RTO Mandates: Hard Truths for Leaders

[@MITSMR]

What are your experiences with RTO mandates? What's the hardest truth you've learned? Let us know in the comments, we'd love to hear your thoughts.

[@maladaptedmalarkey]

Blanket policies and opaque leadership decisions imply that executives are solving a problem that doesn’t require partnership or collaboration with the impacted employees. RTO is just another name for reduction-in-force. Anecdotally, you’re 100% spot-on. I’m a mid career employee at a big tech firm. The top performers are self-selecting out of weird RTO mandates and into roles at companies with more autonomy to pursue functional outcomes.

[@purdysanchez]

The majority of large companies that allow work from home already demand 60 hours a week. How would anyone be able to add 2+ hours a day to those demands?

[@purdysanchez]

After listening to this conversation, it is management speak that is apropos of nothing. The biggest problem companies face are managers who just use the latest buzzwords but have nothing of substance to say. This is the best time for new startups to find a managerial class that actually understands the problems their company is trying to solve.

[@RandomOliphant]

My company had a RTO about 2 years ago and I said fire me, I'm now the only remote worker left in the company. One day my manager will find a new job and I'll probably be fired because they don't know how important I am but the real damage has already been done, all my best peers are gone and I've actually become irreplaceable.

[@Fabdanc]

We have 50% of our workforce in France and 50% in the US. We have struggled to have an RTO mandate that appropriately suites each country, as both have very different circumstances. Adding to the challenge, teams are split between countries and some of those employees have always been remote. So it is very difficult to set a standard at a team level because different rules would apply within the same team. The additional exacerbating factor is that we even have different PTO due to country requirements (or lack thereof)... So we cannot just say "all offices will RTO 4 days per week" when a team has a group of people with 20 days PTO, a group with 30 days PTO, and hired-as-remote employees -- it will inherently be unfair and you just hope that your top talent is not on the unfair side.

[@Sonturist]

What’s crazy is that most meeting are still occurring virtually between employees working in the office.

[@qwerty6789x]

exactly😂

[@mhoover5]

Because the bosses boss is on there and he's remote still 😂

[@RubmaLione]

Yes, especially large corporations where most teams collaborate with other teams and orgs across their country or cross border, or even within the same building if you have back to back meetings for hours. RTO was just a way to justify real estate investments and force people to quit.

[@andraconstantin9459]

Yeah and I've been on calls where 100% of the screens were black cuz the cameras were off. So that whole meeting could have been an email.

[@earnthis1]

Even before Covid my old company did meetings and trainings on zoom. Often, most of us were in the same office infront of our computers in cubicles. Easy to record and log the "event"

[@G5rry]

That phrase "getting tough on employees" says it all - what they care about is preventing employees from feeling they have any sort of self-determination. RTO was their way of attempting to stamp that out. Managers don't like it when an employee stands up for themselves.

[@JUDGEJingles]

This is why I started my own company while still working for a Fortune 100. I'm a high performer, but the inevitable arm-twisting conversations happen where it's just the company exerting power. It's an ace up the sleeve that takes the bite away from any threats.

[@nco_gets_it]

"getting tough on employees" is manager talk that really means something along the lines of "i have no idea what I'm doing, how can I blame my team". The truth is that all of the modern MBA holders in management and executive positions learned the same basic stupidity. If you remember your management theories, from Deming through to the modern day, each successive iteration talked about getting out of the boss over peon mentality of "Theory X" and into the bottom up strategies of ideas like TQM, Six Sigma, etc. Now don't get this wrong--all of them are flawed because they assume that executives and managers have any idea WTF they are doing. They don't. And the greatest problem source is the modern MBA which sees humans as "resources" to "exploit" to produce "value" for the "company". But the company ends up just being the CEO and the humans are just widgets--which is why we call it "human resources" now rather than "personnel". So, the bottom line is that if a manager believes they need to "get tough", it reveals that they are incompetent and stupid. Period. But pay attention to the financial issues in the CEO's portfolio. You'll find that REIT investments are driving most of this. In other words, modern executives are not just profiting from their business, but they have invested in businesses that required tenancy and occupancy to be profitable. It is all a self licking ice cream cone as we say in engineering...a product with no actual features, no actual market, but somehow is profitable between cronies who all eat at the same club in the evening.

[@faethe000]

Yes, what they want is to be able to bully people in person.

[@bitrotter]

The power swung to the individual employees and now they are trying to claw it back. They sure don't know what they are asking for with all that c-level talk about individualism and wanting self-motivated employees. All this right-wing blather about meritocracy has rotted their brains out. They don't want to acknowledge that even the most "meritous" employee is better off being empowered by the systems they work for and not "brought to heel" like dogs and forced into unnatural commuting and work environments.

[@premiertrainingFL]

@@nco_gets_itmanagement should ensuring basic functioning of the team and its members, showing up, understanding the work, meeting minimal requirements, and motivating for improvement.

[@theartofwar1750]

Dinosaur CEO's don't understand that their "creative watercooler conversations" never happened in the first place. If the work ever got done that way, then scheduled meetings would never exist. However, they do. Work doesn't get done impropmptu. It gets done as a result of strategy, planning, and execution. None of those things require being in an office. Its insanity, inefficient, and a complete waste of resources to require people who do all their work on a computer to sit in an office. When I worked in an office, due to my commute, I didnt' mentally start "working" until an hour or two after I arrived and I mentally signed off at 4pm. So how was that more efficient than me working from home and giving the company 3 more additional hours? Just because a CEO can't get his work done without a face to face conversation doesn't mean everyone else can't. Unless you're operating physical machinery or serving customers face to face, then you should be able to do your work at home. And if you can't, then you just suck and need to be fired for sucking. Let's stop covering for dinosaurs who can't adapt.

[@timgibney5590]

Collaboration is code word for micro monitoring. Collaborate = making sure they are not goofing off and working eye of sight. When layoffs happen there is a push to do more with less and focus on effeciency. Many assume to squeeze effeciency you need people in the office since working at home is slacking and slower and can't micro manage as easily to get the productivity up. I am not saying this is true but what managers think with that mindset

[@theartofwar1750]

@@timgibney5590 yeh like what was everyone doing during covid. Making money not "collaborating" lol

[@MITSMR]

You make some great points @theartofwar1750. Commuting can really eat into your productive time. It's true, the remote work debate is complex - what works for one person might not work for another. Finding that balance between structure and flexibility is key, and successful remote work takes good communication and discipline.

[@EarendilStar]

I’m all for work from home, but I’m also for the *option* to be out of the home to work. Homes not only look and feel different for everyone, they serve different purposes for different people (think private sanctuary space vs open door communal). But I’d expect the percentage of employees that want that option to be pretty consistent for a given city, and easy to plan for once he percentage is know.

[@CitizenSlide]

The same argument was made - and debunked - 30 years ago about centralised versus devolved control. As a partner in a global management consultancy at the time, I spent many an hour coaching CEOs on how they could still be effective whilst decentralising their businesses and providing local customer-facing organisations the agency to drive superior shareholder value. Control through visibility and presenteeism is just another fallacy.

[@jlaustill]

I'm a remote software engineer, and it seems to me that one of the missing issues in the comments is the ability to rate based upon results vs rating on easier rhythm stuff. As a remote engineering manager I made it clear to my reports that I didn't care when or where they wrote the code, I only cared about the code. I had one of the most productive teams, emails at 2am, random questions on a Sunday with a note no need to respond until Monday. My teams had amazing velocity, always showed up to scheduled meetings on time, and just got stuff done. I can't imagine having enough energy to also worry about where they all where, what time they walked in the door, etc etc. Now I'm not a manager anymore, but I sure miss my teams :)

[@calvinball1]

Unfortunately there are jobs where success is measured the opposite way. Or not measured at all, and just assumed.

[@goodfortunetoyou]

Just to note: The risk in measuring only "productivity" is burning people out. Management is consistent in misestimating both effort required and what will result from said effort. They're good with short-term metrics, like factory production. They're bad with things that need actual designing, where modifications to things like data structures or communication between systems might determine overall solution effectiveness. This can lead to both inefficient outcomes and a toxic workplace simultaneously. The only way to do this right is to think in ways that are context dependent and trust your people. Measuring something asinine like lines of code sabotages that.

[@jojo-pk]

​@@goodfortunetoyou tbf OP didn't say they measure in lines of code.

[@goodfortunetoyou]

@jojo-pk OP seems to be reasonable. What I was trying to note is that you hear horror stories where some managers will want to encourage those 2AM commits because it signals productivity rather than being real productivity. OP's approach works because he/she knew what to measure and had a good team.

[@shermangoering]

Missing the point here: RTO is about supporting commercial real estate with pressure from chamber of commerce. This is all about supporting the 1% and their commercial real estate portfolios...or 'getting tough' so employees will quit. This is Amazon's approach.

[@Meritumas]

Same with many big corporations around the world. Better to stay away from them.

[@KarlFreeman-fe1nd]

Fudge them. Market forces affect the lower percentage all the time.

[@Shredderbox]

@@KarlFreeman-fe1ndyeah, but the folks normally impacted aren’t real people like CEOs and shareholders.

[@bas3q]

Don't forget companies getting offered cheap investment capital by certain mega-investment funds which have a chunk of their portfolio tied up in commercial RE. That's another major factor in this.

[@filthyfrankblack4067]

So they lose their top performers. sensational

[@kidShibuya]

I used to work all day from home, sometimes long into the night getting quite a bit done. My company demanded RTO, now I sit in the office from 9-5 doing near nothing. Honestly I do in a month now what I used to do in a few days.

[@Pfpfpfpfpf2020]

Same, same 😞

[@sheilaa1333]

Same! The drain of the commute leaves me bitter and it’s affected my output.

[@JP-jn2yx]

Same here! I put in much more effort fully remote than I ever did in the office. Now with a hybrid schedule, I notice that in-office days drain me. When I get home those days, I never log back in.

[@barnabusdoyle4930]

They did this to themselves and what’s going to happen is the companies that forced RTO mandates are going to eventually go bankrupt because the companies that didn’t do this will steal the other companies best employees and keep their costs lower because they don’t have to pay for office space so they will be far more competitive than the RTO companies.

[@yeseniapastor7165]

Exactly

[@richardm450]

The issue is the hypocrisy where the CEOs and the senior executives enjoy home office and private jets while the rest have to return to office

[@kevinpao4269]

Starbucks!

[@AW-gj4ji]

Well let’s add the cheap labour they hire from other countries continue to “work from home”, while the employees located locally has to go back to the office.

[@hrvstmusic]

Literally the ceo and cmo of the company I work for commute from the west coast to Texas weekly. So Mondays and Fridays are travel days so they only work 3 days a week? 😂

[@LlenadeMalo]

@@AW-gj4jiIsn’t that true. I look at the internal job postings and, this is not exaggeration, 2/3 are in India. I’m not even talking tech jobs. Financial Services. The company is telling its US employees they have an expiration date.

[@redbarchetta8782]

It's literally a Master/Slave mentality these CEOs have.

[@boomerau]

The problem with a soft layoff is you don't pick who.

[@pbkobold]

Executives who enact a soft layoff don’t care, they see their stock go up or margins improve. Delivery of individual projects is not their main concern. Middle managers are the ones who are stuck delivering projects with key employees missing. It’s in their professional interest to paper over the problem until they can get it fixed, or more likely get out when things get real bad.

[@acerIOstream]

​@@pbkoboldexecutives don't have to care when they wear a golden parachute.

[@bwcbiz]

Exactly. A lot of the RTO mandates are layoffs in disguise. On the other hand, the selection methods used by a lot of companies for their staff reductions don't reflect actual employee performance anyway.

[@AxelQC]

The ones most in demand are the most likely to leave.

[@purdysanchez]

@bwcbiz, they all seem to think that AI will be the new illegal immigrants. Unfortunately, AI will not create the content or software they think it will.

[@John-zh1ud]

I have two very young kids and a wife and a home 40 minutes from where I have worked at now almost a decade. Working from home, I'm able to jog at lunch, eat healthier options out of habit now, sleep more, save money, see my kids. A quick way to drive me into the ground would be making me sit in traffic for an hour and a half to then sit in a sterile office environment with people I loosely know while I do the same thing I do at home. no, I really don't want to work in the office.

[@kellymoses8566]

Working from home gives you 5 to 10 more hours back per week and saves thousands of dollars a year.

[@A4000]

Sounds like a good position to be replaced by AI - executive team

[@plagiarisedwords]

@@A4000 thing is automation / better tech have been replacing people for decades now. 20 years ago, only blue chip companies could afford big analytics teams. Now the same work can be done by a single person thanks to cloud and better tooling. The result.... way more data analysts as even SMEs start hiring data analysts. Unless AI can replace 100% of a role it has as much chance of boosting demand for workers as reducing it.

[@A4000]

@ but that’s a different argument. Everything you said can be true while stenographers go the way of the milkman. The fact that it could create other jobs or change the human involvement of the same job, is not what’s being argued. The key skills and actual job of taking minutes in court can fully be replaced by AI in 5-10 years. The demand for analysts has increased about as much as the scope and responsibilities of analysts has changed. 🍎 and 🍊

[@plagiarisedwords]

@@A4000 I think the stenographer example is a rare example of a job that can be 100% replaced by AI in the near future. If we take the example of note taking. It's an important skill for project managers who attend a lot of meetings. I suspect right now most will already be using AI note takers because there's no need for 100% accuracy. But it's only a small part of a project manager's job. Even assuming other bits of a PMs job get automated away by different AI. If it's not 100% the net result is to make that 1 person who still must be in the loop more effective. Whenever this happened history shows that demand and salaries increase for such people

[@dathat555]

His point about making RTO decisions at the BU or team level rather than by the CEO is spot on. Nobody I work with is co-located in my office, all are elsewhere, so no benefits from in-person collaboration. But I do lose 2 hours + daily commuting. Sweeping decisions at the macro level are often stupid at the individual level.

[@derringera]

My exact situation. 2 hour commute, less creature comforts, less family/health/hobby time so that I can get on the same video calls in an open office plan that forces me to disrupt people that need to be on site.

[@LlenadeMalo]

I work with people across the entire country every day. Some are located in the same area and have to go to the office three days. You know what they do….They work from their desks. They don’t even get together for meetings. Even the senior leader of the team works from his desk.

[@RogerThat902]

That's exactly right. I'm a computer programmer, we come in 2 days a week and get on calls to talk to people in other locations. Even IF I have to share something with the one other person on my team in the office we still do it via screen sharing. It really is these guys (and some gals) don't understand what their employees actually do for them.

[@nikn2020]

Great talk. Another aspect to this conversation, in the post-Covid world, is that many teams are now geographically dispersed because WFH allowed companies to hire across geographies. With the recent RTO mandates / hybrid-3-day-a-week policies, many people drive to the office but still attend all meetings via Zoom / MS Teams / Slack. Several employees may be the only ones form their team in a specific office. Thus, requiring them to drive to work to attend meetings remotely anyways is a total waste of time, fuel and resources.

[@MITSMR]

Thank you, @nikn2020, glad you enjoyed the interview, and it's a very valid point. Forcing employees who are already participating virtually in meetings to commute simply adds unnecessary expense (both financial and environmental) without any real benefit.

[@samuraijack1371]

Again, you are talking logic. RTO isn’t about logic or what great for everyone or even what’s great for the company itself. It’s about power. That’s it.

[@araimis]

An interesting side effect I have seen at our company is that even those that are local to the main office, they are dialing into meetings about half the time anyway. I always find it odd that I am 1500 miles (I am fully remote) away and on an important meeting, but the guy who lives down the street also called in instead of attending physically.

[@dctackett814]

Yep, I'm going to be one of those in the office without teammates, while driving 4 hours a day, at about $900/month, to get there and back.

[@Hotspur37]

Company i just recently got laid off from was implenting a return to office mandate, but is also laying people off as they outsourced works to teams located in Manilla Phillipines. So yea there is that

[@bryanstephens4800]

Working from home was an effective increase in compensation. RTO is an effective decrease in compensation. Not sure why this is hard for CEOs.

[@user-fb3iy1wh9v]

They know. They do not care. Their compensation does not change or even increases. They can always do remote work from their beach house.

[@gzoechi]

None of them cares about productivity. All they care is feeling powerful, like they are in control. That's difficult enough if they see people sitting on their desks.

[@8BitNaptime]

CEO entrepreneur born in 1964, jeffrey bezos, jeffrey bezos

[@deefdragon]

yeah, None of them cares about productivity, but more importantly, many (atleast a lot of the Silicon valley companies) are pushing to increase "natural" attrition by requiring return to work. Make people leave of their own volition, so they don't have to pay severance. Then, once the market is flooded, they can offer a massive decrease in pay as compared to before, meaning that they make a killing on salaries.

[@soapgirlsrule]

I also think they're trying to get away from their families and have emotional affairs at the office.

[@gzoechi]

@soapgirlsrule Or their family's wellbeing depends on them being away for at least a few hours a day

[@RogerThat902]

@@soapgirlsrule Yeah, the only people I've seen in favor of it are the types that have their only real "friends" at work. Of course they want to return to the office, that's their social life.

[@cageordie]

My one day in the office each week involves getting up at 5:30am instead of 8am to miss traffic and be in the office by 7am. Then I spend half the day in meetings I don't need to attend in person, and the rest of the day chatting to whoever I see. Mostly not people I work with, and not on my program.

[@Embers7]

Went through this insanity. I had a 2 hour commute into NYC each way and couldn't drop off, pick up, or often even see my kids for a job that was possible to do 100% remotely; that we *were* doing 100% remotely before the office opened. The CEO, a very rich and famous person, insisted this was vital for "culture", even though he worked less than 10 hours a week himself. Long story short, the team's productivity plummeted, the product didn't ship, and now the company itself is struggling. 2/3 of the company has left and the CEO has a 23% approval rating. As for me, I was so burnt out that I decided to accelerate my FIRE plans, and retired in my early 40s. I actually love what I do, but workplace conditions around it have become so inhumane that I saw no way to continue in the workforce while being a good parent or a balanced human being. Was it worth it?

[@AW-gj4ji]

I can only guess that CEO wanted to start his FIRE journey too. He’s waiting to get a sweet severance package from the board 😂.

[@ak5659]

Yet another example of higher ups no having to pay a price for their poor decisions.

[@Lomhow]

Too early to retire. Future costs are too unstable. But you did the right thing by leaving. Unhinged moron boss got a reality check.

[@salemonz]

My company has a 4-day/week in office mandate (for those in the main HQ city). My team is located in multiple time zones and countries. I’m on zoom all day. I sit in office alone, surrounded by others who’ve been forced into office, each of them on zoom all day. Our office is flex seating of course (to save money), so you never know where anyone is physically sitting (or if their “home day” is that day or not). Everybody just keeps to themselves. I eat alone. I sit and sigh a lot.

[@ThePragmatist839]

This. If I had my own office, or had a smaller room with my team where I talk to my colleagues every day I’d absolutely come in. But it’s always hotdesking, sitting in a row of desks next to people I’ve never seen before, attending meetings on Teams all day.

[@RubmaLione]

It’s mostly about protecting corporate real estate investment, not actually about productivity or performance. “Look at our giant shiny office” doesn’t sound so good to investors and shareholders if it’s mostly empty. Also, many cities wrongly created commercial-only zones, so when remote and hybrid work became more popular, cities and restaurants in these zones started to blame remote work for their decline in business, not realizing the issue was the city single-zoning their area to commercial use only (case in point, downtown San Francisco). We need commercial centers to build more housing and convert offices into residential units so this stops becoming the scapegoat.

[@ThatGuy-uv2br]

Some of these larger companies are provided tax incentives for their offices by state and local government, and in order to get those incentives, people need to be in the office. That's at least partly why Amazon went back to office

[@ElimEx1]

So much more sick leave since RTO! I know of 3 teams that are currently decimated by sick leave. Productivity is down to zero

[@bas3q]

Wait, you mean shoving people (many who have kids) into the same small space with each other for 40 hours a week leads people to get sick and causes significant productivity loss for the company? My mind is blown...

[@MikeTietel]

Outsource my team to India. Then offshore or outsource many of the teams I collaborate with. Then tell everyone to RTO for collaboration. Then move away from assigned office/cube space to “hoteling”. A - you can’t control whether a vendor is in the office or WFH. B - my collaboration is via a teams call whether I’m in the office or at home, so what’s the difference? C - not having assigned office space made it really easy to walk out the door with my personal effects. All I needed was my jacket and my car keys.

[@madimakes]

Thank you for being a truth teller in a climate that seems to be full of lies; we need voices without a vested interest in "winning" to be reporting on this. I would even appreciate if companies would simply say "we don't trust you". Teams are not privy to what's being communicated to leadership, and it makes even some of the closest leadership levels seem disingenuous. They lost many of their employees when they first started laying down the hammer, whether or not they left immediately or not. "You can't command and control your way out of the future". Thank you. For a company that alleges long term thinking, the person at the head of my organization is blatantly and obviously employing command and control tactics to a group of people that they hired specifically to be smart enough to see through it, thereby jeopardizing their future. Or, perhaps they're more practically thinking that like many things, this time period will be long and forgotten by the time the individuals who were smited have moved on.

[@eh42]

COVID / WFH drove a subtle but real change to how teams are constructed. We saw a real shift from geographic teams (peers in the office) to best of breed teams (the "right" person from any region/office). Now we are mandated to come into the office, and we ignore or cube mates while working virtually (from the office) with dispersed team members.

[@LesNessman2001]

RTO biggest challenge is commuting… traffic. It has always sucked the soul out of people, and it continues to. RTO also takes flexibility away. I specifically moved out of the city (an hour out) because it’s nicer and cheaper here.

[@JusticeFreedomDestin]

It’s always been about control. This has a lot of nice business jargon to explain it to corporate robots

[@ChopperChad]

No shit. I mean, you're getting paid to do something. You think you're going to work for someone else and they just let you do you? Give me a break.

[@ccxcrazy]

I was forced back in office three days a week. I am less productive each day i am in office and look forward to the days i am at home to get more work done. There has also been a decline in my mental and physical health as a result of adding three hours to my workday each time i am in office for commuting, and spending less time sleeping, exercising and being with friends and family. CEOs need to stop being dinosaurs and adapt. Take the fact that employees are having to be FORCED back as a clue. And if you were wondering, yes all of my meetings when i am in office are still virtual.

[@Raxfyr]

"why is there such a disconnect between the people earning $70k and their boss who makes $15 million??" is this a real question that people have trouble understanding?

[@eh42]

I asked what KPI (other than commercial REIT ROI) management thinks will improve with us returning to the office. The answer was, and I kid you not, "We are creating a new dashboard that will show us which employees are scanning in so we can track attendance".

[@windskm]

My god How stupid are those mfs

[@Hotspur37]

managers do love their dashboards

[@dctackett814]

Been remote since 2016, after the company relocated multiple offices they now say I'll have to come into the office. That's now a 4-hour a day drive to sit in an office without any coworkers. That's almost $1k a month in expenses for me; new car, insurance, fees, gas, maintenance, etc.. For company culture? GMAFB, the people who work in the offices still meet on video calls. The CEO brags about the exclusives clubs he's in, this is a power move. It says IDGAF about you, pawn.

[@ivan-to2zy]

Wow! I'm soooo shocked at these completely unexpected findings! Who'd have thought?!?

[@theartofwar1750]

@@ivan-to2zy 🤣

[@MITSMR]

Thanks for your comment, @ @ivan-to2zy - It is surprising to us as well that many CEOs still think RTO mandates are going to improve productivity when in fact they're likely to prove damaging to the bottom line in the near future.

[@gonzog8d]

I'm conspiracy minded. I wonder how much of this is driven by the commercial real estate crunch. Bad debt i.e. delinquent mortgage payments on commercial properties is greater than liquid assets at the all major banks. Is forcing people to offices a way to try and scrounge up missing rents? Please let me know if I have my facts wrong.

[@SportPlusDad]

@@gonzog8d might be a conspiracy, but it’s not a secret.

[@enginerdy]

@@gonzog8dmore like a bunch of PR efforts and lobbying in the WSJ and those sorts of circles by people with stakes in commercial real estate. No conspiracy required, just influence campaigns.

[@dontbanmebrodontbanme5403]

We already proved during the pandemic that we could stay at home and be just as productive. The problem is, no matter how much workers continue to increase productivity, wages don't go up with it. So people found out, hey, I can at least save money by working from home. NO, you must come back to work. Well, no shock that productivity isn't any higher and people aren't happy. I work as a programmer, 100% from home. I OFTEN do work outside of work hours. When I used to go into the office, when I close my laptop, I'm done for the day. I'm LESS productive going into the office. I'm not saying going into the office doesn't have its benefits. But forcing people into the office 5 days a week with no flexibility? It's not a shocker that people are refusing to work even harder for the same paycheck.

[@CD-vb9fi]

Yep, I do a lot of script writing and light programming for much of my own work. I am more productive at home because I am happier and more motivated there. When I was in the office I wound up "visiting" with team members a lot more than I do now that I am a home.

[@earnthis1]

CEO's, corporate landlords, and bosses in general are gonna HATE this reporting. Keep up the good work!

[@RondoDondo]

I love videos and articles that are a smart person talking in a field in which they are an expert about a conclusion they’ve come to looking at a bunch of data

[@jezhou-dev]

Speaking as a software dev: Remote work / WFH can definitely work with the right company culture. It requires commitment to remote work from leadership, a lot of trust between employees, and processes that allow managers/leaders to verify work in case performance becomes a concern. I know many software devs seem to hate Agile, but that is an example of a process that works really well with remote work in my experience, for personal accountability and observability of what you're doing to others. I also think it's a fallacy to think that you need to be working 8 hours a day to be productive. I know many people that have done their best work in a solid 2 hour uninterrupted block, and those uninterrupted blocks are sometimes best found in a WFH environment. The hours we put in as employees is not linearly tied to business impact for many kinds of remote jobs. I agree that a lot of RTO policies seem like a soft layoff. It's too bad the remote work culture has escaped Pandora's box, and that bigger companies will suffer for not being more up to date with their hiring and retention practices.

[@Weaver_Games]

I don't think we hate Agile, I think we hate SCRUM because it's very conception breaks the first line of the agile manifesto. Either way, I agree with you. I'm at a remote software job and my work is tracked pretty rigorously. I'm fine with that trade off for being able to work from home.

[@AW-gj4ji]

What I hate is people expecting work to be done when there are 5-8 daily meetings 😅.

[@LlenadeMalo]

It’s just fallacious to think someone is working for an entire workday. For example, eight hours. You mean big brains think someone is “working” from the minute they sit down at 8am to the minute they get up at 5pm? No one goes to the bathroom, no one has lunch, no one chats with a co-worker about lunch plans, no one takes a quick walk to rejuvenate. They just work like a robot all day. When I do planning for my team, I base it on a six hour work day. That’s two hours they help others, stare at the wall, work on things that are not their core job, but are needed (SMEs for). This has been the case even when full time work from office. Why would the home work be any different?

[@Weaver_Games]

@@LlenadeMalo I think it's also funny to think people don't waste time at the office. Hang around the break room, eating snacks, coffee breaks, extended lunches, etc. I used to work at a 500 person company with a massive office with tons of amenities (gym, game room, free snacks, etc. back when companies were trying to copy all those "google perks"). People would waste a massive amount of time. These same companies have no qualms about creating 5 pointless meetings with 30 minutes between them that effectively delete an entire day's worth of productivity.

[@davemerkury]

I am the lone employee on my team in my area. We come to work 2 days a week and I hate the commute. Drivers are reckless and sleepy at the wheel. At the office, I literally do the same thing I do at home with no one from my team locally. Not to mention, some people are dirty, gross, and smell musty. I’m hearing sounds I don’t want to hear at all while working. Also, we have way too many unnecessary teams meetings and processes with stunt any meaningful progress.

[@zibbitybibbitybop]

Nationwide is forcing all of us back to office two days a week after appearing to commit to full WFH, and had the gall to tell us it's about "culture", not money. Cue the surprised Pikachu face when employee survey results right afterwards dropped massively.

[@irvingwashingtonable]

I thought it was generally understood that RTO is just a way to do layoffs without having to report them.

[@dp2120]

That’s not the insight. No company wants to layoff their most productive employees. Layoffs need to be targeted to truly improve the company. RTO layoffs end up driving away employees with the most options - the best employees.

[@irvingwashingtonable]

@@dp2120 it is extremely funny that you think layoffs are usually targeted. I mean, I guess like a shotgun is targeted at a cluster of people, maybe. Gotta make wall street happy before your options expire!

[@dp2120]

@@irvingwashingtonable They are targeted - for cost-savings and ideally long-term benefit. So entire divisions that aren't as important to the company or maybe specific people who are low performers or whose cost outpaces their productivity. No one is saying that layoffs always target low performers - just that a company never wants to disproportionately target high performers - which is what RTO mandates do.

[@nua1234]

@@irvingwashingtonableCompanies frequently layoff top performers, when they are downsizing. The numbers of people laid off and future wage savings is all that matters, especially if board members are looking for their short term bonuses.

[@ReaveIdono]

​@@dp2120 Layoffs always negatively impact a company. Their bottom line, morale, and new hires. The line may still go up but that's do to consumers. Not the staff.

[@corgeousgeorge]

This is extremely helpful and well put together. Host and production value are excellent and the way she presents is very matter of fact and positive while still asking solid questions. It's incredible to me how they don't use filler words at all. Very impressive.

[@andrewfriedrichs9340]

Our company mandated full RTO without any rules or guidelines or follow-up, so we mostly ignore them and do hybrid.

[@calvinball1]

This is what happens when upper management wants the company to continue to run smoothly despite leadership's wishes, haha. Amazing.

[@Weaver_Games]

My office at my last office job was so far away the commute just drained me and I honestly got effectively no work done on the in-office days, and the company did not pay anywhere near enough to live near the office.

[@JeffersonEagley]

Top talent here. I won't take another in-office role again. Stop imposing a lifestyle on your employees just based on object permanent bias and your ego / emotions.

[@cruisinusa5110]

I will NEVER again work in an office. The overlords can bite me.

[@stevef]

Great interview and discussion. RTO is about control and lack of trust, not productivity. Leadership needs to look within to understand why and create policies that makes sense and don't chase away top talent.

[@who2u333]

Why is there a disconnect between CEOs and the average worker? I wonder.

[@alexschlake9701]

Are executives not being forthcoming with why they're requiring RTO? Things like tax breaks in the city in which the office resides, which might depend on the employment of individuals who physically work within that city? As well as the real estate costs, especially when the company owns the real estate outright?

[@jonr3198]

If it's a considered decision based on hard facts, they would use those as evidence for why the mandate was needed. When it's couched as an executive decision for the good of company culture, you know it's a purely emotional and gut-based decision with no objective foundation

[@Oddesteidolon]

No. It's all, "our teams innovate better in person" and "our culture thrives when we are together".

[@BushnoSkillzz]

"But you don't understand, the empty cubicles are ruining my cool boss aesthetic when I visit an office once a quarter."

[@FuriousTheGeorge]

My company implemented RTO and guess what happened? There wasn't enough room for everyone because they hired so much during the last 4 years.

[@adambickford8720]

You better be prepared to pay a ~25+% premium for in office just to break even on the commute.

[@nsanerydah]

While that might be desirable, it’s not likely in most circumstances.

[@adambickford8720]

@@nsanerydah Thats exactly the economic advantage the competition enjoys by offering full remote. Don't be shocked when the more talented devs don't want to take a massive pay cut by commuting.

[@ReaveIdono]

​@@adambickford8720Right!!! I work remotely currently but if a RTO happens that impacts me I will gladly take a pay cut of 10-15% just to work somewhere else that offers remote work. But any job that requires in office is upcharged.

[@nsanerydah]

@@adambickford8720 I agree with your assessment. Without any hard evidence, it feels like many industry leaders are working together to push the issue across large sectors of business. If they can get behind each other, they effectively reduce the opportunity for people to look elsewhere, increasing the likelihood that people just cave and stay at their positions. I feel like this will be a tipping point in how many service jobs hire and retain talent. Many employers seem to care more for butts-in-seats rather than work output. The COVIDS really did shake up labor markets unlike anything we’ve seen before.

[@bryanbooneart]

My company likes having people in the office. For me that means the stress of driving twice a day, an hour lost to that drive all so I can put on noise canceling headphones to either block out office noise so I can concentrate or to be on video calls… often with people sitting near me as well as in other locations and countries . Once in a very rare occasion it’s nice to physically meet up, but we could do that quarterly. I lose productivity to concentration losses and more headaches. At home I can take a break to get a healthy snack or take a walk much easier than at an office complex.

[@nikn2020]

By requiring people to be in offices, without considering if they really need to be, you are simply adding to traffic congestion in cities and making the commute harder for people who actually need to be in the office. Many of the famous CEOs who have implemented such policies talk a lot about carbon footprint. Well, letting people WFH is a low-hanging fruit when it comes to reducing emissions. If these 'leaders' really were interested in reducing carbon footprint, they could easily do this TODAY rather than proposing convoluted plans which take effect 5-10 years into the future.

[@MITSMR]

You make a valid point about the inconsistency between promoting sustainability and requiring commutes when remote work is equally viable. Mandating office presence directly contradicts efforts to reduce carbon emissions, especially considering WFH offers an immediate way to lessen our environmental impact. It's crucial for leaders who champion sustainability to align their actions with their words and prioritize genuine solutions over empty promises.

[@beno3353]

What if everything, even carbon reduction is just a form of budget cuts without labelling it as such publicly?

[@AW-gj4ji]

Iif companies were rewarded for the emission reduction by the government. They will probably embrace wfh. Not that I think it’s worth rewarding for, but the governments had rewarded carbon tax credits for ridiculous cases, such as buying a piece of land to prevent i The trees from being cut down. Then the company turns around and sell it for a profit and the trees are cut down anyway. WFH actually makes sense in comparison.

[@mgene63]

Great conversation. Great interview. I agree with all of it. 9:19 especially the performance and not activity.

[@kilngod1943]

Sadly, far too many execs got ahead by brown nosing in the office, being the last by the watercooler. Innovators leave an organization once the management kills their engagment or paycheck because of Wall Street metrics or exec's not wanting to share the wealth. I know plenty of semi-retire innovators, a whole generation of the best leaders and innovators who made millions with startups and they have zero tolerance for brown nosing or nosers.

[@kellymoses8566]

I work from home and have built a incredibly comfortable home office in which I am VERY productive in. If I get in the zone I don't have to stop to go home and will continue to work until late at night.

[@MikeLikesChannel]

We fired the middle management instead. My new “manager” was a senior director so it’s me (engineer) > manager > VP of development > CTO. Much flatter and more efficient.

[@thecloud-yt8ly]

I’ve been getting pushed harder and harder - work from home is a little push back. My productivity is important to me and I keep it high. If I get a mandate for full RTO - I’m gone, done, splitsville - drop what I’m doing and leaving that minute.

[@lkuzmanov]

Eloquently put - and I'm glad it's being said - but all of this should be obvious if you actually think of your employees as people.

[@ladyeowyn42]

Rational people. We know what we are measured by and deemphasize other things. RTO tells us that attendance is the metric.

[@MayaUndefined]

leaders don't care if it's backfiring the entire point was to do a back door layoff without calling it a layoff and avoid upsetting stock analysts. CEOs do not care. all they want is line goes up

[@Leorizing]

Thanks. That’s exactly what my tech company had started to do. Crack down harder on employees and reduce remote opportunities to soft nudge us away. Thanks for this insightful chat.

[@andrewobrien8665]

Is it a disconnect? It's pretty clear that companies like Amazon, Dell, and Walmart are executing stealth layoffs under the guise of RTO. They know that their staff doesn't want it. But their up to their necks in commercial real estate that's in the red. Honestly IHMO, RTOs by companies should be seen as a sign of financial issues and a cue to short their stocks.

[@peterschorn1]

Apparently CEOs *like* paying for rent, electricity, water, connectivity, insurance and security, just to lord it over all those employees in a cubicle farm they'll never visit.

[@kimjellen4508]

RTO is an RIF. Plain and simple. And in this market, execs think employees, even high performers, are “easy to replace.”

[@kimjellen4508]

Please do some research into the RIF aspect of RTO! 👍

[@blairmurri8741]

Joke's on the executives. Must have had a US MBA education that does NOT include anything related to economics.

[@manfredstrappen7491]

I used fly managers around to meetings. They’d spend money on all the technology for remote meetings yet they’d insist on flying around to have 1-3 hr “meetings” (mostly small talk, I mean “team building”) in person. Such a waste of time and money. Largely a power move. That way they’d get the pleasure of lower level people waiting at airports to shuttle them back and forth and physically establish the power dynamic.

[@LeonardHarris]

Finally something sensible about RTO.

[@ladyeowyn42]

Instant RTO is cruel if you have kids old enough to self care but too young to legally leave alone, eg 7-12.

[@chfgn]

The only “problem” that RTO solves is employee job satisfaction. If your corporate strategy revolves around your employees being miserable then go ahead, but don’t be surprised when miserable people produce miserable results.

[@Hotspur37]

managment just doubles down when results start dropping they continue to blame RTO and insist even more office time must be needed for company culture, when that doesnt work they start the cost cutting by laying off the expensive employees, usually the ones that have been there the longest first, now the have lost the knowledge so results keep going down, then to try cut more cost they out source the whole office to cheaper over seas staff. If they had just left it alone covid showed companies can be successful with work from home. People want to work and be productive but we are not going to do it for no reward

[@P_Mann]

It might be interesting to see how many companies with RTO plans also have heavy workplace monitoring and statements like, “…no expectations of privacy on premises…” in their handbooks.

[@kellymoses8566]

Time spent commuting to work should be compensated. Then companies wouldn't be so eager to require people to commute to the office.

[@windskm]

True, if lunch time is often paid then why isn’t commuting the same

[@Beth-sn9ip]

Love it!

[@Miikhiel]

I think these are good assessments and analyses of our current corporation climate; however, the mandates to have people RTO are more so economic decisions than professional or even organizational. What I mean by that is cities/real estate /need/ warm bodies to justify the costs of having buildings, certain operations, etc. In their eyes: if people all worked from home, many of these commercial economies would be endangered of collapse. Perhaps executives are being incentivized by said commercial real estate businesses and other similar operatives to hold their employees captive at the office whilst citing “corporate culture, collaboration” and whatever other trite blither. The problem is the world is or has largely moved on even if CEOs, commercial real estate, governments, etc. don’t see that. We will never be able to fully return to what life used to be prior 2019. Those who don’t adapt with the timed and artificially imposed restrictions will invariably suffer losses.

[@clownhands]

RTO causes a significant percentage to resign, shrinks the payroll, and enables a stock buyback. Short term pop, long term damage.

[@GeoFry3]

Boss: i want you to give me an extra 10 hours a week (commuting) no extra pay. Workers: no

[@je5406]

Boss: resignation accepted

[@GeoFry3]

@je5406 company folds 6 months later

[@25jessieg]

Just look at field sales jobs. I make over $250k a year. Haven't been in an office in 10 years. We are the people who literally pay the salaries for the rest of the company. We do just fine without the need to go into the office.

[@litchips]

My company is flexible and allows WFH if the role is compatible with it. I am working more than ever, because there's no division between being at home and working but am more happy because it solves so many problems with kids. Also, we can reach out and hire away some good talent from RTO companies pretty much at will. Lots of resentment from people who want to be treated like adults and instead effectively have to go to homeroom to take attendance.

[@snicholson8884]

Imagine seeing an employee, who make a singke digit percentage of what you make, at a coffee shop in the middle of the day or in another country enjoying life. How dare they have the same privilage that you do, even if theyre fullfilling all of their quotas. Its about rank and class. To be boss, must mean youre on top. Never outshine the master.

[@illegal.strong]

Hmm, I could certainly be wrong here, but I was under the impression that RTO was also driven by the need to prevent commercial real estate collapse since so many retirement funds contain CRE assets. Additionally, the micro-economies that surround large CRE complexes are struggling to profit now that their transaction velocity has screeched to a halt.

[@VBrinkV]

My team has nothing but superstar performers. We all work fully remote, and we are all distributed worldwide. We have extremely happy clients. Only extremely occasional travel is needed. What's not to love?

[@woofydoggie]

This is a great discussion/interview. A good watch!

[@gtjj22]

It was never about productivity, it was about maintaining the value of their commercial real estate

[@FeistyKev]

great work!

[@ShredST]

My company has a 3-day hybrid policy, and we literally don't have enough office space for everyone to show up at the same time.

[@kevinpao4269]

But CEOs and upper managements with offices doesn't care. You peasants can fight it out for a seat

[@Meritumas]

Once a week should be enough tbh

[@groxx]

That's what mine did too. Not enough space, not enough meeting rooms, and that's with only about 60% following the rule. It obviously doesn't work. It obviously *wasn't going to* work. There's no way this isn't malicious.

[@djinn666]

It'll be harder and harder to switch to RTO because while older companies like Amazon probably have big offices already sitting empty, newer companies will only have offices sized for their sales org. To get enough office space to fit everyone (especially if geographically distributed) will cost much more.

[@Nickelodeon81]

My workplace recently built a new office building with 70% capacity and hybrid working. RTO ain't coming back.

[@roscocsa]

I’m currently unemployed, And worked for 22 years as a network and systems admin. EVERYTHING I did was remote. In the office or out. So I took a chance, bought my dream home and offered to either go 100% remote or resign.

[@JustherefortheLOLZ]

Well, they gave you your answer. Your job is being done by a $15/hour employee in Bangalore. A manager told my Unix Admin as much… I can get rid of you and replace you with a $15/hr offshore SA… forget that this guy had almost 30 years experience.

[@lizp4615]

I will not consider job openings that are not remote-only. being able to work remotely dramatically reduces my cost of living because i can live somewhere cheaper. my quality of life has dramatically improved because i don't have to spend three hours in traffic every day. some people may actually prefer hybrid, and bully for those that do, but hybrid requires you to still be within commuting distance, meaning you're not realizing the lower cost of living because you're still going to have to live within the same distance as you would if you had to go in every day. sure, you might spend 6 hours in traffic every week instead of 15, and that's not nothing, but if it's not necessary for me to complete my work, i'm not going to go into the office. my autistic ass is less productive in an office. this puts me at a significant disadvantage when it comes to recruiting, but i'm also willing and able to be flexible on compensation because my cost of living is substantially lower, and that's not nothing from a payroll perspective. i don't expect or need FAANG level compensation if my suburban mortgage is less than half of what renting in the city would be. oh also RTO is usually just a way of being extra cheap when you need to do layoffs. don't have to pay severance if they quit. rollsafe.gif

[@-_James_-]

We have had it suggested that it would be nice if we came to the office a few times a week, but no hard mandate to do so. I work strictly from home, and will never go back to the office, and my manager even commented to me just the other day that he knows that if he asked me to come back in on a regular basis, I'd quit. Which I would.

[@dctackett814]

For some, it's a crack down, I heard today that we're going to be starting up yet another, doomed to fail, individual productivity reporting process. But this time they'll use a dashboard! I dont get why they can't understand that it cannot work. We'll invest so much into it and it won't tell anyone anything, we're not an assembly line.

[@AdmiralMEOW1]

The discussion on managers only just realising they should be measuring performance based on outcomes is crazy to me. It's the only thing they should have ever been focussing on

[@Not.Jason.from.the.southwest]

I worked my whole early life on the premises of my company. I worked my way to an amazing remote job. The flexibility of the schedule and work environment was great and I felt I could work at that job until I retired. The RTO mandate came out and it wrecked my life. I made it for a year to gauge if it was me or the job. After a year I sadly quit and went to another remote job. My new job went to mandatory in office all week a month after I started. I immediately quit, sold my home and extra stuff,and moved back in with my parents. It is easier for me to remain unemployed , and cheaper for me to live in my mother's basement, than invest in living near a job.

[@qwerty6789x]

im in Asia working on an American MSP. RTO mandate here too and many exec visiting us almost twice a month. that says something they know "remote workers" are feasibile, productive and can save money.

[@daveys]

My favourite discussion was with my boss while running a team “are they coming into the office 3 days a week?” “Sure, as far as you know” - because you can’t tell that they’re at home from the fact that they’re trusted to do the job and all the work gets done.

[@RyanRuark]

RTO isn’t about productivity, it’s about cutting labor costs while avoiding regulatory scrutiny. Nothing demonstrates the impotence and intellectual inadequacy of a leader like demanding an RTO.

[@ImperiumLibertas]

All of the unbiased studies show no net benefit for RTO. They know this, executives aren't stupid. They know exactly what they are doing regardless if they want to admit it or not.

[@blackoak4978]

Meanwhile they're paying for large offices they don't even need

[@aaroncorsi]

The reason "leadership" keeps ignoring this data is because RTO isn't actually about performance or collaboration like they pretend. It's actually about preserving their investment in commercial real estate at the expense of their employees. That's why the mandates never make sense and aren't good for the actual productivity of the business. It's either propping up the CEO's personal financial stake in commercial real estate or improving the way financials appear to shareholders because without RTO it's obvious that they have a giant cost center from their offices that aren't being used. If they actually said that was the reason it would be received even worse by employees so they just keep making up excuses about collaboration and "water cooler conversations" to make it sound more appealing.

[@deathsheadhawkmoth1]

Y'all, they want people to quit.

[@wjhdrew]

And then hire the replacements for 1.25x with no domain knowledge and a ramp time. Short term gain at the cost of heavy long term costs/losses that they don’t care about.

[@theamazingmarlbito6293]

It's funny how this never came up

[@adama7752]

​@@theamazingmarlbito62937:50

[@mayiko1]

When I was in the office there were people that did not work at all. There was a guy that just walked around the office socializing. And forget anything being done if there was a potluck, cupcake day or passing out company merch.

[@aussieexpatwatches]

After 10.5 years at amazon, building out there edge infrastructure, I quit over RTO.

[@kojopilgrim9550]

I would like to submit the idea that RTO mandates are really used to justify paying for expensive real estate

[@NealBlanchard-db5tz]

Don't forget what happened before covid. The move to herding employees in barns( large open space offices with no privacy). Consider the time spent in making decisions, not for work, but for things external to work. The easier it is to solved external problems via direct communication with a spouse or other family members at home than at work. Managing child care must be much easier with remote work. If you are in open plan and you must deal with external problems consider what you must due, time wasted to do it. Leave the building to make a call, sit in your car to make a call. These add up and the effectiveness of the communication decreased without face to face decision making. So basically my argument is that RTW effect the second job you have, your life ,to a greater extent than the positive effect it has on being at work. Job decisions because they lack the emotional component are harder to solve from work than home. Work decision are goal oriented and thus better defined and thus easier to make anywhere.

[@AxelQC]

Telework is a negative cost benefit for employees. It costs businesses more money to drag employees in, which doesn't increase productivity and angers employees.

[@spyrule]

It also has other side problems. In my city (Ottawa, Canada), the public transit has been under major "improvements" for 4 years, with 3 more to go (building a subway), but during this time it has proven to be incredibly unreliable. Therefor the majority of the employee's who work downtown (which is probably 80% government employees), are all driving. They just mandated RTO 3 days a week for nearly 200k people, and suddenly the downtown core cannot handle it. Transit cannot cope, due to constructions, two major parking lots have been demolished and not replaced, and then the ongoing construction has caused all sorts of delays. I live, what would normally be 7-15 minute drive to the downtown core. Just this week it took me 55 minutes to get downtown, and then when I did, I literally could not find parking. I had to double park temporarily, run up to my office, inform my boss of the problem, and then drove back home to work from home. That took up almost 3 hours of my day. Wasted just trying to get to work. There is much better strategies. Our policy is simple, 1 day per week, plan to use the office if you are hosting a major/important event (mostly for internet reliability). Forced RTO is a narrow minded view, and the only people really screaming for it, are those who own stocks in commercial property.

[@KeenMixer]

If I had to return to the office full time, I'd barely make rent since the cost of living has outpaced any merit increases at work combined with the cost of a daily commute and rising rents. As others have mentioned, I also feel that I'm far more productive working from home and able to collaborate just as effectively as ever thanks to things like Teams and Zoom. Even working from home, I still end up working freelance on my off hours to help make ends meet.

[@Solstice42]

I call RTO, “Accelerated Attrition” (he calls it Soft-Layoff) - either way, it’s a way for companies to downsize without bad press. Further, in my research, RTO costs male employees at least a 6% pay cut - and women as much as 9% … can we get some research on this inequality?!

[@BrianElliott-tt4zi]

Thanks -- and there is indeed research that shows the impact is worse for women. Upwork survey of executives this summer, 63% said RTO mandates disproportionately impacted women more then men, Mark Ma at U Pitt studied showed women were 2-3X more likely to leave -- 90% of the time still in the US, they're the primary caregiver. I talked about that more in this interview: kzbin.info/www/bejne/apbGkKyQeLyCebs

[@Ari_00X]

i've seen many so called "stars" and "favourites" even move to other cities / towns! Would be interesting to see how that works out!!

[@urraca_i]

FANTASTIC

[@Ocker3]

Excellent summary

[@ProgrammingWIthRiley]

the best CEOs have stayed remote and saw success because of it.