Empire of office workers strikes back against RTO mandates | Hacker News Reader

Empire of office workers strikes back against RTO mandates

theregister.com

22 pointsrntn21 comments

>Despite high-profile calls for employees to get their butts back behind their desks in a traditional workplace setting, more people - at least in the UK

Meanwhile in the US it's either go back or go find a new job.

Headline seems off. Shouldn't it be, "Empire of Office Workers strikes back against the WFH resistance" ?

The only resistance will come from companies that win by being remote first.

what does "resistance" look like?

RTO mandates have been just that, mandates

RTO or you will be terminated with cause

pretty simple really, not sure what there is to "resist"

most CEOs talking through this have said quite clearly that they don't care about case studies (Jaime Dimon was quoted as saying "I don't give a fuck what your studies say"), evidence-based arguments etc...so not sure why people are studying WFH vs RTO

you have to decide if you hate RTO enough to try and find a new job

It looks like unionizing and organizing when you can, and civil complaints against your employer when you can (constructive dismissal by changing work arrangement unilaterally). Also, to your point, looking for another remote job when you've exhausted your options (always be passively searching for your next role, always keep your professional network hot, etc).

Jamie Dimon is almost 70, he will be gone eventually ("Progress occurs one funeral at a time" -- Max Planck). Workers today are able to grind forever against old management who keeps aging out in a structural demographic macro where there are less workers in the working age population every year. 2M people 55+ age out every year in the US, ~5k per day. 4M Boomers retire every year, ~11k per day. These people and ideas will leave the labor force eventually, either through retirement or death.

Why do we collectively care what old CEOs think (average age of US CEO is 58)? "Because I say so?" Nah. So long, thanks for the suboptimal mental model because their work is their identity and status, and they strongly believe in command and control without concern over the wellbeing of their workers. We can do better.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2022/05/05/remote...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35379616/

https://www.epi.org/blog/americans-favor-labor-unions-over-b...

https://news.gallup.com/poll/12751/labor-unions.aspx

https://www.employmentlawwatch.com/2024/10/articles/employme...

https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-research/dependency-and-dep...

https://www.cato.org/cato-journal/spring/summer-2018/demogra...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

This. Resistance looks like solidarity.

Far too often, I find people get caught up in the idea that there is some sort of idea of "done" or "success" in these regards. This is an easy mistake to make. It's more a window or gradient, and which direction you're going over time. Most importantly is recognizing that success is possible, what the tools are at your disposal, and the leverage of those tools in descending order. After that, it's "just" time and effort, course correcting as needed.

(think in systems)

Google has a union and also has RTO

> you have to decide if you hate RTO enough to try and find a new job

I think that's what the resistance looks like. It's certainly not enough in a big company to turn the ship, but in a free-ish market of employment that's really the way to do it. Eventually these companies will feel the result of their policies. It might make them better off and thus validate their policy, or it might not. Either way I think people need to act in their own self-interest with this. If you don't want to RTO, then bail. Obviously finding a job sucks and you might not be able to maintain your high salary (mostly for big tech engineers) but there are plenty of remote-friendly gigs out there.

People leaving tends to be somewhat of a positive feedback loop too. Once one person leaves, other people start thinking about it too. You can build a lot of momentum for change that way.

FWIW, I saw a segment on Canadian television yesterday where a Canadian employment said that a Canadian employer cannot deny you severance if they change the commute, the number of hours worked, the job title, or the salary.

It's a survey from the UK. Employment laws don't give workers an absolute right to WFH but at the same time employers don't have a clear cut 'right to fire' either.

At Least In The US, there's generally two forms of tracked attrition: Regretted and Unregretted. When you say "Fuck you, I'm leaving" that's generally "regretted" -- They would have kept you, you left. When you're fired, that's generally "Unregretted" -- You have been asked to leave and your position will be filled by the next in line.

Every manager wants to see their regretted attrition relatively low: It costs 2-3x the cost of the employee to re-hire that employee... but Regretted attrition being high means something is up with the (manager, org, etc) and needs to be rectified fast.

Firing a whole org (or much of a whole org) tree for not coming back in en masse causes those harvard MBA types to scrunch their face and go "What's going on here, something smells stinky" and if you're lucky they see all their metrics go into the red.

It really depends, many workers actually hold better cards than their employers. Outside of fortune 500 economy-driving institutions like Amazon or JP Morgan there are smaller companies with "lynchpin" employees or teams with the practical authority to set the terms of their contract within reason. RTO is almost never mission critical and it can come with a very high cost measured in lost institutional knowledge.

You can still not comply and see if they end up terminating you. If they value you as an employee enough they may begrudgingly be willing to look the other way.

I've had companies try several times to bring people back to the office, just to have most people not show up anyway (or show up only every once in a while), and so far I haven't seen terminations enforced. That may eventually change, but at least so far I haven't seen that happen. YMMV though.

You're right that the power dynamic here is really bleak. But there are still some things an employee can do individually or in a group:

- Coffee Badging: where you only come in for coffee in the morning and then leave

- Buddy Badging: team up with coworkers badge to scan each other in on alternating days, weeks, whatever

- Quiet Quitting / Lying Flat: aka. chilling on performance while you wait to get fired or look for another job

- Malicious compliance: make a lot of noise, microwave fish in the break room, or anything else you can do to terrorize decision-makers

- And finally the going for the jugular....try to organize your coworkers into collective action, ultimately working towards a union

It's funny to me that the "Lords of the Manor" don't even remotely consider that the peasants might revolt. These "leaders" are essentially challenging their best and brightest to spend all their energy on negative activities instead of positive activities.

Or just quit and retire. When you get close to retirement age, it's always lurking in the back of your mind anyway.

Hell, that thought is lurking from time to time and I'm not even close to retirement age. Part of me wishes I was older just so I could justify it.

> Coffee Badging > Buddy Badging

this will result in making life crappier for your coworkers

no respect for people who want to make a "statement" but really just causing collateral damage

if you've decided to be the office subversive, just quit rather than making life harder for your peers

It doesn't necessarily mean not working. Just only showing up for a little while and still working from home otherwise. Like maybe only go in for a few hours in the morning until lunch, go home at lunch, and then work from home the rest of the day.

Also they might actually be more productive going home for most of the day than if they stayed in the office. Some people aren't very productive in office environments, comparatively.

> what does "resistance" look like?

I guess "A new hope" doesn't says anything to you. /s

> Empire of office workers

Is this located in the Gulf of America ?

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