Return-to-office (RTO) mandates have caused companies to lose some of their best workers, a study tracking over 3 million workers at 54 “high-tech and financial” firms at the S&P 500 index has found. These companies also have greater challenges finding new talent, the report concluded.
They don’t want “best talent”. They want cheap, compliant talent.
And they wonder why they are becoming commodities
And enshittifying
And most importantly they need warm bodies that give their otherwise worthless, massive commercial real estate investments actual value.
Thats the real issue. Billyuns and billyuns in worthless soulless boxes no one can be allowed to use for, yknow, shelter
Are you a company that requires employees to come in to an office for positions that could be done remotely? You should have to pay double payroll taxes for that position. You’re needlessly taxing society’s infrastructure simply for your own vanity. Time to pay up.
But in reality they are getting tax breaks for it. City governments give big tax breaks to companies that open offices and make people come in because it means those people will come to that part of town and be forced to spend money. It’s good for the businesses around the office.
That’s how the system has worked historically and they are clinging to that tired idea.
If I were to work from home though that money would stay in my local economy making my housing value go up instead of the value of some office building. That’s what I want.
But then why are these office buildings in desolate industry parks devoid of anything that makes a human happy?
They are not meant to make you happy, just to force you to come in for their profits
Because they wernt trying to make you happy? What part of maximizing shareholder value didnt you understand?
No shit. The people who leave when you arbitrarily make their job worse will obviously be the people who have better options.
To upper management, it’s all fields in a spreadsheet anyway. That you need 3 cheaper juniors to replace that one expensive talent to in the end pay more for less is abstracted away and the source of many meetings to figure out why reality doesn’t match projections. That’s called the efficiency of private enterprises.
In my experience, It’s usually replacing employees in one region with people in an other who can do the same job with less pay. RTO is forced layoffs. They are trying to get you to quit so they can hire your replacement in a location with a cheaper cost of living. If your job can be done remotely than it can be done by someone else remotely unless you’re very specialized or operationally critical.
This is obvious to anyone who has been in the tech sector, especially those who work remotely. I’ve been remote for nearly 10 years now.
At this point, I have recruiters from Amazon and Meta pretty regularly contacting me about roles. I always say the same thing: I’ve seen how you treated your remote employees, and while you claim position X is currently remote, I’m not about to put myself in a position to “enjoy” your next round of RTO mandates.
I know I’m not alone in that. Combine groups like mine with the groups already burned by RTO, and you have a sizeable contingent of talent which won’t touch certain companies.
To be clear, it’s very difficult for smaller companies to make a dent against the big players, and those that do tend to just get bought out anyway. But that approach is shockingly inefficient compared to just being able to attract top talent in the first place.
The company i am at is forcing only IT to come in everyday because cfo complained about a printer not working and it wasn’t fixed immediately even tho there is a second backup printer that was working properly. The reason is that things arent being fixing around the office in a timely manner and we need IT to always be available for issues like these. Keep in mind this CFO only comes in twice a week and never puts in a ticket, instead immediately goes to ceo and complains about the issue.
They shouldve asked for volunteers with a bonus attached. Im sure at least one or two people would go in and just hide away a piss about.
That’s ok, they can hire more, cheaper talent that they can burn out in an endless churn of replacements. Their product will probably suffer some, but as long as the bottom line looks good they won’t care.
Does anyone else think that the US is going to experience brain drain to other nations for the first time in its history ?
I’m already looking to move overseas to leave the US. I work in tech. I’ll probably be taking a $100k+ pay cut, but…I just can’t US anymore.
If the treatment by management does scare people away, the incoming fascist government will
The wages aren’t there and the ideology will become a huge detriment.
Maybe they will, but it’s tricky. There’s a huge country to the north with (currently) very good protections for women and working immigrants, and it has all the same time zones (and more) so you don’t have the lag like with shifted clocks.
A number of large companies are again talking about starting or growing their talent base in Canada, and with remote work they can ramp up without shelling out for an office.
My union contract is coming due, and the diaspora from the urban centers among my peers means that an RTO will gut the place; if they can outfit more space again, having released most of their old space. But we’re concerned, so we do intend to preserve and expand the WFAnywhere language to ensure we can work where we are best.
Canadian government wants to get rid of its best talent and only keep the worst employees 👍
I can’t convince my boss to meetup with me downtown, spend the day at his house outside the city, or get together almost ever, bc he thinks it’s a waste of our time besides personal connection, and we’ve known each other a decade so no need. We both worked in offices for decades, most recently at another company together before quarantine. Bc he’s smart… that’s why I’m working for him again
See also: “Dead Sea Effect”
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