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Comment by darth_avocado | Hacker News Reader

They’re not regretting the decisions. They’re regretting the fact their poor decision making capabilities are on full display.

Most of these “bosses” would still be caught doubling down on the RTO narrative and threatening people to show up to work.

Bosses with Elon style of management, please take a warning. A weekly email threatening to fire people if they don’t show up in the office 5 days a week only works the first three times you send it. After a while, half the people leave and the other half don’t show up to work anyway daring you to fire them all the while laughing at how ridiculous you sound.

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Not only that but those that stay are the “yes” men/women who are either bootlickers or accept that they aren’t valued much and thus will put in minimal genuine effort and just comply with stupid directives to the letter.

In the end you just don’t get that diversity of thought through disagreement/evolution/personal ownership that you otherwise get when people feel comfortable enough to genuinely show up and be mission-driven.

I would bet lots of those who stay are the visa slaves who aren't as comfortable with the threat of unemployment as domestic workers would be.

At Twitter, all the visa folks left, only domestic workers stuck around. I know it’s a common argument, but unfortunately not as true.

That is interesting, do you have more info on this, or is it anecdotal?

Ironically, I know people that like to be in the office, and are now pissed because they can't get a desk because of all the people who don't want to be there.

Doe these threatening emails convey any kind of warning to prospective new employees? Not just in the WFH/RTO topic, but if they are this draconian in one area, would it not be safe to assume it would span other areas as well?

Even if I was looking for a new job where the WFH issue didn't exist, I'd personally still be hesitant about working at a place managed by people doubling down like that

You’re not wrong, but it’s not that obvious to people. Most people look at this from a perspective of “ohh I’m okay with RTO so I don’t care” or “ohh I like RTO and people should stop complaining and being so entitled”. What they fail to realize is that soon it will be your paid parental leave cut down to two weeks or medical plans moved to cheaper options with less coverage, what are you going to do then?

It would to me. Any employer who wouldn’t negotiate on something like this for a job that does not require being in-office is potentially toxic.

Commuting can be expensive and even potentially dangerous. Car, insurance, gas, dangerous traffic, time wasted driving at least 2x a day.

There’s also the potentially unproductive office environments: loud, annoying co-workers, constant interruptions, etc.

RTO has costs, WFH has benefits and employers who don’t recognize that should be shunned. If the reason they require you to come back is because they wisely rented office space and didn’t even consult the employees on whether the workers would return, that should tell you how much you can trust management and how much they value you as an employee.

The safety issues are what kills me. In a large enough office you will regularly have employees getting maimed and killed on their commutes. This is literally justified on the grounds of employee productivity as if employers just get to wash their hands of any culpability for safety so long as their employees die on their way to or from work instead of at work.

Employers literally demand blood sacrifice from their employees and wonder why their employees are either leaving or becoming non-complaint when they do this without accordingly raising wages.

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