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Comment by giantg2 | Hacker News Reader

They aren't pushing it because they want to get back to the office or even dont understand the impacts. They're pushing it because they want more control over and accountability from their employees. Some even want a percentage of the employees to quit.

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I think there are a lot of reasons, and forced attrition is definitely something they see as a benefit. However, I do genuinely think that a lot of them truly believe that working together in an office, face-to-face, is important. RTO is not just a cold calculation, but also reflective of their moral values towards work.

Whether those values actually lead to a better company is the part that, I feel, continues to lack evidence.

I used to work for a place that had "Focus Weeks". A week where there were to be no meetings, and you could work on whatever was important. Everyone I knew loved it - could accomplish so much more when you are not interrupted every other hour for some marginal-utility status update.

Management...apparently did not enjoy the time. I assume so many of them do nothing but meetings, they were probably bored. The upper leadership, for whom the work is predominantly meetings, is likely not satisfied without maximal people in sight.

> I do genuinely think that a lot of them truly believe that working together in an office, face-to-face, is important.

Because their job is all having meetings and walking around asking people what's new.

Your last point is the biggest driver - it is also why the rules are arbitrarily enforced.

It's useful to have most of your workforce (or other populations, as with police forces) in routine violation of unenforced rules so that one has cover for any individual persecution one finds convenient

+1 Insightful.

This dynamic is at play in every big company I've encountered in my 27 year career in tech.

Exactly this. I've worked at a few places now where there were RTO policies that many workers ignored. But periodically low performers and/or people that had lost political battles were denied promotions or fired and their poor office attendance record was cited.

What exactly is wrong here? If workers don't want that control, well, they can look for another place. Companies are not supposed to solve social problems like how people care for children.

After all, are there any workforce troubles in companies that mandated RTO, besides negative hacker news comments?

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