Apple, SpaceX, Microsoft return-to-office mandates drove senior talent away
The study (PDF), published this month by University of Chicago and University of Michigan researchers and reported by The Washington Post on Sunday, says:
In this paper, we provide causal evidence that RTO mandates at three large tech companies—Microsoft, SpaceX, and Apple—had a negative effect on the tenure and seniority of their respective workforce. In particular, we find the strongest negative effects at the top of the respective distributions, implying a more pronounced exodus of relatively senior personnel.
Dell, Amazon, Google, Meta, and JPMorgan Chase have tracked employee badge swipes to ensure employees are coming into the office as often as expected. Dell also started tracking VPN usage this week and has told workers who work remotely full time that they can't get a promotion.
Some company leaders are adamant that remote work can disrupt a company's ability to innovate. However, there's research suggesting that RTO mandates aren't beneficial to companies. A survey of 18,000 Americans released in March pointed to flexible work schedules helping mental health. And an analysis of 457 S&P 500 companies in February found RTO policies hurt employee morale and don't increase company value.
It's almost like the work force actually values the quality of their lives more than ... umm, honestly I've never been able to figure out a positive side for companies pushing RTO. Report after report show remote work improves productivity, employee retention, is perceived as a significant perk to attract new talent, and reduces corporate overhead (that last one is just an assumption on my part).
Seriously, what is the attraction for RTO?
It’s bosses who are sick of Teams meetings. “You just can’t collaborate like you can in an office setting” is what I heard most during my job hunt.
Which is true only in the rare case you only have one office that everyone is in. As soom as you don't have everyone in the same room teams is better. So once you have more than 50 people
You absolutely can't. You just can't. Standing around the empty coffee pot yakking about the sportsball game over the weekend for 45 minutes and then spending three minutes agreeing you need a meeting to coordinate brainstorming just doesn't work over Teams.
They just refuse to admit that's a good thing.
Office politics with plausible deniability is also so much harder to do when leaving behind an electronic trail.
Ohh man - that sportsball game was nuts amirite
How about that local generic sports team? They sure are doing good and/or bad.
I know, I know, did they ever resolve that half-remembered news item about them from some time relatively recently?
It's been a wild season, I'm sure
I dunno. I got a dumpster and forced three families to finally clean their houses some. And only sportsball I watch is Calvinball but we're in the off season sadly.
(Am I doing this right? I always avoid the coffee pot because it was garbage coffee so missed all the collaborative talk)
Probably the satisfaction to micro manage people and oversee their work over their shoulders.
They get to use all that cheap real estate they bought during the pandemic. What more reasoning could you ever need!
A lot of them around me don't even own, just rent. They'd save money by just not having to keep that infrastructure up and running at max and getting out of their contract when it ends.
It was the whole getting rid of senior employees without having to pay severance or unemployment thing.
It was never about "returning to office." It was always about making the most well paid and senior employees walk so they could save money.
It can be either. My state job had a RTO period where a bunch of people quit so they umplemented it again. RTO wasn't intended to reduce senior positions because seniority isn't a significant cost. Top leadership just didn't believe people cab work remotely and was worried about the impression that it would give if people in the agency worked from home.
All of the other state agencies have permanently embraced remote work. Our RTO was absolutely about control and forcing people to be in the office so top leadership could see them instead of empty cubes.