[manuelabeledo]

I have read this reasoning from time to time, but how does it make sense?

Wouldn't most of the high performers who don't want to go back to the office, just quit and get a better job, while low performing individuals would stick as long as possible since they could keep slacking as long as they go to the office three days a week?

[dfxm12]

The premise here is that they're holding off a layoff, or at least minimizing the layoff. A benefit of not doing a proper layoff: when you tell people you're just enforcing a new policy, you can make exceptions.

So, if this doesn't reduce the workforce enough, a proper layoff will soon follow. We saw Google enforce "return to the office" in April 2022 followed up by layoffs in January 2023. Microsoft had similar timings WRT to return to the office and layoffs as well.

And again, the premise here is about layoffs, letting a large number of people go. Amazon can fire individual slackers if they want to without playing these games.

[RestlessMind]

For truly high performers who are indispensable and a flight risk, the company will always make exceptions. But those are truly rare (<5%) and even among those, some want RTO, some want WFH and some want a hybrid.

[kaibee]

> Wouldn't most of the high performers who don't want to go back to the office, just quit and get a better job, while low performing individuals would stick as long as possible since they could keep slacking as long as they go to the office three days a week?

Maybe, but that sounds like a problem that isn't guaranteed to happen and isn't one that you'd be personally held responsible for, since everyone else was doing the same thing... how could you have known? No one ever got fired for buying IBM and all that.

[Terr_]

"We already successfully exclude low-performers due to Stack Ranki--er, Unregretted Attrition--so this policy will only be impacting the insufficiently dedicated." /s

[smileysteve]

A layoff can easily target the incorrect people; and the echos of the layoff will also result in higher performers searching for new jobs.

So you don't really gain much precision with a layoff versus making work more difficult.