Top workers more likely to want to quit when companies have strict RTO mandates

https://www.businessinsider.com/strict-return-to-office-mandates-could-drive-away-top-workers-2024-2

by rustoo • 2 years ago

77 91 2 years ago

Marazan• 2 years ago

Who'd have thought that workers who have the security of being able to walk into any other job don't like inflexible, cargo cult management workplaces

leosanchez2• 2 years ago

What if everyone has mandatory RTO ?

Workers won't have any other choice.

Jochim• 2 years ago

I'm curious as to whether you believe that's a positive or a negative.

qngcdvy4• 2 years ago

You say that...I fear that myself. But it's like the prisoners dilemma I think...if that happens, then some places will indeed allow work from home and snatch those high-performers just off the market.

throwaway11460• 2 years ago

Then I will get all the top remote workers in my team, excellent.

matwood• 2 years ago

There were remote jobs pre-pandemic. The pandemic showed many companies that remote can work and now gives them an advantage in hiring. Some companies will force RTO, but they'll have to pay for that privilege.

I've always joked that I like solving problems, I like coding, and I like computers. I do that mostly for 'free' (it's a play on an NFL player who joked he gets paid for Tues. through Sat. Sundays he does for free). What I get paid for is all the other BS I have deal with, which can be significant. Going to an office used to cost $ and now it'll cost $$$. Fill in the numbers for yourself.

Where I think people will struggle is they want to work wherever, while also having a maximal career trajectory and making maximal salary. IMO, that's always been a challenge and remote/RTO has magnified that choice.

jokethrowaway• 2 years ago

There were remote companies before COVID and there will be remote companies after everyone RTO.

It's just that you trade off other things, whether pay or interesting work. Culture was generally ok in remote places, which makes sense considering they already picked remote working.

chii2• 2 years ago

What if everyone has mandatory RTO

if each employer manages to cartel, then yes, employees will be forced to RTO.

However, as soon as one company gives the WFH perk, they'll get the cream of the crop of employees, and therefore, out compete the remaining companies that have to hire the 2nd best.

SO in the end, workers will have choice.

nottorp• 2 years ago

Yep, this is not new. The top people will find new jobs easier, so when you do something to annoy your employees - not to mention something extremely disruptive like RTO - they're more likely to leave first.

Even in this job climate, all they have to do is start answering the occasional recruiter that messages them.

2muchcoffeeman• 2 years ago

This is pretty funny. You’re also more likely to get a raise by finding a new job.

So basically management is just providing more incentive for the top performers to quit? How is this a good idea?

polotics• 2 years ago

From a games-theory standpoint: - Top performers need less management. - Top-performers may be competing for your management job. - Top performers are more likely to annoy colleagues and/or make them feel threatened.

q7xvh97o2pDhNrh2• 2 years ago

This is an interesting perspective. Out of curiosity, are you describing some profession other than software engineering?

At least in the context of SWE, I think all of those points are exactly the opposite:

Top performers need less management.

Any halfway-competent engineering manager knows she should spend more of her time with her top people, because anything she can do to improve their performance is that much more impactful for the business.

Top-performers may be competing for your management job.

SWE at the higher-levels tends to be "dual track" (and frankly this is a model that should be applied to more professions). A strong IC is better off being given more breadth/depth for their IC impact, rather than being forced into management -- and that's usually what they prefer, too.

Top performers are more likely to annoy colleagues and/or make them feel threatened.

What a horrifyingly insecure company culture that must be.

pg_1234• 2 years ago

Actually, for the typical environment, top performers who work from home are effectively opting out of the management track.

So from a game-theory standpoint they remain an asset, but not a threat.

vaicorinthians• 2 years ago

which corporate newspeak did y'all hear lately in justification of RTO ? I really do find them amusing

datadeft• 2 years ago

We are between two mandatory vaccination programs pushed by the pharma lobby and now is the time to really get back to the office.

I think we should get back the control of our lives from corporations. At this stage it is about profit and control maximalization above all else.

polygamous_bat• 2 years ago

I think the flawed assumption there is thinking management is there for the good of the company. In my experience, much of the time management is there for the good of itself, and when it’s good for the company it’s mostly a byproduct. Just like how we use yeast to make bread and beer.

DrBazza• 2 years ago

In some industries companies are well aware of what others are doing such as 'cost saving' redundancies, or "adjusting" the wages of contractors, that always seem to happen at the same time. In this case a lot of companies and CEOs actually think 'it's what the other guy is doing as well' and 'it's good for the company'. Except it's not the same, and there is a competitive advantage of getting the best people from the other guy.

Companies that are doing this, are losing their best people, and their competitors are gaining them.

If remote work and 'the internet' didn't work, we wouldn't have nice things like Linux, Postgres and so on.

Throw73747• 2 years ago

I did not quit, I stalled. I was looking for a house to rent, my wife needed to find a new job, kids had troubles at school... RTO deadline was like 8 months ago, nothing happened so far.

My contract says "my place of work" is at my home and I work remotely. It is illegal to move employees thousands of kilometres.

Company should not expect some sort of honest answer to this illegal action. Employees should not fall on sword and quit, they should get fired with compensation etc... Also in my country if you quit yourself, you lose right for unemployment support!

qngcdvy4• 2 years ago

In my personal environment I have many people that don't live in the city they work in, for various reasons. They do, however, live in the range of like 1h-1.5h away. 1.5h on a daily level, speaking from experience, can really make or break a (family) life.

I'm all with you. They wanted us to go to university. They wanted both partners to have jobs to support a family. Now they want to force those workers to live close to work (for the most part so management can watch butts-in-chairs) again.

This can only be prevented if employees stand and fight together.

serial_dev2• 2 years ago

You can stay home and keep things the way they were, and management does not need to fire you or confront you because they can tell others (who were to meek to stand up for themselves) that "he/she is working on it" indefinitely. They can save face as you not challenge their authority directly and also don't need to fire you because you pretend to be collaborating, and you going back to the office could happen any time soon.

That's a really good approach, that's also what I'd use if I can't find a better alternative.

bugbuddy• 2 years ago

If all the top workers of the world come together, they could start a company where everyone could work from home. Surely, the top workers can figure it all out right?

shawabawa3• 2 years ago

There are already plenty of options to work remotely, why would anyone need to start a new company just for that?

todd38344• 2 years ago

There are definitely some options out there already and many new companies being formed. RTO feels like a hiccup in the grand scheme of things. The cost of large office spaces and long commutes will seem silly to the next generation IMHO.

quickthrower24• 2 years ago

Being great at your job and running a company are different skillsets.

maxehmookau2• 2 years ago

Why are folks still writing these articles? Everybody knows this.

Companies can no longer shocked-pikachu their way through this. If you enforce RTO, your top performers (who are top performers wherever they are) will leave for somewhere that allows them to maintain a decent work-life balance and no commute to a soulless office.

Freedom2• 2 years ago

Management needs thought-piece articles like these, and a lot of them, for any kind of concept to get through to their brains.

maxehmookau2• 2 years ago

I'm in the wrong industry. Maybe I need to give up software engineering and start writing think pieces for other team's managers stating the obvious.

zarathustreal• 2 years ago

Considering that the topic has already been discussed ad nauseum, my best guess is that it's a sort of indirect effect of the never-ending struggle to influence culture. I'd guess it's related to the ongoing layoffs and the larger economic changes. RTO is often speculated as a way to force people to quit to avoid having to fire them (and I completely agree that it is.) This article just happens to be written to appeal more toward the worker, probably as a way to gain wider appeal and promote virality considering that the actual data is so weak. Granted, it does confirm my own biases so it's getting my upvote.

I wonder what it would take to create a society where we could vote on things based on the objective truth rather than needing to vote based on what we would like the narrative to be

politelemon• 2 years ago

In some places I've seen the return to office mandate issued, with management knowing it would cause people to leave, which they were fine with. It's sometimes a cheaper form of cost cutting without redundancy pay.

lewdev2• 2 years ago

I believe some of the reasons for RTO was for that reason. It makes sense because at this point, everyone agrees WFH is much preferred overall and would probably leave over it, so I agree with you. I just don't see how well this will play out for these companies. I guess they predict that they'll come out on top at the end. Top-performers probably cost more than others too.

hcks• 2 years ago

“16% less likely to want”

So a tiny effect, not even measured on what they do, but on how they feel.

Again, being a “top—performer” gives you very little negotiating power in itself.

AmericanChopper4• 2 years ago

being a “top—performer” gives you very little negotiating power in itself.

Of course it does. It gives you the power to find another job more easily than everybody else can.

quickthrower24• 2 years ago

Not really. You need to be a top jobseeker and top interviewer and have a top CV and referees, which are different. Correlated probably though !

klyrs• 2 years ago

Being a key contributor can give negotiating power, if your company is long on wisdom and lean on employees: the places it's worthwhile to stick around. And when a few seniors are willing to stick their necks out in defense of sound policy, it helps the whole team.

mgaunard2• 2 years ago

At this point working from home has become some kind of weird religion that refuses to accept the truth.

ttyyzz• 2 years ago

What's your truth?

todd38344• 2 years ago

I was working from home long before the pandemic. I definitely don’t worship it but I do love having time with my kids and surfing before work instead of commuting. I still get my job done and employers seem to be pretty happy with me and my friends who are like me.

What is the truth you speak of?

qngcdvy4• 2 years ago

That you should be forced to have a miserable commute, spend less time with your family and be a happy little worker drone.

Oh and you'd thank management each day for allowing you to spend your precious little free time raking in profits of which you will get a share in form of a salary, yes, but a much smaller one than the work you contribute should entitle you to.

chii2• 2 years ago

refuses to accept the truth.

and what is that truth?

mgaunard2• 2 years ago

People more consistently work seriously and assiduously in an office.

firstplacelast• 2 years ago

I took a fully-remote position a month before lock-down started. Didn’t ever think it was a possibility before that position, but those positions have been out there for a long time.

It works really well when companies/departments are setup to do it that way. More people are now being clued in that it works insanely well with the right setup and the right line of work.

Even with RTO and massive lay-offs, we’re just going to see more start-ups coming around that are completely remote.

Tech-giants can keep in-office. Things will shake out over the long term.

I’m personally not opposed to being in office, but the benefits of remote are many.

xorandor• 2 years ago

Our team is global, working from home maximizes our timezone overlap, plus my company gets 2 hours out of me for free everyday because I'm not sitting on a train for that time. Those are quantifiable benefits, what is the truth that you are alluding to? If it's so compelling, please provide details.

saos• 2 years ago

They can be replaced

todd38344• 2 years ago

“They” being the employer/job or employee? Both are true. Replacing an employee does have a cost to the business. Especially for higher level top performers.

cm2187• 2 years ago

What I am puzzled about is companies that are sending mixed messages. On one side they want people to return to the office because people are just more productive. On the other hand they want to save on office real estate so are not providing enough desks for everyone to be in the office, mandatory hot desking (so you can't customize your desk or leave anything at the office), and so making it unpalatable to work in the office. And they want people to come on different days of the week, which negates one of the principal benefit of an office: seamless access to people / informal conversations.

aleph_minus_one2• 2 years ago

What I am puzzled about is companies that are sending mixed messages.

What you call "mixed messages" is what I call "incompetent management" that has no clear idea what it wants.

nonrandomstring• 2 years ago

What I am puzzled about is companies that are sending mixed messages.

There's a difference between mixed messages and incompatible desires.

My 8 yo wants to go on the roller-coaster and to eat a giant tipple-scoop ice-cream at the same time. I am stuck explaining why this isn't going to work out well, but she's insistent that both things can happen together.

A mature mind is able to join-up the dots and see the need to prioritise or prune. Modern corporations are not like that. They're a collection of colonial homologous zooids (departments) like Physalia-Physalis (Portuguese man o' war) that from the outside give the appearance of cohesion because they have a PR department, a logo, a company number and so on.

That's why it's meaningless when we read "Google says..." or "Facebook thinks..", because a bunch of sub-organisms that happen to occupy the same offices do not constitute an "entity". When dealing with them, like a patient with DID, you need to know which bit you're talking to.

jleask• 2 years ago

"people are just more productive" is not the case for everyone. That relies on a lot of variables; type of work being done, as you mention the office environment, whether the people you're working with are in that office etc. My home office is far superior to any environment I've ever been given by an employer. I have multiple large screens, control over the heating, a door I can close and most importantly a cat to stroke whilst thinking.

Anecdotally I find extroverts prefer the office and introverts prefer home. I find that seamless access to people can be really distracting especially when I'm doing focus work.

I think you're correct if people are given a good work environment, are in on the same days and are all in the same office this makes sense. The reality is that in many large organizations this isn't the case.

sys_64738• 2 years ago

You're assuming company leaders know what they're doing. Very often it's the lower level employees that save the day due to company incompetence. It's just that the narcissistic tendencies of senior leaders will fail to highlight this to themselves. They are surrounded by yes-men usually.

TrackerFF2• 2 years ago

I just don't understand a full 100% RTO.

Hybrid works so well. You get best of both worlds, so to speak.

If you NEED to have facetime with your co-workers five days a week, I can only assume that your main task is to manage/oversee them.

p1esk• 2 years ago

Hybrid works so well.

No. I live far away from the office. Hybrid, just like a full RTO, means I have to move. I don't want to do that.

serial_dev2• 2 years ago

That's not been my experience with hybrid work at all.

The days in the office were always unproductive, as you work on a new desk, need to set up your work station (which gets even worse with hot desk approach). You also couldn't really count on having all the meetings in person, as someone always had to stay at home for some (probably quite often, bs) reason, so now you have 5 people in office that need to Zoom because 2 stayed at home.

After a couple of you realized you won't get much done in the office, you use the time in the office to chat about things, most often not about work. When it's about work, it's in a negative light about silly decisions the company / team has been making, things that annoy you to no end, you can "casually" discuss alternative companies that hire your kind of talent. In person, it's much easier to talk about these things casually.

With hybrid work, you also can't hire people that aren't reasonably close to the main office.

lewdev2• 2 years ago

As a software engineer, I'm doing 1-day a week in office. I feels like a decent balance. Any more than a day seems ridiculous because I would have no reason to be there. I could be in the office by myself at times because the others are in meetings and I just need to code.

It does help to have face-to-face conversations with co-workers because simply the easiest way to share ideas and thoughts. The 1-day a week feels a little more than enough to do this, but I can deal with it.

And because of the environment I don't feel very productive coding, but I suppose it was productive to have face-to-face conversations, which helps us stay connected with each other.

tfandango• 2 years ago

Same here. I like the 1 day in the office to meet face to face with people I work with. But I do feel like that becomes the point of the trip, which is ok, but I get very little programming done on those days. As hard as it was for me to transition to WFH, now it's hard to imagine going back to 5 days.

Aurornis• 2 years ago

I had to click through to the original study to see the actual numbers. From the source:

Intent to stay among average employees was 8% lower with strict RTO mandates. Among high-performing employees, their intent to stay was 16% lower with these RTO mandates, double the rate of average employees. Among millennials and women, the intent to stay was 10% and 11% lower

So the self-reported “intent to stay” ranged from 8% lower to 16% lower depending on the group.

The way they cherry picked it sure does fit nicely into the “RTO makes high performers leave” narrative, but I’m actually surprised that the “intent to stay” was only 16% lower in the most cherry-picked group they could find. That’s honestly not much, and I can see why such numbers aren’t threatening to companies who are downsizing and doing RTO at the same time.

I think the narratives that RTO is nothing more than a downsizing mechanism are overblown. The downsizing is more likely to be the window of opportunity to let employees self-select out if they don’t fit the company’s new RTO direction, but most of these companies also have layoffs around these periods.

I work remote and have for years, but even I have to admit that moving everyone to WFH during COVID all at once created a lot of really bad situations with a lot of people who couldn’t handle it. It’s frustrating for those of us who can and do handle remote well, but the mass migration to WFH without preparation or filtering for WFH ability really poisoned the well.

mytailorisrich2• 2 years ago

My company now mandates 2 days in office per week.

What for? Well, nothing speacial, really. Just to have your Teams meeting from office rather than from home.

IMHO this is what pisses off people. There is no plan nor thought put into it for management to be able to explain the reason to be in office and why that is beneficial.

todd38344• 2 years ago

From most of the RTO policies I’ve seen I’m convinced it’s an alternative to an officially layoff. Depending on how deep they need to cut will determine how strict the new policy is. While a layoff can, but doesn’t always, target low performers… RTO seems to accidentally target top performers.

TrackerFF2• 2 years ago

Here's a napkin-math breakdown my colleague gave me. Prior to lockdown he had the following:

1 hour commute every way.

2 hours every day, where he was stuck behind the wheel.

260 workdays = 520 hours, every year.

That's 65 8-hour workdays, just spent commuting.

He just recently bought an EV, but drove a car that used around 0.8L / 10 km. His daily commute was 150 km in total. So he roughly spent 12L of diesel every day.

In a year, that's 3120L of diesel. 1L of diesel here is currently 21 NOK, or approximately $2. So in a year, he spent over $6000 in fuel alone. Not to mention all the other wear and tear on his car.

He can use his lunches more effectively. Instead of spending all 30 minutes in the lunchroom, or surfing the web, he can do housework, do his daily errands, shopping, or what not.

All in all, by working form home, he saves money and time. And lots of it!

fzeroracer• 2 years ago

When you do the math, WFH just wins in all aspects like you mentioned.

People need to get in the habit of enforced RTO being a strict pay downgrade. If a company isn't willing to pay you more to force you to spend hours in traffic and thousands in gas to come to work, then it's time to leave.

Gigachad2• 2 years ago

This is why public transport is so important. I can spend my 30 minute trip in reading the news or learning something rather than driving a car.

bitcharmer• 2 years ago

I reckon you haven't had the pleasure of commuting on the tube in London. You can forget about reading anything on a train packed beyond capacity.

And that's every day.

vladvasiliu• 2 years ago

While I agree that public transport is very important and am happy my local transit authority is improving the situation, sibling commenter bitcharmer is on point. That's exactly my experience here in Paris, too.

And even if it weren't the case, you'd still have to do those 30 minutes at that specific time, you can't move them around. Don't want to read a book today, but practice something? Tough luck. Also, where I live, most people having a 30-minute commute will need to change trains / buses. Can't exactly read while walking between platforms or for 5 minutes under the pouring rain while waiting for a bus. Podcasts and audiobooks could work, though.

Oh, and that 30 minutes trip may double or triple without prior notice. Hope no-one was depending on you that day. Happens fairly often here, too.

swarnie• 2 years ago

Instead of spending all 30 minutes in the lunchroom, or surfing the web, he can do housework, do his daily errands, shopping, or what not.

This is by far the most beneficial part of working from home for me and one my employer semi-appreciates. Time to do those very short tasks which usually get dumped over on to the weekend.

Laundry for example. I put a load on before i start work in the morning, move it to the dryer a few hours later (when every office person is stood at the coffee machine) and fold / put away at lunch.

Its only 15-20 minutes of tasks but spread over four hours, it means i don't have to spend half a weekend day stuck at home.

gwd• 2 years ago

It means you can do some dinner prep mid-day, including potentially starting something long like a slow-cooker, pressure cooker, or oven so that you don't need to start the "total cooking time" clock after you arrive home.

Additionally, it means you can do this stuff during the day, when you have solar and/or the electricity is cheap.

My own commute is only 12 minutes by cycle, so this is actually the biggest annoyance on days when I'm forced to be in the office.

Fire-Dragon-DoL• 2 years ago

65 days is like 3 months of work, so when comparing salaries, subtract 3 months for in office work.

That's insane

aurareturn2• 2 years ago

HN is overwhelmingly pro-WFH.

Can people who are pro-WFH write some reasons why RTO might be better overall for the company?

badcppdev• 2 years ago

My simplistic view: A company is a collection of workers who need to work as a team to achieve goals that are a not achievable by a single person.

Therefore the communication/synchronisation/interaction of the people is the most important thing that defines a company.

1. Workers in an office can onboard new workers more easily.

2. Leaders (whether official or unofficial) can communicate with people more easily.

3. Companies benefit from the social bonds formed between workers inside the office environment.

milesvp• 2 years ago

I’m a little suprised that Richard Hamming doesn’t come up in this conversation. He’s a mathmetician who noticed from working in research at many different locations that there were 2 kinds of people, those who worked with their doors open vs those who worked with their doors closed. The closed were considerably more productive in the short term. In the long term they were largely irrelevant to their field. I’m wondering if WFH is analogous to working with your door closed. It’s much harder to be distracted by colleagues who might be be bringing course correcting information about your field. It’s the main reason I like working in offices, the random encounters that seem impossible remote. I have a suspicion that onsite companies may move slower but have better acceleration all things being equal. But, if you can’t attract talent, which this article suggests, that might be a bigger problem to overcome, and I don’t know which has a bigger effect.

Gigachad2• 2 years ago

Yeah I get the feeling that the “I’m so productive now that I’m not being interrupted by coworkers” is basically “we don’t communicate with each other anymore”

Top workers more likely to want to quit when companies have strict RTO mandates

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