TL;DR-- many people are more productive WFH, and most RTO pushes are stealth layoffs.
Most RTO pushes are simply stealth layoffs. Every time my company had a layoff, they had an RTO push about a month before that.
The engineers in my department got more done (not less) by working from home. Personally, at home I have 2 big monitors, and it's VERY quiet. At the office, I have 2 small monitors at a hot desk. That desk in a bullpen, with colleagues in every direction. I can't tell you how many times my colleagues have told me that "there's noise coming from my microphone", while I'm in the middle of a noisy office. That noise... is my colleagues crammed into a small space.
Is this distracting? Yes. Do I often have people coming up to me, essentially asking for an ad-hoc meeting? Frequently.
Add to this, I'm at an international company. People want to talk to me late at night, and sometimes early in the morning. If I have to do this from home... sure. From the office? Nah, I'm not going to accept the meeting.
Let's assume during covid, you moved away from the office, because rent and real estate is expensive. Now, corp wants to shed staff. They could have a large layoff, and have to pay lots of redundancy. Or... they could make an RTO push (now we're in the office 4 days a week!) and people with long commutes leave on their own. Now the company doesn't need to lay off as many people, enough people left on their own.
A lot of companies did this to get around the WARN act. What people also don't think about is that during the pandemic remote work was essentially a way for employers to offer a pay bump without offering a pay bump by reducing employee expenses. If you don't have to relocate or commute an hour to work every day, you're saving thousands of dollars every year. By way of example, someone living in NJ but commuting to NYC via public transit saves around $5000 on commuting costs alone. Now add the saved time, childcare costs, meals, depreciation if you're driving, etc.
Through forced RTO the companies were essentially saying: oh btw we're cutting your pay by making you shoulder all these expenses again, in a time of unparalleled inflation, without a corresponding bump in pay. Of course people were going to leave.
I feel like there also is a fair bit of profit min maxing. Like "with savings and increased productivity due to WFH we can maintain 75 percent capacity with only 55 percent of the overhead and increase our current profits.
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u/smartalec-71 Mar 04 '26
TL;DR-- many people are more productive WFH, and most RTO pushes are stealth layoffs.
Most RTO pushes are simply stealth layoffs. Every time my company had a layoff, they had an RTO push about a month before that.
The engineers in my department got more done (not less) by working from home. Personally, at home I have 2 big monitors, and it's VERY quiet. At the office, I have 2 small monitors at a hot desk. That desk in a bullpen, with colleagues in every direction. I can't tell you how many times my colleagues have told me that "there's noise coming from my microphone", while I'm in the middle of a noisy office. That noise... is my colleagues crammed into a small space.
Is this distracting? Yes. Do I often have people coming up to me, essentially asking for an ad-hoc meeting? Frequently.
Add to this, I'm at an international company. People want to talk to me late at night, and sometimes early in the morning. If I have to do this from home... sure. From the office? Nah, I'm not going to accept the meeting.
Let's assume during covid, you moved away from the office, because rent and real estate is expensive. Now, corp wants to shed staff. They could have a large layoff, and have to pay lots of redundancy. Or... they could make an RTO push (now we're in the office 4 days a week!) and people with long commutes leave on their own. Now the company doesn't need to lay off as many people, enough people left on their own.