Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

>> where it comes from

It's a power play. To show regular folks their place. Big corpo is a modern feodal state, where CEO is an emperor, c-suites are kings, managers are barons, IC are peasants and external contractors are slaves(but leased from other owner).

It's not only RTO, it's also about timetable and dress code. Yes, I had a beef with IT manager about dress code in the development office of a bank. Just because he can show his power he tried to enforce dress code.

In addition to the other comments (yes, very much a powerplay) it is also likely that employers simply realized remote work is a huge perk they had not accounted for, and RTO is simply a means of renegotiating:

https://www.tiktok.com/@keds_economist/video/746473188419558...

The video presents a compelling theory that post-Covid employers realized that employees CAN be productive remotely, but also put a pretty high premium on being able to do so -- studies show employees are willing to take a hit to bonuses, pay and promotions to keep that perk.

So the current coordinated RTO push is basically a renegotiation of salaries to account for that perk, especially now that it is very much an employer's market... which, BTW, is also the outcome of another very coordinated effort across the industry: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45192092

Edit, some recent studies:

- https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/charting-remot...

- https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/tech-workers-take-much-lowe...

Are they requiring VP approval for zoom meetings? Requiring zoom meetings to be restricted to office network IP addresses?

I’m the kind of employee that would comply, not answer my cell phone and require people to leave voicemails on my desk line, call out people who are multitasking, and actively call out managers who attend meetings via zoom.

RTO with back to back zoom meetings all day is a waste of everyone’s time and energy.

Make management show us the benefit of all this RTO collaboration.

Oh, and I’m done checking email and teams after hours. Not safe to do so while driving.

C suites are committed to spending as much as possible on real estate

Executives often own the real estate and lease it back to the company. From Steve Ballmer to the owner of the tiny 85 person company I last worked at, it’s not uncommon.

So, yeah, there’s often some financial incentive there.

I know of a certain large company I will not name that is sending people back to office while also having a huge percentage of staff augmentation consultants living outside of the US. So you can find teams that have two people in the office, working side by side with another 10 people in the team that are remote, and interacting with teams that might be a 7, 8 timezones away.

You can imagine how well those people feel about RTO, and how it helps their collaboration.

Several years before the pandemic I was forced to move several states away after my local office was shutdown and the company was looking to force everyone to a few larger offices. It didn’t make any sense. Within my little 10 person team, we had people in 5 states and at least 2 counties, spanning multiple time zones. I was on the phone, tethered to my desk, all-day every-day. I saw very little point to being in the office. If they are going to push for office collaboration, at least organize the teams so all the team members are actually in the same office. The whole thing was madness.

I do see the value in meeting people face-to-face, but I also think they could be done with the occasional company event. I have to imagine having a few events where people can meeting and build some rapport is cheaper than maintaining offices year round.

My employer is currently mandating a 2 day per-week RTO for all employees within 50 miles of a major office, but in my case, even if they wanted to, they'd be unable to force a return to a 5 day arrangement.

My commute time has more than doubled since they closed and sold my office for a hefty sum of money. As a result of multiple offices converging to one, there are insufficient seats for the number of employees actually assigned to my office; hence, "hotdesking".

I'd wager that maybe a third of the total employees assigned to the office could be present at any one point in time, so unless they purchase some additional properties, we're at a stalemate with the twice a week RTO. Most days over 90% of the desks, sometimes over 99% are taken in the building, requiring reservation weeks in advance through a seat reservation app.

I have no direct teammates in the office and no two members of my 10 person team work in the same office (or state).

> I remain baffled by executives' obsession with RTO

same reason some people think "professionalism" is about wearing smart shoes. While these sorts will never admit it to themselves, you are there to make them feel important. What you actually do is secondary, which is why they pay more attention to bullshit like presenteeism, than they do your work.

Man, if I could get the same level of attention on my PRs over the course of my career as I do about being occasionally late, then that'd be great.

We should know by now that all these RTO initiatives are not grounded in any reasonable logistics nor financial reasoning. Right now all of tech is in cut mode, and RTO's are a great way to do layoffs without calling them layoffs. Note that when Google got "too many" people RTO'ing, they did layoffs anyway.

If your office does try to make things stricter, it's another layoff attempt. I don't think it will work, because at this point we're in a "sticky" job market; those out of work are facing some of the stiffest markets in decades, those in work are holding on for deal life.

If the company enforces RTO at least stop using zoom for meetings. If that means offshored employees can't participate then so be it. Let them come to the office.

This is exactly the problem with a lot of the RTO push.. We are more geographically spread out than ever, and companies usually have, at best, 1/2 the conferences rooms required to actually collaborate properly.

So in-office days are spent sitting in a big noisy open floor plan, wearing noise cancelling headphones trying to get work done.. in between producing lots of noise yourself on zoom.

The other having-it-both-ways I see from employers is that in the last 5.5 years of COVID most people I know have expanded their work days to take calls earlier and later for timezone alignment purposes. This was tenable to expand your work day 1-2 hours when you had no commute. Now they think they can get the extra hours out and force a commute.

My wife spends many of her in-office days dialing into 7:30/8am calls, heading into the office late enough to have tons of train delays, and rushing to meet the deadline to get the swipe in so it counts.

If I returned to the office I'd be working with teammates in India, Washington, Nevada, Minnesota, and Delaware and none of them would be in my office. I'd be essentially working remote from an office that I commute to. The worst of all worlds.

This is why I stay at a company that’s 100% remote even though I’m sacrificing many thousands of dollars a year in additional income. I just can’t go back for so many reasons. But the most frustrating one in my opinion is exactly what you said, that all of this can be done remotely.

I suspect the C-suite has noticed the discrepancy between attendance and occupancy

The solution is to downsize your physical plant.

My company has a ton of faults, but every time one of these stories hits the HN front page, I thank God that my company remains committed to work from home. So much so that it recently sold its last building, and the few dozen employees whose roles require them to be physically present have been relocated to a much smaller building on a train line.

The work-from-home policy comes very heavily from the top. I suspect it's due to two things:

1. We have no shareholders. So the C-levels don't feel the need to engage in performative monkey-see-monkey-do antics so they have something to talk about during investor calls.

2. The management is extremely female-heavy. If I had to guess, I'd say it's 4:1 female:male. And the biggest beneficiaries of work from home are caregivers, who are statistically more likely to be women.

While I believe that 90% of the "work-life balance" speeches that come out of our HR department are a bunch of bullshit, I also believe that when it comes to work-from-home, management loves it not just for the massive cost savings they say it's provided.

Same thing happened where I worked, though that was mostly from what I heard from coworkers since I maintained my WFH status. It's all CEO theater designed to layoff folks while also forcing people who RTO to take an effective pay cut. People need to recognize that and demand more from where they work, whether it's in the form of unionizing or otherwise.

Executives have done all manner of things which reduced productivity. Hoteling alone must have cost billions in lost focus.

They’re suspicious of work from home because employees like it. If they were concerned about productivity they’d make deals where you can work from home but have to work 10% more hours or something to make up for whatever imagined productivity was lost.

While sketchy and total crap move on MS. What recourse do employees really have?

MS likely consulted with their army of lawyers before pulling this.

Actions might be crappy but not illegal. Not a lawyer but employers are usually allowed to dictate the terms of the employment agreements and requiring someone to go into an office to work can be one of them. Even changing from permanent remote to onsite at a later time seems like another relatively protected decision.

Unless someone somewhere higher up is on the record saying something like “Oh yeah let’s make them come into the office to actually make it really crappy for them so they leave on their own” I doubt any reasonably reliable legal case can be made.

I don't know. When a company uses RTO to reduce headcount they usually include all employees, with the expectation that those who live far away from the office will resign instead of relocate.

If I'm reading this right, it only applies to people who already live within 50 miles of the office. Remote-remote employees are exempt.

>MS had to mention that in the memo, because that's what everyone reading it was thinking?

It's not reducing headcount if they hire just as many people overseas.

At my shop employees had to RTO but us consultants are still remote. I suspect this is exactly what it looks like.

I'd have to do the math on what the commute would cost me in time and financial cost.

I don't own a car. I have no plans to buy one. If I "needed" one for a job, that would be brought up at the salary negotiation. Sorry, I'm not going to pay for a car I don't otherwise need and lose $15K a year for something decent. What a scam!

On the time, well, it just depends on what they're going to pay me. Divide by work hours per year. Add 2 hours a day. Add that to the offer. I don't work for free. I don't travel for free. When I need to fly somewhere I get free ground transport, free meals, free flights, free hotel, but because we put "we're forcing you to travel 10 miles a day for no reason" in a little special box called "expected" we can force you to spend your own salary on it. *Scam*. It's all a big scam. They're subsidizing their bottom line with your time, your money, and your air.

I worked a terrible job in high school because I could walk there. There was no point in going someplace else that paid more because I would've burned all the extra money up in gas.

This question isn't very revealing because it almost entirely depends on this one variable:

> maybe I am even in a privileged position financially; but at this moment in my life I would rather quit my job

Someone closer to retirement with a lot of savings and low expenses will have a completely different answer than a younger person with low savings and a family.

The second variable it depends on is their current salary. Someone who currently earns a huge number can afford to give up a higher percentage than someone who earns barely enough to make ends meet.

The question becomes a proxy for the person's financial situation and current salary, not their remote work preferences.

This is also a question where people's claims don't match their actions. Similar to every election season when a lot of people declare they're going to move to a different country if their party loses, but the number of people who actually do it is much smaller.

> Just out of curiosity, how much compensation would people be willing to leave on the table in lieu of "Remote" work? (this is different to, how much would you ASK to go from remote to a new in-office job). 10%, 25%, 50%?

~$250k, ~50% of potential day gig comp.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37094928

(remote 10+ years, I'll retire before I go back to an office, I want more time and quality of life, not more money)

I took a 10% pay cut to move out of San Francisco to a location with a satellite office. Best decision I’ve made, but SF was never for me.

I left an on-site job for a fully remote job, taking about a 35% cut to do so. Literally every aspect of my life improved, including financially.

The financial savings come from 3 things: downsizing to one car and elimination of transport costs; dramatically reduced lunch and coffee expenses; not buying a bunch of stuff to cope with the emotional toll (by far the biggest component).

The savings are even more dramatic if I factor in the opportunity costs of commute time. After accounting for the two way commute time, gas station line time, and vehicle maintenance time, my effective hourly rate working in-office was probably lower than working remote.

There have been some studies on this, turns out employees will give up quite a bit:

https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/charting-remot...

https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/tech-workers-take-much-lowe...

Just left a comment elsewhere (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45192176), but it's likely this RTO push is partially to renegotiate to account for this perk.

Enough to win the competition for the fixed number of available homes in good neighborhoods convenient to the office. Which is effectively an infinite amount, if every employer in the area is trying to throw money at the problem.

This is the answer, its supply demand and there is likely going to be a different equilibrium price for each.

> Microsoft updates flexible work expectations to three days a week in the office

Of all the "voices" I'd like to be able to do, corporate shitspeak is definitely the top one.

[dead]

This is the way.

As a salaried employee there is no "salaried time." You're paid for your output not the time spent on it. This goes especially true for Microsoft where lots of people put in far less than a 40hr workweek. Literally no one bats an eye at arriving at the office late so if you want to start your commute at 9 and include that in your "working hours" no one would care.

Sounds a bit extreme, but OTOH this is what tradesfolk typically do - charge $100 to ring your doorbell and take it from there, since it does cost them money just to get to you.

Still, even if there is some sort of justification (moreso if the company chooses to locate themselves away from residential/affordable areas), I'm not sure how you would avoid abuse. Maybe just pay employees a fixed amount for each day they are required to drive to the office ?

> Commute time should be salaried time.

Salary means you're paid a fixed amount per pay period, regardless of hours worked.

So including commute in your hours worked wouldn't change your salary, which is by definition a fixed amount.

Did you mean that commute time should be paid hourly at an additional rate?

And workers should be paid to have space to work from home and internet service and food and office supplies and electricity.

Nobody's stopping you from moving closer to the office, and incentivizing people to move further away is the last thing we should do

Yes, rent 5 minutes from the office is likely very high, and it's much cheaper two hours away, and that's why most people live far away. But that is already a factor in salaries. If the office is in a high-cost-of-living area they have to offer higher salaries to get an equal caliber of workers.

Interesting. I've been remote for 5 years across three different companies, and if anything I've had the opposite experience: my remote coworkers are far more responsive than my on-site coworkers, who are always in meetings, in transit, having in-person chit chat, or taking a break.

I have a more nuanced take here. For low performing or junior employees, remote work was generally a terrible thing that led to less productivity (and more managerial overhead). For strongly performing employees with obligations at home, there were many who preferred working at home.

I fall more into the latter camp (at least I hope so) and, given I've only worked in nice offices with catered lunches, gyms, video games, offsites, etc, I enjoy a 3 day hybrid schedule works best for me.

> It was a privilege

Hardly. It was COVID. It forced companies to do the most logical thing they could in a world of high speed internet. Many of them refused to read the writing on the wall and assumed it would return to normal one day. They made no efforts to internally reorient themselves around this new work strategy.

> people abused it

Other than your anecdote what evidence is there that this is true? Has the economy faltered? Is there any second source for the data which shows _any_ impact _at all_?

That seems like an issue of company leadership and culture. There are many remote companies where this isn’t true. I’ve seen comments from Amazon workers talking about they were much more productive in a remote work situation, even though their leader (Andy Jassy) chose to make the company go back to the office 5 days a week with invasive monitoring of how people badge in and out.

It always seems weird to me how people complain about such things. Just do your thing and don't care about others. If others are blocking you, just say so in the daily or to your manager. Easy.

I don't really care about unproductive people, I care about myself.

I'm very pro remote working, but I think people like me need to realize that this is a real issue. It happens in the office too, but it's a bit harder to get away with, and it's really a performance management issue which brings us nicely to your second point.

I agree, managers are always the worst offenders when it comes to this sort of thing. But they do the same in the office by disappearing into meeting rooms for the entire day. I'd love to know how you can effectively manage a team by constantly being in meetings with other managers.

I will forever fight this with saying that chat is an async medium. If you need a response right now, pick up the phone.

Worst offenders are people who say things like: Hey, how are you doing?

And then ... nothing.

Or maybe people are actually working on something. And your 2 minute question might cause them to lose 30 minutes.

This is why it is important to have multiple work-streams going when doing remote work, so that you don't sit around and wait until you have your answer.

> It was a privilege, people abused it, and now it's over. And managers were the worst offenders.

IME, managers do this in the office just as much as remote.

Look at the typical manager's schedule. It's completely full of meetings - most of which are bullshit "busy" meetings, and they never respond to anything timely.