I think before that, we just postpone making this appointments until our home issue became much worse ( health, house maintenance, child-care, etc... ). I notice my house smelling much nicer just due to weekly cleaning instead of every 2-3 weeks.

>I have no idea how i used to manage with five days in office

The quality of offices was also much better in the past like a single office for for 2 to Max 6 people. Now it's crowded open space hot desks offices with 40+ people.

>I am currently using myunch hour to see a doctor

I'm not saying you do, but people abusing the WFH flexibility are probably a big reason for RTO push.

That, or the (possibly irrational) management fear that people may be abusing the WFH.

To add to that, we had almost no free time during the week to ourselves. Commute, dinner, shower, bed. So what did we do? We borrowed personal time from our sleep time, always feeling foggy and tired. I would wake up and go "eh, nothing that a cup of coffee won't fix", and off I went.

I am the same way - 3 days I actually find invigorating. It cures that cabin fever. But back to back, five days, after the pandemic, it just feels like straight up abuse. And it's what it really is. We just TOOK it.

Before that people just took flex days and it was fine. With RTO enforcement and measurement it's made it less flexible

I don't understand why companies don't "get" this bit of it.

I'm fairly amenable to the idea of RTO. Office work with a team is just different, and I've worked almost exclusively remote my entire career.

If I were a high level leader in these giant orgs trying to implement RTO I'd 100% ban any internal Zoom calls for in-office days. If you are in the office you are in the office. Why take the worst possible form of communication ever invented and totally remove the entire point of people being in one spot?

If you absolutely must sacrifice an entire day’s productivity, dedicate one day each week exclusively to video calls.

This is why many see it as babysitting. In larger orgs, many or even all meetings l, depending on your function and seniority, are going to all be online and spanning multiple time zones.

If you believe in fully remote work, and think that companies should not pay double to have employees in HCOL locations: why would you hire in a crazily expensive market like the US in the first place?

If everyone is remote, why not put your employees in Costa Rica? Or São Paulo? Colombia? Heck, even Canada is cheaper than many places in the US.

And we're only talking about timezone-aligned markets. You can also consider Poland, or India, and now you can hire a lot more resources for the same cost. Sure, it will be less efficient, collaboration tax and all, but 2.5X is quite a difference.

The one thing holding US-based companies from going all-in offshore is the belief that in-person relationships still matter. They would rather pay the extra COL mark up than save 40-70% for a remote employee.

To be clear: the jobs are going to other markets; this is not a either or situation. But at least hybrid RTO has as a dampening effect, and protects the internal job market. We should be celebrating folks like Amazon, not complaining that they don't get it.

In the past we had more demand than supply, which kept salaries stable (read: high). Now there's more supply than demand, and the main thing holding salaries stable is that employers still want warm bodies walking through their doors every day. Remove that, and you get a race to the bottom.

The company I work for was “coerced” into forcing more people back into the office due to pressure from the city and the local chamber of commerce.

I say coerce, because there are absolutely people in middle and upper management who feel the need to preside over their little fiefdoms and were more than happy to relay this info as a convenient way to deflect criticism. “Don’t blame us, the city would start making things difficult for us if our occupancy numbers stayed so low. We don’t want our taxes going up.”

It's quiet layoffs. You agreed to be in their city any time they want in the contract, but you signed it anyway despite the pay being less than the rent in that city. Now you're being called in, you're quitting, so it's technically not a layoff.

I wonder what the relative fraction of those doing software development that also have to touch hardware is.

My whole team (it's a large one) is doing one day in the office per week. It's the same day for everyone. I personally like calmness of the office, so I usually go two times. I don't see any fundamental problems with that arrangement.

If everyone agrees on 3 then you can't work two jobs at once.

I am also hybrid, currently we can still distribute the monthly count as we feel like it, the moment they start pushing for more is when I will remind them of my remote work clause on the work contract, and then lets see, maybe I'll be again on the job market.

> Currently I'm 0-2 days a week at the office, my max so far has been 4 this year.

Probably the same here. This week might actually be my first 4-day in office week this year, come to think of it. Next week, I'll be in office at-most 1.5 days, because I'm going to be taking a day off in the middle of the week and then working from the other side of the (admittedly small) country for Thu/fri.

Question- how common are fully-remote software engineer gigs in Europe? I'm considering a relocation from the US (currently fully-remote) and this will be a huge factor in my decision.

Sir David Attenborough is gonna make bank on the documentary featuring these animals engaging in these most unnatural of corporate environments

oh they are paying, but shit rolls down hill and those who will ultimately pay are in the flood zone

It shouldn't be about hours in a seat, it should be about deliverables met and actions & communication around those that couldn't be met. For knowledge work and creative tasks, at least.

I would really be surprised if Amazon didn't allow their top performers a day or two of WFH per week in pre-pandemic days. Other FAANGs basically had that policy before the pandemic. If they're really saying 5-day RTO for everyone, yeah, there are a lot of people who would legitimately decline those terms.

I was referring to the article, which specifies Amazon is now requiring 5 days RTO.

> Many firms are tightening RTO, but Amazon stands out. It demands 5 days in-office and ties compliance to promotions and performance reviews. Those who refuse to relocate to "hubs" are considered by Amazon to have voluntarily resigned.

> "We continue to believe that teams produce the best results when they're collaborating and inventing in person, and we've observed that to be true now that we've had most people back in the office each day for some time," the Amazon spokesperson said.

List some companies that allow 4 10 hour days? Other than healthcare I haven't heard many tech companies allowing this.

Only if they can't find a job.