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It’s an open secret that there is no data that supports RTO. If there was, at even one company, it would be screamed from the rooftops.

(I don’t believe it’s all covert layoffs either - it’s imho the more banal reason of c-level personal feelings and groupthink)

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Executive brain worms are real. They see each other do things, and they want to be like each other, so they feel safety in numbers, untethered to the data.

My company only stopped a strict company-wide RTO when they saw how much senior talent they were losing, and leaders were taken by surprise.

It's an open secret that we have no idea how to actually measure tech company productivity. That's why there isn't and will not be clear evidence for or against RTO.

Best you can do is pick a narrow enough sliver that it is measurable. Then claim it is the "important" view and wow, what a shock, the data supports your position!

I agree on an individual level, but at a company level it’s fairly easy to measure things like product feature shipping velocity, change in business metrics like growth etc. When you’re talking about company wide changes like RTO it would theoretically show up in these core metrics.

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