[Jagerbizzle]

This announcement is pretty much meaningless, as it's completely up to the VPs of a given org to set the policy. Many teams have already been back 3-5 days a week for over a year, and exceptions aren't hard to get if you're a senior+ employee or otherwise have considerations that prevent this from being feasible.

[ourguile]

Anecdotally, I'm at a larger multinational corporation and our site has been mandating a new RTO policy and have not been granting exceptions based solely on seniority. In my personal opinion I believe it's mostly a soft layoff, so they can approve exceptions on a case-by-case basis.

[Jagerbizzle]

No disagreements there (I'm at Microsoft). I should also note that in the part of the org I work, exceptions are re-evaluated every quarter.

[geodel]

Indeed. Apart from really aggressive, "love the bad press" type of employers most would try to appear reasonable from outside while largely rejecting wfh/remote requests lasting more than few months.

[nlawalker]

I don't think I'd call it meaningless; this sets the new default for the many orgs who haven't set a mandate already, and it seems to indicate that exceptions will now be harder to get.

[Jagerbizzle]

Fair point. I've wasted way too much time arguing about this in my org. The messaging is effectively that the "data" (which is never presented to anyone) indicates on-site is better, and if you disagree, feel free to go test the job market.