> Every company that issued forced relocation ultimatums to their pre-pandemic remote workers will not only lose most (if not all) their top talent in the next year, but they will struggle to hire for at least the coming decade

People have been saying that over here on HN too.

It’s what they WANT to happen, but not at all what will happen.

It’s a feel good narrative based on the fact that engineers want to believe they are “top talent”, that their skills alone will be enough for them to do well economically, that in the end the people that don’t respect the tech will suffer consequences.

Sorry, “top talent” isn’t that scarce or NEEDED at all in software engineering. Even FAANG is more than happy to churn on 20 something college grads with no deep expertise. In fact, engineers with deep expertise who wants to work on challenging technical problems often have to take pay CUTS to be able to do so.

With no unions and no solidarity between workers, the future is clear: come back to the office or take a pay cut.