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.
> Big corpo is a modern feodal state, where CEO is an emperor, c-suites are kings, managers are barons
Why do people forget about board members and shareholders?
There's a lot of overlap among the rich. I doubt Satya "wants" to RTO. I would suspect board members / shareholders with real estate interests are forcing the policy. (eg Vanguard holds 10%, with Blackrock close behind).
Big corpo is a feudal state, in the sense of complex incestuous power dynamics. It's oversimplifying to call CEOs emperors.
Because board members are all emperors too, and they have a stated interest in keeping emperors in power. Look at how many board members are C-suite in other companies.
I do not understand the real estate investor conspiracy theory. Why would it be better for vanguard if Microsoft paid rent to a real estate firm that managed office space, earned an X% profit margin, and then got taxed on the earnings before they were attributed to shareholders?
It makes much more sense to take a bath on the office investments and have Microsoft pay the difference in dividends or buybacks. The net amount to vanguard is higher than paying insurance, building and grounds maintainence, janitors, utilities, management fees, and property+ income tax before seeing your first dollar.
I don't get why the various tax incentives and such (plus stealth layoffs) aren't enough to explain it.
I've seen companies do some weird shit for those "X workers at location Y at least Z hours per year" tax incentives. I'd believe it's a major motivator for RTO (though probably somewhat behind the layoffs motivation)
The incentives don't pencil out. They don't make an entire separate corporate structure and several extra layers of taxation result in more money for investors instead of just... giving it to investors.
Why the push for RTO? The most simple and boring answer. Most people work and especially learn from each other better in-person than over Zoom and Slack. Practically zero people will try to pretend that remote school was great for the average student during covid, even at the university level. But for some reason everything inverts when it comes to work. I get that there are superperformers that work better in a closed room with zero interruptions ever and require little collaboration to do their jobs, and some students were 3 grade levels ahead during covid. But in a company of 200,000 people you have more average people than lone wolf superperformers, and so going in person is better than 200,000 slack pfps. Simplest yet most hated answer.
If I am already an owner of real estate, I’m interested not only in monthly rent, but also in property value (I can sell it or I can use it as collateral for a loan).
If offices are half empty across whole town, then property values are down.
On the other hand if you somehow would be able to saturate the office space, them property values go up.
Commercial real estate value is directly connected to occupancy. If I own an office building which was valued ten years ago at $10M (to pick a random number) and today is valued at half that because nobody's going in, that's a direct $5M loss on my accounts, and any loans outstanding secured on it are potentially now underwater. Not only that, but it also weakens the rent I can demand from the tenant not just because the value of the building has dropped, but because they demonstrably don't need all that space any more.
Microsoft is almost certainly a special case in a number of ways, but the incentives are absolutely there for commercial landlords to try to force their tenants' hands.
Not a "conspiracy theory". I've been to board meeting at one of companies, where board member was a real estate investor. They insisted that to obtain more investment company has to lease an office from the investor and ensure the office is occupied as part of the lease. Then they used that company in advertising of their property portfolio as in look who leases from us. It's complex.
You are missing the point that Microsoft might be the loss leader, setting an example or simply ensuring that commercial estate gains in value and the gains are greater than the losses.
It's a fact, you can maintain empty offices only for so long and billions invested can potentially vanish.
The funny thing is, I get more done at the office than at home. And if I’m dressed professionally, I get more done and I get better responses from others than when I’m wearing shorts and a tee shirt.
I’d prefer to work from home wearing pajamas but I can sympathize with why my employer wants me in the office and may even have a dress code.
Be glad you didn’t work in the development office of a bank in the 1990s, you’d be expected to wear a suit and tie to work.
What is happening is some
companies are choosing A and others are choosing B.
Employees who really care about A will prefer companies who chose A, same for B. Employees who care more about other properties C, D, E, etc. but not much about A or B will prefer companies that provide those properties.
So when it’s my idiosyncrasy I’m supposed to shut the fuck up because it’s unprofessional, but when it aligns with whatever goals of some middle manager I’m supposed to take one for the team, because Bob the baby needs a grown up man sitting next to him?
It's not an idiosyncrasy, it's a preference/optimal work environment. And it varies by person. Stop acting like the people that are on the other side of the opinion are being childish/stupid.
Nobody said you needed to stfu. Pointing out what works best for you is important in making sure the best decision is made. But, as I was trying to say, any decision that is made will be wrong for some of the people involved.
> Stop acting like the people that are on the other side of the opinion are being childish/stupid.
No, people on the other side should stop acting like we’re childish/stupid.
I was born a while ago, and know how world works. No need to feed me bullshit about “culture” or “value of communication”.
Regardless of someone's stand on the topic of remote vs in-office, I find it staggering that _anyone_ could believe that either one of them is the one-true-way. There's downsides to both and either decision is likely to make at least some of the participants unhappy.
I'm firmly on the WFH end of things; I much less productive in an office. But I know other people that are better in the office with the ability to talk things over with co-workers in person. And the fact that I'm not there makes it harder for them (and easier for me; tradeoffs)
The productivity is tangential at best to this matter; the discourse around WFH has long devolved into primitive drivel for/against freedom precisely because abstract "freedom" is all that Americans care about. (I don't think WFH is as big in Europe, at least based on my experience—everywhere I worked in Europe has overwhelmingly been in-office.) I get the argument that American cities are really sparse, and sometimes people have to commute a long while, etc etc. but I don't believe that it's the deciding factor. I think it's FAR simpler than that; in view of covid, all companies subscribed to WFH policy, and workers (quite naively) interpreted it as +freedom. The companies are now subscribing to RTO policies, and it's simply read as -freedom. That's it. People find it offensive whenever they're deprived of some extra options, choices, etc. It's nice not having to go to office all the time, but it's in of itself much nicer if you CAN choose not to, isn't it? In my view, that's what it boils down to.
So pay me enough to afford a home nearby so I can work in the office. Hell, I'll wear a suit too. Oh, I can only get enough to commute in from an exurb 1+ hour commute each way? Buzz off.
Been working since the 80s, and no company has ever paid me enough to buy anything nearby.
So I gave up 15 yrs ago and now work full remote where I could afford something.
The owners of the companies we work for are making more money than us, off the value we create through our work, simply by through ownership itself. How’s that for compensation vs difficulty?
If you think that’s an easier route, I doubt it’s ever been easier to found a company and own almost all of it.
On this very site is a link at the bottom to apply for substantial funding and help in succeeding at a modest cost of equity. But if it’s easy enough that you don’t even need that help, you can own it all.
The state of the world is a human product. It’s something we create. We can choose to resign ourselves to it and rationalize it, or try to change it through conscious collective action. Either way we are participating in creating the world we see around us.
I can tell that in Portugal it is a highly paid as any office worker, meaning bad, with unpaid overtime, and until you make it into manager you're failing.
Also doctors and business owners not only make it much more, there are plenty of under the table payment possibilities.
I also know of offshoring countries where folks working in tourism make more in tips from foreigners that any IT worker can ever dream off.
For some people, what they wear has an impact on their own performance. It's not necessarily about how others perceive them, and it's not necessarily logical. Some people work better with music, or with a window to look out... some people work better in fancier attire.
I once moved to a company that still mandated relatively formal work clothes—suit and tie no longer required, but still seen fairly often.
The first casual Friday I was struck now how energized I felt as soon as I walked in (and I didn’t participate, I wore slacks and a blazer that day).
Reflecting on that, I realized that I actually associate jeans and such with “professional office that gets shit done”. Because that’s how it’d been everywhere else I’d worked.
The “professional” dress code was having exactly the opposite effect on me, from what it was supposed to.
My friend is CTO of a smaller company say ~250 people, and RTO constantly comes up in the C-suite.
He is only able to fend it off by pointing out that they do not pay as well as their larger competitors, so the remote flexibility is a recruiting advantage.
He describes the push for RTO from the rest of the C-suite as basically a combination of unspecific vibes that it must be bad if employees like it, and of course.. because they can. Just like many rules at companies.
Likewise many companies in my slice of the industry point to one of the big leaders RTO policies as the reason to do the same, as a sort of cargo cult. However, what the big leader actually does that differentiates is paying 30% premium to have their pick of talent at every level of the org.
> Likewise many companies in my slice of the industry point to one of the big leaders RTO policies as the reason to do the same
This also explains other things, not only RTO. Like when the mass layoffs started about three years ago. Overstaffed big-tech fired a few thousand allegedly idle employees and (not surprisingly) saw no impacts on output. That was enough for many smaller companies, some of them understaffed, to go on and do the same, surely encouraged by their investors. I have friends in a half dozen companies complaining about permanent overtime and severe project delays after the layoffs. Yet, referred companies are either not hiring, or doing it in a very leisurely pace.
> Overstaffed big-tech fired a few thousand allegedly idle employees and (not surprisingly) saw no impacts on output.
The part that's always glossed over in this narrative is that the remaining workers were forced to pick up the slack to keep up the output ("do more with less") which resulted in toxic work cultures. Ask any employees across BigTech companies and they'll tell you of this happening everywhere all at once -- formerly collaborative environments suddenly becoming cut-throat and competitive; high pressure and unreasonable goals for delivery; hiring being scaled back (except in offshore teams!) and new candidates being severely downleveled compared to their experience.
This was not a coincidence; Sure, there were slackers scattered everywhere, but the waves of layoffs were completely disproportional to that. The real intention was to bring the labor market, overheated during Covid and ZIRP, back under control (a power play, as other comments indicate.) And who better than Elon to signal that change with his shenanigans at Twitter.
If it seems surprising that output was not impacted (although I would argue a close look at Twitter shows the opposite) one just needs to look at the record levels of burnout being reported:
Speaking as an immigrant who is now a US citizen, I don't think this is particularly relevant. As far as immigration support from companies goes, Big Tech already offers it, so the real beef is with the federal government - and a trade or company union is hardly the best venue to have that fight. I would first and foremost want a union that protects my interests as a worker against my employer's encroachment, and it was no different when I wasn't a citizen yet.
Congrats. But the top priority for a non-citizen immigrant would be protection, above employer encroachment. Notice how this played out when twitter fired 85%, and who stayed back.
Unions being political players will have to take a side - and in the current climate this makes unions a non starter, since majority can never align.
> unspecific vibes that it must be bad if employees like it
I read it as the feeling that they know somehow that the employees are not putting in 100% of their attention at home on the work assigned.
And i do believe it to be true - lots of people claim that WFH means they can "do the laundry" and/or go to the post office.
The fact is that there's very few self-starters and intrinsically motivated employees. Most are just there for the pay cheque, and will do the minimum work that is required of them - esp. if not under strict supervision.
Not to mention the fact that it is indeed much harder to have collaborative discussions that are spontaneous and unplanned in a WFH setting, compared to the office.
Those lazy employees need that strict supervision!
Maybe these c suites and other employee hating assholes are projecting their own lazyness. Or maybe they think they are so superior compared to ”common” people that the ”common” people must be lazy trash.
I don’t know, but it is weird to assume most people won’t do their job without ”strict supervision”. Like super weird.
(Btw, anecdotally, most people I know work more efficiently from home with fewer breaks)
> Those lazy employees need that strict supervision!
This comment is a bit reactionary. It would be more balanced to say that lower motivation employees will benefit from a more structured working environment.
> will do the minimum work that is required of them
So... doing their job?
When I read people wanting to have 100% uptime on their human resources I feel like I'm reading "The goal" again and how machines have to be 100% used in the mind of some managers.
And even when doing chore (or posting on HN), people tend to think about other things. Like their current task. Why do you think people find solutions to problems in the shower or just before sleeping? Because you can think about work (and so for most office jobs, working) even when not on your computer.
> lots of people claim that WFH means they can "do the laundry" and/or go to the post office
I mostly work from the office. Since the end of COVID-19, my teams are always mixed where some people WFH. One issue that I frequently encounter: People do their chores at random times in the middle of day, so frequently you cannot corral a group of people to quickly discuss something. In the office, this is trivial: Turn around in your chair. Over time, I find that I reach out to WFH staff less and less and work more closely with in-office teammates. I'm not rewarded for overcoming this friction with WFH teammates, so why would I try?
> People do their chores at random times in the middle of day...
When I was in-office, people I needed to speak to would be away from their desk (god only knows where) several times a day. Perhaps they were off taking a shit, or getting food, or having a long think in a quiet corner, or crying in the nap closet, or who knows what, but they weren't at their desk and I had no idea how to contact them.
If your coworkers are regularly inaccessible for extended periods, then you're gonna have to do what has been done since way before widespread WFH: talk to your manager to establish core working hours during which everyone is expected to be easily accessible to other folks in the company.
If your manager doesn't see the need to establish and enforce core working hours and neither does their manager, then either stop thinking of it as a problem, or go work for a place that is a better fit for your theory of work.
If you've already established core working hours and these remote employees are ignoring them, then complain to your manager. If their behavior is seriously getting in the way of you getting your work done, it's your manager's job to fix that.
Daily reminder that if a manager can't tell if their employees are effective working from home, that manager is incompetent. There are a million ways to check if someone is actually working, and butt-in-seat isn't one of them.
Also given many orgs are distributed across buildings, cities, and countries.. a manager admitting they need to physically see butts in seats is telling on themselves re: ability to do their job.
> Not to mention the fact that it is indeed much harder to have collaborative discussions that are spontaneous and unplanned in a WFH setting, compared to the office.
This is a culture thing that is easily fixed by mandating cameras on, buying everyone good microphones, and a consensus that you can ping someone with a question, go back and forth, and know that you aren't imposing by throwing a /zoom into the Slack DM and saying "let's just meet about this".
My team is small, sure, but we are cameras on 100%, we know to pause a sec after someone stops talking for latency, and have a spoken agreement "fuck slack just open a room i'll hop in". We have met in person numerous times and each time it feels identical to work in person as we do remote.
When I meet with other teams, people are in their fucking cars driving, cameras off the whole time (but chewing into the mic), can't figure out how to share their screen (still!), like, no shit that isn't productive, you're putting no effort into it!
I don’t think mandating cameras on and insisting on 100% is the right move, but I definitely think you want to aim for a team culture where camera-on is a default and most people have them on 80-90% of the time.
Otherwise, yea participation and engagement seems to take a major hit.
I think some people are misinterpreting 100% as "even when you aren't on a call/Zoom/huddle" which is batshit.
Some people are just unhappy they're being called out for taking meetings while they take a dump.
The latter is precisely why attempting for 100% cameras on during meetings is a good idea. If you're uncomfortable being on camera in a meeting doing it, its a good sign you shouldn't be doing it.
Screw presentability, having a camera pointed at you and on all the time is creepy and awful. It’s not the same as being in a room with actual people, it’s way worse.
Just meetings with 100% camera-on, even, are awkward and draining in ways that meeting in person or just having a call are not. Having a camera on you is like having a person making hard eye contact without blinking or looking somewhere else, ever. It’s bizarre and it sucks.
I can't edit this more but to temper this: I don't mind camera-on for 1-on-1 conversations, I don't mind camera-on while actively participating in larger meetings, that kind of thing, that's fine.
Camera on all the time so someone could just pop in and start watching at any moment, even not during a call? Terrible, absolutely terrible. Camera on for larger meetings the entire time, even when I'm not participating? Tolerable for very short meetings, but brutal and distracting for even a half-hour meeting.
Again, it's like being stared at. If the context of how I'm participating wouldn't naturally have people looking at me more or less uninterrupted if this were an in-person conversation, having the camera on is really unpleasant. So, when I'm talking, fine, being directly addressed by someone, sure, camera on is OK, but in a group setting when I'm not the (or a) current center of attention? Bad.
FWIW I did some work with McKinsey way into the Zoom era, though long enough ago that I can't vouch for their still doing this, but: they culturally favored just using group phone calls, complete with the phone number option being a common way to connect (Teams and such have this, too, but it's more of a back-up that IME doesn't get used unless absolutely necessary—they'd actually dial-a-phone-number call in as a routine way of operating). Even when everyone involved could have used video, they usually just did the call-in audio only thing. I was like "that's weird and old-fashioned" at first, but what I found it to actually be once I got used to it was flexible, robust, and entirely sufficient most of the time. I think people really overrate the importance of (everyone having) a camera for most calls.
>Camera on all the time so someone could just pop in and start watching at any moment, even not during a call?
That's not at all what I meant. I don't think it was how I typed it, I grant it could be, but you might want to read my original comment again. I am not advocating for just sitting there in your Zoom Personal Room, camera on, all day every day. That would be insane. But for synchronous work with others, a camera on that lets me know you're there, listening, providing feedback with body language? Thats why shit just gets done faster in person. Remote teleconferencing is low bitrate on the human communication spectrum. At least, lower bitrate than being in the same room. Cameras increase that bitrate.
In my meetings in Zoom, (scheduled, 1 hour, normal), everyone on my team has cameras on almost all of the time. I don't even turn mine off if I step away to grab the coffee pot from the kitchen, it lets people know immediately I'm not able to speak but can hear them fine.
Since they’re not collaborating with you, and are presumably a well paid professional, maybe their collaborators are perfectly happy with how they work?
Because I need to see if how I'm explaining something is hitting. I need to see if you are listening. I need to know you're actually there and not distracted.
I have found the same with remote. Cameras ON is a huge improvement in how much people are in on the game. Constant communication, frequent ad hoc meetings, screen sharing. Its totally doable, but most people don't do it. There is no feeling worse than presenting an idea to a meeting room of 10 people with all cameras off, and when you ask a question you get crickets. Too many people are phoning it in.
I saw a few clickbait articles highlighting that JPMorgan's new world headquarters in Manhattan (270 Park Ave) has a gym but will charge employees to use it. Why is this so interesting? I have worked in many different tall office buildings in my career. I saw a variety of setups: (1) company gym, (2) third party gym, (3) no gym. You always had to pay a fee to use the gym. Why does requiring employees to pay trigger such a hostile reaction from people? Also, the people working in this specific building are very well paid. They can easily afford the fees. Some other points that people don't mention: If it was free, it might be overloaded. That building is expected to have 14,000 employees! Also, no gym can possibly provide everything that everyone wants. In Manhattan, you are spoiled for choice with gyms.
I am sure that a few people will reply to say: If the gym were free, then more people would use it, and the company would benefit from lower healthcare costs. (Specific to the US: Most large corporations are self-insured for healthcare, but use third party providers to administer the programme.) Maybe so, but difficult to prove. If that is true, the company should also provide healthy lunches, etc. The list goes on and on. And Internet randos will have a never ending list of things that a "good company" must do for their employees.
If you're going above&beyond the industry average and demanding full 5-day-RTO, and pointing at how you just built a brand new HQ with great amenities so suck it up, then don't charge for those amenities?
Anyway, I've recruited with JPM a few times in my career, my spouse worked there at one point, and I know friends who have been through. So I like to pick on them as a good example of a company using their brand as an excuse to have bad pay/benefits relative to rest of industry. Good for investors I suppose, but don't work there.
> if employees like it, it must be a perk/benefit.
Or, for those who have bought into the utterly toxic mindset that employees are always trying to get as much out of the company as possible for as little work as possible, "if employees like it, it must be a scam on us."
A big difference between feudalism and modern societies is that in feudalism, you expect to earn much less than the value of the land you inherit and pass on (or the custom or right of your family farming the land) whereas in modern societies most people will earn much more in lifetime earnings than they would inherit or pass on. This results in far more social mobility and much more freedom in praxis. I don’t think companies are like feudal societies.
A West Coast software engineering career is barely worth the land underneath a house from which you could reasonably commute to it. We're getting there.
This is just straight-up false? My current home - not the land, the home entire - cost just under 3 years of my salary, or under 2 years of my total comp, and I can go door-to-door in 35 minutes on public transit or 20 by car. (and I'm under 40 and still getting good reviews, so can reasonably hope for my pay to increase considerably in the second half of my career)
Don't get me wrong, that's still way too expensive; but your exaggeration is _way_ off the mark.
Do you live in Socal, like the person is implying? You make >500k a year and still live in a pretty small house then? And if so, like basically no one in the united states?
> Do you live in Socal, like the person is implying?
Apologies, I saw "A West Coast software engineering career [...and...] a house from which you could reasonably commute to it" and assumed they meant San Francisco, which is accurate for me (I live in Berkeley, and my office is in the FiDi of SF). I had thought that the Bay Area was both more expensive and more tech-centric than SoCal, but I could be wrong there.
> You make >500k a year and still live in a pretty small house then
Just under 300k, but yeah - it's 3 bed 2 bath, so not huge but not tiny either. And I've saved enough over the ~5 years of living here to be looking at building a 3-4 room extension onto it into the yard next year.
> And if so, like basically no one in the united states?
Again, I didn't claim that my situation is a) typical, or b) ideal - housing in the Bay Area is far too expensive, and it's perfectly valid and reasonable to prefer living elsewhere for any number of reasons. I'm just pointing out that /u/closeparen's statement was a _wild_ exaggeration (if they did indeed mean Bay Area like I assumed and not SoCal. If they did, I have no data to contribute!)
An American middle class house in San Mateo or Santa Clara County will run you about $2 million, or ~$140k-160k/year. The take-home pay for $300k is about $180k.
Alameda County is cheaper because the commute to South Bay and to S.F. destinations not near BART is unreasonable. If you’re willing to rule out those jobs you might be able to get away closer to $1.5m at $120k/year.
I’m guessing you bought with a 3% mortgage and before the COVID asset price takeoff.
Another way to look at it is that for each $100m of company value created, you’re looking at perhaps $20m of employee equity, or about 10 employees being able to buy homes (before taxes) if the equity were distributed evenly.
It’s extremely pretty, there’s great food, lots of tech jobs, you meet diverse and interesting people, great public transit (for the US). There are many reasons for living in the Bay Area.
You can find the same in Minneapolis with a better cost of living. (At least the other reply mentioned weather). there are more people in the bay area, but in minneapolis you can find more people in minneapolis than you have time to meet.
there are many other cities in the us that likewise have a great tech scene. The bay is not unique - it has a little more but it isn't unique-
8 years in the Twin Cities from Chicago originally.
People are nice, but everyone who I ever interacted with in stores or outside of work was from somewhere else. The natives just weren’t up for making friends or casual conversation.
Despite the cold, Winters in Minneapolis are 100 times better than winters in Chicago.
Food in Minneapolis can’t hold a candle to Chicago or New York.
Public transportation barely works even if you have a government job where you can leave exactly the same time everyday. You still need a car for everything else.
Grew up in Minneapolis and spent most of my life in the twin cities.
You really can’t compare it to a tech hub, or even a major city like NYC or Chicago. It’s just a different league.
I miss the twin cities quite a lot and will likely eventually move back - but definitely not for professional reasons or the opportunity to expand my exposure to cultural diversity.
Living in both a few mid tier cities like MSP and a major “real” city comparing them is pretty tone deaf to me. Calling public transit even usable in Minneapolis is a joke - and I lived without a car for over 20 years there taking it every day. Not even a comparison to a large city with a rapid transit network.
The Bay Area may have fallen off since I’ve been there, but the tech density even 10 years ago gave opportunity for career growth that Minneapolis simply did not remotely have. If you were a super star developer doing Internet things in the early to mid 2000s you left a lot of money on the table by not being willing to move.
That's an understatement: Bay area weather is magical. It is the same all year round. You don't need "winter" and "summer" attire, your plans never get rained out, and you never have to deal with snowstorms. The downside is sometimes it rains ash.
Personally, I had to leave because the pizza out there is unbearable but damn I miss the bay area weather.
When the sky turned orange in 2020, my wife and I were just done. Also, there's something to be said for living in a place with four seasons, and a sense of time passing by.
For highly-specialized engineers and researchers, there’s often only a tiny handful of companies they could work for that offer jobs in their specialties. For example, if you’re a compilers expert, there are only so many companies that hire compiler developers, whether it’s working on a commercial compiler like Microsoft Visual Studio or contributing to an open-source project such as LLVM (Apple is a major contributor). These jobs tend to be concentrated in a few global metro areas.
Additionally, Silicon Valley in particular benefits from having multiple companies in overlapping specialties. Suppose I’m a GPU expert working for NVIDIA, and suddenly I hit a setback and it’s time for a new job. Well, Apple is just a few miles away, and Apple makes GPUs and NPUs, and so I’d have a shot at working for Apple.
Contrast that with people living in areas with little diversity among tech companies. For example, Intel recently laid off a ton of engineers working near Portland, Oregon. There are few alternative technical employers in the region, especially in the specialties Intel focused on in Portland. Those laid-off engineers are facing the prospects of pivoting to a different tech specialty with more employment opportunities, competing for remote jobs at a time when so many companies are requiring their employees to return to the office, or relocating from Portland, which is massively disruptive and can potentially be very expensive. Some may be forced to retire early.
Silicon Valley may be insanely expensive and ultra-competitive, but it also has critical mass, which is vital for highly-specialized engineers and researchers.
I think the same can be argued for global investment banks. All of their important offices are in six cities globally: New York (Manhattan), London, Tokyo, Hongkong, Singapore, and Sydney. All other locations pale in comparison. Probably 1% of headcount (sales, trading, i-bankers) is responsible for 99% of revenues. There is a reason why investment banks are all crowded into very tall buildings in the same six cities: They are trying to access those "1% people". I see the same for tech clusters around the world. (For tech, I guess that less than 5% of staff generate most of your important intellectual property.) There is a reason why Oracle stays in Silicon Valley instead of moving to Montana or Oklahoma were real estate and salaries would be much cheaper!
There are plenty of other cities with enough job options that isn't something you only get in the bay area.
for the intel emplopees I doupt there is anyone else in the us who needs them. Maybe one or two to a military contactor but most have to find a new spectialty. I wish them luck. Fortunately specalists are mostly easy to retrain.
Not having access to land you had a right to farm (and therefore needing to be a tenant farmer of some kind or – even worse – a wage labourer) was pretty bad for a peasant. It was also hard/impossible to escape from on the back of one’s labour. It is in this sense that land (or associated rights) was worth significantly more than one could make through labour.
I think it is a mix between power play and real-estate. During Covid and late-Covid, management had to let people wfh/remote, and companies were either mass-hiring or mass-layoffs. Insecure management felt like they had their "power" stripped away, and now between the uncertain economy and some being embolden due to the current potus admin, they want to "put workers in their place".
One of my coworkers is a contractor for a local IT/engineering firm, and another client recently lost one of their principle engineers due to him refusing to RTO and quit. Now the VPs he reported under are bad-mouthing him, saying he was "never any good", "screwed everything up", and "not a team player" - which everyone else knows is BS. The employees are just keeping their heads down trying not to get noticed - morale is bad. Management has even noticed and reversed their recent more formal dress code for a Jeans (and a Food Truck once a month) Friday. Needless to say no one is impressed.
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.