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I find this idea that there is a 'CEO RTO mania' to be absurd; if WFH was just as good for the company, and more attractive to employees, we should see a boom i

• johnnyanmac 1y ago
  > if WFH was just as good for the company, and more attractive to employees, we should see a boom in WFH-first companies, which does not seem to be happening. In this economy, you can't even make a company, let alone profess their benefits. This is all intentional. If/when the economy recovers and funding is flowing around, I predict we will see this huge boom in WFH companies, especially with startups. Unfortunately, larger corps are seeing "WFH" as yet another attempt to offshore as much labor as possible. I can't guarantee after this ebb that top tech companies will be begging for talent the same way they were last decade.
  • nickff 1y ago
    If WFH is a good deal for both sides (in a particular industry), I would expect new entrants to use it as a competitive advantage against existing businesses (likely hiring away talented staff). I agree that web-tech business formation seems depressed, but WFH should eventually win the day if it is all that advocates say. I expect WFH will expect, while remaining relatively niche, much like worker co-operatives.
    • watwut 1y ago
      Small companies use it as competitive advantage against existing businesses. The market is fully captured and you do not win by having better productivity or by being able to attract better people. You win by attracting a lot of capital and by being able to eventually create quasi monopoly. You think hot AI companies are somehow productive? They are in massive looses. Or that all those corporations have super productive workforce? Anyone who worked there knows they dont. The econ 101 thought experiments are just that - thought experiments about ideal world. They have much less to do with how actual companies operate.
      • jamespo 1y ago
        What market is fully captured? Do you have sources for that?
  • slaw 1y ago
    Economy will not recover to hire people. Tech companies will not be begging as all jobs will be in India and China.
    • jimbob45 1y ago
      Trump will outright win 2026 if he bans H-1Bs after this RTO charade and neither party would be able to oppose such a ban without fatal public outcry. With India choosing Russia over the US, there would be very little political backlash to wrecking their economy too. Huge unemployed force in the US to fill the gap too. That is to say, if H-1Bs aren’t banned now, in what seem to be the most favorable possible conditions in history for such a thing, then they’re never getting banned.
      • esseph 1y ago
        Of course it's never getting banned
      • wkat4242 1y ago
        Banning H1Bs and RTO does not stop companies from simply opening an office in Bangalore and hiring thousands of people there. That's what my employer did.
      • throwsep10 1y ago
        [dead]
    • throwaway2037 1y ago
      > all jobs will be in India I have been hearing this since the mid 1990s. If this were true, why does Silicon Valley exist at all? Why hasn't it all moved to somewhere cheap in India?
• squigz 1y ago
  This assumes that executives are all perfectly rational beings and so wouldn't do anything based on personal feeling or beliefs. Sadly, this is not true.
  • nickff 1y ago
    I don't think there have ever been many ‘perfectly rational’ business (or governmental) leaders; the successful ones are just ‘sufficiently rational’. In fact, some business leaders are probably instituting RTO for irrational reasons, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a bad move for most in-person-based businesses.
    • LtWorf 1y ago
      But you think it's a good move for irrational reasons and have no data to show it.
• zero_shift 1y ago
  > Instead, it seems like CEOs see RTO as a way of getting rid of 'slackers' "Seems" is an interesting word, because if even you can't locate a rational motive, whilst attempting to apologise for RTO, and are just left making some guesses, then what am I supposed to infer except that this whole thing is based on suspicion, groupthink and anxiety? "The data is clear", trumpets Microsoft in their internal email. Then why will they not divulge it? It resembles the same kind of social contagion as the AI usage mandates we see - also completely meritless
  • nickff 1y ago
    You seem to be demanding some proof of the RTO side, which is a reversion to the mean, while providing none for your own side. I see and hear people talking about all the non-work things they due while being paid, and am unsurprised that their managers suspect a negative impact on productivity.
    • Thiez 1y ago
      Why do we rely on the managers suspicion if there is actual evidence? Why is the evidence not shared?
    • oldmanhorton 1y ago
      If people aren't getting their work done, then they should be having discussions with their manager that eventually lead to pip or firing if not resolved. If they are getting their work done... Who cares if I do a "non work thing" at a "work time"?
      • JambalayaJimbo 1y ago
        If your work could be easily quantified and measured like that, it would be contracted out to the lowest bidder.
        • limagnolia 1y ago
          Then maybe it doesn't need to be done on a strict work/non-work schedule everyday? If one is an hourly employee, then sure, they should be doing work things when on the clock... but if they are salaried, part of that is not having to clock in and out to switch between work and non-work tasks, and not being a strict work/non-work schedule.
• Asooka 1y ago
  Yeah, WFH doesn't work because you can't smell each other over the network. We can transmit video and audio, but so far we can't replicate touch and smell over Zoom calls. Now, touch is obviously not needed, because touching your coworkers is against policy, but smell is really important. As the esteemed researcher Mya S. Smith has shown, people who work emit a specific pheromone, known as the "Busy Efficient Employee" pheromone, or BEE pheromone for short. When a person smells another person's BEE pheromone, that signals their brain to focus on work and they themselves start emitting BEE pheromones too. The end result is a hive of bustling BEEs, delivering productivity, synergy, collaboration, and making line go up! This is also why open-office plans are so important to maximise productivity - it is the easiest way to make sure BEE smell is dispersed to every corner of the office. BEE also makes employees very happy to stay late in the office and work overtime without asking for additional pay.
  • taway1874 1y ago
    JFC! People will say anything. LOL!
  • seriocomic 1y ago
    Don't laugh, but in my org we have a bi-annual "Hive Week" where all Product/Tech (two sub-orgs) bring all the 'bees' home to Office Central for a week of, um, collaboration?
• peab 1y ago
  100% this. remote work is great for some people, but it's definitely taken advantage by a others. And those who take advantage ruin it for everybody. I literally have friends who have bragged about how good their mouse jiggler is.
  • somanyphotons 1y ago
    > mouse jiggler Are they really collecting stats on mouse movements? If they were they'd surely detect these predictable movements
    • MontyCarloHall 1y ago
      It keeps your Slack/Teams/etc. status as online. These apps will display your status as away if they detect that the computer appears idle (i.e. no mouse/keyboard inputs).
      • cebert 1y ago
        Are there really managers to constantly look at their report’s online presence indicator to determine if they’re being productive or not? What if they’re whiteboard or having an ad-hoc conversation that RTO advocates value so much?
        • Tostino 1y ago
          The platforms give reports to managers on idle time. If the manager is lazy and uses just that as an indicator of if someone is working or not then it's an easy metric to game.
        • MontyCarloHall 1y ago
          It’s less about gaming metrics and more about keeping up appearances. The sort of person who uses a mouse jiggler is constantly absent from their computer to a degree that anyone who interacts with them would implicitly notice “huh, this person is literally never online” versus “this person takes a while to respond to messages, they must be busy.”
• titanomachy 1y ago
  I think there are a large number of competent but mostly checked-out engineers who will consistently work just enough to not get fired. If you want more productivity, you could raise the bar and fire a lot of people, but this also sucks and it creates a "hunger games" culture like at Amazon or Meta. I think a lot of those people actually will do more work if you make them sit in an office for 8 hours a day, since they have nothing better to do and there's immediate social pressure to work (unlike in their homes which presumably have many more pleasant activities available). This isn't obvious to people who are highly disciplined and intrinsically motivated, since they actually get more done in the quiet environment of their home. But some people need the structure and social pressure of an office to get them to work. Your strategy could be "only hire highly disciplined and intrinsically motivated people", but you'll have to compete with everyone else for them, and they're expensive and less common than the other type. It's also hard to test for in an interview. If you're really exceptional, they'll quietly let you WFH anyway.
  • LtWorf 1y ago
    They can chit chat and do nothing in the office just as well. That's what I normally see when I do go to the office.