Hacker News Reader

Comment by Ajay-p | Hacker News Reader

"Study finds a quarter of bosses hoped RTO would make employees quit"

https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/09/rto_quit_study/

Get the bucket ready, I have another anecdote.

Someone I know worked for a company that instituted wildly unpopular policies across their entire workplace, just to try and get three people to quit. They suffered massive attrition at every level of the org, this went on for something like 9 months, and in the end only one of their "targets" left voluntarily.

I cannot fathom how this was less expensive than just laying off those three with severance packages.

The excel model sees reduction in operating costs and not the long-tail of reduced productivity

I will steal this

The problem with these policies is that the people LEAST likely to quiet are also the most likely to comply with the shit policies, because they have no other option (or it's going to be the most difficult for them to find a different/better job)

Not sure if they teach second-order effects in those MBA-mills though.

That's shocking, but not surprising. I can just imagine the mental gymnastics the HR staff did to feel OK with helping with that plan.

I have no idea how involved they were; I didn't get the nitty-gritty details of the story, just heard the broad strokes over beers.

I can easily imagine that HR was never told about the purpose of the changes. I can also imagine that HR has bills to pay, and a lack of desire to quit without another job lined up.

Paradoxically, the cynic in me thinks the result is quite fair. You behave like a jerk, and people don't want to work for a jerk, so they leave. They have a better job, and you have faithful minions - everybody is happy.

I always wondered why our culture has devolved so much.

If you are like "please will <direct report> just quit or leave!?" then just start the process to fire them.

No need to drag out everyones suffering. It's hard firing people but suffering together is always worse.

Then combine how that person might piss off the rest of the team... It's a no brainer.

Because companies are amoral entities... empathy and suffering are human qualities that don't exist in the corporate structure beyond the individuals themselves. Sometimes that manifests in corporate actions but usually it's totally lost amongst all the layers.

Also there is a financial downside and legal risk to firing vs. just getting employees to quit.

Western ideals have given the masses this belief that they matter at all in the grand scheme of things. The reality is nobody really matters but a select few people that turn the crank and the rest of us are just here to act as grease. Amassing as much wealth as possible is the key to escaping this grind.

> empathy and suffering are human qualities that don't exist in the corporate structure

Corporations are run by real humans, as far as I know. They are the definition of human qualities but they give a pretty good mask to the guys doing the job, so they unleash their full humanity.

Or inhumanity as the case may be. Some of the most egregious things in human history were covered by "just doing my job."

> Because companies are amoral entities..

Then maybe they shouldn’t have many rights real humans enjoy, like anonymously owning property or filing objections to planning permission for ‘ruined view’

The ones you want to leave also may have a clue that they'd have a hard time finding a comparable job somewhere else. So they may be the ones who don't leave. That could give you the worst possible outcome - the good ones leave, and you're left with the ones you don't want, and they're all at the office with you.

All in all, "RTO to get X to quit" seems like an amazingly bad plan.

> If you are like "please will <direct report> just quit or leave!?" then just start the process to fire them.

> No need to drag out everyones suffering. It's hard firing people but suffering together is always worse.

> Then combine how that person might piss off the rest of the team... It's a no brainer.

Firing people can piss the rest of the team too.

If you cannot explain or justify a firing to your team, you as the leader are the problem...

The problem is you can message the person who got fired on linkedin.

I've had coworkers who had sudden "family emergencies" and the like who really just took a better offer.

Even worse than that, I don't understand how execs are hoping random people will quit. I could maybe understand the reasoning (though it would still have been stupid) if I didn't have people I very much do not want to play Russian roulette with.

CEOs think all people (including devs) should be interchangeable. If they think you are not, they'd rather fire you and have you changed by a process (that has whatever X number of people) that are interchangeable.

Random people will die form time to time. thus if you are an exec you need to ensure all employees (including you) are replaceable. As such if you need to reduce headcount just counting on a few random people to quit and not replacing them (or replacing them by moving someone out of a position you wanted cut into theirs) is good enough.

Of course people are never this substituteable in the real world. however you need to do your best to make them so.

I can believe that I'll survive without my right arm while simultaneously not looking to chop it off. Yes, sure, all my people are replaceable, but I'm not going to go around flipping a coin on whether they stay or go. Replacing them has costs and risks, and it's cost a lot just getting the people I have.

To make everyone's life more miserable, hoping that your high performers don't leave, that's just shooting yourself in the foot because "I can still walk eventually".

I am not going to disagree. Just pointing out the logic such as it is.

Let me quote the quote from Robert Townsend "Up the organization", quoted in turn by DeMarco and Lister in their "Peopleware" (needless to say they quote it to say its pure crap):

"If you've inherited (or built) an office that needs a real house cleaning, the only sure cure is move the whole thing out of town, leaving the dead wood behind. One of my friends has done it four times with different companies. The results are always the same: 1) The good ones are confident of their futures and go with you. 2) The people with dubious futures (and their wives) don't have to face the fact that they've been fired. "The company left town," they say. They get job offers quickly, usually from your competitors who think they're conducting a raid. 3) The new people at Destiny City are better than the ones you left behind and they're infused with enthusiasm because they've been exposed only to your best people." — Up the Organization

I think "RTO to make people leave" has the same idiotic thinking at its base.

Sounds like tips a narcissist would offer on life.

"Pack up and leave once people are on to you, only the true believers will follow and the people at the new city will only interact with them so they will think you are great as well!"

fire (as opposed to lay off) is something companies avoid - if you don't show good cause to fire someone they can sue you for wrongful dismissal. If a company has reason to fire you they will often tell you verbally to quit or they will fire you - quit meaning that you did it of your own will. If this ever happens to you consider carefully taking their offer - you can't quit, but when someone asks they will say you left in good standing which looks better than being told you were fired for cause (but of course you can't sue them anymore as you quit)

Layoff is what a company wants to do, but they need to do at least something to show the layoff was random. They can't just lay off one person who is bad, they need to get rid of a lot of people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com