I've been wondering for some time if business success for in-person companies is based on leadership's "better" control of the workforce vs. employees actually being more productive in the office.

Are there strong success stories for remote-first tech firms that operated this way before the pandemic?

The best-case situation from the employee side, IMO, is to have maximum flexibility, where folks can work from home as needed but have a desk available if they want to work in the office regularly, with regular "offsites" where people meet face to face. Yet every company seems convinced that "hybrid" where larger tech companies conveniently get to keep their real estate holdings (AMZN, GOOG, etc.) is the better bet.

In the case of Grindr and Zoom, I can't believe they're requiring RTO. If it truly seems "unsustainable" to companies Grindr's size, then probably every tech company is doomed to forced RTO. Granted, Grindr's case might be more related to unionization efforts (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/12/business/grindr-rto-union...) than actually deciding on required RTO for its own sake.

I assume they have expensive real estate contracts that they can't get out of otherwise I can only interpret this as a failure in leadership and vision.

This was a slightly confusing headline until I opened it and understood that they were ending remote work for their employees

Previous discussion on Zoom RTO:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37242545

Previous discussions on Grindr RTO:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37434293

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37421241

Seems ironic in Zoom’s case!

They will lose talent and I'm guessing have to change back to compete against the many companies and agencies who are still remote and or changed to fully remote.

Remote working many view higher then more money.