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Comment by chevman | Hacker News Reader

There is a huge chunk of the economy that is agitating for RTO.

All the big consultancies are pushing it, travel sector (eg airlines, hotels, conference circuit folks) are pushing it, corp real estate and related service sector (think Aramark and other bigCo service companies) are pushing it, etc.

All these folks are on site in your BigCo HQ week in, week out, talking to your senior execs who are predominantly white men 50+ years old, trying to convince them this is like an existential crisis only they can solve and which will supercharge their firm for the next 25 years.

I've seen this shit up close and it's real. Big money and big egos pushing this agenda.

It will happen, just a matter of how long it takes.

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I agree with your points, just not with the racism. The color of people's skin, age and sexuality has nothing to do the problem, even if they correlate. Please stop the hate on a specific subgroup based on things they didn't choose or have control over. Seems like nowadays the anti-racism went overboard on the other direction and now it's cool to be racist against white old men (the previous most racist group).

Also, if you have a top heavy, senior exec filled org, they likely all own expensive property nearer to the office than the average worker (in big US cities).

Think NYC. At a few companies I noticed the decision makers had nice apartments in Manhattan or big homes with reasonable commutes from CT or NJ, or both. It isn't like those property values went down, but over a long enough period of time maybe the value wouldn't grow as quick with WFH.

Also, just being out of touch with the reality of housing for most non business decision making employees.

I do agree with the thought process suggesting there are interests, who would not mind return to pre-WFH, but I disagree with the conclusion. Right now it is virtually impossible to determine what will happen and everything will be done to prevent recession prior to midterms.

Last time Apple et al blinked. Now, supposedly, it is for real. I am sure both sides know what it means. It is for keeps so some real drama may unfold in September.

Maybe they just wanted to avoid having an actual layoff in Sep, hoping that some percentage of people will leave.

I agree that there are a lot of powerful parties pushing for RTO.

I believe all of the anecdotes you list in your post.

But I'm not sure that this follows:

> It will happen, just a matter of how long it takes.

Yes, powerful people want RTO. But some powerful people are fine with remote, and some even prefer remote for business, personal, or climate reasons. Individuals are split on RTO -- some people love the office for productivity and socialization, or just getting out of the house. Others love working from home.

It remains to be seen if RTO or WFH will dominate in the long term. Based on the the lukewarm reception to RTO at every entity I know of in the last year (even very old fashioned companies, like VAs and state departments and small town utility companies) I suspect there will be a split between the two for a long time. As long as companies exist that trust their employees and want to save money on office space, WFH will be an option. As long as WFH is an option, some people will pick WFH. Likewise with RTO.

Your post seems to hint that RTO will inevitably return to the vast majority of workers. I don't buy it.

I don't buy it. Sure some industries are affected but commercial real-estate is very expensive. Why would a CEO (regardless of his age/hair/color) want to pay that expense if that's not adding to the bottom-line of the company. I'm not saying he wouldn't do it, because he might believe (for whatever reason) that his company needs RTO to be able to operate.

But I don't see how people selling that stuff could convince him. And I'm pretty sure they are all agitated (or would be if a big number of companies don't come back to the office).

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but if there was one conspiracy I'd believe in it's this one. I've never seen the entire corporate world so aligned behind anything as much as they are lock-step aligned on "return to office" being the One True Way. It's as if they are all being fed the same memos and regurgitating from the same script. It makes sense that the many cottage industries who are hurt by remote work taking hold would all fight it in unison, but how are they getting every major CEO to say the same thing(s)?

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