Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#521

Post by Schnitz » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 5:12 AM UTC

lukasschwab wrote: post #218

zero_shift wrote: post #190

At $org, we too are undertaking a mandatory RTO order, enforced with door access logs. People are up in arms, particularly those in our smaller locales, where the offices we have are perfunctory at best. The rationale is the usual one: collaboration, watercooler chat, unspecific evidence / "research" about productivity (that we are told definitely exists, but is yet to be shared). I remain baffled by executives' obse…

> An RTO mandate is also an excellent thing for a CEO to show investors they are doing, if they are not making money and lack better ideas. I think of Jeffrey Pfeffer's "social contagion" arguments a lot — first with regards to layoffs[^1], but increasingly also to RTO policies and tracked AI use. It seems very unlikely execs (esp. in small organizations) are taking the time to read and seriously evaluate research ab…

Just how software engineers are in the hacker news thought bubble you have the VC and CEO thought bubble. It roughly goes like this: Someone has some productivity or whatever problem and RTOs. That costs money, they lose people, so they can’t later admit it was a wash or a net negative. So they go on Twitter or LinkedIn and trumpet how great their hardcore 996 RTO is going. Now others see this and fomo kicks in. They start their own RTO which they are then again highly incentivized to report as successful. Rinse and repeat.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#522

Post by mattlondon » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 5:13 AM UTC

xtracto wrote: post #278

Just out of curiosity, how much compensation would people be willing to leave on the table in lieu of "Remote" work? (this is different to, how much would you ASK to go from remote to a new in-office job). 10%, 25%, 50%? I've worked remotely for 5 years now, and there is NO way I would return to an office based job. I even have moved to a small town where there are practically 0 tech jobs; and at this point there's N…

Personally I'd probably want a 25-50% increase to go 100% remote.

I hate fully remote working.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#523

Post by whateveracct » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 5:14 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #513

zero_shift wrote: post #190

At $org, we too are undertaking a mandatory RTO order, enforced with door access logs. People are up in arms, particularly those in our smaller locales, where the offices we have are perfunctory at best. The rationale is the usual one: collaboration, watercooler chat, unspecific evidence / "research" about productivity (that we are told definitely exists, but is yet to be shared). I remain baffled by executives' obse…

RTO mandates are about many things, but actual business value of being in the office to the business doing the mandate is low on the list. Among the things it is about: (1) Executives with emotional attachment to certain leadership styles that are enabled by physical presence, (2) Interest in the investor class for the commercial real estate market. The business impacted may not be invested in it, but the businesses’…

This is dead on. In software especially, we have established ways for distributed individuals to collaborate (FOSS). RTO is meant to coddle the waterfall-addicted executive class.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#524

Post by tayo42 » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 5:18 AM UTC

keeda wrote: post #425

zero_shift wrote: post #190

At $org, we too are undertaking a mandatory RTO order, enforced with door access logs. People are up in arms, particularly those in our smaller locales, where the offices we have are perfunctory at best. The rationale is the usual one: collaboration, watercooler chat, unspecific evidence / "research" about productivity (that we are told definitely exists, but is yet to be shared). I remain baffled by executives' obse…

In addition to the other comments (yes, very much a powerplay) it is also likely that employers simply realized remote work is a huge perk they had not accounted for, and RTO is simply a means of renegotiating: https://www.tiktok.com/@keds_economist/video/746473188419558... The video presents a compelling theory that post-Covid employers realized that employees CAN be productive remotely, but also put a pretty high p…

>studies show employees are willing to take a hit to bonuses, pay and promotions to keep that perk.

That doesn't seem surprising for software. If I can make 300k remote or 400k in the office, that 100k tbh has dimishing returns on my life satisfaction. And 300k total comp is a ton off money in the first place.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#525

Post by gamblor956 » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 5:19 AM UTC

wpm wrote: post #505

gamblor956 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS Teams for video teleconferencing...good. On a Windows PC, and using MS365, by far the easiest to set up ( or change ) a meeting and fewest issues with cameras across multiple devices. (Webex and Zoom are close seconds, Google Meet is a distant last due to constant camera issues.) MS Teams for IM...okay. Too much white space and too hard to find conversations that I know I've had recently. Very much prefer Slack. M…

Does MS Teams support dual video inputs yet? I refuse to do the whole "click through a powerpoint clumsily while in edit mode with private DM notifications popping off in the background" thing I see too damn often so I use the OBS Virtual Cam. Zoom picks this up easily. Last I ran Teams (admittedly two years ago), if I tried to do the same, it would just set my camera feed to the virtual cam.

It allows you to choose what screen or window you want to present if that's what your asking.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#526

Post by SauciestGNU » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 5:21 AM UTC

dymk wrote: post #297

Aurornis wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. When a company uses RTO to reduce headcount they usually include all employees , with the expectation that those who live far away from the office will resign instead of relocate. If I'm reading this right, it only applies to people who already live within 50 miles of the office. Remote-remote employees are exempt.

How many employees do you think msft has that don’t live within that 50 mile radius? I’d bet it’s an incredibly small percentage. They chose 50 miles because it’s big enough to cover almost everyone. I’m within that but my commute is two hours one direction.

50 miles is a US government defined "commutable distance" (I was just talking about this at work with a human resources person, but unfortunately I can't recall what agency defined it as such).

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#527

Post by otikik » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 5:23 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #513

zero_shift wrote: post #190

At $org, we too are undertaking a mandatory RTO order, enforced with door access logs. People are up in arms, particularly those in our smaller locales, where the offices we have are perfunctory at best. The rationale is the usual one: collaboration, watercooler chat, unspecific evidence / "research" about productivity (that we are told definitely exists, but is yet to be shared). I remain baffled by executives' obse…

RTO mandates are about many things, but actual business value of being in the office to the business doing the mandate is low on the list. Among the things it is about: (1) Executives with emotional attachment to certain leadership styles that are enabled by physical presence, (2) Interest in the investor class for the commercial real estate market. The business impacted may not be invested in it, but the businesses’…

It’s just (3)

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#528

Post by freddie_mercury » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 5:24 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #513

zero_shift wrote: post #190

At $org, we too are undertaking a mandatory RTO order, enforced with door access logs. People are up in arms, particularly those in our smaller locales, where the offices we have are perfunctory at best. The rationale is the usual one: collaboration, watercooler chat, unspecific evidence / "research" about productivity (that we are told definitely exists, but is yet to be shared). I remain baffled by executives' obse…

RTO mandates are about many things, but actual business value of being in the office to the business doing the mandate is low on the list. Among the things it is about: (1) Executives with emotional attachment to certain leadership styles that are enabled by physical presence, (2) Interest in the investor class for the commercial real estate market. The business impacted may not be invested in it, but the businesses’…

It is hilarious that people think the second largest company on the planet, with a market cap over $5 trillion, spends even one second worry about the profit margins of commercial real estate companies, makes any decisions based on that, or is somehow cowed by their alleged political power despite being much, much, much smaller than Microsoft.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#529

Post by terminalshort » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 5:26 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #513

zero_shift wrote: post #190

At $org, we too are undertaking a mandatory RTO order, enforced with door access logs. People are up in arms, particularly those in our smaller locales, where the offices we have are perfunctory at best. The rationale is the usual one: collaboration, watercooler chat, unspecific evidence / "research" about productivity (that we are told definitely exists, but is yet to be shared). I remain baffled by executives' obse…

RTO mandates are about many things, but actual business value of being in the office to the business doing the mandate is low on the list. Among the things it is about: (1) Executives with emotional attachment to certain leadership styles that are enabled by physical presence, (2) Interest in the investor class for the commercial real estate market. The business impacted may not be invested in it, but the businesses’…

2 and 3 aren't real. Nobody gives a damn about their shareholders other investments, and no one company has the numbers to save them anyway. And nobody is dumb enough to do RTO as a layoff proxy because anybody with a brain knows you're going to lose the people with options, who are exactly the people you don't want to lose.

1 is spot on.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#530

Post by typewithrhythm » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 5:26 AM UTC

dymk wrote: post #502

typewithrhythm wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of that is product engineering and how much is leasing access to capital during a GPU demand spike?

Why does it matter? You're just describing another case where losses get spread around but gains are claimed by those at the top.

Because the idea of productivity per employee its relevant to look at capital spending as well.

Otherwise people claim Microsoft is successful and hires well (with outsourcing or RTO or whatever), but in reality they are in a shift to a more capital intensive business.