The argument doesn’t hold water. Companies aren’t pushing RTO because they want to pay higher salaries to office-bound staff in expensive metros. If raw “input–output” and cheap labour were the only metric, they’d go fully remote, tap global markets, and slash payroll overnight.

RTO is about control and optics, not cost optimisation. It’s management preference, real estate sunk costs, and the illusion of productivity through visibility. Actual delivery of work is the only thing that matters in tech - and remote delivery has already proven itself at scale.

The idea that “physical location is your greatest asset” is backwards. If that were true, San Francisco developers wouldn’t already be competing with contractors in Bangalore and Bucharest. They are - yet the jobs remain, because employers value capability, not postcode.

In short: RTO doesn’t protect American tech workers from global competition. It just wastes time in traffic and props up bad management.

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bonoboTP 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> If that were true, San Francisco developers wouldn’t already be competing with contractors in Bangalore and Bucharest. They are - yet the jobs remain, because employers value capability, not postcode.

Well, it's not just capability. I know people who had offers at Big Tech, but had to move. There was no option to work from Bucharest or Eastern Europe. You either move to the US or to some other country like UK or Germany. Even if the job is remote. For legal and accounting reasons apparently. I know someone who officially rented a tiny space in rural Germany then secretly worked remotely from Poland, because they needed the official address for paperwork. So there are many artificial hurdles as of now. But the more normalized remote work becomes, the more people will realize these rules don't make sense.

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us-merul 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It also turns remote work into a negotiated benefit, which may be preferred over actual raises.

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AnimalMuppet 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Well, if we're going to negotiate, let's negotiate both ways. You want me in the office? Then I have to commute, and my time's not free. Are you going to pay me for my commute time?

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us-merul 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Right. If employers set RTO as the default, you may be able to negotiate remote time instead of a pay raise. They’re less willing to pay you more to commute and would rather see the commute as the expectation.

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varispeed 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Salary isn’t a meter ticking from 9 to 5, and it’s not a line item of “WFH credits” vs. “commute debits.” Salary is simply the number that convinces you to show up and do the work. Whether you sit in an office, in your kitchen, or on the beach is irrelevant - the company pays because they need outcomes, not because of your postcode or chair type.

That’s why all this “WFH as benefit / RTO as cost” chatter is sleight of hand. It nudges you into negotiating around scraps instead of the only thing that matters: total compensation for total output. Companies push that framing precisely because it distracts you from asking for a bigger number.

	▲	AnimalMuppet 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		My point is that, from the employee's point of view, the commute has to be factored into "total output". So if I've been getting $X for Y hours WFH, and now they want to give me $X for Y hours in the office, that's (Y+C) hours to me, and that's the same pay for more of my work - though part of the work doesn't benefit the company.

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passwordoops 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You're partially correct in RTO being about control. Sunk costs in real estate and local tax benefits pay a significant role.

But if every company decided "you know what? Let's go remote!", it will be a matter of months, if not weeks, before every CFO/CEO/Board decides to boost profits by tapping the global talent pool.

The recent delusions to replace software engineers with LLMs is a pretty good indication of where the thinking is vis-a-vis capable engineering

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AnimalMuppet 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think there's an element of management incompetence, or at least lack of confidence. They're not confident that they know how to manage a bunch of remote workers.

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Esophagus4 7 hours ago | parent [-]

As a management, I understand that this is the perception… but it’s not remotely true. It astounds me how often this is repeated. It’s almost more of a conspiracy theory at this point. “Those evil incompetent managers are just so stupid they have to justify their existence by having people in office.”

RTO is not about watching people in their seats all day to see who is productive. It’s about getting talented people to sit next to each other, as there is significant benefit to that. It builds culture and internal networks (which helps attrition rates, especially for junior employees) and that helps junior employees learn from senior employees. They need that hands-on feedback from seniors, minute to minute. It helps people across teams work together, as in remote land, most communication is intra team only.

It’s not about input->output. It’s about building a long term company culture and employees who grow with it. It’s about building a system where communication and collaboration have less friction.

Can this be done remotely? Maybe, by a few companies who are very intentional and do it well. But remote is very difficult to do well.

If it were just about input->output, I’d offshore everything and save a ton of money.

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varispeed 5 hours ago | parent [-]

The whole “RTO builds culture and networks” story is upside down. Culture isn’t something you force by sticking bodies in the same postcode; culture is what people build when they trust each other, share information freely, and aren’t ground down by pointless commutes. If your company can only transmit knowledge through overhearing desk chatter, you don’t have culture - you have an ad-hoc crutch for bad processes.

Mentorship isn’t “minute-to-minute hand-holding.” It’s structured review, clear documentation, and intentional teaching. If seniors are expected to babysit juniors in person all day, you haven’t built a system for growth, you’ve built a dependency loop that collapses as soon as those seniors leave.

And claiming remote is “very difficult to do well” is just an admission of managerial laziness. Remote is harder only if your toolkit begins and ends with meetings and hallway gossip. The companies that are intentional about remote show it scales just fine.

So yes, RTO is about (damage) control - not because managers are cartoon villains, but because without control, the hollowness of their systems is exposed.

	▲	Esophagus4 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If you want a job, feel free to work remote. If you want a career, get back to the office.