I find this idea that there is a 'CEO RTO mania' to be absurd; if WFH was just as good for the company, and more attractive to employees, we should see a boom in WFH-first companies, which does not seem to be happening. Instead, it seems like CEOs see RTO as a way of getting rid of 'slackers', preventing people from multi-tasking while 'working', and in some cases increasing 'teamwork'.

In any case, it makes sense to have either a WFH organization, or an in-person one, but the mixed cases appear to be a friction-filled mess.

> Instead, it seems like CEOs see RTO as a way of getting rid of 'slackers'

"Seems" is an interesting word, because if even you can't locate a rational motive, whilst attempting to apologise for RTO, and are just left making some guesses, then what am I supposed to infer except that this whole thing is based on suspicion, groupthink and anxiety?

"The data is clear", trumpets Microsoft in their internal email. Then why will they not divulge it?

It resembles the same kind of social contagion as the AI usage mandates we see - also completely meritless

> if WFH was just as good for the company, and more attractive to employees, we should see a boom in WFH-first companies, which does not seem to be happening.

In this economy, you can't even make a company, let alone profess their benefits. This is all intentional.

If/when the economy recovers and funding is flowing around, I predict we will see this huge boom in WFH companies, especially with startups.

Unfortunately, larger corps are seeing "WFH" as yet another attempt to offshore as much labor as possible. I can't guarantee after this ebb that top tech companies will be begging for talent the same way they were last decade.

100% this. remote work is great for some people, but it's definitely taken advantage by a others. And those who take advantage ruin it for everybody. I literally have friends who have bragged about how good their mouse jiggler is.

Yeah, WFH doesn't work because you can't smell each other over the network. We can transmit video and audio, but so far we can't replicate touch and smell over Zoom calls. Now, touch is obviously not needed, because touching your coworkers is against policy, but smell is really important. As the esteemed researcher Mya S. Smith has shown, people who work emit a specific pheromone, known as the "Busy Efficient Employee" pheromone, or BEE pheromone for short. When a person smells another person's BEE pheromone, that signals their brain to focus on work and they themselves start emitting BEE pheromones too. The end result is a hive of bustling BEEs, delivering productivity, synergy, collaboration, and making line go up! This is also why open-office plans are so important to maximise productivity - it is the easiest way to make sure BEE smell is dispersed to every corner of the office. BEE also makes employees very happy to stay late in the office and work overtime without asking for additional pay.

This assumes that executives are all perfectly rational beings and so wouldn't do anything based on personal feeling or beliefs. Sadly, this is not true.

I think there are a large number of competent but mostly checked-out engineers who will consistently work just enough to not get fired. If you want more productivity, you could raise the bar and fire a lot of people, but this also sucks and it creates a "hunger games" culture like at Amazon or Meta. I think a lot of those people actually will do more work if you make them sit in an office for 8 hours a day, since they have nothing better to do and there's immediate social pressure to work (unlike in their homes which presumably have many more pleasant activities available).

This isn't obvious to people who are highly disciplined and intrinsically motivated, since they actually get more done in the quiet environment of their home. But some people need the structure and social pressure of an office to get them to work. Your strategy could be "only hire highly disciplined and intrinsically motivated people", but you'll have to compete with everyone else for them, and they're expensive and less common than the other type. It's also hard to test for in an interview.

If you're really exceptional, they'll quietly let you WFH anyway.