I never understood this line of reasoning. If you want to shed staff, don't you want to control which staff you shed? A RTO mandate just means your best staff leave because they're the ones with real options.

Maybe. But if I’ve learned anything from the layoffs I’ve been a part of or adjacent to, it’s that executives don’t share an engineer’s understanding of who might be a valuable engineer.

At the size of these companies they couldn’t possibly hold that understanding in their head. So they’re thinking more about budgets and strategies, assured by their peers that we’re all replaceable in the end. They’re not entirely wrong.

Of course, later (once the economy recovers and hiring resumes) they’ll cry that new employees aren’t picking up context or contributing fast enough, things seem to be moving slower, coordination is lacking etc.

This would very explicitly apply to buyouts (paying people to quit) and voluntary layoffs as well, but at least in Canada those are pretty common.

One company here had a bit of a panic as way too many employees accepted a buyout.

https://financialpost.com/telecom/shaw-to-take-450-million-h...

So do layoffs.

Layoffs are unpopular. CEOs don't want to be unpopular.

If people leave off their "free will" (haha), so be it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That's the line of thought.

I agree. But my current employer is having a hiring freeze for this reason. So good, employable, overworked, smart staff are leaving. And those that we don't really need are staying. It's basically the opposite of what any decent manager should want.

So I think senior management see these things differently...

In part, I think it's because numbers are all they can see and control. So if all you have is a hammer... On the other hand I also think it's because they are a bit stupid.

Upper management just wants people that can be easily controlled, that will follow orders, and that don't create problems or complain. Middle management might care more about performance/skills, but the higher you go the more those things become irrelevant.

For the average company a "good employee" doesn't have to be a skilled one, but just one that obeys the boss. This is also true for engineers unless you work for a totally meritocratic PhD led 4 people startup that builds quantum-enabled crypto-agnostic vacuum cleaners.

I guess the more employees you have under you, the more you just view them all as average and accept that they will just be average. That actually makes sense statistically. I'm just surprised it's the dominant model with about 100 people...

You can find this mentality in companies of any size, even if it's probably more common in medium to big sized companies.

Point is that in general people that are upper in the chain are usually pretty self-important and see themselves as indispensable, while everyone below is seen as disposable, so as soon as you drift out of their simpaties and their plans they don't care about you anymore.

Obviously there are senior managers/bosses smart enough to know about those 2 or 3 people that they absolutely need to keep for reasons(they know secrets, they have some super rare skills, ...) otherwise the company will just disintegrate.

Humans are selfish, as simple as that, almost nobody goes up in the company ladder for virtue, more for greed and convenience usually, so it's not so strange that things are like this.