That's a nice idea but how many of those people will wind up at a job that doesn't require RTO? I was applying quite a bit back in April and many places that previously had decently-hard stances on allowing WFH now stated RTO as a requirement.

Depends on the person and their lifestyle and savings. I'm sure some well off single/DINK households can simply weather the recession while making a few concessions, waiting until the market shifts to an employee's market again.

But in the normal case, you are right. Google had extra rounds of layoffs because RTO didn't self-cull enough people. People know this isn't the market to make a stand in without significant leverage.

Sadly, and we all know that butt on chair while doing Teams calls with the offshoring and nearshore teams, is a large improvement in productivity. /s

> Sadly, and we all know that butt on chair while doing Teams calls with the offshoring and nearshore teams, is a large improvement in productivity. /s

I personally liked how they claimed employees complained that they spend too much time aligning with other teams, and somehow their response to they complain was... Firing the people responsible for facilitating that alignment?

And then there's the comical justification that they will increase development speed with larger teams managed by managers with far more responsibilities and far less time to deal with issues.

Uber's announcement wouldn't sound so silly if they just stuck with the financial angle. They are firing people because they aren't growing, they have no answer for stalling, but they still need to present nice numbers to investors who want to get paid. That would be a more respectable answer.

Look at the bright side: any employees compelled to commute now will be much more likely to summon Uber rides every day!

“ The benefits of sitting together, collaborating in person, and solving problems as a team are clearer than ever in our post-Covid world.”

100%. Speaking only for myself, I was fully remote for a few years and that was a miserable experience. Now everyone is mandated to be in office 3 days a week and that works better for me. Uber is going one step further and structuring teams to be colocated with their manager. That solves the problem of team members distributed across multiple offices, which is still a real pain point in the hybrid model.

I know some people who strictly prefer fully remote setup. Over time, I think companies and employees will self sort themselves into those who prefer office vs those who prefer remote. That should work out for most of us.

I love how most any RTO-proponent always presents RTO as "well I'm glad you're back in the office with me because that's better for me". Ask most any WFH-proponent about going to the office and the answer will read like "do whatever works best for yourself, I prefer WFH myself, you can go to the office if you want". It's a very selfish mindset, really. If RTO-proponents cared about not imposing their will on others, they'd also advocate for WFH for anyone that prefers it, but they don't.

Well what do you expect? Holing yourself up in your home is something you can do unilaterally. In-person team collaboration requires... well, collaboration. It's not a unilateral action so there isn't unilateral advice.

Nah. 99% of meetings are fluff. Something that could have been just an short email. Meetings are for people who do not get anything done. for people who like to waste other peoples time. The actual good meetings are the ones that have a VERY clear context, and goes down to details that EVERYONE in the meetings know by heart. These are rare, maybe one a year.

> In-person team collaboration requires... well, collaboration.

You're confusing things. Collaboration doesn't require you to be continuously in the same room with people 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, and your personal needs to be in a room with someone else does not justify forcing everyone under payroll to commute to the office.

You already need to schedule meetings to be in the same room with someone, don't you? Why would anyone have to waste their time commuting to the office if you didn't booked a meeting?

You're misunderstanding my use of the term collaboration. I'm not using it as corporate speak for "teamwork". I'm saying that in order for me to go into the office with everyone, everyone needs to go into the office. That's an axiomatic self-proving statement.

As opposed to WFH where one can simply do that without other people also doing it.

> I'm saying that in order for me to go into the office with everyone, everyone needs to go into the office.

No. You feel you need everyone around you at the office, but that is you and you speak for yourself. Others have a say on that, don't they?

For you to be around people in a way you don't get in the way of everyone else around you, you need to coordinate. This means you need to plan ahead and schedule meetings with a specific agenda to discuss with the people whose time you want to waste. That doesn't require everyone else to drive all the way to the office 5 days a week,and then send there 8 or 9 hours a day. In some cases a simple message does the work. In some cases a call will do. For the rare occasions where you need to be at arm's reach of someone, you guys can plan ahead.

So why do you believe it's reasonable ti demand everyone around you to bend backwards to accommodate your peculiar requirements of proximity?

in-person collaboration requiring in-person more than collaboration, as collaboration is quite possible remotely, and even asynchronously.

“holing yourself up…”

but it wasn’t about conversation, it was about opinion.

Except most of us don't do team collaboration in the office anyway.

With very few exceptions, all my projects involve distributed teams in a mix of nearshore and offshoring, across multiple locations.

100%. The Linux kernel would have never grown and become so successful if it weren’t for everybody in the office all those years just collaborate-maxxxing … /s

When working a regular 9-5 I very much preferred office presence for the social aspect, especially when work is slower and no pressure.

But when I actually need to concentrate and deliver high quality work, it needs to be in a quiet place. And that is often from home, because open space office buildings are the devil's work and I will never forget how much people complained about them when they started becoming the norm a bit before the 2010s.

RTO steals one work day from me per week, at a minimum. When i work from home i can start 6am (or whenever i want to), and if im in a flow state, i can push to 5pm easily. I get SOOOO much done. Other days i can lax, have a few teams meetings and chill on the couch and quit work early.

When i go to the office it takes 2 hours from each day only for commute, add meetings, lunch breaks, and the office bullshit chitchat and non-stop blabber that distracts you. People on the phone, or just "hanging" out next to you.

Bottom line is when i have to work from the office i get 5% done of what i do from home. I get angry, and unmotivated. I usually also leave early.

> Speaking only for myself, I was fully remote for a few years and that was a miserable experience. Now everyone is mandated to be in office 3 days a week and that works better for me.

If you feel you work better at the office, more power to you.

That does not justify forcing everyone around you to do the same, particularly if the best argument you can piece together is that forcing others to do something against their will makes you feel better.

> That does not justify forcing everyone around you to do the same

Literally that's why I wrote: "I know some people who strictly prefer fully remote setup. Over time, I think companies and employees will self sort themselves into those who prefer office vs those who prefer remote. That should work out for most of us."

> Speaking only for myself, I was fully remote for a few years and that was a miserable experience.

Just out of curiosity, what did you find miserable about it? I've been working remote since 2008 and just have no desire to ever be consistently in an office, but I guess I did like it when I could pop over to SF (I live in NYC), stay in an apt my employer at the time had, and spend a week with people. Otherwise, I much prefer the freedom of being remote.

Different person. In short:

I get distracted at home, and home is no longer home - it's the office.

I work best when talking through my mental blocks with people. As a consultant I've never gotten over trying to poke my head in via Slack/Teams/etc. In-person huddles and brainstorming get more done in 30 minutes than phone back-and-forth usually does over days.

Being in the office allows some level of personal understanding occur between teams and people.

I like the idea of being able to live where I want, but I haven't moved since going WFH, and I find talking to people in person when I visit gets planning and training done a lot more efficiently. Learning from others and collaborating on problems is something mid-high level IT does a lot more than solo coding for hours at a time.