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

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

63 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The study (PDF), published this month by University of Chicago and University of Michigan researchers and reported by The Washington Post on Sunday, says:

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.

Dell, Amazon, Google, Meta, and JPMorgan Chase have tracked employee badge swipes to ensure employees are coming into the office as often as expected. Dell also started tracking VPN usage this week and has told workers who work remotely full time that they can't get a promotion.

Some company leaders are adamant that remote work can disrupt a company's ability to innovate. However, there's research suggesting that RTO mandates aren't beneficial to companies. A survey of 18,000 Americans released in March pointed to flexible work schedules helping mental health. And an analysis of 457 S&P 500 companies in February found RTO policies hurt employee morale and don't increase company value.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

But will they learn...

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago

Their stocks go up in the short term and they have golden parachutes so they have learned that running companies into the ground benefits them.

They do learn, just the wrong lessons.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Learn what? This was the intended outcome: layoffs without severance or unemployment.*

*Unemployment benefits aren't totally off the table due to the companies changing of job requirements, but that's going to depend on local laws and individual employee circumstances.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

My hope is that companies would learn from the brain drain side effects in the long run. You're absolutely right that greater profit is what drives this and it was intentional, but it is short-sighted.

The company I work for just terminated a substantial percentage of its workforce. It was done without truly understanding the effect on many programs. I'm now standing on a desert island, alone, trying to figure out how to continue satisfying a customer with nearly all the knowledge and talent to best do that stripped away. Doing the job of three people was hard enough before. Now I'm doing the job of X people, a variable I can't even adequately quantify now. And a lot of that work is so wildly outside of my sphere of knowledge.

Decisions that these large companies are making are causing side effects that they may not feel for many years, but they will... And it won't matter because those executives have accomplished everything they wanted for themselves in those first moments.

Don't be evil. Heh.

I really do hope a few of these companies learn. I'd love for people to not be treated as expendable assets that can be ground into dust, but as people to nourish and develop. I'd love to cheer for them. I'd love to contribute to their work.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Short sighted for who? Executive compensation is tied to stock performance via options. If their actions boost the stock price in the short term, what do they care about the companies performance at a future date after they've cashed out?

We're currently in the extraction phase of our neoliberal economic system's lifecycle and it's only downhill from here.