"It’s easier to manage a team that’s happy.”

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.

  • @PseudorandomNoiseEnglish
    42•19 days ago

    It’s bosses who are sick of Teams meetings. “You just can’t collaborate like you can in an office setting” is what I heard most during my job hunt.

    • bluGill
      32•19 days ago

      Which is true only in the rare case you only have one office that everyone is in. As soom as you don’t have everyone in the same room teams is better. So once you have more than 50 people

    • mynachmadarch
      18•19 days ago

      You absolutely can’t. You just can’t. Standing around the empty coffee pot yakking about the sportsball game over the weekend for 45 minutes and then spending three minutes agreeing you need a meeting to coordinate brainstorming just doesn’t work over Teams.

      They just refuse to admit that’s a good thing.

      • @SlopppyEngineerEnglish
        24•19 days ago

        Office politics with plausible deniability is also so much harder to do when leaving behind an electronic trail.

      • OptionalEnglish
        8•19 days ago

        Ohh man - that sportsball game was nuts amirite

          • OptionalEnglish
            3•19 days ago

            I know, I know, did they ever resolve that half-remembered news item about them from some time relatively recently?

          • @MajinBlayzeEnglish
            1•18 days ago

            It’s been a wild season, I’m sure

        • mynachmadarch
          1•19 days ago

          I dunno. I got a dumpster and forced three families to finally clean their houses some. And only sportsball I watch is Calvinball but we’re in the off season sadly.

          (Am I doing this right? I always avoid the coffee pot because it was garbage coffee so missed all the collaborative talk)