I prefer the Office.
Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
891–900 of 969 posts
Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
#892Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think at some point, it's just inevitable that C-level management takes decisions based on the assumption that people are replaceable and that the difference between a great performer and a poor performer is essentially irrelevant. Maybe, but I find it hard to believe that someone who has spent their entire career in the tech industry actually believes this. The "backdoor layoffs" theory seems suspect to me more…
I mean we still have headlines coming like this https://fortune.com/2025/09/05/paramount-skydance-ceo-david-... A 10 day notice requiring agreement to full 5 day RTO or take a voluntary package. This from a CEO talking bout 'efficiency' and cost cutting, where I know people who have been 100% remote for 5 years. What are the odds those voluntary packages are worse than whatever contract & law specific in the case of…
> What are the odds those voluntary packages are worse than whatever contract & law specific in the case of layoffs.
Roughly zero, if the scale as a layoff would be sub-WARN Act level, because it is unlikely that the impacted employees had any contractual severance guarantee or any legal entitlement to any notice of termination of employment or pay in lieu (they might be less than the firm’s historical practice for similar roles, and having an excuse to characterize it as voluntary provides a bit of PR cover for that, but that's not a legal or contractual guarantee.) At-will employment is the rule, rather than the exception, for private, non-uniom employment in the US.
Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
#893Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
These executives, though, also made billions in investments themselves in Microsoft's Redmond Campus, which mostly otherwise will stand empty. These executives don't like looking dumb and these billions in useless investment are statues to them looking stupid otherwise.
Those investments would be a matter of public record, either directly or through real estate companies. Any investigator who found these hypothetical investments would get a lot if clicks and eyeballs so there is a hell of a lot of incentive. So where's the proof?
Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
#894Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it's layoffs aren't there a very real risk that the most talented people, who enjoy working from home will simply leave, while the less talented returns to the office because they'll have a harder time finding new jobs? So you're doing backdoor layoffs, but you're laying off the people you'd most likely want to keep, leaving the company with the less experienced/talented people.
> aren't there a very real risk that the most talented people, who enjoy working from home will simply leave, while the less talented returns to the office because they'll have a harder time finding new jobs? a.k.a Dead Sea effect
Leave to where? All the other FAANGs and tech companies seem to be doing RTO as well. There's no "dead sea effect" because the less talented are also being flushed out by layoffs specifically targeting low performers. And the job market is so bad right now that there's absolutely no shortage of fresh talented folks to hire.
Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
#895Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean we still have headlines coming like this https://fortune.com/2025/09/05/paramount-skydance-ceo-david-... A 10 day notice requiring agreement to full 5 day RTO or take a voluntary package. This from a CEO talking bout 'efficiency' and cost cutting, where I know people who have been 100% remote for 5 years. What are the odds those voluntary packages are worse than whatever contract & law specific in the case of…
> What are the odds those voluntary packages are worse than whatever contract & law specific in the case of layoffs. Roughly zero, if the scale as a layoff would be sub-WARN Act level, because it is unlikely that the impacted employees had any contractual severance guarantee or any legal entitlement to any notice of termination of employment or pay in lieu (they might be less than the firm’s historical practice for s…
I guess the question is then - why the same Twitter/Musk playbook of creating a forced dichotomy "agree to 5 day RTO in writing or take voluntary package"?
Would imply they are probably planning WARN-act-level layoffs, and trying to get under that with "volunteers"?
Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
#896Earlier quoted context omitted.
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’…
I always assume a different option, though (3) is likely part of it for Microsoft right now as well. When leadership decides their velocity is too slow for whatever reason, they look for deck chairs to move. RTO is one big deck chair they can move and many will assume it will improve performance and velocity. The problem is that I've never seen anyone actually prove that out for RTO with solid data. And that goes bot…
> When leadership decides their velocity is too slow for whatever reason, they look for deck chairs to move. RTO is one big deck chair they can move and many will assume it will improve performance and velocity.
I’d agree that “do-something-ism” is a factor, both on its own and as an accelerant for any pre-existing bias in that direction that packed an impetus or pretext without bad results.
Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
#897Earlier quoted context omitted.
The move of offshoring in many projects, changed my mindest that companies care one second about their talent, at a size like Microsoft is all about replaceable cogs, little ants every doing their own small task.
Why in your opinion do Microsoft or any large org pay software engineers in America or western Europe? India would be cheaper. South America, Phillipines cheaper still. Etc etc etc. Plenty of educated folks speaking English. I think a large part of it is that they want people physically and culturally close to themselves for projects they care about. Piles of companies have tried outsourcing core development and in m…
Mostly to play firefighters and many countries in Europe, business people actually rather not deal directly with offshoring teams in English.
Which is what the on site team does, besides firefighting, handling the cultural interface.
For many businesses even if it looks a failure from engineering point of view, as long as it is within the budget, many businesses see it as a success, versus having paid a whole team onsite.
Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
#898Earlier quoted context omitted.
No CEO cares about commercial real estate profits. It isn't a factor in any major company decision. Why not extend the baseless paranoia and say it is because they want to see auto company profits go up? And also support petroleum companies? Or is it just real estate that is boogeyman secretly running the country behind the scenes?
May you explain why ruthlessly profit driven CEOs of megacorporations don't care about the commercial value of the real estate they own?
In the case of Microsoft, their main campus in a thriving suburb of the Seattle Eastside would be prime real estate even if they disappeared tomorrow. They have absolutely zero reason to worry about the value of their real estate regardless of occupancy.
Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
#899Earlier quoted context omitted.
May you explain why ruthlessly profit driven CEOs of megacorporations don't care about the commercial value of the real estate they own?
Because who are the profit driven CEOs (are there any other CEOs?) sell their buildings to? The value of their building affects the profit via the depreciation expense. Which is to say the more buildings you have for RTO the bigger the expense-and thus the lower the profit for the profit maximizing CEOs. From a profit only perspective RTO makes sense only if the cities gave businesses tax breaks tied to business occu…
>How big could that tax break could be?
Many are asking this!
Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
#900Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds like Dell. Michael Dell owns a lot of commercial real estate, especially around main campus hq. More employees in the office, better returns on his commercial real estate. That’s my opinion anyway
How does that make sense? "Now that my employees don't need to occupy the space all the time, rent out (possibly parts of) the office for even more $$$" would be how I'd think if I were in his shoes.
Board members run scams on stakeholders all the time.
I know of a CEO who is CEO of multiple companies and tells employees of one company (big one with many stakeholders) to work on stuff from his other smaller companies.
It's basically just a scam to the stakeholders.