Comment by hnthrowaway6543

> - Execs truly believe that culture and productivity are better in office (i.e., what they actually say in their announcements)

fwiw I talk to a lot of execs/board members and the belief here is genuine, whether or not workers agree with it. Most other execs I've talked to have wanted to pull the trigger on full RTO for years but have been afraid because they know it's a hugely unpopular decision. With a major player like Amazon doing it now, it's suddenly a lot easier to justify to employees. I suspect by 2026 fully-remote jobs will be about as common as they were pre-COVID, which is to say they exist but are an exception, not the norm.

> - An opportunity to force attrition without layoffs

this is almost right but "layoffs" is the wrong word. Layoffs = we want to cut spending to improve our cash position/burn rate/etc. It's more accurate to say it's a way to get rid of people who aren't "dedicated" for lack of a better word, without a ton of paperwork. The idea being that if someone hates the company enough that showing up to an office 5 days/week will make them quit, you're better off replacing them.

> - Maintain real estate value / Justify real estate investments

This one's a silly conspiracy theory, most executives don't have heavy investments in commercial real estate, at least not directly... residential has been so much more profitable for decades now

HarHarVeryFunny 4 days ago

> this is almost right but "layoffs" is the wrong word

Well, it's not quite the same as the forced relocation to Alaska, but if you're taking away a hugely popular perk and forcing people back to spending a couple of hours a day commuting, then you have to realize you are going to lose people, even if you rationalize it as a loyalty or team spirit test.

Things like this have a tendency to backfire though ... the people who will chose to quit will be the ones who can most easily get new jobs - the best people. The ones who are unhappy but less able to move will just RTO as pissed off employees.

Reply View 2 replies

hnthrowaway6543 4 days ago

No, layoffs is still the wrong word. If I'm a 100 person company and I lay off 50 employees, I'm now a 50 person company. If I'm a 100 person company and I institute an RTO mandate and 50 people leave, I replace those people with 50 other people and I'm still a 100 person company.
> Things like this have a tendency to backfire though ... the people who will chose to quit will be the ones who can most easily get new jobs - the best people. The ones who are unhappy but less able to move will just RTO as pissed off employees.
There are lots of reasons good people quit. Good people are not universally against RTO. Many are. But many other good people stuck around at Amazon even after the mandated 3 days per week in office, and many good people will stick around with 5 days per week.

Reply View | 1 reply
- endtime 4 days ago
  
  > > the people who will chose to quit will be the ones who can most easily get new jobs - the best people. > > There are lots of reasons good people quit. Good people are not universally against RTO. Many are. But many other good people stuck around at Amazon even after the mandated 3 days per week in office, and many good people will stick around with 5 days per week.
  You are mixing up "quit -> best" and "best -> quit".
  
  Reply View | 0 replies

norir 4 days ago

I find it very unlikely that we return to prepandemic work culture. Too many people value more flexible arrangements and so many people will trade compensation for quality of life and many companies will find it a competitive edge that gives than access to great workers who would otherwise take more money from full time RTO companies.

Reply View 1 reply

ghaff 4 days ago

Maybe. A lot of people have to be in-person and a lot of people can't just casually trade off compensation for coming into an office if that's an option. There's probably more flexibility in general though some of that is as much about mobile communications as post-pandemic.

Reply View | 0 replies

conception 4 days ago

It’s not that execs have investments but if a company spends hundreds of millions of dollars on half-empty buildings, they look bad and are losing money on the investment.

Reply View 0 replies

ghaff 4 days ago

Yeah. What I've seen personally is that normalizing rarely coming into an office means that a lot of people essentially stop coming in even if maybe coming in half the time and doing off-sites actually makes a lot of sense. People just make coming into an office an exceptional event and if other people they know aren't there, why bother? Latterly, if I came into my nominal work location 30 minutes away, I would not know or work with a single person there.

And it may even be understandable to the degree that they end up moving a couple hours away so now it's a huge pain for them and their co-workers to get together. You don't need commercial real-estate conspiracy theories.

Reply View 0 replies

oblio 4 days ago

> This one's a silly conspiracy theory, most executives don't have heavy investments in commercial real estate, at least not directly... residential has been so much more profitable for decades now.

Amazon's main shareholders are Vanguard and the like, that for sure also have big commercial real estate investments.

Reply View 0 replies

xenihn 4 days ago

>This one's a silly conspiracy theory, most executives don't have heavy investments in commercial real estate, at least not directly... residential has been so much more profitable for decades now

What you're replying to doesn't specify commercial.

If you know any executives, you know they own multiple homes. You can connect the dots here between a rise in real-estate prices in tech hubs and RTO directives.

Plus this isn't even about individual executive investments. It is about corporate investments, and duty to shareholders.

Reply View 1 reply

hnthrowaway6543 4 days ago

> If you know any executives, you know they own multiple homes. You can connect the dots here between a rise in real-estate prices in tech hubs and RTO directives.
I don't understand how the massive rise in residential real estate prices from 2020 to 2022 shows any dots between RTO and home prices being connected.

Reply View | 0 replies