[skyyler]

It seems like RTO isn't specific to the tech industry.

It also seems like most publicly traded companies have instituted some form of RTO by now.

I'm fairly certain that many entities that hold large amounts of commercial real estate also own large amounts of stock in companies that are doing RTO.

It's not the most far-fetched conspiracy theory.

[sokoloff]

If Amazon (or some other company) thought they were going to be more profitable and more successful working remotely, I don't think the threat is credible of some commercial property owning shareholders deciding to further underperform the market by dumping shares unless that company made the decision to underperform by forcing RTO.

"If you want to threaten me that you'll underperform unless I do, be my guest..."

I suspect that different companies could have different motivations (including potentially forcing resignations), but it strains credibility for me that it's to answer to shareholders in conflict with what they think will make them successful.

[pqtyw]

> If Amazon (or some other company) thought they were going

This presumes that the company is fully capable of measuring and comparing the utility between RTO and working from home. That might be the case or it might be mainly due to management culture and other indirect factors but neither is self evident.

Major corporations are almost by definition have massive amounts of bloat and inefficiency to one degree or another and are carried (especially tech companies) by certain products/teams/departments the rest are often there only for the ride (short to medium term at least and who has time for any "long-term" development these days?). To be clear, I don't think this has that much to do with people who are "lazy" or hard workers (you can put in extreme amounts of effort into something that leads nowhere).

Anyway, not particularly pro or anti-RTO but I just find it bizarre that we usually assume that decisions making in large companies are always logical, rational and quantifiable and are not made to benefit specific subgroups or individuals in one way or another.

[mitthrowaway2]

They wouldn't threaten to dump shares (and they may not even be allowed to dump shares, eg. they may be an index fund). Instead, they'd threaten to exercise their votes, and potentially fire the CEO.

But most likely they wouldn't have to. The CEO knows that a deleveraging event would kill their stock options even if their company outperforms the market on the way down.

[skyyler]

>it strains credibility for me that it's to answer to shareholders in conflict with what they think will make them successful

I'm not so sure. I don't think that it's exactly the most probably scenario, but I can absolutely see it being a factor. I don't think there's some commercial real estate mogul on every F500 board demanding RTO, reality is way more complicated than that.

[JumpCrisscross]

> It also seems like most publicly traded companies have instituted some form of RTO by now

So have plenty of private companies.

> It's not the most far-fetched conspiracy theory

It really is. (With unusual prevalence in the San Francisco Bay Area.) You're talking about some of the most powerful and notoriously-independent companies on the planet kowtowing to invisible shareholder pressure.