And what else is that everyone loses in this present situation. People in the job hub in SF also lose, because they are operating in this fundamentally broken local economy, way too enriched for high income workers making their home cost 2.5m and their compensation actually pretty poor as far as what it can get in the local economy. West Atherton would be a 400k median home neighborhood in most of the midwest. Literally same floorplans, lot sizes, fit and finish. Same country club down the road. Same private school up the road. Boutique shopping and steak dinners still available.
The fact that people completely miss this fact and just go "well I like talking to people in person" I mean at a certain point belies ignorance that borders on stupidity with how hard people cling to the "ability to talk to people in the hallway" against even just the obvious negative externalities like the commute and limited home choices. No one ever talks about this career side and juggling a two body problem.
This makes sense when you consider that all of these big companies are run by leaders who talk in similar networks and listen to the same consultants (McKinsey, BCG, etc). I know someone who is going through a McKinsey run structural re-org, that is identical to one they ran (and failed horribly) at a company I was in 8 years ago.
> why did RTO happen at the same time that critical equity/diversity viewpoints were increasingly being discussed at work?
There was a decent lag between the peak of equity nonsense and RTO, plus the evidence is that DEI/Equity/etc hurt workers and disrupt organizing tremendously.
> why did RTO happen despite no evidence that productivity had anything to do with it? (and in fact, lots of evidence that it made employees more productive!)
Company I was went from 1 quarter talking about the increases in productivity WFH brought to the next quarter town hall talking about RTO for the culture and productivity.
Yes, it certainly does! I'm sure they also talk to Pinkerton :)
> decent lag between the peak of equity nonsense and RTO
Just about the amount of time it would take for management to (1) realize what was happening and what it meant for their power over labor; and (2) align on a policy.
> Company I was went from 1 quarter talking about the increases in productivity WFH brought to the next quarter town hall talking about RTO for the culture and productivity.
Yes, exactly. That's how you know anything about "productivity" is all a load of shit.
Of course, other things have value too. Often, our folks who prefer to work from home do so because they have small children who they want to spend time with, more fully share parental responsibilities with their partner, etc. I'm glad that they have the opportunity to do that, but it does generally seem to come at some professional cost.
I don't mean to be a jerk but ... if you are one of the people I manage, you literally are employed (at least in part) to make my job easier. That's not the only thing that matters -- which is why we (like many employers) do still allow some remote work. But making management more difficult is absolutely an impact that a rational workplace would take into account.
Before working remotely (pre-2019) when managing teams in person, I found myself necessarily having discussions to get synced with folks. At my most recent role (and previous remote first roles), team members were excellent at providing updates on Github issues (the sources of truth for work items). Of course, this required buy in at all levels and trickling company objectives down through the program(s) and linking work items to OKRs etc. It was very obvious when folks weren't hitting objectives and easy to gather detailed written evidence of this.
And regarding getting to know folks. Most recent offsite was at a villa in Croatia where I got to both meet my team members and ended up getting to know them like friends. Now that I think about it this has happened at previous companies as well during remote offsites.
I wonder if it's field-specific. Sounds like there are multiple anecdotes across a wide distribution of outcomes.
I think you are confounded by the fact your most overeager overachievers are going to return to office no matter what.
The arguments for and against fall along these lines. For RTO: in favor of the company over the self. It is more "productive" by some invented measure to work in the office, so it is the correct choice damned any other factor. A total trump card to those with this logic, like arguing the sky is blue.
And then what is the for WFH argument but the following: in favor of the self over the company. Perhaps if one pushed as hard as they could, they could get more done. They could sacrifice their sleep. They could grey their hair, increase cortisol, have an early heart attack and die. But in that time, they'd get a whole lot more done for the company certainly. WFH argues that affordances toward the employee ought to be made and even favored. Things like having choice in where one might live, not being saddled with a commute costly in time or money or both, being able to parallelize tasks such as taking the two minutes to start the laundry machine then returning to the desk, being able to see pets and loved ones for more than a few fleeting hours at the end of the day, better food, the list of benefits pretty much endless and also bespoke to the worker in question.
To be pro RTO, you have to be able to sacrifice the self like an ascetic, to deny all these tradeoffs and to grant the company control over you, your family and life outside of work (as where you live and how your family has to then live is a factor with RTO), all to benefit the company over yourself. The company that will never show you loyalty, that will use the same logic you are using to return to work to one day fire you.
Among my peers, on the younger side, no one really likes working in the office at all. They all are stuck with it and would desperately like to not work in the office. I expect over time, RTO will die as the generations that are culturally inclined to put the company over themselves retire from the workforce.
How does their quantative performance compare? Is there an opportunity in the differential?
It is a nice building in a nice area.
I have a 40min walk to it or 10min bus ride.
I like my colleagues. Sometimes you need to meet and solve problems face to face, and not have it be planned.
I like dressing up a bit, not a full suit but nice pleated pants and OCBD/sweater/blazer.
I have a shift schedule, sometimes I am the only one in the office, that is bliss :)
But my work is 100% in office. But not being shut at home is nice.
I sometimes go into the office, but maybe only once or twice per month. But I am allowed that choice, I can work from my house, any of the company's locations, a cafe, or anywhere else I feel like it on any given day.
I value the freedom and flexibility. I'd be miserable being told "You must be in the office" and I'd also equally hate to be told "you must work from a desk in your house only"
Sounds like you are taking 80 minutes away from your family every day. I would not be so proud of that. And you'll likely regret it on your deathbed. #1 regret is not enough time with fanmily.
Please work in a day as a oil rig technician or a nurse. "I should be able to work anywhere and my employer must accommodate me" is an extremely privileged and elitist view of thinking.
A few of your notes are actually just wrong as well. Salaries jumped during covid due to over-hiring and software booming. "Productivity" is not a number, but a business-by-business decision. The vast, vast majority of people don't want politics at work, and it's exclusively the viewpoint of the laptop class who demand that stuff. (Again, people who work toiling jobs for 10 hours a day don't create petitions and demands like that)
At the end of the day, if you don't want to work in an office, you don't have to. But, believe it or not, many many people, including young people, like the office environment.
Rig work it is weeks on weeks off sort of deal where you then get off that rig back to, quite literally, anywhere in the world where you live otherwise. You could live in the middle of the Amazon rainforest and make six figures a year on a rig in the middle of the ocean (well, maybe US jurisdiction is preferred from a tax perspective for employer payroll).
There is a reason YC is in person. There is a reason why the top companies are in person.
> "I should be able to work anywhere and my employer must accommodate me" is an extremely privileged and elitist view of thinking.
Nope! You totally missed the point. "You must accomodate me" is a demand, that you can place on your employer, when you have labor power, as an employee. The acceding is what we're talking about here. That is not cultural; it is a matter of market power.
> At the end of the day, if you don't want to work in an office, you don't have to.
What are you talking about? Did you read my post? Yes, I have to! Because of RTO!