the most insulting part of this is 'people' suddenly pretending like we love and always loved the office, when it's been a fundamental symbol of stagnation and boredom and misery in culture ever since they became widespread. NO ONE would voluntary want to spend 5 days in a shitty building after a commute wearing clothes they don't want to with bosses sniffing around their necks all day leaving maybe 4 hrs a day to yourself in your home. 'top talent' or not, everyone deserves to be able to work where they feel most comfortable.

This is absolutely to be expected. If I was able to work from home remotely and then was told I'd have to go back, I would look for another job with the specific requirement that I must be able to work from home.

You give your top talent what they want. The problem is that they hired a consultant to find out what that was. The consultant, knowing on which side his bread was buttered, told the board what they wanted to hear, which is, after all, why they hired a consultant instead of just asking.

My manager didn't care for it when I pointed out that making us go into the office three times per week was equivalent to an approximately $5,000 pay cut. Not including wear and tear on the car.

Forget the cost of travel, if my commute is one hour, that's two per day, ten per week, that's an EXTRA WEEK they demand that I donate of my time to the company each month.

Ain't happening.

My company ordered back to office, and as I was told, I was the only one to say no.

I generate too much value and have tolerated being underpayed enough that they can't justify firing me.

I'm also not some MIT AI machine learning savant. I come from a business analyst/ QA background, and I have made a SQL/Java/VBA system for virtually free that does the work of a team of 10 every day, but it's just my underpaid ass running it.

When I lose this job, honestly, I'm fucked and it will be a nightmare because I'll probably need to go into an office, and I'm in no shape for that.

But for today, I said no and I keep doing my job.

Apparently smaller tech firms are loving office mandates, because it allows them to hire talent that they normally would not have access to at their budget.

I work for a 350k+ company doing grid mod for energy utilities. The head of our division had an "all hands" meeting earlier in the week saying based on client requirements we all need to be in an office or on the clients site.

The head of our group of ~20 (my bosses boss) scheduled a meeting right after and said ignore that. Our team is kicking ass and our current client has not such requirements (other than onsite at their location for training/go-lives which is reasonable). Furthermore, he said unless it was out of his hands this could be the normal with new clients.

We have a killer team from all over the US (many of whom are nowhere near the client or our company offices). This team would dissolve quickly if that mandate ever hit us.

My point is, there ARE still people in upper(ish) management that understand to keep top talent you have to be willing to accept or embrace work from wherever. Hell, during the last go-live last hear he basically said unless absolutely required he didn't WANT any of us on-site with the client. He wanted us all comfy, no jet-lag, in our normal settings to be able to troubleshoot issues. Granted, I worked nearly 80 hours that week, but that's not a normal week. I usually work 30-40.

lol and holy wall of text batman. I didn't mean to write that much but it's here and I don't want to delete it.

People who have headhunters lining at the door do not want to be office slaves? Unbelievable.

Surprised no one.

The push to return to office is nothing more than a push to thin out the numbers. Much cheaper for them to jump themselves than be pushed by management.

No shit. Leave us the hell alone so we can focus on deliverables.

The whoe "tech layoffs" always sound scary, but we are still in high demand. And we'll keep jumping because fuck your BS micromanagement.

Everyone in this thread is saying that this comes as no surprise, and that is certainly true. But the thing is, a lot of management types do know this already but they simply don't care for two reasons:

1. They care more about leverage/control over employees than they do about actual good work being done. You cannot understate at all how important employee control can be for managers and how seriously they're willing to destroy their own business to keep this kind of power.

2. RTO is basically a layoff program. As much as I love working remotely, it's very important to keep in mind that remote workers are the first ones that will get laid off when the business wants to cut back - purely because of how easy it is to do. They can just mandate RTO without actually calling it a layoff and know many workers will outright quit, and the business won't have to comply with whatever local regulations are in place around layoffs. Still, this shouldn't sound like comfort for employees that do work in the office - there's a good chance that once RTO is in place, another round of layoffs will strike when the company doesn't meet its cut targets. So any time a business announces return to office, it means that there's a good chance that layoffs will follow too.

tl;dr: Managers knew this would happen all along too - it was just a trade they were very willing to make.

can confirm. source: did this 3 separate times

Just a quick thanks for including a nonpaywalled link, @ylai@lemmy.ml !