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People are up in arms, particularly those in our smaller locales, where the offices we have are perfunctory at best.

The rationale is the usual one: collaboration, watercooler chat, unspecific evidence / "research" about productivity (that we are told definitely exists, but is yet to be shared).

I remain baffled by executives' obsession with RTO... C suites are committed to spending as much as possible on real estate and geographically limiting their talent pool. Whilst making workers more tired and less productive.

I still have no idea where it comes from. My best guess is that nobody at that level wants to break ranks with the "collective wisdom" of "investors", which creates a kind of groupthink.

(An RTO mandate is also an excellent thing for a CEO to show investors they are doing, if they are not making money and lack better ideas.)

Now I suspect the C-suite has noticed the discrepancy between attendance and occupancy, and I fully expect that their solution in this job market to be a 5-days, monitored attendance RTO soon. We are regressing at an alarming rate.

Claims who? These also sound like typical sketchy headcount reduction tactics.

Also, it's throwing employees under the bus, because the company is tarring them as low performers, at the same time as the company dumps them onto a hostile job market. Those employees should talk to lawyers.

> > Importantly, this update is not about reducing headcount.

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

1) Office is bad, people more productive working remote from their homes, and corporate C-levels issue and enforce RTO, which is silly and anti-productive.

2) All jokes about Zoom/Meet/Teams, with all these «Each meeting consists of “are you hear me?” questions», etc.

Maybe, I'm unique (I'm sure I'm not), but I was twice less productive at remote (when it was mandated by anti-COVID measures of my Government) and I've happily returned to office as soon as I was allowed to.

For me, there are multitude of reasons to want to go to office, including endless number of shelves I need to mount at home (it is easy to procrastinate when you have OTHER real things to do, like home improvement, and not only meme-scrolling), mental resource to prepare one more meal each day (I have canteen at the office and lunch becomes no-brainer and takes 15-20 minutes instead of additional shopping & cooking at home), etc.

But main and most important reason is, personal meetings and, yes, this proverbial cooler chats. I'm 10x more effective in communication in person than all these videocalls. I dread planned calls, I cannot «read» counterparts well via videocall and it takes me much more time to explain ideas, problems and opinions via any remote communication. Also, a lot of «small» questions are postponed indefinitely because there is no this cooler, when you can ask somebody opinion or bounce off half-backed ideas against your colleague without scheduling yet another meeting and WITHOUT throwing your colleague out of the flow (because you know that he leaved flow to drink some tea already!).

I'm glad, that I can visit office every day, but also I'm glad that I can WFH for one day if I needed to (for example, when I need to meet plumber or alike).

Yes, there is commuting, but my commute is 15-20 minutes one way :-)

I've worked remotely for 5 years now, and there is NO way I would return to an office based job. I even have moved to a small town where there are practically 0 tech jobs; and at this point there's NO way I would relocate for a new job. Maybe it is my age (44), or maybe I am even in a privileged position financially; but at this moment in my life I would rather quit my job if they made me return to office (even for one day a week, as it would mean having to move to wherever the office is). Fortunately I am in a position where I can go several months without a paycheck, and I have some passive income.

Verge: Microsoft Mandates a Return to Office https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45184017

Geekwire: Microsoft sets new RTO policy, requiring employees in the office 3 days per week https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45184032

Why Microsoft Has Accepted Unions, Unlike Its Rivals - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/business/economy/microsof... | | https://archive.today/ES3SF - February 28th, 2024

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_and_unions

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

I like the routines and processes that I adhere to more when I have a separate work location; I find it more difficult to adhere to those same processes when I can roll out of bed and walk to my computer half asleep and zone in on work.

For example, I find it much more likely I’ll consistently shower, get dressed, eat breakfast etc, when I go into the office than when I work from home.

Additionally, when working remote, I find that there’s often more of a bias towards threads or messages starting off related to something work related; I do try to ask about colleagues weekends occasionally for example, but when remote it often feels more like you’re consuming their bandwidth or attention vs just minor conversation in passing.

Sometimes things take time to compile, or conversations over text-mediums are difficult; having a manager nearby that can sense when things are difficult and more effectively help is great. I’ve had many times where I’ve sighed about something and my coworker heard and asked what got me flustered and explaining it helped lead to resolution.

What I would suggest is that perhaps some teams should be remote and some local if possible to facilitate different types of employees.

I totally get working remote, I’d probably do it if I was back in a relationship and/or had kids.

This would have made sense when the company was all at one site, but over the last 5 years my company (and microsoft) have massively expanded.

So now I drive to the office and video call my colleagues in other sites. Brilliant.

To do what exactly? Sit in an open office in Redmond, jump on Teams to call with someone in Fort Lauderdale?

Funny thing, I had multiple interviews with them on explicit remote roles (which are different from roles that went remote during COVID). I wonder if the policy changes there.

It says a lot about a team when they win, and instead of rewarding the players that got them the win, they do shit like this.

At the office there where those who clearly wanted to minimize human interactions and people who thrived and performed better when interacting with others.

And then there is liminal spaces (Severance) the place where hope and creativity comes to die.

"There must be someway out of here."

Given that MS does not have top salaries, my bet is that folks will leave to other companies given that the main leverage like WFH is gone.

Ah the data is clear, without reference to the data collected or metrics used.

- There are times when in-person collaboration is invaluable.

- There are times when having quiet focus time alone is invaluable.

- Every team and job is different. Sitting on Zoom all day in an open office full of strangers doesn't make sense. Getting blocked because I bricked my proto board and I need a tech to rework it but I'm wfh and the tech is wfh and now we have to do a mail dance and burn a week for something that used to take a 5 min walk down the hall to deal with doesn't make sense. YMMV.

- The industry seems to be converging to hybrid. I feel like this is kind of like the debates over being mandated to use AI in dev - love it or hate it, it's happening, and there's no point trying to swim against a rip current.

What I would really like to see is arguments from the other side. Can someone steelman RTO. Preferably with evidence, anecdotal or otherwise.

It feels less about actual performance and more about a need for control. Some of these companies even invested in remote tooling during the pandemic, and now they’re choosing to ignore it. You start to wonder if they’re really looking at output, or just want people back in seats so things look like they’re under control.

  1) until the fed lowers interest rates (and thus makes it easier for small to mid size companies to bring on more employees), hriing will be nowhere near the peak of 2022? where employees had all of the leverage
  2) trump tarrif's are probably limiting the ability of the fed to do serious interest rate cuts needed to spur hiring
  3) on top of this, AI is imo undoubtedly reducing demand in tech hires (esp. software engineers, but soon most white collar fields imo), something that wasn't the case just a couple of years ago.
  4) the latest US revision just showed a downward revision of 1 million less employed than previously posted over the last year or so, last month(?) was revised to job losses and the msot recent job month was basically flat as well.
  5) an arguement can be made that RTO, while crappy, greatly benefits cities by forcing a lot of highly paid tech workers to commute downtown, helping restaurant workers, cleaners (sorry the proper term escapes me at the moment), and other workers in support roles for offices keep their jobs (the spike in SF homeless during covid was caused by a big spike in high earning tech workers  suddently working remotely causing layoff in these office reliant industries).

The long short of it is that the remote workers become alienated, while the office gang has a good chance of becomes a good ol' boys club.

1) For experienced high performers, remote work definitely increases productivity. They're much likely to work longer hours and get more done when they're not in the office.

2) For people who are on the low end or need more guidance, it's more likely for them to slip or get left behind with remote work.

3) It takes longer to onboard new hires working remotely.

4) There's more barriers to cross-team collaboration working remotely. You don't have that natural bumping into each other in the office and unintentional communication that you do on Slack or Teams.

5) Remote work allows you to pull from a much greater talent pool, and you don't have to spend money on office space. This is really beneficial for startups.

6) For larger companies, remote work is excellent for teams that need to support a live product 24/7 since you can pull from many different time zones.

7) For managers and senior leadership, your meetings are all on zoom. And they're all back to back. The natural food or bathroom breaks you get working in an office don't exist. And they're more likely to exist later into the night.

This all leads to high performers picking up a lot more of the team's slack. They tend to thrive. Meanwhile, there's a certain percentage of staff that aren't doing a lot or are struggling. Managers are totally overloaded with meetings and don't have much time to give direct support. And because these are the decision makers, they're more likely to be in favor of RTO.

What I expect to happen with RTO is that junior staff and new hires will pick up more work (hopefully), the meeting burden on managers will be me more reasonable, and there will be better collaboration. But the high performers who teams rely on will be unhappy, will get less done, and are more likely to leave. Productivity will dip at first, and there might be a brain drain. It might be a good decision longer term. But there are tradeoffs any way you do it.

This mandate is not at all surprising given MS invested heavily in new, revamped offices, which they had started before the pandemic. How did folks who relocated to other areas not see this coming.

That is the real threat, someone might notice how utterly useless these bozos are and finally cut them off. Especially in software development, where focus and silence are everything, this mandate is beyond ridiculous.

> If needed, you can request an exception by Friday, September 19.

Often the exceptions to this sort of policy override the rule.

Oh the irony! double facepalm emojis

A company where most employees work digitally with people across the world is requiring people to sit at a desk in a physical location. The irony is blinding & shows an utter lack of transparency by leadership.

Most of them have dedicated their lives to getting that sweet corner office with the mahogany L-desk. Then theres that sweet nameplate.

I don’t think there’s any reliable data on RTO vs Remote productivity.

Citation needed or this is just more vibe-xecutive decree.

If anyone here is Microsoft employee living in Ukraine, I'd love to heat your take

He pulled his people back into the office because he said he "felt" like they were not working. Despite graduating from Harvard and from Harvard Business School he could not offer any qualitative or quantitative data to back up his "feelings." He lets his people WFH on Friday's but says he schedules video calls on that day to make sure they are working.

He said, "When they are working from home, I do not know if they are walking their dog for an hour but if they are in the office, I know they aren't."

What made this conversation laughable was that he and I were at a country club having lunch and bullshitting for half the day, on a weekday, while our kids (who had the day off from school) were playing a sport together. He stepped away more than once for "meetings" that he took from his cell phone.

It was laughable.

>With that in mind, we’re updating our flexible work expectations to three days a week in the office.

OTOH, I've noticed the "disruptors" of yesteryears are now full-on right-wing jerks whose mission is to preserve wealth instead of create wealth by doing new and disruptive things. This tells me one important message if nothing else: There is no shortage of talent for the perceived wealth-creating opportunities. The gold rush is over.

I fear this is less about ZIRP and more about complacency (in general) and would-be investors and VC's not having faith in the possibility of high ROI investments.

Interesting. Everyone here is an employee.

It's a standard McKinsey & Co. playbook that is going around the various tech companies as a way to reduce headcount.

And, productivity is going to tank. If you force me to RTO, I will show up exactly at 8am, take my 1 hour lunch away from the office, and leave exactly at 5pm. And, when I do leave the office at 5pm, my work phone gets turned off and I will not do anything work related until 8am the next morning.

You would think these tech companies would do something innovative. A f*cking monkey can cut costs by firing people. How about you stop over hiring? How about you stop leasing building space and use the products you create that enable remote collaboration?

You can essentially divide IC employees into three categories. First, those who are about as productive from home as they are from the office, but are on average happier working remotely (no commute, etc). That's probably circa 80%. Second, those who are well-intentioned but fall behind over time, because they are less proactive about maintaining soft skills - communications, cross-functional relationship management, etc. That's the bulk of the rest. And third, there are people who actively exploit the situation in ways that the company is going to have an allergic reaction work (outsource their work to a dude in India, half-ass three jobs at competing companies, etc). That's typically <1%, but it's obviously a weird / scary new thing.

Further complicating this picture is the fact that line managers are not perfect either; there is an "out of sight, out of mind" aspect to it, and if a WFH worker is underperforming, it will on average take longer to address the problem, which has some ripple effects.

And on some level, the exec perspective is that the intangible gains in the happiness of the 80% that was previously willing to work for you in the office is not worth the horrors on the bottom end. So there is something resembling a credible argument for RTO.

At the same time, there is a degree of lazy thinking / bad faith on the exec side because the problems can be solved in other ways. You can retrain managers, you can improve performance management, you can monitor for certain types of grift, and you can accept some degree of added risk. In fact, you probably should if it keeps your top performers happier. But the overwhelming preference is for the easy choice of RTO.

This is it folks. Corp screws you when they can. Welcome to the machine.

For most working people, showing up at the office (or place of work) is the absolute minimum requirement.

People here seem to talk about what legal right a company has to let people go just because they didnt want to shop up at work, at the office

If you go to a restaurant, do you worry about how many hours the waiter, the chef, etc had to travel in the morning to put food in your face?

It is not for you like. It is doing what your employer requires.

I'll cut Microsoft out of my list of places to apply.