Lyft Employees Told to Return to Office as New CEO Lays Out Vision

nytimes.com

7 points·_fizz_buzz_··3 comments

> There’s a real feeling of satisfaction that comes from working together at a whiteboard on a problem.

Always the same argument used as cornerstone for RTO — it feels good. I’m sure it feels good to be a CEO in an office where the power dynamics make everyone your friend.

But what about the huge senior talent shift from RTO companies to remote ones? It’s getting more and more tough to compete for senior remote roles because the supply of serious talent is tremendous, it seems like every engineer bringing top skills and expertise to the table is now looking for remote work. So many new start-ups are building all-star teams just from this. In the big games industry, for example, there isn’t a week without 3+ articles how ex-AAA heavyweights are starting their own studios and staffing it with only long-term AAA talent.

And where is all this brain drain coming from? From companies where the CEO felt good about RTO, so they did it against the interests of their people.

Does his vision include not paying Silicon Valley salaries to run a taxi company? Because it would seem to me that might be important.

A modern ride hailing service is much more tech-heavy and complicated than a taxi company. They even started their own in-house mapping service last year. They have to plan pricing, balance the marketplace, provide accurate cost and ETA estimates to drivers and users, and all of this has to be super-reliable otherwise the fickle consumer will flee elsewhere. I can't say if it requires thousands of engineers like they currently have, but it's definitely not a taxi company.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com