This is exactly what my wife is experiencing in her state gov position. It’s a hybrid state/corp department and the CEO says they need to RTO even though he admits they are more productive at home. He literally said it’s because they are still paying for the building and feel it’s being underutilized. They have been remote for 5 years and some of the employees moved across the state and most have said they are quitting.
You think this is about RTO? He knows they’ll quit. That’s the point. You don’t pay severance to quitters. Anyone that’s truly critical to the company will somehow get an exception.
He literally said it’s because they are still paying for the building and feel it’s being underutilized.
He’s just saying the quiet part out loud. That’s always what RTO mandates were about. Companies were trapped in long rental contracts with office buildings, and wanted to use the space they were renting. And office space owners had zero incentive to actually release those contracts, because they saw the writing on the wall and realized their land value was going to plummet if office space demand dropped.
I think it has more to do with lazy management. Before WFH their job was basically just making sure the employees were sitting at their desks at a specific time and didn’t leave until after a specific time. So 9am, you’re sitting at your desk, at 5pm you’re sitting at your desk then they’ve done their job for the day.
WFH means they need to know that you’re actually working. So they have to know what you do (many bosses don’t actually know what their employees do) and have some way to measure that you’re doing that thing in a reasonable amount of time. It’s actually their job to do this even if you’re in the office, but it’s easier to just make sure you’re in a location where work is the only thing you can do and assume you’re doing work because there’s nothing else to do.
Also bosses are hesitant to verbally abuse employees over video chat as that can easily be recorded. RTO solves problems for managers that like to yell at their employees.
But they can’t say “we’re lazy and we want to be able to yell at you” so they come up with other reasons.
Sure, sometimes the real estate thing can be a factor when a company got massive tax breaks from the government under the promise of that the new Amazooglesoft “campus” will be a big economic driver for a city with a bunch of cities competing to give the biggest tax breaks to entice those companies to go there. The governments that gave those incentives will probably take them away (they should, those companies should be paying taxes) because there actually hasn’t been economic stimulus for the neighbourhoods of those offices spaces because of WFH. So in those cases you have to go to a place so you can buy lunch (and maybe go shopping after work) so your company can still get tax breaks.
This is exactly what my wife is experiencing in her state gov position. It’s a hybrid state/corp department and the CEO says they need to RTO even though he admits they are more productive at home. He literally said it’s because they are still paying for the building and feel it’s being underutilized. They have been remote for 5 years and some of the employees moved across the state and most have said they are quitting.
Let me fix this for you: “genius CEO stealthily does layoffs by convincing people to quit on their own. Hires cheaper replacements”
Don’t quit. Make them fire you. Work a second job while you wait. Fuck em.
This CEO should be immediately canned for incompetence. Anyone who can’t understand the sunk cost fallacy has no business running any organization.
I first read that as “caned.” One day…
Oh, the CEO should also be caned…rectally.
You think this is about RTO? He knows they’ll quit. That’s the point. You don’t pay severance to quitters. Anyone that’s truly critical to the company will somehow get an exception.
But the company has already invested so much into the CEO, they can’t just let him go because he doesn’t understand the sunk cost fallacy! /s
He’s just saying the quiet part out loud. That’s always what RTO mandates were about. Companies were trapped in long rental contracts with office buildings, and wanted to use the space they were renting. And office space owners had zero incentive to actually release those contracts, because they saw the writing on the wall and realized their land value was going to plummet if office space demand dropped.
I think it has more to do with lazy management. Before WFH their job was basically just making sure the employees were sitting at their desks at a specific time and didn’t leave until after a specific time. So 9am, you’re sitting at your desk, at 5pm you’re sitting at your desk then they’ve done their job for the day.
WFH means they need to know that you’re actually working. So they have to know what you do (many bosses don’t actually know what their employees do) and have some way to measure that you’re doing that thing in a reasonable amount of time. It’s actually their job to do this even if you’re in the office, but it’s easier to just make sure you’re in a location where work is the only thing you can do and assume you’re doing work because there’s nothing else to do.
Also bosses are hesitant to verbally abuse employees over video chat as that can easily be recorded. RTO solves problems for managers that like to yell at their employees.
But they can’t say “we’re lazy and we want to be able to yell at you” so they come up with other reasons.
Sure, sometimes the real estate thing can be a factor when a company got massive tax breaks from the government under the promise of that the new Amazooglesoft “campus” will be a big economic driver for a city with a bunch of cities competing to give the biggest tax breaks to entice those companies to go there. The governments that gave those incentives will probably take them away (they should, those companies should be paying taxes) because there actually hasn’t been economic stimulus for the neighbourhoods of those offices spaces because of WFH. So in those cases you have to go to a place so you can buy lunch (and maybe go shopping after work) so your company can still get tax breaks.
But mostly it’s just lazy managers.
Why not just rent the space?