There's a third option beyond forcing everyone into boxes in the middle of nowhere (old and busted) and everyone working from home (new old hotness).

My point is that if 5/100 people want to work in the office and 95/100 don’t, that’s fine.

If 5/100 want to work in an office with 100 people, and force the others to return against their wishes that’s * not* fine.

They can have their preference, but it seems wrong to me for their preference to override the preference of others.

> I’m not a CEO so it’s not my place to decide what a company does or doesn’t do.

Funny, because I’m the owner of my company, but I don’t think employees should defer their decision making to a CEO.

An employee can have an opinion, and even demand their preference. CEOs can’t actually make a unilateral decision on this. Labor absolutely gets a say. If the CEO says “RTO or you’re fired”, and 95/100 people say “okay, bye”, then that company won’t RTO.

Just about this. We've seen again and again that they will.

I don't understand what is happening well enough to explain CEOs destroying their companies before conceding this to the employees, but this is clearly a thing common enough for it to be the default expectation.

And that's my main criticism of the article. Those CEOs clearly are not doing some random bullshit. They are doing some completely intentional and heavily desired thing. IDK what is their reasoning or if it's aligned with the company's goals, but they do have the intention.

This is the part I was disagreeing with. The CEO does not make that call. The CEO and labor negotiation over that call.

If you view it as just the CEO's decision, you've ceded a tremendous amount of power.

But, actually, it's a shared decision between the CEO and the entire body of workers. If the body of workers all reject the CEO's decision, then...that decision will get reversed.

Yes, in a particular scenario.

If it improved productivity so much that it exceeds the work required to commute to the office, and the employer is willing to pay for that commute (both in cost and employee time), then sure. If the productivity gain is so large that if offsets the cost/time of the commute, and the employer is willing to pay for that time, then I think RTO makes sense.

I will prioritize my own needs, my own life, my own comfort, over the "productivity" or profit of a company every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

And frankly, so should we all. This obsessive focus on enabling companies to make more money, regardless of what it means for us regular workers as human beings, is utterly ruinous and needs to stop.

Every industry, every company, every team, and every project is different. What works in some places and times doesn't work in others.

You have to decide for yourself and your team/company if RTO is what is best, and don't take other's lived experience as your own.

I don't understand this response and it come off as incredibly rude.

What I'm asking is whether it ever makes sense for a firm to do something against the preferences of employees if it demonstrably increases productivity.

> You have to decide for yourself and your team/company if RTO is what is best, and don't take other's lived experience as your own.

I genuinely think you might be responding to the wrong comment or something. Where did I "take other's lived experience as your own"? Am I misinterpreting your response?

I've already said in this thread that I'm open to both arrangements. I'm not a zealot on either side of this conversation, and it bothers me that you're assuming I am. There's pros and cons to both. You put forward a scenario that for whatever reason inspired me to present a hypothetical situation because I was curious what your response would be.

I am not trying to be rude, but the way you asked the question "Hypothetically, would you still feel this way of it turned out that everyone being in the office (remember this is a magical hypothetical) has a significant and demonstrable improvement in productivity?" is leading to a yes or no answer to a hypothetical question with a lot of missing quantifiers (the lived experience). Neither answer is wrong, and neither answer is right.

A better question would have been: "_Have you_ experienced a demonstrable improvement in productivity from being in the office in yourself or others?" Personally, I have not. Going to the office wastes a lot of my day getting ready to leave the house (unhooking laptop and charger), commuting back and forth, etc. The only time being in the office is a net positive is when I need to get like 6+ people into a conference room for a few hours and get them all to agree to something. These type of meetings only happen every few months.

For the record, you're talking to different people. You asked the question to me, and I responded. guhidalg is a different person in the conversation.