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.
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.
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:
https://leaddev.com/culture/engineering-burnout-rising-2025-...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2025/02/08/job-bu...
https://blog.theinterviewguys.com/workplace-burnout-in-2025-...
https://thehill.com/lobbying/5325471-burnout-erupts-among-pr...
As you can see, your bosses already did.
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.
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!
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.
> So... doing their job?
Can also mean working 5 h instead of 8, but not so little so you'd get fired.
That's not doing one's job completely (if paid for working 8 h), just that no one notices.
> lots of people claim that WFH means they can "do the laundry" and/or go to the post office
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.
If middle management can't figure it out for remote or in-office employees, they need a new line of work.
The people that are slackers at home have low output in the office and are probably the annoying gabber distracting the rest of the team in-office.
Collective punishment isn't a solution, and the best will walk.
> Most are just there for the pay cheque, and will do the minimum work that is required of them
That's just capitalism? Every player is supposed to optimise.
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!
The fact that you think is good tells me you're probably some kind of middle manager with too little actual work to do.
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 hate the idea of camera on 100% of the time.
I am not presentable when WFH. That's the point.
I might also be on the toilet - which otherwise is dead time!
omg that explains so many things!
Therefore with the current job market we don’t need to be generous with it.
Related - JPMorgan is opening a new HQ with a big nice gym, and plan to charge employees to use it, lol. Thanks I’ll just leave the building Jamie.
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.
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."
Chef's kiss.