[zigglezaggle]

Not me, but I've had a direct peer fired because they did not comply. They received recurring monthly notices for about 6 months and were then terminated (no severance or other allowances were given that are typically given to performance-based termination).

This peer was typically evaluated as a high performer during performance reviews, but was denied for their request to remain remote, and they decided to ignore the order and accept the consequences.

The organization is also actively monitoring and blocking bonuses and promos for those who are not fully ignoring the mandate but are not meeting the full expectation.

USA based financial institution.

[Paul-Craft]

> The organization is also actively monitoring and blocking bonuses and promos for those who are not fully ignoring the mandate but are not meeting the full expectation.

That's what they're saying, at least. My easiest promotions have all been from changing companies; to give up a job because I (hypothetically might) get offered another is a luxury I can't afford right now. And, I'd bet better than even money that there's going to be a lot of "not in the budget" syndrome going around near the holidays.

In other words, them saying that they're actively monitoring, blah blah, might actually be a subtle and distant crack of the whip. The real story is that the job market for highly paid professionals is still absolutely fucker. Employers, of course, know this, and will take any opportunity to capitalize on it, even at the expense of their best workers. It's not 2-3 years ago, when people could peace out at the drop of a hat, because a job would roll in soon enough just by making a LinkedIn post and sending out a handful of resumes.

[idontknowtech]

Idiotic decision by that employer. Who cares where the employee is, if they're a top performer?

I'm convinced the back to office mandates come from people who thrive in office environments. Those people succeed, get promoted, become leadership, and then assume everyone else works just like they do. It's absolutely not the case.

That's without going into the many, many studies of office environments which provide empirics disproving common myths about office work, such as the oft-repeated lie that open offices encourage collaboration. Those facts just don't compute for people who love working in those spaces, so they ignore them and repeat happy lies instead.

[zigglezaggle]

I understand this take, but let me present the flip side:

There are two ways of working, remote or in person. Hybrid is a swan song of bullshit where you get the worst of both worlds and few of the advantages. So organizations need to make sweeping changes one way or another: either restructure towards remote-first or return to pre-covid paradigms by not only getting people back to the office, but also teams back in the same office. Both require some pretty sweeping changes to get there, and it's understandable (if maybe not defensible) that a majority of established organizations don't want to reinvent themselves.

At the end of the day, if in-person is the final vision, yes you should be fired if you don't comply with it. Almost everyone is replaceable, including even the top levels of management. Keeping employees who are actively hostile to (remember, not just disagreeing, but actively disregarding) a core organizational standard doesn't help anything --- regardless of their performance.

All that being said, I find it amazing that companies were presented the opportunity to use a new remote paradigm on a silver platter and decided to scoff at it rather than embracing all of its advantages, but maybe that's why I'm not making those decisions.

[n4r9]

Do you know if they had a new job lined up?

[zigglezaggle]

Not sure if it was lined up but they started a new role roughly a month after they were fired.