This announcement is pretty much meaningless, as it's completely up to the VPs of a given org to set the policy. Many teams have already been back 3-5 days a week for over a year, and exceptions aren't hard to get if you're a senior+ employee or otherwise have considerations that prevent this from being feasible.

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ourguile 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Anecdotally, I'm at a larger multinational corporation and our site has been mandating a new RTO policy and have not been granting exceptions based solely on seniority. In my personal opinion I believe it's mostly a soft layoff, so they can approve exceptions on a case-by-case basis.

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Jagerbizzle 5 days ago | parent [-]

No disagreements there (I'm at Microsoft). I should also note that in the part of the org I work, exceptions are re-evaluated every quarter.

	▲	geodel 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		Indeed. Apart from really aggressive, "love the bad press" type of employers most would try to appear reasonable from outside while largely rejecting wfh/remote requests lasting more than few months.

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nlawalker 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't think I'd call it meaningless; this sets the new default for the many orgs who haven't set a mandate already, and it seems to indicate that exceptions will now be harder to get.

	▲	Jagerbizzle 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		Fair point. I've wasted way too much time arguing about this in my org. The messaging is effectively that the "data" (which is never presented to anyone) indicates on-site is better, and if you disagree, feel free to go test the job market.