[toomuchtodo]

It’s happening because employers are desperate to get their power back while workers have no rights. It also makes it harder to leave an org, as orgs are also desperate to hold on to and develop existing talent due to forward looking working age population demographics. This is a desperate immune response.

(also why employers are trying to staff up offices offshore in LATAM and India)

Edit: @tbrownaw all of the responses to your inquiry are accurate.

[tbrownaw]

> It’s happening because employers are desperate to get their power back while workers have no rights.

What does this mean in concrete terms? What useful power do they gain based on physical presence, and what rights are currently absent but coming (back?) soon?

[PantaloonFlames]

The power in the market for labor.

If remote labor is the norm, then every tech company has to compete with every other, across all geographies. If local labor is required, the employers can manage or restrict their competitive environment. There are fewer options for the employee.

The bulk layoffs of the past couple of years have a similar effect - gaining power. It makes every employee a little more conscious that their employment is provisional and conditional.

But I think RTO goes beyond just market power gains. There are many workers who are conscientious, attentive, and dedicated. For each one of those there are plenty who are just punching their time card. I’m no expert but it seems to me that RTO gives the employer and mid-level managers better visibility into all of that dynamic.

But RTO fights against the reality that employers have constructed distributed teams, with people working from all over the globe on the same project. If that’s the case, what is the difference whether I work from my home office, or a hotel desk space in a big building alongside people I don’t know.?

[brookst]

> If remote labor is the norm, then every tech company has to compete with every other, across all geographies. If local labor is required, the employers can manage or restrict their competitive environment.

Doesn’t that seem backwards? A company that supports remote work has a worldwide talent pool.l, including lower cost geographies. A company that insists on RTO can only hire locally, so has less talent available and can’t arbitrage labor costs.

I think RTO makes no sense, but I don’t see how it gives employers more power.

[jackcosgrove]

I have thought about this too.

* Remote workers aren't actually a worldwide labor force because of time zones, so the competition on the labor side is less than in theory.

* Remote work diminished the difference in liquidity between labor and capital markets. Capital is by nature more liquid than labor, and being more liquid gives you an advantage. As you say, the competitive pressures exist in both markets, and maybe this is a wash in terms of power.

* Remote workers can pay off mortgages faster, leading to more early retirements.

I still think the primary reason is a desire to manage according to the old style, which is a different argument than the GP.

[alpha_squared]

> Doesn’t that seem backwards? A company that supports remote work has a worldwide talent pool.l, including lower cost geographies.

Humans are not just replaceable cogs. When you hire someone, there are several things built into the assumption of that work that we take for granted. For example, federal holidays or work culture. The US is notorious for accepting overwork as the norm (people even brag about working 60-hour weeks) where that's just not acceptable in other parts of the world. That's obviously not true everywhere (e.g. 9-9-6 in China), but is true in enough places that it's not trivial to just swap in person A from country X with person B in country Y. That's not even touching on labor laws, language barriers (e.g. understanding office lingo like "circle back"), or value structure. The latter is huge where Americans care a lot about their jobs and careers and most parts of the world don't have the concept of a career.

[WheatMillington]

Yes, and moreover it's obvious from anyone's experience that applying for remote roles means workers will have MUCH more competition for the role. Employers ought to love this.

[aisenik]

Capturing and controlling a market is preferable to competitive markets under our political-economic system. It's been the model for Silicon Valley since Bezos sold his plan to lose money until Amazon had a controlling stake of the retail market in the late 90s. It's a seemingly unavoidable outcome of under-regulated capitalism.

[d0mine]

It is worth mentioning that companies colluding for forced RTO, so people can’t easily leave

[NBJack]

Couple this with regular threats and fear mongering about AI coming for the jobs of tech workers, and the picture gets even more somber. The tech industry wants to cheapen labor.

[WalterBright]

> The tech industry wants to cheapen labor.

Of course. And the workers want more money.

It's how markets work.

[Jordan-117]

Office work requires living within commute distance of the office, which is much more expensive and keeps the employee tethered to their job. Remote workers are less threatened by layoffs because they can choose to live in a lower COL area and have their pick of other remote-friendly jobs rather than being limited to other companies in their metro or having to uproot their lives to move somewhere else. This is on top of the perceived benefits employers have surveiling and micromanaging office work.

As for workers having fewer protections rn, gestures in the general direction of DC.

[gruez]

>Office work requires living within commute distance of the office, which is much more expensive and keeps the employee tethered to their job. Remote workers are less threatened by layoffs because they can choose to live in a lower COL area and have their pick of other remote-friendly jobs rather than being limited to other companies in their metro or having to uproot their lives to move somewhere else.

This doesn't make any sense. Remote jobs are... remote. Moving to mountain view or whatever doesn't make you "limited to other companies in their metro". You can still find remote jobs, but now you have the additional option of in-person jobs in the bay area.

[i_am_proteus]

If you move to Mountain View, you need to be able to afford to live in Mountain View. That takes a lot of remote jobs off the table, or substantially diminishes their prospects.

If you live in Omaha and work remotely, far more remote jobs are available.

[scarface_74]

Yes. But living in Orlando Florida means I can accept a remote job that pays less. I would have to get a remote job that pays 5x more and I don’t pay state income taxes.

Remote jobs on average pay less because you are competing with people who live in the MiddleOfNowhere Nebraska.

Even formerly “field by design” roles that were permanently remote at AWS (where I use to work) paid less than in office jobs. Now those jobs are also in office jobs at both Amazon and Google (GCP).

[photonthug]

Fang companies have colluded together before to surpress the labor market, litigation about this goes back to 2010 or so.

Since that’s always an option.. yeah clearly keeping talent in high col places is a part of the cudgel that employers want to use against employees. It’s similar to healthcare being connected to employment really. If the labor market was actually free from ultimately coercive tactics like this then the world would look very different.

[lukevp]

Not OP, but RTO forces geographic centralization and reduces mobility of their employees. If you can work remotely then you have a much larger pool. And I think that opening the door to remote work made employees realize that there was some power and some negotiation to be had on working conditions (basically our generation’s version of the 40 hr work week in response to the Industrial Revolution)

[pm90]

This is an underrated comment. I like the framing of Remote as Millenial’s 40hr workweek. In the face of declining worker conditions we made the best of a crisis (pandemic) and showed that working remotely was viable for most jobs. But no, the ruling class could not tolerate those gains.

My prediction is that as soon as interest rates fall, employers will be reintroducing “flexibility” to lure workers and attract talent. And at that point it might become more established.

[scott_w]

> Being forced to RTO across the country, then immediately laid off after I uprooted my life to do so

Definitely power there if you know your staff have just uprooted their lives and now depend on you for their immediate term existence…

[blitzar]

It's not the details of the request, it is the request itself.

Do this, or else.