains The West already advanced a lot until 2020 by working from office. If anything, fully remote conditions are a death knell for software jobs in the rich parts of the world. Most of the SW jobs do not require special talent and can be done for a fraction of the cost from Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa or India.

ReptileMan 1y ago

Make a friend of yours buy one share of the company that doesn't allow you to work remotely. Make him sue that by insisting on RTO they are breaching their fiduciary duty by being deliberately inefficient.