Technology

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.

I’m not sure if this was actually some kind of sinister plot, rather than incompetence and ego. You’re not the first to suggest that this is a way to lay people off without “having to pay severance”, but what really throws a wrench into that idea is that in most states they didn’t “have” to pay severance in the first place. That’s really more reliant on the employment offer or contract. There really wasn’t anything stopping these companies from just laying people off the normal way. The only other justification I’ve seen is that it’s a way to “avoid bad press”. But clearly it doesn’t because we all still know this is happening and we’re all still just as unhappy about it. If anything, it’s better for a company to just lay people off and spin it as a “cost saving measure” to appease shareholders, than make it look like top talent is leaving of their own volition. The latter makes the company look bad to both the general population and its shareholders.

We do what we must because we can.

For the good of all of us.

Except the ones who are dead.

Senior professionals in high demand area are very hard to find and hire - when I worked as a freelance very senior software designer-developer some years ago were I was paid big bucks for it, in most of my contracts they had ended up hiring an expensive freelancer like me because the company simply could not find anybody with that level of seniority willing to either become a permanent employee or move jobs (it's funny ´cause they almost invariably though it was temporary and they would find somebody and then generally I ended up working 2 years or so for them and eventually I would choose to leave because I was getting bored).

These people are also older and have families, not naive young men that will work crazy hours and take any shit.

This is IT, not some kind of early 20th century industry filled with employees for life who have "seniority" because merelly of how long they've working in the same company: they're senior in the sence of their domain expertise being very advanced, not in the sense of being old (though such expertise usually requires one to be older because it takes time to accumulate, being older does not guarantee such expertise and always working for the same company actually makes it harder to keep on evolving as a domain expert into the most senior levels because all you know is one way of doing things)

So it makes a lot more sense to me that the executives in these companies which have a tradition of over-exploiting bright young naive techies, didn't account for their most experienced staff (who are not only are past the age and insecurity about their skills that they will simply lie down and take shit but can also much more easilly find a job somewhere else than the less experienced ones) not just taking it and getting used to it and instead endind up prompted by these RTO policies to start looking for something else and eventually leave because, I repeat, it's much more easy for them to find a place to leave to.

Honestly, this shit should have been class action lawsuits under "Constructive Dismissal."

Constructive dismissal is not illegal or anything. All it means is that "yeah, you didn't officially get dismissed but with the other things they did you may as well have been. Here's your $200 unemployment check for the month"

You see how that’s more convenient for the interviewee too, right?

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.

Probably the satisfaction to micro manage people and oversee their work over their shoulders.

They get to use all that cheap real estate they bought during the pandemic. What more reasoning could you ever need!

It was the whole getting rid of senior employees without having to pay severance or unemployment thing.

It was never about "returning to office." It was always about making the most well paid and senior employees walk so they could save money.

employees

choice

That does not sound corporate enough.

Heat tracking software? Damn, that's creepy as hell.

Wait, when did the heat sensing get added

Senior talent also tends to save the company money by avoiding the mistakes of less experienced people, but C level positions don't tend to recognize that because they don't see problems that were avoided or mitigated.

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.

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.