[JediPig]

I too hit the 50. For the last 8 years I been 100% remote and seen the office ONE time only and that was just to hug a buddy happy retirement. Later on I found out his wages were cut and he found a new job. I quickly joined him with a competitor.

The pro RTO people are nothing short of power hungry. They like flexing their will against others. That’s why having leverage and a huge f*ck you fund is necessary. Especially when it’s going to take a year to un frack this IT job economy. A quick fix would be removal of all IT h1b. The that would get Americans back to work. We all know they use it to keep wages down.

[asoneth]

> The pro RTO people are nothing short of power hungry.

It depends. I have no issue with companies that RTO'd after lockdowns ended. Some teams and orgs work better in person, others can work fine remotely.

But promising new hires that they can work remotely only to renege on that promise a few years later when the job market tightens is a despicable bait-and-switch.

[scarface_74]

Exactly this. If you worked in the office, then went remote after Covid and the company made no promises about being permanently remote, I have no issues with that.

In my case, Amazon Retail reached out to me in mid 2020 about an SDE position. They made it clear I would have to relocate eventually. There was no way in hell I was going to uproot my life and move to Seattle for Amazon already knowing there reputation.

They then suggested I apply for a role in Professional Services that was “field be design” and that would be permanently remote. That department was exempted from the first round of RTO requirements while I was still there.

As of this year, even those positions are required to be in an office even though it’s more than likely no one on a project will be in the same office and the clients will definitely be remote. It means you are either at a customer site or on a call with a client from the office. I got Amazoned in late 2023. The RTO mandate from them just came into affect this year.

The equivalent positions at GCP are also hybrid. They reached out to me. But when they said that, I said no thanks