If it's layoffs aren't there a very real risk that the most talented people, who enjoy working from home will simply leave, while the less talented returns to the office because they'll have a harder time finding new jobs?

So you're doing backdoor layoffs, but you're laying off the people you'd most likely want to keep, leaving the company with the less experienced/talented people.

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ReptileMan 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

>If it's layoffs aren't there a very real risk that the most talented people, who enjoy working from home will simply leave, while the less talented returns to the office because they'll have a harder time finding new jobs?

The corporate structure is not created around talented people, but around mediocrity. In Dilbert land you have no use for brainiacs.

In my current environment one line bugfix takes 3-4 workdays to release. Does it matter one bit if you will do the fix in 10 or 100 minutes if it will be overshadowed by the time THE PROCESS consumes.

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InsideOutSanta 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This assumes that companies view their employees as individuals. At a certain scale, companies inevitably start viewing their employees as "resources" that behave more like robots than human beings.

There is no way for somebody like Nadella to have an understanding of most employees' performance, and the chain of management is so long that he doesn't trust anyone else's ability to ascertain individual performance. This leads to the introduction of "objective measurements" of performance, which further undermines trust, as everyone now starts trying to manipulate the numbers.

I think at some point, it's just inevitable that C-level management takes decisions based on the assumption that people are replaceable and that the difference between a great performer and a poor performer is essentially irrelevant.

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thinkharderdev 4 days ago | parent [-]

> I think at some point, it's just inevitable that C-level management takes decisions based on the assumption that people are replaceable and that the difference between a great performer and a poor performer is essentially irrelevant.

Maybe, but I find it hard to believe that someone who has spent their entire career in the tech industry actually believes this.

The "backdoor layoffs" theory seems suspect to me more generally. It's not like they're particularly averse to doing layoffs the normal way. Especially now where the signal from big tech company doing layoffs is "we're really good at AI".

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steveBK123 4 days ago | parent [-]

I mean we still have headlines coming like this

https://fortune.com/2025/09/05/paramount-skydance-ceo-david-...

A 10 day notice requiring agreement to full 5 day RTO or take a voluntary package. This from a CEO talking bout 'efficiency' and cost cutting, where I know people who have been 100% remote for 5 years.

What are the odds those voluntary packages are worse than whatever contract & law specific in the case of layoffs. And I am sure the (very X/Musk/extreme hardcore coded) agreement employees sign agreeing to RTO means if they are fired later for office attendance its for-cause.

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dragonwriter 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> What are the odds those voluntary packages are worse than whatever contract & law specific in the case of layoffs.

Roughly zero, if the scale as a layoff would be sub-WARN Act level, because it is unlikely that the impacted employees had any contractual severance guarantee or any legal entitlement to any notice of termination of employment or pay in lieu (they might be less than the firm’s historical practice for similar roles, and having an excuse to characterize it as voluntary provides a bit of PR cover for that, but that's not a legal or contractual guarantee.) At-will employment is the rule, rather than the exception, for private, non-uniom employment in the US.

	▲	steveBK123 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		I guess the question is then - why the same Twitter/Musk playbook of creating a forced dichotomy "agree to 5 day RTO in writing or take voluntary package"? Would imply they are probably planning WARN-act-level layoffs, and trying to get under that with "volunteers"?

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4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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lloeki 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> aren't there a very real risk that the most talented people, who enjoy working from home will simply leave, while the less talented returns to the office because they'll have a harder time finding new jobs?

a.k.a Dead Sea effect

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ThrowawayR2 4 days ago | parent [-]

Leave to where? All the other FAANGs and tech companies seem to be doing RTO as well. There's no "dead sea effect" because the less talented are also being flushed out by layoffs specifically targeting low performers. And the job market is so bad right now that there's absolutely no shortage of fresh talented folks to hire.

	▲	int_19h 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		NVIDIA is very remote-heavy with no plans to RTO.

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insane_dreamer 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> aren't there a very real risk that the most talented people, who enjoy working from home will simply leave

company will probably write exceptions for those people into their contracts; my neighbor, a talented senior dev lead at BigTechCo, has it in his contract that he can WFH regardless of RTO calls

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int_19h 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Have you seen some of the people whom they laid off in the recent waves of overt layoffs? There was a lot of talent unceremoniously dumped there.