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

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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] 189 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (17 children)

The C-Suite at this news: "This was a triumph! I'm making a note here: "Huge success!" It's hard to overstate my satisfaction!"

This is exactly what they wanted to happen. Stealth layoff without having to give your most senior employees things like severance or unemployment. Senior employees cost more, and any way to get them all to flee without having to pay out for it is viewed as a big win.

They knew their best would fly the coop. They didn't fucking care, that was the plan. Honestly, this shit should have been class action lawsuits under "Constructive Dismissal."

[–] [email protected] 71 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yup.

Sure, the long term productivity and quality takes a nosedive, but the shareholders don't care about that as long as the numbers for the next quarter look better.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

What's worse is they'll make young upstarts feel like "heroes" for figuring out a problem that wasn't a problem until they lost all that senior staff.

Never realizing it wouldn't have been a problem to solve if they company hadn't purposefully shitcanned all that institutional knowledge and that they're being way underpaid for solving the issue.

Then this same cycle will happen to them too, when they're too old to change careers easily.

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