[garciasn]

You give them entirely too much credit. They were told by others (primarily Wall Street) that they are to do this. It provides them with three things:

1. Real estate holding investment increases.

2. Control.

3. Silent layoffs.

There's no reason for RTO. None. They're doing it to save money and regain control of their workforce.

[VBprogrammer]

I think one thing which wasn't obvious to me early on is that halving the number of office days doesn't half the requirements for desk space. In my experience people have a strong preference for going in on similar days, particularly Tuesday and Thursday. So if you ask all of your employees to come in 2 days a week you end up needing desks for almost every employee.

The result in my experience is you have either fullish remote or you need just as many desks so very little saving from a company point of view.

[ajmurmann]

Also, what's the point of going into the office if nobody else is there? My department had a hybrid model for a bit with a fabulous, newly built-out office. I liked seeing people in person a couple times a week. However, if I go in and nobody from my team is there or we need to still call in to meetings as if we were at home, what's the point?

[VBprogrammer]

Yeah, definitely. The only real value I've had from going in is when we've got some kind of social event planned (over teams / zoom this sucks) and when we've gone in with the specific plan of talking about a how we can implement a new feature which is complex and touches multiple teams (which also sucks to do online).

[303uru]

>1. Real estate holding investment increases.

Yup, our commercial real was essentially fully vacant. So they rolled out these silly blended schedules (literally just electronically sign in to the office by physically being there once a week, no time req). Now they can say, hey our office space is 90% utilized on a weekly basis! I think commercial real estate investors are going to see right through this charade, but maybe I'm overestimating them.

[TheKarateKid]

Let's not forget 4. Politicians

You have several from major cities (NYC, SF, etc.) saying on the record that they are going to speak to CEO's and push for RTO so that downtowns, local businesses, and neighborhoods can go back to "normal."

[15457345234]

Yeah, and what I find funny is people acting like that's a stupid thing for them to be saying.

Not everybody works or can work in an office. Not everybody can work in tech. Cities are symbiotic, they offer employment to both knowledge workers and non-knowledge workers.

Sorry but you can't just write off the needs of that 50% of the population that aren't techcels. Yes, you will come back to cities, yes, you will re-create thriving downtowns, yes, you will do your bit.

Service sector workers will not tolerate being turned into gigbots and stuffed into ghost kitchens so the PMC elite can pretend they don't exist.

[TheKarateKid]

You do realize that most of the service workers in major cities can't even afford to live in the neighborhoods that they work in right? They often have to commute from other cities or parts of the city which aren't at all close.

Perhaps this will make things go to how they should be, which means that you work locally because that's where the demand for your services is.

[red-iron-pine]

This is a big one. Entire tax bases are effectively drying up because people aren't driving in or are moving away.

Not just income or payroll taxes, but also regular traffic simulating the local bars, cafes, gas stations & oil changers, dry cleaning, late night pizza, you name it. If these folks can't make their nut then they can't pay rent, and end up moving away or going out of business. Then the problem snowballs.

And then there are the other sources of cash, i.e. speeding tickets, parking fines, and jaywalking citations.

Arguably this is the 'invisible hand of the market' doing its thing, but it's hard to run a municipality if your year-by-year tax base could change dramatically.

[superq]

I don't really have a horse in this race, but it's actually funny the way you worded that:

[three reasons for RTO] "There's no reason for RTO. None." [perhaps another]

[garciasn]

Yeah, I meant to say 'valid' reason, but it got dropped. It's been a day; my bad.

[lazide]

Valid is entirely up to the eye of the beholder. For them, they may be valid reasons even if you don’t like them.

It’s all about pros/cons and either sides approach.

One big one you didn’t list - it’s really hard to a manager to see what is actually happening when remote, which can let some serious problems fester.

Some (but not most!) employees may be burning out, or violating security or labor rules, or not following company policies, or whatever, and these would be trivial to detect in person, but nearly impossible to do so remotely. And almost definitely impossible to do anything about effectively while remote.

[garciasn]

Having ineffective management ("it’s really hard to a manager (sic) to see what is actually happening when remote, which can let some serious problems fester") is a leadership problem that is easily fixed by hiring competent and experienced leaders who have worked with remote teams.

Incompetent leaders cannot manage people remotely and they generally do a poor job when in person, but it's masked by their ability to micromanage and type-A the problem away.

[lazide]

Ho man.

[esoterica]

(1) is a dumb conspiracy theory, the tech companies that pay rents care about their own profits, not the profits of their REIT counterparties. The idea that evil capitalists sacrifice their own profits in order to boost other companies’ profits in the name of class solidarity is one of the sillier things people on the left believe. According to your theory of how capitalism works companies work Amazon and Walmart should be volunteering to pay their suppliers as much possible in order to boost their suppliers profit margins. Obviously that is not how the world works.

[cultureswitch]

Maybe not this specifically, but the history of the last 200 years is littered with examples of capital owners cooperating together to elevate and secure their status as a class despite supposedly divergent individual interests. Perhaps the most obvious is how rich people who commit crimes are systematically saved by other rich people who happen to have the right connections.

[The_Colonel]

> no reason

Sounds like motivated reasoning.

There are valid reasons for RTO like better communication or even better control over employees. It's a question of trade-offs.