[p_l]

Maybe if the office was not a hellscape? Not just the commute, the offices themselves.

I didn't work in a properly colocated team since 2017, and that was mostly by accident. The norm is zoom/teams calls, often taken from the desk (which is 3-4 in a row with rows densely packed) because there's never enough space for meeting rooms so it becomes norm to not give a fuck that nobody can concentrate because someone is talking loudly on a work meeting.

And the watercooler is either office politicking or discussing how much the place sucks

[calgoo]

Exactly this, its great that the person next to me can stand and talk to someone 2 desks down, over my shoulder while I'm on a teams call with someone from the other side of the floor, as there are only 3 conference rooms, and managers have priority. If you want people back in the office, redesign the whole space to small working areas where people can actually focus. Open office environments are the worst office experience possible, but i guess it makes the C-suite feel powerful or something having all these people sitting outside their office.

[rob74]

Well yeah, and that's actually the point: if you don't like it, you're free to leave! Headcount reduction without severance payment and getting rid of an unmotivated employee, win-win! At least for federal employees they had the decency of spelling it out clearly: https://traumaawareamerica.org/2025/04/28/deliberate-strateg... - the rest of us have to keep listening to the "it's all for your best" BS...

[p_l]

Sometimes the "quiet layoff" [1] aspect of RTO leaks publicly though.

[1] If they get to call shit on workers with "quiet quitting" etc. they get the same back