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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

> "Everything was fine when the world was structured around an extroverted lifestyle. Then the pandemic hit and everything was miserable for a bit, but what's even worse is that those darn introverts aren't (happy) resuming their natural place in society!"

Hence "Return to Office", and the failure thereof.

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At a place I worked, they kept trying to use the phrase "return to work" as if we were not working the whole time. :/

Wow. That's pretty offensive. Pretty sure I worked much more during WFH. Hybrid makes Mondays and Fridays feel more like they're part of the weekend, and then all the social events are packed into Tu-Th now so... Jokes on them I guess?

I have no doubt RTO appeals to extroverts socially, but the sudden and seemingly coordinated push to RTO is about tax breaks:

>New Jersey and Texas are states that stand out for spelling out exactly how often employees must work from the office to qualify for tax breaks. Before the pandemic, several New Jersey tax programs required workers to show up at least 80% of the time, and one Texas program set the threshold at 50%.

>Provisions like these were designed to ensure that the jobs boosted local revenue from income, sales and property taxes, and bolstered downtown economies.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-21/another-t...

Yes but no one was ever going to check for each individual employee which is why it's so frustrating that some people were forced in. $Dayjob always gets the innovation tax credit and it's literally just "hey did you innovate? Y/n." RTO but if you're someone who really cares then stay home is a system that makes everyone happy— or at least nobody mad. After months of hand-wringing my work relented to this by having a medical exception that was broad enough that in practice anyone could get it.

RTO initiative seemed more like an attempt at value extraction more than anything else.

Buildings have mortgages, surrounding businesses need to be supported, etc... Local economies dipped and some hedge fund portfolios suffered, and RTO was the only way to pump their bags.

This is all conjecture

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