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Comment by civilized | Hacker News Reader

I think about this all the time. I cannot count how many times I've heard this narrative about RTO being driven by commercial property leases.

But I'm not sure it makes sense. Why is it that CEOs were totally fine saying "oops we done goofed and overhired, sorry gotta do some layoffs now" when post-pandemic inflation hit, but they're not comfortable altering or nuancing their strategy in response to what we learned about remote work during the pandemic?

I think this is a just-so story. There's more layers to this onion.

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First: It's a power issue. Employment is at will so ceos feel they have more power (or at least leverage) and can say they're firing ypu for a reason. Leases have the power with the landlords so ceos feel they need to be more circumpect. Second: it's a positioning issue. Ceos are usually thinking about their next gig. Layoffs because we overhired: agressive, good ceoing. Too much real estate: bad ceoing, doesn't look great on the next job search.

Absolutely a power issue. My current employer has been reasonably lenient on RTO, however..

They periodically keep asking people to come in more while actually not even having enough desks in 2 of our major offices.

The desk shortage is bad enough you have to beg for consultant desks and every couple months we get a mass mail ordering everyone to stay home next week to accommodate some visitors.

So on the face of it, would seem that our company is at full utilization of office space given COVID era remote hiring & hoteling, and yet they still want to nag. They really just want employees in "how high sir?" mode, with tears in our eyes.

> I think this is a just-so story. There's more layers to this onion.

IMHO, all the amount of issues correlated with RTO are far more complex than an onion. I'd rather compare it with a wool cloth, everything is linked tightly with everything, and the tensions that came from Covid have left some parts permanently deformed.

it's a pithy, feel-good explanation that lets the anti-RTO camp feel superior without having to delve into complex topics such as talent development, informal learning, meeting effectiveness, etc. that do not trivially lend themselves to the RTO argument in quite the same way.

Corps didn’t delve into that nuance with the switch to open office so I wouldn’t pretend that this is some data driven decision.

100%. When the alternate to remote is a return to hodge hodge seating in an open floor plan - or worse, hoteling in an open floor plan.. its all theatre.

Seating staff level engineers next to the desktop support row, or C-suite admin row, and other loud areas with no virtuous "informal learning" overlap was the norm at my last company.

You also get to sit near idiots who want to debate politics all day or talk about the latest TV shows and sportsball. A day in the office without top of the line noise cancelling headphones is essentially a negative productivity day.

CEOs want to treat many of us like cattle into pens.

"Oops, we dun' goofed, gotta lay people off" is an expression of power in the hands of the CEOs.

Altering their plans on RTO to fit the needs of the workers is an expression of power in the hands of those workers.

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