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RTO mandates are about many things, but actual business value of being in the office to the business doing the mandate is low on the list. Among the things it i

RTO mandates are about many things, but actual business value of being in the office to the business doing the mandate is low on the list. Among the things it is about: (1) Executives with emotional attachment to certain leadership styles that are enabled by physical presence, (2) Interest in the investor class for the commercial real estate market. The business impacted may not be invested in it, but the businesses’ shareholders in sufficient numbers probably are, and so are the influential constituents of the politicians they want favors from, in a time of increasingly naked political corruption and cronyism. (3) Backdoor layoffs. RTO is unpopular with large swathes of the work force, and people will quit because of it. That’s good for a firm likely to be cutting positions anyway; there’s no need for severance, regardles of scale there’s no WARN Act notice requirement, and if you still have to cut more positions afterwards, it makes it less likely that those cuts will hit WARN Act thresholds. And while the people that quit may not be the ones it would be your first choice to cut, they are the ones that would be most likely to quit in the kind of less-employee-friendly and financially leaner (in real terms) times likely to exist for a while after cuts.

whateveracct 1y ago
This is dead on. In software especially, we have established ways for distributed individuals to collaborate (FOSS). RTO is meant to coddle the waterfall-addicted executive class.
- yepitwas 1y ago
  It's pretty funny to watch e.g. some little FOSS console game system emulator—an actual toy, or at least, a project in service of a toy and of game-playing, to a large extent, but also technically more challenging than a lot of corporate work—or maybe some FOSS MMO server re-implementation coordinate development across continents with nothing but IRC, email, and Github (if that, LOL) and do it efficiently with little friction and volunteers working in their spare time and zero people with a dedicated "project manager" title, while companies pretend they need this whole fucking edifice of communication systems and people sitting in cubicles in particular places just to shuffle a few gigabytes of spreadsheet data around with Python or whatever. Yeah. No you don't. You're, somehow, a fraction as competent and professional as some teens and 20-somethings making toys in their spare time, if you do. Definitely deserve seven-plus figure salaries for that.
  - cyberpunk 1y ago
    Shit I would fucking love a cubical vs the open plan wall of noise and chaos that’s our brand new office. Sigh.
    - lnsru 1y ago
      I feel you. Have my own office right now. Its worth more than €25k salary. It’s really hard to apply somewhere else and go back to noise and chaos in open office even for more money.
  - oblio 1y ago
    KDE was supposed to run on Windows, starting 15 years ago. Linux was supposed to flawlessly support laptop sleep and hibernate, 20 years ago. Gimp was supposed to support 32 bit colors (I think) 15 years ago. Etc, etc. The money is there so that things that are desired happen mostly on time.
    - regularfry 1y ago
      The question is who they are desired by.
      - oblio 1y ago
        Not by the developers, obviously. "That's what the money is for."
  - Chris2048 1y ago
    but this is survival bias. lots of those FOSS projects go nowhere, unnoticed. You are flipping this around: "companies pretend they need this whole fucking edifice", but they'd need to pick the winners first. those people need no management for them to do what they are motivated to do, but corporation have some people they are asking to do something they might not care much about - the same results aren't guaranteed.
  - snapcaster 1y ago
    Isn't the thing you're ignoring just passion? I find it a small miracle that any company accomplishes anything. it's a ground of hundreds or thousands of people, almost none of whom want to be there and don't care about the product or company, that despite this still somehow accomplish things
otikik 1y ago
It’s just (3)
- guiriduro 1y ago
  Two things about backdoor layoffs. Mostly its about who. When its corporate dictat, those most likely to leave are those with other options, ie the best talent. So sure a business might save on severances in aggregate, but it doesn't get to decide on who, but simple statistics show it will be the best who move on. So a demoralised and increasingly mediocre workforce is then faced with a much tougher hiring environment with unfillable positions and the downward cycle continues, destroying customer value and reputation to a far greater degree than any temporary layoff savings. All for what exactly, control? Its the C-suites that should be being marched out the door.
  - mhuffman 1y ago
    >All for what exactly, control? No, quarterly earnings. In this case, retained earnings, but they want to show profits in a situation with high inflation, stagnant employment, and other issues where customers are not as spendy as they once were.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    The move of offshoring in many projects, changed my mindest that companies care one second about their talent, at a size like Microsoft is all about replaceable cogs, little ants every doing their own small task.
    - RugnirViking 1y ago
      Why in your opinion do Microsoft or any large org pay software engineers in America or western Europe? India would be cheaper. South America, Phillipines cheaper still. Etc etc etc. Plenty of educated folks speaking English. I think a large part of it is that they want people physically and culturally close to themselves for projects they care about. Piles of companies have tried outsourcing core development and in my experience whatever minimal home team thats left keeps growing and growing and the oversess guys get pushed to the least desirable jobs. It's almost always a failure in the end, or at least the overseas team ends up being given limited scope, simple tasks while complex work finds it's way back home. I say this having worked with many talented overseas colleagues; I think this is a management level effect, not individual developer
freddie_mercury 1y ago
It is hilarious that people think the second largest company on the planet, with a market cap over $5 trillion, spends even one second worry about the profit margins of commercial real estate companies, makes any decisions based on that, or is somehow cowed by their alleged political power despite being much, much, much smaller than Microsoft.
- vanviegen 1y ago
  Consider the networks of friends and acquaintances the top-level decision makers are likely to be part of. Talking about how they're divesting big corporate dollars from the real estate market probably wouldn't make them more popular at cocktail parties.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  I was very clear, I thought, when I said “RTO mandates are about...”, that I was not saying “All of these factors are relevant to Microsoft”. With Microsoft its probably mostly (3), with maybe some degree of (2), with (1) maybe, especially in the political salience, being a plus in the eyes of some decision-makers but not really driving the decision. There are firms (and public agencies) where the relationship between those factors is very different in driving RTO mandates.
  - freddie_mercury 1y ago
    No CEO cares about commercial real estate profits. It isn't a factor in any major company decision. Why not extend the baseless paranoia and say it is because they want to see auto company profits go up? And also support petroleum companies? Or is it just real estate that is boogeyman secretly running the country behind the scenes?
    - holowoodman 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - 1y ago
terminalshort 1y ago
2 and 3 aren't real. Nobody gives a damn about their shareholders other investments, and no one company has the numbers to save them anyway. And nobody is dumb enough to do RTO as a layoff proxy because anybody with a brain knows you're going to lose the people with options, who are exactly the people you don't want to lose. 1 is spot on.
- cdaringe 1y ago
  I disagree. Corpo finance doesn’t see names and value, they see cost. Talent can be purchased. They can’t purchase cost reductions
  - bfg_9k 1y ago
    They can and its called management consulting
- hobs 1y ago
  You couldn't be more wrong, no evidence supports your assertions. https://fortune.com/2024/07/24/return-to-office-mandates-layoffs-bamboohr-survey/ https://fortune.com/2024/07/24/return-to-office-mandates-lay... https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/its-official-rto-mandates-are-driving-workers-to-leave-their-jobs-and-helping-employers-avoid-layoffs/ar-AA1M2LM3 https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/its-offi... https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/12/why-rto-mandates-are-layoffs-in-disguise-according-to-workplace-experts.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/12/why-rto-mandates-are-layoffs... You are very ignorant of the real world.
  - cutemonster 1y ago
    Wow, thanks for the links!
- intended 1y ago
  3 is real, this is what was behind Amazon’s RTO mandates. Its designed to ensure that people decide to quit.
jannw 1y ago
One you miss is that if other companies in your industry are RTO, and you don't, the first quarter you under-perform your competitors, your shareholders and activist investors will blame the fact that you haven't RTO when all your competitors have ... !obviously! that is the key issue. Effectively, if everyone else is, you cannot afford not to.
aurareturn 1y ago
(4) In person teams outperform remote/hybrid teams. I'm surprised this was not mentioned as a possibility.
- mulmen 1y ago
  It’s not mentioned as a possibility because nobody has ever been able to substantiate that claim.
  - aurareturn 1y ago
    Shouldn't we trust that the execs have this data and can see productivity metrics that aren't available to the public? Unless you think all RTO is a conspiracy.
    - nemomarx 1y ago
      Why would they not use those metrics internally as part of the RTO policy then? Surely they would be picking particular stats out to highlight the benefits of RTO, talk about how well everyone is doing afterwards, etc.
      - aurareturn 1y ago
        Because they don't want the public/employees to misconstrue those metrics? Maybe they don't want employees to know how they view productivity? Surely if they're presented with solid evidence that WFH increases productivity, they'd keep it. Execs make millions in bonuses if the performance of the company hits certain goals. It's baffling that people here still talk about real estate conspiracy theories.
        cmiles74 1y ago
        If there were clear metrics showing that in-person teams “out perform” remote teams, we would be hearing about it constantly. The supposed rationale for keeping such data secret sounds far-fetched to me.
bilekas 1y ago
Backdoor layoffs. It's always backdoor layoffs. If they really appreciated and needed you at the company, they would cater for your needs when you're delivering your work.
- mrweasel 1y ago
  If it's layoffs aren't there a very real risk that the most talented people, who enjoy working from home will simply leave, while the less talented returns to the office because they'll have a harder time finding new jobs? So you're doing backdoor layoffs, but you're laying off the people you'd most likely want to keep, leaving the company with the less experienced/talented people.
  - ReptileMan 1y ago
    >If it's layoffs aren't there a very real risk that the most talented people, who enjoy working from home will simply leave, while the less talented returns to the office because they'll have a harder time finding new jobs? The corporate structure is not created around talented people, but around mediocrity. In Dilbert land you have no use for brainiacs. In my current environment one line bugfix takes 3-4 workdays to release. Does it matter one bit if you will do the fix in 10 or 100 minutes if it will be overshadowed by the time THE PROCESS consumes.
  - lloeki 1y ago
    > aren't there a very real risk that the most talented people, who enjoy working from home will simply leave, while the less talented returns to the office because they'll have a harder time finding new jobs? a.k.a Dead Sea effect
    - ThrowawayR2 1y ago
      Leave to where? All the other FAANGs and tech companies seem to be doing RTO as well. There's no "dead sea effect" because the less talented are also being flushed out by layoffs specifically targeting low performers. And the job market is so bad right now that there's absolutely no shortage of fresh talented folks to hire.
anothernewdude 1y ago
Isn't 3 actionable under employment law?
- spacebanana7 1y ago
  If you could discover an email where an executive admitted their RTO strategy was a layoff then maybe, in some jurisdictions. But it's hard to prove, most of the time they could just say their motivation was "culture" or similarly vague and unfalsifiable like that.
  - californical 1y ago
    I think it depends how far you are. There are laws covering you against forced relocation, treating it essentially as a layoff if it’s >50 miles (not sure exact numbers, and it may be state specific)
_heimdall 1y ago
I always assume a different option, though (3) is likely part of it for Microsoft right now as well. When leadership decides their velocity is too slow for whatever reason, they look for deck chairs to move. RTO is one big deck chair they can move and many will assume it will improve performance and velocity. The problem is that I've never seen anyone actually prove that out for RTO with solid data. And that goes both ways, I haven't seen anything to prove that remote-first is universally better for performance.
- InsideOutSanta 1y ago
  I'm pretty sure it doesn't have a significant impact on performance for the kind of work people on HN do. I do my work every day. When I'm done doing my work at the office, I browse HN. After I finish my work at home, I do the dishes. But I do roughly the same amount of work either way.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  > When leadership decides their velocity is too slow for whatever reason, they look for deck chairs to move. RTO is one big deck chair they can move and many will assume it will improve performance and velocity. I’d agree that “do-something-ism” is a factor, both on its own and as an accelerant for any pre-existing bias in that direction that packed an impetus or pretext without bad results.
Hackbraten 1y ago
> (2) Interest in the investor class for the commercial real estate market. The business impacted may not be invested in it, but the businesses’ shareholders in sufficient numbers probably are How is this not a net loss for them? From their perspective, wouldn’t that just be moving money left to right, plus even more overhead?
- e40 1y ago
  Commercial real estate crashing would have a huge impact on the economy. Many of these companies are invested heavily in it, too.
thinkharderdev 1y ago
My personal pet theory (based on no evidence other than personal experience) is that, if your job is in senior management then your day-to-day work is going to meetings. And spending 8-10h on zoom meetings every day is unbelievably soul-crushing.
- Newlaptop 1y ago
  8h on zoom is far more desirable than 8 hours in person shuffling from meeting room to meeting room for me. I can have the call in the background while looking at something else without it being impolite. I can eat, drink, or use the restroom at will. I can wear comfortable pants. I can throw laundry into the wash in the couple minute gap between meetings. And when the last meeting ends, I close the laptop and I'm already home, no miserable drive in rush-hour traffic. Of course, there is something worse than in-person meetings. Which is meetings that are hybrid, with a groups calling into zoom from two different conference rooms in different locations. Those manage to be far worse than just everyone individually joining the zoom. And ironically, that's the type of meeting that becomes common when you force your distributed workforce back to offices split across a dozen locations.
  - thinkharderdev 1y ago
    > I can have the call in the background while looking at something else without it being impolite. I can eat, drink, or use the restroom at will. This works great when you are one of a dozen anonymous people on a zoom call. less so when you are the senior person in the meeting who everyone is actually talking to and expecting you to make a decision. But this response kind of proves my point. If you are the principal in a meeting, the fact that everyone else in the meeting is zoned out and doing something else is not great.
- dh2022 1y ago
  But here is the thing-almost all meetings are on Temas. Because Microsoft campus is so spread out managers do not have time to go from building to building to meet other managers. Azure for example is spread out over 10 building just 8n Redmond. Never mind connecting with teams in Bay Area, Atlanta and India. All of these mangers spend their meetings on Teams. Again I do not have a good explanation for RTO.
bko 1y ago
I think it's naive to think that management would push something so unpopular and expensive just because some kind of emotional attachment or to help some other unrelated commercial property owners. I think a more reasonable answer is they think employees are more productive and a large swath of employees don't do anything. I wouldn't believe it unless I've seen it myself. At a large org, there is a significant portion of people that don't do anything meaningful. Sure they'll waste time in the office as well, but at least they're somewhat more productive or available. They're not watching Netflix in their underwear. Every large organization I've been at had these people. It's really that simple. The alternative is really conspiracy level stuff.
- HelloMcFly 1y ago
  > They're not watching Netflix in their underwear. I'm sure leaders believe this, I'm even sure it happens. Yet despite how obviously and deleteriously widespread this phenomenon is, isn't it amazing that we still can't seem to quantify notable efficiency and effectiveness gains from RTO mandates? And that's setting aside whether any hypothesized (at best) productivity gains are sufficiently high enough to justify the expense of office space rentals and office maintenance. Let's also remember that the typical RTO experience is one where members of a geographically distributed team are RTO'd so they can remain geographically distributed, just working out of company owned or rented spaces instead of their homes.
- PleasureBot 1y ago
  I think the real answer is that executives at large companies live in a completely different world than their employees. For one the circles they run in are going to be full of like-minded people; i.e. people for whom work is the most important part of their life. People like that want RTO and don't understand those who oppose it. When those are your priorities and all of your pees share them, its going to produce an echo chamber where most executives want RTO. Furthermore their lifestyle is completely different. Most are going to have chauffeurs so they can be productive to/from work. They are going to have aids that take care of the food shopping, laundry, picking kids up from school, cooking, helping with homework etc. RTO does not affect them nearly as much as their employees who still have to deal with all of this in addition to commuting time now. Its really just as simple as that. They lead completely different lives than their employees, are surrounded by other executives in friend and professional groups who have similar lifestyles, and generally don't understand why someone wouldn't want to RTO.
Difwif 1y ago
(2) Seems like a media narrative rather than truth. I don't think that would be anywhere remotely high on a CEO's priority list unless they were a commercial real estate company. It's far more likely a mixture of (1) and actual results - in-person/hybrid teams produce better outcomes (even if why that's true hasn't been deeply evaluated or ultimately falls on management)

whateveracct 1y ago

This is dead on. In software especially, we have established ways for distributed individuals to collaborate (FOSS). RTO is meant to coddle the waterfall-addicted executive class.

yepitwas 1y ago
It's pretty funny to watch e.g. some little FOSS console game system emulator—an actual toy, or at least, a project in service of a toy and of game-playing, to a large extent, but also technically more challenging than a lot of corporate work—or maybe some FOSS MMO server re-implementation coordinate development across continents with nothing but IRC, email, and Github (if that, LOL) and do it efficiently with little friction and volunteers working in their spare time and zero people with a dedicated "project manager" title, while companies pretend they need this whole fucking edifice of communication systems and people sitting in cubicles in particular places just to shuffle a few gigabytes of spreadsheet data around with Python or whatever. Yeah. No you don't. You're, somehow, a fraction as competent and professional as some teens and 20-somethings making toys in their spare time, if you do. Definitely deserve seven-plus figure salaries for that.
- cyberpunk 1y ago
  Shit I would fucking love a cubical vs the open plan wall of noise and chaos that’s our brand new office. Sigh.
  - lnsru 1y ago
    I feel you. Have my own office right now. Its worth more than €25k salary. It’s really hard to apply somewhere else and go back to noise and chaos in open office even for more money.
- oblio 1y ago
  KDE was supposed to run on Windows, starting 15 years ago. Linux was supposed to flawlessly support laptop sleep and hibernate, 20 years ago. Gimp was supposed to support 32 bit colors (I think) 15 years ago. Etc, etc. The money is there so that things that are desired happen mostly on time.
  - regularfry 1y ago
    The question is who they are desired by.
    - oblio 1y ago
      Not by the developers, obviously. "That's what the money is for."
- Chris2048 1y ago
  but this is survival bias. lots of those FOSS projects go nowhere, unnoticed. You are flipping this around: "companies pretend they need this whole fucking edifice", but they'd need to pick the winners first. those people need no management for them to do what they are motivated to do, but corporation have some people they are asking to do something they might not care much about - the same results aren't guaranteed.
- snapcaster 1y ago
  Isn't the thing you're ignoring just passion? I find it a small miracle that any company accomplishes anything. it's a ground of hundreds or thousands of people, almost none of whom want to be there and don't care about the product or company, that despite this still somehow accomplish things

otikik 1y ago

It’s just (3)

guiriduro 1y ago
Two things about backdoor layoffs. Mostly its about who. When its corporate dictat, those most likely to leave are those with other options, ie the best talent. So sure a business might save on severances in aggregate, but it doesn't get to decide on who, but simple statistics show it will be the best who move on. So a demoralised and increasingly mediocre workforce is then faced with a much tougher hiring environment with unfillable positions and the downward cycle continues, destroying customer value and reputation to a far greater degree than any temporary layoff savings. All for what exactly, control? Its the C-suites that should be being marched out the door.
- mhuffman 1y ago
  >All for what exactly, control? No, quarterly earnings. In this case, retained earnings, but they want to show profits in a situation with high inflation, stagnant employment, and other issues where customers are not as spendy as they once were.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  The move of offshoring in many projects, changed my mindest that companies care one second about their talent, at a size like Microsoft is all about replaceable cogs, little ants every doing their own small task.
  - RugnirViking 1y ago
    Why in your opinion do Microsoft or any large org pay software engineers in America or western Europe? India would be cheaper. South America, Phillipines cheaper still. Etc etc etc. Plenty of educated folks speaking English. I think a large part of it is that they want people physically and culturally close to themselves for projects they care about. Piles of companies have tried outsourcing core development and in my experience whatever minimal home team thats left keeps growing and growing and the oversess guys get pushed to the least desirable jobs. It's almost always a failure in the end, or at least the overseas team ends up being given limited scope, simple tasks while complex work finds it's way back home. I say this having worked with many talented overseas colleagues; I think this is a management level effect, not individual developer

freddie_mercury 1y ago

It is hilarious that people think the second largest company on the planet, with a market cap over $5 trillion, spends even one second worry about the profit margins of commercial real estate companies, makes any decisions based on that, or is somehow cowed by their alleged political power despite being much, much, much smaller than Microsoft.

vanviegen 1y ago
Consider the networks of friends and acquaintances the top-level decision makers are likely to be part of. Talking about how they're divesting big corporate dollars from the real estate market probably wouldn't make them more popular at cocktail parties.
dragonwriter 1y ago
I was very clear, I thought, when I said “RTO mandates are about...”, that I was not saying “All of these factors are relevant to Microsoft”. With Microsoft its probably mostly (3), with maybe some degree of (2), with (1) maybe, especially in the political salience, being a plus in the eyes of some decision-makers but not really driving the decision. There are firms (and public agencies) where the relationship between those factors is very different in driving RTO mandates.
- freddie_mercury 1y ago
  No CEO cares about commercial real estate profits. It isn't a factor in any major company decision. Why not extend the baseless paranoia and say it is because they want to see auto company profits go up? And also support petroleum companies? Or is it just real estate that is boogeyman secretly running the country behind the scenes?
  - holowoodman 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - 1y ago

terminalshort 1y ago

2 and 3 aren't real. Nobody gives a damn about their shareholders other investments, and no one company has the numbers to save them anyway. And nobody is dumb enough to do RTO as a layoff proxy because anybody with a brain knows you're going to lose the people with options, who are exactly the people you don't want to lose. 1 is spot on.

cdaringe 1y ago
I disagree. Corpo finance doesn’t see names and value, they see cost. Talent can be purchased. They can’t purchase cost reductions
- bfg_9k 1y ago
  They can and its called management consulting
hobs 1y ago
You couldn't be more wrong, no evidence supports your assertions. https://fortune.com/2024/07/24/return-to-office-mandates-layoffs-bamboohr-survey/ https://fortune.com/2024/07/24/return-to-office-mandates-lay... https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/its-official-rto-mandates-are-driving-workers-to-leave-their-jobs-and-helping-employers-avoid-layoffs/ar-AA1M2LM3 https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/its-offi... https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/12/why-rto-mandates-are-layoffs-in-disguise-according-to-workplace-experts.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/12/why-rto-mandates-are-layoffs... You are very ignorant of the real world.
- cutemonster 1y ago
  Wow, thanks for the links!
intended 1y ago
3 is real, this is what was behind Amazon’s RTO mandates. Its designed to ensure that people decide to quit.

jannw 1y ago

One you miss is that if other companies in your industry are RTO, and you don't, the first quarter you under-perform your competitors, your shareholders and activist investors will blame the fact that you haven't RTO when all your competitors have ... !obviously! that is the key issue. Effectively, if everyone else is, you cannot afford not to.

aurareturn 1y ago

(4) In person teams outperform remote/hybrid teams. I'm surprised this was not mentioned as a possibility.

mulmen 1y ago
It’s not mentioned as a possibility because nobody has ever been able to substantiate that claim.
- aurareturn 1y ago
  Shouldn't we trust that the execs have this data and can see productivity metrics that aren't available to the public? Unless you think all RTO is a conspiracy.
  - nemomarx 1y ago
    Why would they not use those metrics internally as part of the RTO policy then? Surely they would be picking particular stats out to highlight the benefits of RTO, talk about how well everyone is doing afterwards, etc.
    - aurareturn 1y ago
      Because they don't want the public/employees to misconstrue those metrics? Maybe they don't want employees to know how they view productivity? Surely if they're presented with solid evidence that WFH increases productivity, they'd keep it. Execs make millions in bonuses if the performance of the company hits certain goals. It's baffling that people here still talk about real estate conspiracy theories.
      - cmiles74 1y ago
        If there were clear metrics showing that in-person teams “out perform” remote teams, we would be hearing about it constantly. The supposed rationale for keeping such data secret sounds far-fetched to me.

bilekas 1y ago

Backdoor layoffs. It's always backdoor layoffs. If they really appreciated and needed you at the company, they would cater for your needs when you're delivering your work.

mrweasel 1y ago
If it's layoffs aren't there a very real risk that the most talented people, who enjoy working from home will simply leave, while the less talented returns to the office because they'll have a harder time finding new jobs? So you're doing backdoor layoffs, but you're laying off the people you'd most likely want to keep, leaving the company with the less experienced/talented people.
- ReptileMan 1y ago
  >If it's layoffs aren't there a very real risk that the most talented people, who enjoy working from home will simply leave, while the less talented returns to the office because they'll have a harder time finding new jobs? The corporate structure is not created around talented people, but around mediocrity. In Dilbert land you have no use for brainiacs. In my current environment one line bugfix takes 3-4 workdays to release. Does it matter one bit if you will do the fix in 10 or 100 minutes if it will be overshadowed by the time THE PROCESS consumes.
- lloeki 1y ago
  > aren't there a very real risk that the most talented people, who enjoy working from home will simply leave, while the less talented returns to the office because they'll have a harder time finding new jobs? a.k.a Dead Sea effect
  - ThrowawayR2 1y ago
    Leave to where? All the other FAANGs and tech companies seem to be doing RTO as well. There's no "dead sea effect" because the less talented are also being flushed out by layoffs specifically targeting low performers. And the job market is so bad right now that there's absolutely no shortage of fresh talented folks to hire.

anothernewdude 1y ago

Isn't 3 actionable under employment law?

spacebanana7 1y ago
If you could discover an email where an executive admitted their RTO strategy was a layoff then maybe, in some jurisdictions. But it's hard to prove, most of the time they could just say their motivation was "culture" or similarly vague and unfalsifiable like that.
- californical 1y ago
  I think it depends how far you are. There are laws covering you against forced relocation, treating it essentially as a layoff if it’s >50 miles (not sure exact numbers, and it may be state specific)

_heimdall 1y ago

I always assume a different option, though (3) is likely part of it for Microsoft right now as well. When leadership decides their velocity is too slow for whatever reason, they look for deck chairs to move. RTO is one big deck chair they can move and many will assume it will improve performance and velocity. The problem is that I've never seen anyone actually prove that out for RTO with solid data. And that goes both ways, I haven't seen anything to prove that remote-first is universally better for performance.

InsideOutSanta 1y ago
I'm pretty sure it doesn't have a significant impact on performance for the kind of work people on HN do. I do my work every day. When I'm done doing my work at the office, I browse HN. After I finish my work at home, I do the dishes. But I do roughly the same amount of work either way.
dragonwriter 1y ago
> When leadership decides their velocity is too slow for whatever reason, they look for deck chairs to move. RTO is one big deck chair they can move and many will assume it will improve performance and velocity. I’d agree that “do-something-ism” is a factor, both on its own and as an accelerant for any pre-existing bias in that direction that packed an impetus or pretext without bad results.

Hackbraten 1y ago

> (2) Interest in the investor class for the commercial real estate market. The business impacted may not be invested in it, but the businesses’ shareholders in sufficient numbers probably are How is this not a net loss for them? From their perspective, wouldn’t that just be moving money left to right, plus even more overhead?

e40 1y ago
Commercial real estate crashing would have a huge impact on the economy. Many of these companies are invested heavily in it, too.

thinkharderdev 1y ago

My personal pet theory (based on no evidence other than personal experience) is that, if your job is in senior management then your day-to-day work is going to meetings. And spending 8-10h on zoom meetings every day is unbelievably soul-crushing.

Newlaptop 1y ago
8h on zoom is far more desirable than 8 hours in person shuffling from meeting room to meeting room for me. I can have the call in the background while looking at something else without it being impolite. I can eat, drink, or use the restroom at will. I can wear comfortable pants. I can throw laundry into the wash in the couple minute gap between meetings. And when the last meeting ends, I close the laptop and I'm already home, no miserable drive in rush-hour traffic. Of course, there is something worse than in-person meetings. Which is meetings that are hybrid, with a groups calling into zoom from two different conference rooms in different locations. Those manage to be far worse than just everyone individually joining the zoom. And ironically, that's the type of meeting that becomes common when you force your distributed workforce back to offices split across a dozen locations.
- thinkharderdev 1y ago
  > I can have the call in the background while looking at something else without it being impolite. I can eat, drink, or use the restroom at will. This works great when you are one of a dozen anonymous people on a zoom call. less so when you are the senior person in the meeting who everyone is actually talking to and expecting you to make a decision. But this response kind of proves my point. If you are the principal in a meeting, the fact that everyone else in the meeting is zoned out and doing something else is not great.
dh2022 1y ago
But here is the thing-almost all meetings are on Temas. Because Microsoft campus is so spread out managers do not have time to go from building to building to meet other managers. Azure for example is spread out over 10 building just 8n Redmond. Never mind connecting with teams in Bay Area, Atlanta and India. All of these mangers spend their meetings on Teams. Again I do not have a good explanation for RTO.

bko 1y ago

I think it's naive to think that management would push something so unpopular and expensive just because some kind of emotional attachment or to help some other unrelated commercial property owners. I think a more reasonable answer is they think employees are more productive and a large swath of employees don't do anything. I wouldn't believe it unless I've seen it myself. At a large org, there is a significant portion of people that don't do anything meaningful. Sure they'll waste time in the office as well, but at least they're somewhat more productive or available. They're not watching Netflix in their underwear. Every large organization I've been at had these people. It's really that simple. The alternative is really conspiracy level stuff.

HelloMcFly 1y ago
> They're not watching Netflix in their underwear. I'm sure leaders believe this, I'm even sure it happens. Yet despite how obviously and deleteriously widespread this phenomenon is, isn't it amazing that we still can't seem to quantify notable efficiency and effectiveness gains from RTO mandates? And that's setting aside whether any hypothesized (at best) productivity gains are sufficiently high enough to justify the expense of office space rentals and office maintenance. Let's also remember that the typical RTO experience is one where members of a geographically distributed team are RTO'd so they can remain geographically distributed, just working out of company owned or rented spaces instead of their homes.
PleasureBot 1y ago
I think the real answer is that executives at large companies live in a completely different world than their employees. For one the circles they run in are going to be full of like-minded people; i.e. people for whom work is the most important part of their life. People like that want RTO and don't understand those who oppose it. When those are your priorities and all of your pees share them, its going to produce an echo chamber where most executives want RTO. Furthermore their lifestyle is completely different. Most are going to have chauffeurs so they can be productive to/from work. They are going to have aids that take care of the food shopping, laundry, picking kids up from school, cooking, helping with homework etc. RTO does not affect them nearly as much as their employees who still have to deal with all of this in addition to commuting time now. Its really just as simple as that. They lead completely different lives than their employees, are surrounded by other executives in friend and professional groups who have similar lifestyles, and generally don't understand why someone wouldn't want to RTO.

Difwif 1y ago

(2) Seems like a media narrative rather than truth. I don't think that would be anywhere remotely high on a CEO's priority list unless they were a commercial real estate company. It's far more likely a mixture of (1) and actual results - in-person/hybrid teams produce better outcomes (even if why that's true hasn't been deeply evaluated or ultimately falls on management)