Give it time. The (RTO) companies are on the wrong side of history. Ideally these mandates are something the (employment) market will never forget. It will be interesting to see in the near future how many of the RTO execs at these companies will be whining about their struggles finding talent and/or having to pay a premium to attain and return the level of talent they need.

Of course few, if any of these execs will admit they got it wrong. That the root of the problem was their heavy-handed mandates and how they compromised the brand in the (employment) market.

Eh, people forget. Heard about Blackwater lately? Or was it Xe? Or Academi?

And they always complain about stuff like that, even when they aren’t playing games!

Yes and no. What needs to be factored in is, does the best / top talent forget? Or are they ones with more focus and memory? Does their marketability allow them to be more selective?

I think you see where this is going :)

Oh I'm well aware. How many downturns have you lived through?

It's rarely so easy when times get lean, but everyone has a different experience for sure!

Compromising in the short term to meet immediate needs isn't the same as forgetting. Once the tough times have passed, the memory rejuvenates and those who can do (i.e., leave).

Everyone leaves eventually, even if by retirement or death.

A great many people say they’ll leave ‘any day now’, or ‘after my next paycheck’ - but then somehow never do.

That might be true, but it's effectively a long-winded description of mediocrity. Mediocrity will only get you so far. Mediocrity means you're less competitive. Mediocrity means the only way to rise is if your competitor becomes even more mediocre. Mediocrity means to always live in fear that the "trick" isn't going to last much longer. And so on.

The point is, those environments, those cultures don't capture and retain top talent. Again, those who can...do (i.e., leave).

re: "Everybody leave..." Come on. You've got to do better than this. This isn't Reddit.

I’m pretty sure I don’t actually have to do better than this, actually.

And I’m going to have to quote Sturgeon’s law here. “90% of everything is crap”.

If 90% of employers are crap, (or 90% of jobs in an industry?), there is going to be a lot of competition for the 10% that aren’t with the crap employers or with the crap jobs. In conditions like we have today, many of the top 10% will even relax their standards (sliding closer to crap), since they just need to beat their competition not be perfect.

All they need to do to outrun the bear is run faster than the next guy, not be the fastest in the world.

So not everyone is going to get one of those nice ones, pretty much by definition no?

I wish you luck with finding one, and making the move if your current employer sucks.

Many won’t, for valid reasons. And employers are counting on that. For valid reasons (even if we all hate it).

That is my observation.

Companies have a right to fuck their employees over in all sorts of ways. "It's not literally illegal for them to do this to you" is the absolute weakest defence that can be made for any behaviour.

FYI, I wasn’t defending. I was noting market dynamics and likely counter-forces.

How you decide to position yourself (and plan), and how they decide to position themselves (and plan) is of course up to each participant.

This argument is also flawed.

“Market Dynamics” is discussed as if it is a physics problem.

Markets are social creations - they are a human way to effectively allocate resources.

They are also constantly being manipulated and shaped to better achieve certain outcomes over others.

When these outcomes are bent to serve the benefits of the few, or to serve the benefits of a principle that isn’t human wellness, its is a pointless market.

The rules against oligopolies, monopolies, fraud and manipulation are to ensure the social purpose of the market is achieved.

By extension - a market that by nature forces RTO, when WFH is superior to the majority of humans, is a market that needs to be fixed.

A negligible % of firms include commute time as a part of your salary. WFH means that you can save nearly an hour every day, doing any number of things that add economic value to humanity.

Just a data point: When I was living in LA, it would have been nearly 2 hours a day for a good while. My boss, at the time, commuted nearly four hours a day on the worst days.

What argument am I making exactly?

Your statement seems to be one of 'should' due to social factors largely outside of the various actors control and/or self-interest.

Which in my experience tends to mean 'I wish was', not 'will be', let alone 'is'. Unfortunately. But pressure applied to various regulators, PR campaigns, etc. could change that! I wish whoever wants to spend the time and effort doing so the best of luck. When that happens, the factors will change.

In the end, labor markets only care about the wellbeing of participants as much as they have to - because labor will either actually not participate, or regulators will actually intervene, etc.

If someone is willing (and able) to commute 12 hrs a day to fill a job, and an employer is willing to employ that person at the rate they want, that will often happen barring better deals. Stochastically of course.

One can think of it in relation to energy states (when markets get above a certain size) if one was in the mood.

As always though, just as in said physics or chemistry problems, individual 'atoms' can and will end up in wildly different states from the median.

But that a single atom may be a movement/vibration rate equivalent to 100C doesn't mean the temperature of the solution isn't 25C (for example). Or that it won't average out over time for that atom as it collides/interacts with others.

Companies can do a lot of things that are morally reprehensible without fear of legal consequences. It doesn’t make it OK, and it certainly doesn’t mean that they have “a right” to behave that way.

Companies are gonna fuck over their employees either way but I totally agree that's not the kind of thing they have a right to. The world isn't dystopian enough yet.

I think you have a very different definition of a 'right' than the court system?

Folks on both sides are allowed to make decisions others disagree with (within bounds), and suffer or enjoy the consequences appropriately.

Courts are a last resort venue though. They have to work with that standard.

I’m not sure what you mean here.

While having a moral right to something (or not) is definitely important, when push comes to shove it’s the legal rights that come into play.

Legally recognized rights tend to underpin most definitions of ‘rights’ someone has, since if the legal system doesn’t recognize it, it’s nearly inevitable it will be stomped on at some point with no recourse.

And when that happens regularly, it’s hard to claim it’s a right anymore as practically it isn’t.