[dry_soup]

It's quite clear to me that tech companies know that reneging on WFH will cause some employees to leave. I think that this is actually the entire point. You can do a soft layoff, without ever having to say the word layoff, and without ever getting "Tech company XYZ announces layoffs" headlines.

[lmarcos]

The problem, I think, is what kind of employees may leave. If it's the best of the cream, then the company is in trouble. And frankly, the best employees can allow themselves to say "I want to work from home. You don't allow? Then goodbye".

[ricardobayes]

In my opinion, above a certain size, companies don't really care about employee quality all that much. So long as they meet the initial hire criteria it doesn't matter who's a 5x or 1x dev anymore. It's just one FTE anyway in the planning.

[Lewton]

dirty secret is, they'll just allow their best employees to work remote

[a_vanderbilt]

They are going to quickly discover that this is the case. I left Lockheed right after they started forcing everyone back into offices that didn't even have enough desks. Those whom were actually creating value there all had plans to leave to. Plenty of them left as soon as they got the news lol. Sure it's a way to do layoffs without saying 'layoff', but the impact is going to be felt much harder down the line.

[UncleMeat]

I'm not sure that there is a terrible large correlation between "best of the best" and "refuse to ever work in office." When I think about the engineers that I most respect and admire, they are very split on wfh vs wfo opinions.

[theshrike79]

Companies keep making this mistake.

Nokia at one point started handing out very generous severance packages to get people out. The management thought that the bad workers would be the ones to take the deal.

Nope, the oldest and most experienced ones took the money and used it to start their own companies.

[mprovost]

(As I always point out...) This is known as the "Dead Sea Effect" and it was traditionally associated with companies like IBM but now we're seeing it across the board with tech layoffs. The best people know they have options and they have a good network so once a company starts showing signs of slowing down they bail out.

http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-d...

[closeparen]

Those headlines are usually associated with a bump in the stock price; it's unclear why they'd be trying to avoid them. Perhaps they think it undermines future hiring or retention, but so does RTO.

[mandevil]

It can be bad optics for companies which took large sums of money from the government recently (say, for pandemic relief or major tax breaks of some kind) to then turn around and announce large layoffs. It guarantees that the CEO is going to have an unpleasant day or two in front of, say, a Congressional committee or maybe a state legislature hearing. And letting CEO's avoid unpleasant consequences of their own decisions is definitely an important factor in corporate decisions.

[hrudham]

The problem with this is that they are more likely to lose their best talent first.

[benjaminwootton]

Aren’t those layoff headlines desirable if they bump your stock price?

It sounds perverse but surely conpanies notice how much the market likes them.

Even the serverance they save is a rounding error compared to a 10% bump in market cap.

[TeMPOraL]

It's situational - sometimes a layoff headline may push your stock price down.

I imagine current round[0] of layoffs is opportunistic - companies know they'll want to do some layoffs at some point, but when's a better moment than when everyone else is doing layoffs? The public at this point doesn't even care anymore - there's been too much of it going on, it's not novel, it's what everyone's doing.

--

[0] - I'm not sure if "round" is even a good term anymore - it's been what, half a year already, of ongoing layoffs in tech companies? I've been seeing at least one headline per week about some recognizable name in tech announcing/executing layoffs, since February, or maybe even January 2023.

[thefz]

The problem is they are leaking talent, as those who know that can pick another offer that suits their needs will do without thinking about it too much.

[olliej]

I’m beginning to think so as well. You can get significant layoffs without having a “layoff” event, and you don’t have to provide any of the support that is required when firing people.

It’s clearly not what an employment lawyer would call “constructive dismissal” but it sure feels like that is the intent.

[lmm]

> It’s clearly not what an employment lawyer would call “constructive dismissal”

Isn't it? I'm pretty sure this kind of forced change to working conditions constitutes constructive dismissal under e.g. UK law.

[throwaway5371]

where are they gonna go when few allow wfh?

[nlnn]

Even if none allow WFH, they might go somewhere with less of a commute, or to a more trustworthy employer that doesn't backtrack on promises.

[gtirloni]

Aside from FAANG, there's no evidence this trend is picking up.

In fact, I bet all the people that got laid off recently will be happily hired by remote first companies very quickly.

[komali2]

So many allow WFH. There's thousands of open software positions in SF alone, and plenty are ok with remote. Some are even ok with me being in the taiwan time zone. I'm managed to stay consistently employed in the Taiwan time zone with SF and NYC based jobs the last 2.5 years.

[dmitrygr]

Curiously, for some candidates, almost every letter of the FAANG, WILL give a full WFH offer, today, and they are willing to put this down with ink on paper.

Source: have a few of those on my desk right now.

[landswipe]

In my case, more than likely change industries.

[avnigo]

Depending on the circumstances, couldn't that be tantamount to constructive dismissal in some countries?