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While this is practically the best-case scenario for enforcing RTO (generous severance if you answer "no" and plenty of time to plan and get relocation support for "yes"), I can't help but feel like this is yet another instance of extroverted people who end up in management and leadership positions judging the importance of in-person collaboration for other people at the company's jobs based on their impression of how important it is for their jobs. As a SWE who does IC and planning / TL design work, I find it immensely easier to work from home. I don't have to find a meeting room, I have one stable multi-monitor setup that I'm comfortable with for running and participating in meetings, and I can make myself available for "emergencies" early and late in the day without having to work my commute around that. The leaders making this decision at Roblox have generous compensation packages (even for tech), and can likely afford to buy a new house every single year based on how much they earn. The reality for a rank-and-file SWE trying to secure housing in the Bay Area, especially near San Mateo, is much more precarious. No joke, if these companies offered to factor in a cost-of-living adjustment to compensation based on rent rates in the area surrounding the office, I'd go back in a heartbeat, but I spent enough time as a new grad commuting 90 minutes each way saving less than 10% of my paycheck after rent and basic living expenses, to where I would literally quit SWE work before being forced back to my company's HQ. Mind you, certain economic classes of young individuals will have safety nets from their family and the support they need to not worry as much about finances. This will have a deliberate effect on the types of backgrounds that will become predominant among employees -- likely, folks already in the bay area who went to nearby top-tier schools and have upbringings that primed them for such a life one way or another. My experience thus far is that our remote teams at my job tend to be more diverse and the new-grad experience is less economically precarious because you have the choice of living where you want to. Caretakers and people with kids also suffer disproportionately with RTO vs. those younger or with less family duties, and this affects the population of employees drastically too. As important as in-person collaboration is for mentoring, brainstorming, and culture, I feel like there's probably a way to create space for that without bringing everybody back to the HCOL areas where leadership tends to already own personal and commercial real-estate (potential conflict of interest, though this varies by company/leader in terms of the size of the assets). I think the writing is on the wall though and probably every major tech firm will slowly creep back from "hybrid" to "well, 3 is the minimum" (see: flair bit from office space https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7SNEdjftno), to having the real "team players" be the ones who can afford to come in 5 days a week. This was probably inevitable but I find it vastly disappointing. |