The Washington Post: Return-to-office mandates at some of the most powerful tech companies — Apple, Microsoft and SpaceX — were followed by a spike in departures among the most senior, tough-to-replace talent, according to a case study published last week.

Return-to-office mandates at some of the most powerful tech companies — Apple, Microsoft and SpaceX — were followed by a spike in departures among the most senior, tough-to-replace talent, according to a case study published last week.

Ordered back to the office, top tech talent left instead, study findswww.washingtonpost.com In the months following return-to-office mandates, an increased number of senior employees departed Apple, Microsoft and SpaceX, often to work for competitors.

This is very simple: flexibility leads to greater talent wanting to work for your company. Less flexibility does not. If your company insists on using dinosaur practices, don’t be surprised when you go extinct.

The problem is these CEOs don’t care they are hemorrhaging talent. In fact, that was by design for many of these RTOs. This often means less payroll boosting profits(short term), the stock market approves because they only care about next quarter, and the bill only comes due long after they leave

Oh for sure. There’s no concern for the longterm growth of companies anymore. It’s all about short term profits even if it kills the company in the next 5 years. Thats a different CEO’s problem.

Get ready for another bust, we missed the boom in this cycle or it just missed us completely as it was gobbled up by the upper classes before it could "trickle down".

Ahhhh, trickle down: one of the greatest scams ever sold to the American voters.

Yup, selling the "virtues" of greed under the idea that the greedy will bw generous.

Tech bust, but not a bust. Many companies accross the country are begging for talent accross several sectors. Pay is great, and many companies will pay you to move. But that would require these same privileged white people to move.

Eventually the tech companies will spread out across the US with some workers needed near HQ and others WFH anywhere. But that'll be after the libertarian techno-utopians are booted.

And it’s great for the environment. What a great corporate brag. But egos once again prevail.

Yup! I started a full time WFH job in 2019. I can’t even tell you the impact it had on the amount of gas we use and mileage on our car. Heck, my wife and I went down to one car because we realized a second one was made completely redundant. That’s gotta have a positive environmental impact.

And the hour you get back daily by not having to commute

Strictly speaking from a mental and time management perspective, I can’t stress how beneficial that has been. And my employer benefits too; I don’t mind as much spending a little extra time to finish my work at the end of the day now, versus when I had to worry about 5:00 traffic.

It’s crazy. I’ve put _maybe_ 20k on my car since 2021 and I used to drive three hours a day just to be in an office where none of my team members nor management were. Something something butts in seats. We were smart enough to divest from owning hardware, god forbid we apply that wisdom elsewhere.

We just turned in our lease after three years and our mileage was under 21k. With so many younger families struggling to afford houses and have kids, the extra $300-400 per month for a car payment (not to mention gas savings) can have a massive impact.

If only someone had said something

corporate folks sure seem to think RTO is a good thing, & probably for some industries it is. but when your job absolutely does not require you to be at the office there is basically no point to it at all aside from waking up earlier/wasting gas/being less productive/being less comfortable. Only Ls

the best part about bluesky is that I haven't gotten twelve replies to this calling me a lazy asshole. pretty much just people agreeing

Agree!

I used to go into the office to sit in online meetings with people doing the same thing in different offices. I can’t believe we used to think that was a good use of our time. (I mean, I never thought that, but apparently some people did.)

This is several hours of my workdays. One of the one-person meeting rooms on my floor is practically my office at this point

Exactly. There are many jobs that cant be done from home but for jobs that can why not? Save on the real estate expense of having that office space

won't someone think of the landlords?

It is a monumental waste of resources on both ends to me. I will never understand why RTO gained so much traction. Isn't it a massive waste for the company too? Not to mention the productivity lost when the staff all moves from having essentially their personal offices to open office and hotdesking.

100% sunk costs. Long-term leases, management whose toolboxes consist almost entirely of in-person surveillance and control, etc. Even stuff like using pizza parties as rewards - the relationship with employees has always assumed they were all in a single space that the company controls.

Remote work means a bunch of supervisory stuff has to be done differently, and a whole lot of people aren't even very good at managing employees in the highly structured workplace environment where they just have to do everything the exact same way everyone who's ever been their manager did.

Ahh, pizza parties as rewards reminds me of one side effect of remote work - in the office, it was easy to save on raises and promotions by rewarding people with things that make in-office work a bit less miserable. You work hard, have a cubicle that isn't right outside the men's room. You were

voted employee of the month, here's a parking spot that's not a half a mile walk from the front door, but you can only use it this month. Raise, what raise? People would be too busy moving their stuff into a less-crappy cube to even think about a raise.

Buildings they were still paying for & couldn't sell because no market or long term leases they couldn't get out of.

Least surprising cause and effect ever.

In Finland we have a saying "Voting with one's legs". Is what happened.

Not just Finland...

I like that. Think I might borrow it for awhile.

I can let you have it all for yourself 😊 Glad you like it.

this alt text is patronizing and insulting. Please use the alt text field to actually describe what is in the image rather than treating Blind people as children who should let you interpret the world for them.

Thank you for pointing the out. You are 100% correct.

🫡

this describes the puerto rican government and the “upper” class so well. they just dream of going back to those times and middle management acts like they feels empty inside when they can’t summon minions to them on a whim.

Hi. Please do better with alt text. Our blind comrades are as important as any others & deserve to be part of the conversation as much as anyone. Thank you for addressing this. Peace.

Well played.

Hahahah exactly whah everyone said was gonna happen. Eat shit. Just let people do their endless Teams meetings from home

My employer already had a large remote workforce prior to COVID so I don’t expect them to require RTO. But if they do I’m quitting.

mine had no remote work whatsoever before covid but ended up ditching the office entirely and going fully remote! but then for a tech business it was always an outlier with an incredibly diverse staff and strict guidelines to avoid over-work etc.

Is this place hiring? 😇

Mine did the same. Sadly, it also filled chapter 11 and sold my division

(COMPLETELY UNRELATED TO GOING FULL REMOTE)

My wife's Fortune 100 company hired her as a remote worker well over a decade ago, but damned if they didn't insist on RTO for her as well coming off of COVID, despite the fact that no one in any group she worked with was here, so she had to zoom all her meetings anyway!

She didn't quit, but she DID start taking calls from headhunters again. Took her almost a year to get them to let her return to working the way they they actually HIRED her to work (Also, the RTO order came just AFTER we finally sold our unused second car to a neighbor with a 16 year old kid 😡)

I've worked from home for almost 15 years now, in a few different jobs. I am good at my work, and no one bothers me, and that makes a rather boring job much easier to tolerate, and do well.

A friend of mine has been a senior developer at Apple for decades. He's having to take retirement due to their insistance that he be physically present in a building.