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Apple, SpaceX, Microsoft return-to-office mandates drove senior talent away (arstechnica.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago by Powderhorn@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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I hate to go as cliche as "surprising absolutely no one," but really, this is not a surprise.

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[-] JoMiran@lemmy.ml 62 points 2 weeks ago

We currently have a stacked roster thanks to those mandates. Even more hilarious is that we are helping three clients who's projects are currently underwater because they lost key staff thanks to return-to-office mandates. We are not a staffing agency, we are a highly specialized firm, so right now they are paying six times the cost for specialists to do what they used to do with in-house staff. Funnier still, we have been a 100% remote work firm since 2012, so ultimately the office is still empty. SMH

[-] penquin@lemm.ee 44 points 2 weeks ago

Lol. Returning to office when you absolutely don't need to is the dumbest shit I've ever fucking seen. I can do my job 100% from home, why would want to send me back to that shithole?

[-] downpunxx@fedia.io 38 points 2 weeks ago

control via direct in person oversight and corporate real estate investment, that's it, that's the reason

[-] penquin@lemm.ee 19 points 2 weeks ago

I'm so glad I work for the company I work for. They sold 90% of their buildings. We are never going back to office ever again.

[-] PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca 9 points 2 weeks ago

My company has a mandate to sell 50% of our buildings. We also have a mandate to return to office. They’re having people sit on the floors with their laptops because there is not enough space.

[-] penquin@lemm.ee 11 points 2 weeks ago

What the actual fuck?

[-] B0rax@feddit.de 1 points 2 weeks ago

Nice.

[-] TanyaJLaird@beehaw.org 33 points 2 weeks ago

Ultimately, these mandates are because executives don't work for the same reason normal people do. Most people work to support themselves. But a single year working at an exec at a major company will be enough to let you retire very comfortably, never working another day in your life. Once you have ten million in the bank, you're not really working for money anymore.

Instead, you're working for prestige and power. Execs and high-level managers work for a few reasons. Some work because they want to have power over people. They get a thrill out of having complete authority over other human beings. And sociopathic need to control others is an itch that simply can't be scratched by working remote. Others like to mandate in-office because they're professional shmoozers. They do very little real work. Instead, they just go from meeting to meeting, spend afternoons golfing on the company dime, etc. The company is basically just their own personal social club. Others work because they have a savior complex. They think they're God's gift to mankind, and they need the sycophantic praise that can only come by forcing people to work in person. Finally, some are simply sexual predators. For some, the primary benefit of coming into work is the ability to coerce sex out of their underlings. And it's hard to sexually assault an employee who is working hundreds of miles away.

[-] penquin@lemm.ee 11 points 2 weeks ago

And others are just pure assholes

[-] belated_frog_pants@beehaw.org 24 points 2 weeks ago

Who could have fucking predicted

Unless that was the point and this plus big layoffs are meant to lower salary ranges for tech

[-] Powderhorn@beehaw.org 19 points 2 weeks ago

Sure as fuck happened to journalism. Except they had the balls to offer buyouts instead of just saying "your service counts for nothing unless I see the back of your head every time I meander around with a coffee mug."

The truly absurd bit of it to me is absent Covid, already working remote for years would not have been a problem. I went remote in 2016, and there's no fucking way I'd be like "oh, the recent grads you hire to chew and spit out are an issue for remote? Sure, why don't I restart the pointless thing of driving for an hour and a half a day with concomitant fuel costs, having to choose my food for the entire day at 7 a.m. or paying four times as much, and generally being more surly in my personal life so that you, dear boss, can prove you have something to do?"

[-] pseudonym@monyet.cc 20 points 2 weeks ago

Of course senior talent left, that was the point. It was a deliberate move to reduce headcount due to economic headwinds and over hiring. I was one of the people that left for this reason.

[-] GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah, they don't care that senior talent left because that was the whole point.

[-] WaterLizard@beehaw.org 18 points 2 weeks ago

It's all in effort of "line goes up" in the immediate short-term despite the fact that a year from now these companies are going to struggle to complete difficult projects. My company has layed off a number of 10, 15, 20+ year veterans because they were highly paid. Now there are gaps in knowledgeable folks to tap for help and Juniors are being forced to perform to a Senior level without proper support.

The pandemic growth periods caused every company to loose their damn mind to make growth projections based on those insane numbers for a time that should have been ruled out as an outlier. I know these MBA fucks had to take a business stats class, but literally dropped the fundamentals when they saw big $$$. Now they're cutting the talent that fostered their primary growth and will be looking back 6 months from now wondering why they still aren't growing. Well surely the Juniors aren't working hard enough!

[-] arthur@lemmy.zip 11 points 2 weeks ago

[-] downpunxx@fedia.io 11 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

senior talent are the one's making the most money, and costing the corporations the most year over year, the fact they've left willingly frees the corporation up from offering severance and unemployment benefits

[-] 520@kbin.social 16 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah but they're called talent for a reason. The senior talent are generally better than the juniors at what they do.

[-] downpunxx@fedia.io 1 points 2 weeks ago

sure, and the worth of "better" is determined by a company at any given time. any market, including the job market, is what people are willing to pay, and willing to let go of.

[-] 520@kbin.social 11 points 2 weeks ago

Until they make the wrong call and it bites them on the ass.

[-] jarfil@beehaw.org 6 points 2 weeks ago

Senior talent tends to be "T people", while juniors tend to be "I people". Removing that T scaffolding, is how corporations end up like Boeing or the Titan.

[-] Banzai51@midwest.social 4 points 2 weeks ago

I've seen this before in the 90s. The companies that forced out the best, highest paid staff always suffered.

[-] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 2 weeks ago

well i'm shocked shocked i say

[-] gbin@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 weeks ago

I have seen another contributing factor in CS: it is really hard for the management to keep a good senior to junior ratio ie. A lot of juniors are trying to enter the workforce today. It means that during covid and shortly after the companies definitely relaxed as much as they could the geographical constraints for senior remote roles, also being senior they trusted them to work remotely not needing too much direct supervision. And now it backfires when your company is in silicon valley and you ask your senior developer from the boonies Colorado to move to an industrial concrete jungle.

[-] sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al 7 points 2 weeks ago

In my grandpa's thick Jamaican accent: "you fucker, you!"

[-] Kissaki@beehaw.org 3 points 2 weeks ago

Your grandpa is working remote?

[-] sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al 2 points 2 weeks ago

😂

[-] OpenStars@startrek.website 5 points 2 weeks ago

I wonder where they went?

[-] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 8 points 2 weeks ago

I think this is the real question.

Did they quit and join a competitor who offered a better WFH option? Or did they get a taste of the good parts of white collar pandemic life

no commute, flexible hours, work from anywhere

and decide that actually, their entire identity is not just their professional life, and maybe they should retire to see the world/spend time with family?

There are definitely some high profile rage quits over return to office, but I think there are a lot more of the "hey this was fun but time to take care of myself" quits.

[-] heluecht@pirati.ca 5 points 2 weeks ago

@Powderhorn In our company, we have theoretically had a "one day at home per week" rule for several months now. In practice, people usually work about 3 days a week at home. This is partly due to the fact that there is a works council agreement for some of my colleagues that is binding and can't be overruled by management (thanks for German labor law!).

[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:

Click here to see the summary

A study analyzing Apple, Microsoft, and SpaceX suggests that return to office (RTO) mandates can lead to a higher rate of employees, especially senior-level ones, leaving the company, often to work at competitors.

In this paper, we provide causal evidence that RTO mandates at three large tech companies—Microsoft, SpaceX, and Apple—had a negative effect on the tenure and seniority of their respective workforce.

In particular, we find the strongest negative effects at the top of the respective distributions, implying a more pronounced exodus of relatively senior personnel.

Apple representative Josh Rosenstock told The Washington Post that the report drew "inaccurate conclusions" and “does not reflect the realities of our business."

Yet some companies have struggled to make employees who have spent months successfully doing their jobs at home eager to return to the office.

Dell also started tracking VPN usage this week and has told workers who work remotely full time that they can't get a promotion.

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