There aren’t that many opportunities for people these days, especially at the senior level where titles and compensation is still inflated due to 2020-2022 grants.
You are joking, right? Apple, SpaceX and Microsoft are not the only game in town.
I am sure you can name a couple, but I am skeptical that there are that many comparable roles available within those companies at this time.
If you take away an employee perk/benefit, employees get upset.
The lesson learned is, most companies didn't realize allowing WFH (due to COVID) would be perceived as an employee benefit.
It provides real, non-negligible value to sit in the same room as your coworkers. If companies want to reap that value though, they are going to have to pay for it. I think the days of setting up shop in downtown SF and just expecting talent to show up are over.
Please cite a reputable source for this unsubstantiated and unsubstantiatable claim. eg: to me it provides a negative value (commute, noise, lack of my cat). To my employer it also provides negative value: my lower productivity, my much higher chance to GTFO to a more sane workplace.
I can and do communicate with my coworkers over slack and zoom just fine. As my job does not require touching them, no problems are created by this arrangement.
Clearly there are some amount of intangibles that the corporations care about, otherwise why would they bother with RTO at all instead of just firing everyone and offshoring the entire team? This is kind of the argument we are making for them.
That’s why I’m not there today. (I turned down a full time offer)
The value businesses get from putting employees in the same room is making it harder to go elsewhere (creating a fake “family”), and managers get to feel like they have control and ownership of their plebs.
There are also people who use office life as surrogate social lives, and they seem to be the employees they were most in favour of mandatory RTO - “I can’t deal with not having a forcefully created social environment, so I’m going to demand that everyone come back”
The first man wishes to be home with his family, his wish is granted.
The second man wishes to be in Vegas with lots of money, his wish is granted.
The third man says "I'm really lonely now... I wish those guys were back here with me"
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40339852
I expect driving senior talent away is part of the strategy - the senior talent demands the highest compensation, which is what these employers are combatting industry-wide and in coordination. They want to hire them back at lower wages later on.
>Microsoft, which also enacted a hybrid RTO approach, saw a decline of 5 percentage points.
Requiring people to come to the office 3 days a week for no reason other than executives and managers getting off on control is moronic.
“Hybrid” RTO has literally no benefit over RTO except for being able to say “hybrid”.
It forces all of the same problems as RTO - cost and location of living, planning for not being home, massive commute times, etc
It should look something like: hiring should be slow, retention should be longer-than-average, morale should be excellent (inc. devoid of toxic negativity and toxic positivity), and the burden of leadership undertaken by preselection coupled with sortition and a governance body comprised of representative workers.
I'm talking about the legal ways it happens, too. It's not only some "isolated cases of bad actors" as some put it.
on the face of it, it sounds like a flavor of anarchism, along that spectrum and with some similar appealing points. but then there comes all this state and state police stuff, and endless domination and role based subjugation in a variety of legalized ways that rely on state violence to preserve. I can't understand the coherency so the results are suspicious
(also, unions are not the only way for labor to organize. there are lots of ways to do this.)
The question is not “do some people prefer offices”, the problem is “some people prefer offices and then require everyone else to be there to support them as well”
I could just as easily ask why everyone is having to go to an office to accommodate people who can only work in office environments. Especially given the overwhelming evidence that office environments reduce productivity, morale, and employee health?
You're just repeating the "I can't do my job unless I'm in an office, therefore I need everyone else to spend hours every week coming into an office to coddle me". Me not spending hours of unpaid time coming to the office does not prevent you from going into an office. You requiring me to drive for hours to come to the office has a direct and measurable cost, that solely benefits you.
It does not benefit productivity. It does not benefit morale. It actively harms the health of everyone, including you.
> Office work isn't possible unless the team is present.
Well yes, you've just said "everyone being in the office is only possible if everyone is in the office". My job, and the job of most people in tech (or jobs where being in the office is not required to work), is not to heat a seat in an office.
The fact that you use work as a proxy for a social life, or find it necessary to interrupt other people who are working, does not mean that being in an office is necessary to do our jobs. It means it is necessary for you to do your job.
So please stop presenting your own requirements as if they (1) apply to everyone universally, and (2) supporting your requirements is free for everyone else. (1) is demonstrably false, (2) is just selfish - why do you get to demand your coworkers give up a significant fraction of their lives and a significant amount of money to support your requirements?
Claiming it's hybrid is disingenuous imo.
Many people would counter the suggestion of back to office mandates with the idea that it will work if the people who want to come in can come in and the people who do not want to can stay remote. My previous comment was a response to this idea from a business's perspective, that in office work may not be possible for individuals, unless the rest of their team is also in the building. As I mentioned, it is up to the companies to decide what is best for the business. If they decide return to office is best for business then it will be return to office mandates, otherwise they may allow remote work indefinitely.
This other argument of the only point of people pushing office work due to being a proxy for "social life" as you put it is one of the most common things I hear get thrown around. Again, I'm not sure why you decided to attribute this to me, as I'm not in charge of the mandates and never implied I'm in office. I was just offering up the reasoning on the other side. However, from my perspective, I don't think that upper leadership in any company which is considering a return to office mandate, is going to find this criticism convincing in the least.