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Comment by terminalshort | Hacker News Reader

2 and 3 aren't real. Nobody gives a damn about their shareholders other investments, and no one company has the numbers to save them anyway. And nobody is dumb enough to do RTO as a layoff proxy because anybody with a brain knows you're going to lose the people with options, who are exactly the people you don't want to lose.

1 is spot on.

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3 is very real. Sometimes even openly so, as in an executive telling it out loud.

> And nobody is dumb enough to do RTO as a layoff proxy because anybody with a brain knows you're going to lose the people with options, who are exactly the people you don't want to lose.

Here is what our CEO told me once: layoffs always mean you loose more people then those you just fired. That is unavoidable and can amount to additional 30%. And obviously those will be those with options. He said that you can not avoid nor control this factor, there is no point in overly fretting about it. From his point of view, people always have agency to leave and layoffs and surrounding chaos always annoy people and weaken their ties.

These arguments based on "we do not want to loose good people in layoffs" are off mark. Company will loose good people in layoffs.

Well RTO mandate means you lose ONLY the good people with other options or make the people with no options have animosity since the deal was changed

You wont loose only the good people. You will loose the usual mix. Plenty of slackers or not good people are fully capable to make their way through interviews. That is how they got here, after all.

It is always just pure wishful thinking that "all the people you will loose when you alienate someone like me" are totally the best people out there.

Being willing to switch employer for convenience does not make someone a good worker and it's not like bad hires can't change employer. I'm guessing the best employee would be someone who hates change and is financially illiterate. Never asks for a raise, works in the same company, does the same thing for 30 years for the same money.

> Being willing to switch employer for convenience does not make someone a good worker and it's not like bad hires can't change employer.

Your comment is really quite out of touch of how layoffs actually affect people.

I’ve been through a few rounds now. Morale is essentially destroyed in the short term. Your team suddenly has a lot more work with no additional support or even acknowledgement that people are now slammed.

It’s not inconvenience. It’s a significantly negative change in the work environment, and a sign that maybe your company’s long-term prospects aren’t great. Of course good people leave in these situations.

I'm talking strictly about RTO as a layoff alternative and even more specifically about the perception that it'll lead to the best workers leaving.

Having a bunch of people leave due to RTO is different than having seemingly random colleagues laid off.

Both are not nice, RTO is more voluntarily and more avoidable since you can sometimes bargain for remote work to be a part of your contract and not just an oral agreement.

It's morally questionable to call for RTO only to get rid of people without technically having layoffs, but in countries like the US getting laid off is probably worse than having working conditions degrade to where you just find another job of your own volition since there's less urgency.

3 is real, this is what was behind Amazon’s RTO mandates. Its designed to ensure that people decide to quit.

From a source closely involved with this- Amazon tracks many productivity metrics of employees and was seeing very significant differences between in-person and remote people, which drove the decision.

Source left since so I don’t know how much productivity has improved.

Advice to new grads: get into the office 5 days a week for at least a few years.

Those numbers were so convincing they have been shared with employees... 0 (ZERO) times.

Why would they share that... come on lets not be naive here. Do they always justify every bigger decision to whole world? It just creates friction surface for various people to catch on. C suite is there to set directions, not to explain themselves to their employees.

Its like getting refused during interview process. Sharing actually why makes no sense for hiring people, no gain and potentially a lot to lose.

I don't like the situation overall or RTO at all since it markedly increases quality of my personal life (which makes me a happier employee too but nobody really cares about that) but we need to be realistic with various people's motivations.

Orders and rules without explanation or motivation, damages morale and loyalty.

That's a reason to publish any statistics they might have (at least internally)

> It's like getting refused during interview process

Not at all! Those rejected, disappear. But grumpy employees are still there, but less productive

Yes. They would. There is a whole world of MBA and business analysis schools that look into this with a microscope.

The evidence that we have is that hybrid work is a net increase in productivity. Do note its hybrid, not remote.

Why would they share it? To counteract employees complaining endlessly about it, presumably.

Why is it that these "sources" always remain anonymous and outside the possibility of an external review?

Presumably because they’d be punished for sharing such information and you don’t rat out your friends?

> From a source closely involved with this

Bueller?

He's sick. My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from a guy who knows a kid who's going with the girl who saw him pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I think it's serious.

This would be impressive. since it complete contradicts what reports we do have of hybrid work (hybrid, not remote)

I disagree. Corpo finance doesn’t see names and value, they see cost. Talent can be purchased. They can’t purchase cost reductions

They can and its called management consulting

You couldn't be more wrong, no evidence supports your assertions.

https://fortune.com/2024/07/24/return-to-office-mandates-lay... https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/its-offi... https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/12/why-rto-mandates-are-layoffs...

You are very ignorant of the real world.

Wow, thanks for the links!

> nobody is dumb enough to do RTO as a layoff proxy

I wouldn’t be so sure of that…

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