[jmye]

Of course not, unless you move the entire office and all roles. It’s like you’re intentionally missing the point (or at least the stated reason) behind returning folks to the office.

To be clear, this is not a defense of RTO policies.

[jodrellblank]

> "Of course not, unless you move the entire office and all roles."

Yes, do that. If you can close down one role and replace it with an Indian in India doing that role cheaper, then with the same logic you can close down the entire office and replace it with an office of Indians in India doing those roles, cheaper.

Somehow, the first applies and is used a threat for return to office, but the second 'magically' doesn't apply. If you need to keep westerners doing the jobs for any reason, and you can't outsource those tasks to India for any reason, then the people may as well be westerners WFH.

[jmye]

Exec leadership/management doesn't want to move to India, therefore moving the whole office is a ridiculous non-sequitur that has absolutely nothing to do with the ease of moving a few roles or role-sets. This isn’t a complicated thing to understand.

Pretending this isn’t the case because you really want to be angry at me or as a reason to riff on whatever form of Management Bad this is, is weird, but you do you.

[jodrellblank]

Why would they have to move? Are there no Indians who can lead, be executives, manage a team, run an office? Replacing a WFH role with the same role in India doesn't involve the WFH person moving to India.

[jmye]

Is this a serious response? You talked about moving the entire office. Clearly the owner neither wants to live in Bangalore, nor wants to sell the company to someone who does, ergo, the entire business does not move. On the other hand, he has an entire QA team working from home and sees no reason not to offshore them.

I feel like you’re being intentionally obtuse in not understanding why one scenario is fundamentally nonsense, and not the pedantic gotcha you think it is.

[jodrellblank]

I feel like you're being intentionally obtuse and pointing at the obvious case so you don't have to address the point. Yes yes, Billy Bob CEO isn't going to replace himself with someone else, but a company big enough to employ offshore workers and deal with international taxes and employment regulations is big enough to have more than one department and more than one office which could be offshored wholesale. And the financier quoted above, if they can get the same development from an offshore company for less, is going to finance the offshore company instead of Billy Bob.

That is, the implicit threat "if you don't RTO, we will offshore you" comes with the counter "if you do RTO, we won't offshore you" - except if offshore was actually tempting, they could and would offshore your entire office even after you RTO to it, and "the market" would/will offshore the whole company.

To the extent that doesn't happen, "you working from home is indistinguishable to an Indian working from India" isn't true. Timezone, language, culture,

"RTO because we need the extra productivity of everyone in the office - but if you don't, we'll accept the reduced productivity, just with other cheaper people" is also nonsense - then why not offer the WFH American less money to stay WFH? No? Because it's a punishment and not a real business decision.