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>> where it comes from It's a power play. To show regular folks their place. Big corpo is a modern feodal state, where CEO is an emperor, c-suites are kings, m

>> where it comes from It's a power play. To show regular folks their place. Big corpo is a modern feodal state, where CEO is an emperor, c-suites are kings, managers are barons, IC are peasants and external contractors are slaves(but leased from other owner). It's not only RTO, it's also about timetable and dress code. Yes, I had a beef with IT manager about dress code in the development office of a bank. Just because he can show his power he tried to enforce dress code.

dan-robertson 1y ago
A big difference between feudalism and modern societies is that in feudalism, you expect to earn much less than the value of the land you inherit and pass on (or the custom or right of your family farming the land) whereas in modern societies most people will earn much more in lifetime earnings than they would inherit or pass on. This results in far more social mobility and much more freedom in praxis. I don’t think companies are like feudal societies.
- bwestergard 1y ago
  There was no market in land, so land could not have a monetary value in feudalism proper.
  - dan-robertson 1y ago
    Not having access to land you had a right to farm (and therefore needing to be a tenant farmer of some kind or – even worse – a wage labourer) was pretty bad for a peasant. It was also hard/impossible to escape from on the back of one’s labour. It is in this sense that land (or associated rights) was worth significantly more than one could make through labour.
- closeparen 1y ago
  A West Coast software engineering career is barely worth the land underneath a house from which you could reasonably commute to it. We're getting there.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    I'm glad I live in the midwest. Every story I hear about working in the bay area makes me wonder why anyone would.
    - pm90 1y ago
      It’s extremely pretty, there’s great food, lots of tech jobs, you meet diverse and interesting people, great public transit (for the US). There are many reasons for living in the Bay Area.
      - NewJazz 1y ago
        Lol you missed the weather... Bay area weather is much more moderate than in the Midwest.
        craftkiller 1y ago
        That's an understatement: Bay area weather is magical. It is the same all year round. You don't need "winter" and "summer" attire, your plans never get rained out, and you never have to deal with snowstorms. The downside is sometimes it rains ash. Personally, I had to leave because the pizza out there is unbearable but damn I miss the bay area weather.
        cubix 1y ago
        > sometimes it rains ash When the sky turned orange in 2020, my wife and I were just done. Also, there's something to be said for living in a place with four seasons, and a sense of time passing by.
      - bluGill 1y ago
        You can find the same in Minneapolis with a better cost of living. (At least the other reply mentioned weather). there are more people in the bay area, but in minneapolis you can find more people in minneapolis than you have time to meet. there are many other cities in the us that likewise have a great tech scene. The bay is not unique - it has a little more but it isn't unique-
steveBK123 1y ago
My friend is CTO of a smaller company say ~250 people, and RTO constantly comes up in the C-suite. He is only able to fend it off by pointing out that they do not pay as well as their larger competitors, so the remote flexibility is a recruiting advantage. He describes the push for RTO from the rest of the C-suite as basically a combination of unspecific vibes that it must be bad if employees like it, and of course.. because they can. Just like many rules at companies. Likewise many companies in my slice of the industry point to one of the big leaders RTO policies as the reason to do the same, as a sort of cargo cult. However, what the big leader actually does that differentiates is paying 30% premium to have their pick of talent at every level of the org.
- the_gipsy 1y ago
  > unspecific vibes that it must be bad if employees like it omg that explains so many things!
  - steveBK123 1y ago
    The way these people think - if employees like it, it must be a perk/benefit. Therefore with the current job market we don’t need to be generous with it. Related - JPMorgan is opening a new HQ with a big nice gym, and plan to charge employees to use it, lol. Thanks I’ll just leave the building Jamie.
    - j-bos 1y ago
      No way, they're going to charge for the gym in the office? That's like something out of the onion.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
    - danaris 1y ago
      > if employees like it, it must be a perk/benefit. Or, for those who have bought into the utterly toxic mindset that employees are always trying to get as much out of the company as possible for as little work as possible, "if employees like it, it must be a scam on us."
SoftTalker 1y ago
The funny thing is, I get more done at the office than at home. And if I’m dressed professionally, I get more done and I get better responses from others than when I’m wearing shorts and a tee shirt. I’d prefer to work from home wearing pajamas but I can sympathize with why my employer wants me in the office and may even have a dress code. Be glad you didn’t work in the development office of a bank in the 1990s, you’d be expected to wear a suit and tie to work.
- moralestapia 1y ago
  >And if I’m dressed professionally, I get more done and I get better responses from others than when I’m wearing shorts and a tee shirt. Are you a butler? No offense. No one in tech would give two f...s about what you're wearing when you push git commits.
  - tjr 1y ago
    For some people, what they wear has an impact on their own performance. It's not necessarily about how others perceive them, and it's not necessarily logical. Some people work better with music, or with a window to look out... some people work better in fancier attire.
    - moralestapia 1y ago
      >and I get better responses from others than when I’m wearing shorts and a tee shirt. Did you not read the last part of the sentence?
    - wfhrto 1y ago
      > music > window > fancier attire one of these things is not like the other
      - yakshaving_jgt 1y ago
        Right. Two of these is things you can see, but only one is a thing you can hear.
losteric 1y ago
> Big corpo is a modern feodal state, where CEO is an emperor, c-suites are kings, managers are barons Why do people forget about board members and shareholders? There's a lot of overlap among the rich. I doubt Satya "wants" to RTO. I would suspect board members / shareholders with real estate interests are forcing the policy. (eg Vanguard holds 10%, with Blackrock close behind). Big corpo is a feudal state, in the sense of complex incestuous power dynamics. It's oversimplifying to call CEOs emperors.
- danaris 1y ago
  Well, then show the evidence. If this is a shareholder action, of a publicly-traded company, then (IIUC) shouldn't that be publicly-available information somewhere?
  - QuantumFunnel 1y ago
    This is probably better evidence than any public filing https://wolfstreet.com/2025/09/01/office-cmbs-delinquency-rate-spikes-to-record-11-7-much-worse-than-financial-crisis-peak-multifamily-delinquencies-also-spike/ https://wolfstreet.com/2025/09/01/office-cmbs-delinquency-ra...
    - danaris 1y ago
      ...No? That shows, if I'm reading it right, that commercial real estate is having trouble. We know that; it's not in doubt. What's in doubt is whether that is the primary motivator behind the RTO efforts.
- missedthecue 1y ago
  I do not understand the real estate investor conspiracy theory. Why would it be better for vanguard if Microsoft paid rent to a real estate firm that managed office space, earned an X% profit margin, and then got taxed on the earnings before they were attributed to shareholders? It makes much more sense to take a bath on the office investments and have Microsoft pay the difference in dividends or buybacks. The net amount to vanguard is higher than paying insurance, building and grounds maintainence, janitors, utilities, management fees, and property+ income tax before seeing your first dollar.
RoyTyrell 1y ago
I think it is a mix between power play and real-estate. During Covid and late-Covid, management had to let people wfh/remote, and companies were either mass-hiring or mass-layoffs. Insecure management felt like they had their "power" stripped away, and now between the uncertain economy and some being embolden due to the current potus admin, they want to "put workers in their place". One of my coworkers is a contractor for a local IT/engineering firm, and another client recently lost one of their principle engineers due to him refusing to RTO and quit. Now the VPs he reported under are bad-mouthing him, saying he was "never any good", "screwed everything up", and "not a team player" - which everyone else knows is BS. The employees are just keeping their heads down trying not to get noticed - morale is bad. Management has even noticed and reversed their recent more formal dress code for a Jeans (and a Food Truck once a month) Friday. Needless to say no one is impressed.

dan-robertson 1y ago

A big difference between feudalism and modern societies is that in feudalism, you expect to earn much less than the value of the land you inherit and pass on (or the custom or right of your family farming the land) whereas in modern societies most people will earn much more in lifetime earnings than they would inherit or pass on. This results in far more social mobility and much more freedom in praxis. I don’t think companies are like feudal societies.

bwestergard 1y ago
There was no market in land, so land could not have a monetary value in feudalism proper.
- dan-robertson 1y ago
  Not having access to land you had a right to farm (and therefore needing to be a tenant farmer of some kind or – even worse – a wage labourer) was pretty bad for a peasant. It was also hard/impossible to escape from on the back of one’s labour. It is in this sense that land (or associated rights) was worth significantly more than one could make through labour.
closeparen 1y ago
A West Coast software engineering career is barely worth the land underneath a house from which you could reasonably commute to it. We're getting there.
- bluGill 1y ago
  I'm glad I live in the midwest. Every story I hear about working in the bay area makes me wonder why anyone would.
  - pm90 1y ago
    It’s extremely pretty, there’s great food, lots of tech jobs, you meet diverse and interesting people, great public transit (for the US). There are many reasons for living in the Bay Area.
    - NewJazz 1y ago
      Lol you missed the weather... Bay area weather is much more moderate than in the Midwest.
      - craftkiller 1y ago
        That's an understatement: Bay area weather is magical. It is the same all year round. You don't need "winter" and "summer" attire, your plans never get rained out, and you never have to deal with snowstorms. The downside is sometimes it rains ash. Personally, I had to leave because the pizza out there is unbearable but damn I miss the bay area weather.
        cubix 1y ago
        > sometimes it rains ash When the sky turned orange in 2020, my wife and I were just done. Also, there's something to be said for living in a place with four seasons, and a sense of time passing by.
    - bluGill 1y ago
      You can find the same in Minneapolis with a better cost of living. (At least the other reply mentioned weather). there are more people in the bay area, but in minneapolis you can find more people in minneapolis than you have time to meet. there are many other cities in the us that likewise have a great tech scene. The bay is not unique - it has a little more but it isn't unique-

steveBK123 1y ago

My friend is CTO of a smaller company say ~250 people, and RTO constantly comes up in the C-suite. He is only able to fend it off by pointing out that they do not pay as well as their larger competitors, so the remote flexibility is a recruiting advantage. He describes the push for RTO from the rest of the C-suite as basically a combination of unspecific vibes that it must be bad if employees like it, and of course.. because they can. Just like many rules at companies. Likewise many companies in my slice of the industry point to one of the big leaders RTO policies as the reason to do the same, as a sort of cargo cult. However, what the big leader actually does that differentiates is paying 30% premium to have their pick of talent at every level of the org.

the_gipsy 1y ago
> unspecific vibes that it must be bad if employees like it omg that explains so many things!
- steveBK123 1y ago
  The way these people think - if employees like it, it must be a perk/benefit. Therefore with the current job market we don’t need to be generous with it. Related - JPMorgan is opening a new HQ with a big nice gym, and plan to charge employees to use it, lol. Thanks I’ll just leave the building Jamie.
  - j-bos 1y ago
    No way, they're going to charge for the gym in the office? That's like something out of the onion.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - danaris 1y ago
    > if employees like it, it must be a perk/benefit. Or, for those who have bought into the utterly toxic mindset that employees are always trying to get as much out of the company as possible for as little work as possible, "if employees like it, it must be a scam on us."

SoftTalker 1y ago

The funny thing is, I get more done at the office than at home. And if I’m dressed professionally, I get more done and I get better responses from others than when I’m wearing shorts and a tee shirt. I’d prefer to work from home wearing pajamas but I can sympathize with why my employer wants me in the office and may even have a dress code. Be glad you didn’t work in the development office of a bank in the 1990s, you’d be expected to wear a suit and tie to work.

moralestapia 1y ago
>And if I’m dressed professionally, I get more done and I get better responses from others than when I’m wearing shorts and a tee shirt. Are you a butler? No offense. No one in tech would give two f...s about what you're wearing when you push git commits.
- tjr 1y ago
  For some people, what they wear has an impact on their own performance. It's not necessarily about how others perceive them, and it's not necessarily logical. Some people work better with music, or with a window to look out... some people work better in fancier attire.
  - moralestapia 1y ago
    >and I get better responses from others than when I’m wearing shorts and a tee shirt. Did you not read the last part of the sentence?
  - wfhrto 1y ago
    > music > window > fancier attire one of these things is not like the other
    - yakshaving_jgt 1y ago
      Right. Two of these is things you can see, but only one is a thing you can hear.

losteric 1y ago

> Big corpo is a modern feodal state, where CEO is an emperor, c-suites are kings, managers are barons Why do people forget about board members and shareholders? There's a lot of overlap among the rich. I doubt Satya "wants" to RTO. I would suspect board members / shareholders with real estate interests are forcing the policy. (eg Vanguard holds 10%, with Blackrock close behind). Big corpo is a feudal state, in the sense of complex incestuous power dynamics. It's oversimplifying to call CEOs emperors.

danaris 1y ago
Well, then show the evidence. If this is a shareholder action, of a publicly-traded company, then (IIUC) shouldn't that be publicly-available information somewhere?
- QuantumFunnel 1y ago
  This is probably better evidence than any public filing https://wolfstreet.com/2025/09/01/office-cmbs-delinquency-rate-spikes-to-record-11-7-much-worse-than-financial-crisis-peak-multifamily-delinquencies-also-spike/ https://wolfstreet.com/2025/09/01/office-cmbs-delinquency-ra...
  - danaris 1y ago
    ...No? That shows, if I'm reading it right, that commercial real estate is having trouble. We know that; it's not in doubt. What's in doubt is whether that is the primary motivator behind the RTO efforts.
missedthecue 1y ago
I do not understand the real estate investor conspiracy theory. Why would it be better for vanguard if Microsoft paid rent to a real estate firm that managed office space, earned an X% profit margin, and then got taxed on the earnings before they were attributed to shareholders? It makes much more sense to take a bath on the office investments and have Microsoft pay the difference in dividends or buybacks. The net amount to vanguard is higher than paying insurance, building and grounds maintainence, janitors, utilities, management fees, and property+ income tax before seeing your first dollar.

RoyTyrell 1y ago

I think it is a mix between power play and real-estate. During Covid and late-Covid, management had to let people wfh/remote, and companies were either mass-hiring or mass-layoffs. Insecure management felt like they had their "power" stripped away, and now between the uncertain economy and some being embolden due to the current potus admin, they want to "put workers in their place". One of my coworkers is a contractor for a local IT/engineering firm, and another client recently lost one of their principle engineers due to him refusing to RTO and quit. Now the VPs he reported under are bad-mouthing him, saying he was "never any good", "screwed everything up", and "not a team player" - which everyone else knows is BS. The employees are just keeping their heads down trying not to get noticed - morale is bad. Management has even noticed and reversed their recent more formal dress code for a Jeans (and a Food Truck once a month) Friday. Needless to say no one is impressed.