#rto

Isnt it ironic how we were all forced back into the office supposedly for collaboration in person but now the new metric being tracked is screen time and keystrokes?? Apparently the focus is no longer RTO reporting as people are either complying or have been let go.

Now the new metric is tracking productivity which is starting with hours and then expanding to things like keystrokes and mouse clicks. Our director literally advised us to screen share by utilizing laptops for in person interactions. Am I the only one who thinks this is ridiculous?? We have to be chained to our computers now so no time for in person interaction or events then what is the point of RTO???

Ironically I know our leaders often are not online at all cause they’re ‘traveling’ on the company dime or just dialing it in though their work phone. This company literally disgusts me. The only people left are those who are stuck with no options at this point.

Welcome to the 5 days a week club staring in January 2027

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/08/spacex-spectrum-license-att-verizon-tmobile.html

Stink and “Leadership” laughed at Starlink and said they weren’t a real threat. Look where we are now.

SpaceX is making moves to become a serious competitor in wireless, acquiring nationwide low-band spectrum that could help Starlink Mobile compete directly with AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. $T stock down 7.5% on the news.

And what the fu-k are we focused on? Badge swipes, 5x RTO and how many bowling alleys to put in Stinkey’s new corporate fantasy factory.

The industry is changing right in front of us, and leadership is worried about forcing people into an office instead of focusing on the competition, innovation and the future of this business.

We’re fighting employees over where they sit while competitors are fighting for the future of connectivity.

Get this loser Stinkey out before he does any more damage.

Store ops just confirmed they're no longer flying remote people in for HQ core weeks so either they don't get to participate or virtual only. Looks like they plan to fully RTO 5 days a week by Q3 2027.

Has anyone else heard of other pyramids doing RTO?

Looks like any remote IT staff are being called onsite 5x a week

The Labor Department just suspended eight major tech and outsourcing companies from the PERM program, including Cognizant, Infosys, Capgemini, Tata, Wipro, HCL, Microsoft and Adobe.

This one has to really sting for Stinky.

AT&T has laid off thousands of American workers while pushing RTO, outsourcing work and chasing cheaper labor overseas. Now the government is putting some of the biggest players in that model under the microscope.

And when you eventually come begging the people you laid off to come back because your H1B and outsourcing plan isn’t working, don’t be surprised when they tell you: HE-L NO!

They haven’t forgotten how you treated domestic American workers while letting overseas employees do whatever the fu-k they wanted.

You can force RTO and lay us off. You can ship the work overseas. But you can’t expect people to forget. F U!

This is my two cents, most of you are seeing this as well. I think the mgmt is hitting things on three fronts, some of the things i'll list are familiar/announced, other maybe less so. Anyhow, they are pushing three transformation tracks, I'd name them: Management, Workforce, and Workplace....

On the Management Transformation side this boils down to greater surveilance and monitoring, standardized performance expectations and harsher consequences for noncompliance with policies (yep, RTO and others)...

On the Workforce side this means that we'll have fewer US salaried employees... There will be MUCH more geographic flexibility in sourcing labor. We'll want more lower-cost labor locations.

Workplace is being transformed as well, this means consolidated facilities, hotel desking, selective remotework exceptions, RTO sh-t, etc.

So, yeah, this place is massively changing and nothing is going in the worker's favor.

Just a general thread. We seem to like/dislike the topic very much.

I was in IT at 3M Center. I left a bit over a month or a month and a half ago. What is it like now? Is everyone back in the office four days a week. Are they still cutting people. How is the new CIO doing. I am kind of glad I left just because of the job insecurity. Just curious.

That’s what management told us, stop talking about RTO and move on.

NO. We won’t stop talking about because you keep changing the rules and making up reasons RTO is beneficial, such as when RTO started, they said it was for security reasons.
That was an obvious lies about data security because all of our data is accessible by remote employees in India. Then they said it was collaboration, well, many of us sit by ourselves and talk to our team members all over the country, we don’t sit next to them.

Then they changed from 11 days a month to now 13 to 15 days a month, and we have to make up dates to be OVER 60 percent quarterly. And then they have the nerve to lie and say nothing has changed. And they said it was retroactive, so most of us came in 11 days and didn’t meet over 60 percent, now we get zero raise and Lower bonuses because of it.

And now they will soon require 8 days total log in time at the office, retroactive , again.
My manager said I was ok to work 6 hours in office and work the rest of the hours at home and avoid the heavy traffic. Now that is no longer ok in a couple of months, worse parts is it’s retroactive, they have the data, just not displayed for us in workday.

Why they continue to treat us salary exempt employees as hourly employees to be monitored to the seconds we are in office? What does this have to do with our job performance??

I heard through the grapevine that Citi will require all workers to stay at least 7 hours in the office per day under the 3-day-a-week RTO policy soon. Has anyone else heard this? We will have to swipe in and out of the building and our times will be tracked. No more coffee badging. I am sad. I usually went home at lunch.

I heard some teams are bringing remote workers back to the office? How does that work?

I’ve seen a few post of the last few months and now it’s hit my team. A girl on my team received the email yesterday and was put on paid leave until the investigation is complete.

If an employee badge-in or office activity occurs during the first week of October, when does that data officially populate in the manager’s report?
What is the cut-off date/time for weekly activity to be captured in that period's report?

"A new development shows that even senior executives consider leaving their jobs over requirements to show up to work in person. Microsoft is losing its LinkedIn CEO after nearly two decades, after he determined that he would have to show up in person to effectively lead the company — and he said that was a price he wasn’t willing to pay.

• After nearly two decades at LinkedIn, CEO Ryan Roslansky is leaving.
• He determined that to effectively lead the company, he would have to show up in person at Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington headquarters.
• Roslansky announced that he is moving on rather than accept the significant return-to-office change to his working arrangement."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/executive-leadership-and-management/linkedin-ceo-is-leaving-after-18-years-says-he-didn-t-want-to-return-to-the-office-full-time/ar-AA2dCybB?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=6ac3fdc945af456bae8e8ab5acf7b047&ei=25

I literally can’t find a seat in the office. The Workplace app is useless. It shows the next three weeks as fully booked.
At this point, I just walk around the office, can’t find a space, and leave. If they’re actually tracking hours based on badge-out time, I’m sc--wed.
It’s pretty ridiculous that the RTO policy is pushing people to come into the office when there literally isn’t a seat for them to work at.

Is an extension for a few months possible after one gets the RTO letter? Whom does one go about asking on dire need?

So there are managers and many employees in California who were hired remote before the mandate, are they required to go into office because a few women that work from there are always away running errands etc and they barely do anything

Do layoff people still have an office? WTF intel id--ts ask them to RTO for? I think these id--ts actually don't know to design a CPU so they ask layoff people for help. Do you think so ?

I have a few observations and feelings on this and in no particular order…

1. Compliance actually feels higher than I thought it would be. I am in MMK so I can only speak to that location, but many people are clearly showing up & ki-ling time by going on walks around the buildings, spending long durations in the cafe, playing games, talking to co-workers, then leaving after putting in however many hours of “in-person”. The productivity despite being in-office can’t possibly be any higher than remote. Fidelity’s gonna stick with it regardless though and pretend like collaboration is up. It’s purely pretend and very obvious at ground floor if they act like this had any positive benefit in the slightest.

2. Piggy backing off the first point, most people seem to do their badge-ins, and the office is full. Nobody is happy about it obviously, and it causes the energy to be miserable. RTO has been the only topic of conversation since the start and it’s clear that people are burnt out. Even if you try to enter the office in a good mood, it quickly gets suffocated away. There’s no choice but to interact with other people who also don’t want to be there, and the feeling multiplies.

3. The FLIK workers are slammed every day. They were already full-time before everyone else came back and so it’s clear they have their own set of frustrations over needing to double their output every day. Some are handling it well and others are not. The ones who aren’t, while I definitely don’t blame them and even feel kinda bad from the collateral damage, it adds another layer to the frustration and discontent with being overcrowded and surrounded by unhappy people in the office.

4. Depending on the time you arrive in the morning, the LAZ parking attendants tend to point to obvious places and don’t add any benefit whatsoever, mostly just funny/useless observation.

5. Like I said earlier, I am in MMK. I’ve heard so much about how nice the new seaport office is and how much money Fidelity invested into it. I’ve only been at the company for less than a decade, but those who have been here since the 90s and early 2000s attest that there have been next to no improvements or changes to MMK. It’s absurd how dated the office is, and I for one am quite jealous over the blatant neglect of locations outside of headquarters.

I (naively or not) hold out hope that eventually we move to something like 3 or 4 days a week expectation instead of 5, but I can’t see that happening with the current people making the decisions. Also, the rumor of someone stealing FLIK food doesn’t shock me given the state of affairs & economy.

This deserved a thread of its own, the OP is @a6+1m3dc6nye.

Heard senior leadership is fed up and RTO is moving to 8x5pm Mon-Fri at your assigned site. This allows management 100% visibility into arrival time and departure time. The policy will be simplified to 8x5x5 to ensure clarity

The amount being spent on co-locations and flying remote employees in just to meet badge-swipe requirements has to be off the charts.
How does it make financial sense to let go of employees who were already local to an office, while retaining remote employees whose RTO compliance now requires additional travel and related expenses?
And then there’s leadership. The number of VPs and directors who remain remote while employees are being pushed into the office four days a week raises a pretty obvious question: why isn’t the same standard being applied consistently?
FHFA has been vocal about RTO and waste, fraud, and abuse. Maybe it’s worth looking a little closer to home. If reducing waste and improving accountability are truly the goals, start by examining the cost of these arrangements, the decisions that created them, and whether the RTO expectations being imposed on employees are also being applied to leadership. Sometimes the backyard needs cleaning before you start inspecting everyone else’s.

As Paramount and Warner Bros. prepare to combine forces and inevitably begin identifying "synergies" for cutting costs and eliminating jobs, there is a bold alternative hiding in plain sight: the walls of 1515 Broadway.

Rather than pursuing mass layoffs, the newly combined company should launch an aggressive corporate art initiative designed to cover every available square foot of office space within 1515. Every dollar that might otherwise be spent on severance could instead be redirected toward framing, mounting, lighting and professionally curating increasingly enormous pieces of IP until there is literally nowhere left to hang a single labor law poster.

More importantly, this strategy would dramatically improve employee morale and finally provide a compelling reason for everyone to embrace RTO. Imagine walking into 1515 every morning surrounded by enormous, beautifully framed reminders of Ridiculousness, Bar Rescue or Joker: Folie à Deux. Sigh. Breathtaking.

Employees would feel valued, inspired and increasingly excited, resulting in higher engagement, greater collaboration and a 67.38% increase in productivity.

The debt pays itself off.

RTO changes as of 10/2/26. Employees will be mandatory in office 3 days a week minimum at risk of their career progression or their job

This is forced attrition at work

Ask yourself and be honest: are you doing something valuable? But be fully honest.

If you're actively contributing to the company, you're significantly less likely to be laid off and punished for ignoring the RTO.

How We Work reports captured my attendance from the week of April 4th - week of September 13. 24 weeks. I work hard at being compliant with the three days in the office but I am sure many people are Surprised Surprised Surprised

Two employees outright fired today for non-compliance with the RTO policy. Company was well prepared with legal and HR. They had been warned twice, and apparently on their calls HR had a lot of data around badge swiping, interviews w office snitches, log in detail. Zero severance. Looks like then you get two warnings.

Be aware.

... you up and moved your home, your family, your life for RTO only to be laid off shortly after you got there.

Dell is such a joke of a company.

New policy was just sent out. Turns out the rumors here about policing coffee badgers were actually legit. Who woulda thunk?

What I wanted to say:

Yes. When they took back my company car, that stung.

When they cut coverage for the one prescription I rely on, that hurt.

When I got a 1.5% raise in the face of runaway inflation: ouch.

The role was posted as mobile, live anywhere in the geography. Then they asked me to come into the office. Now I'm 90 minutes away, one way.
They told me not to travel to see customers and to use Teams instead. But Teams is apparently not okay for day-to-day work, only for avoiding spending their money on customer visits.
1NA is hanging over my head, with my role potentially cut in half.

Field teams are cut to the bone, our workforce is on unlivable wages, and it gets worse every year.

Meanwhile, there's somehow a $10 billion buyback authorization and nearly $9 billion going back to shareholders this year.

No money for travel to see customers, but $1.7 billion to hand the global media account to a new agency.

They priced Doritos up 50% in four years, watched consumers walk, and then cut prices after the damage was done, and somehow the field is who pays for that miss.

Now they're reportedly pulling coverage for weight-loss dr-gs too, so the cuts to employee benefits clearly aren't finished.

And for all that squeezing, the stock is down about 15% over five years while Coke is up 63% and the S&P is up 73%.

We gave up the car, the raise, the benefits, and the flexibility, and the people making these calls still can't deliver a return.

I have been with the bank for a very long time well before COVID. I was just told that if we get sick on our in office day even if that means leaving an hour or two earlier for ONE day, that can put me out of compliance if I already had my WFH day. Before this was ever a thing as long as I had the time I could leave sick whenever and wasn’t penalized for it. What is this company coming to? Why do we preach a work life balance when they sn---h it from us when we have it. Has anyone heard similar to this? How can we protect ourselves and jobs?? I try and work all my office days beginning of the week but I can’t do my WFH days back to back so it leaves me vulnerable if me or my kids get sick

We are only 3 weeks into this ridiculous RTO policy and I am completely burnt out. Anyone else feeling the same? I don’t know how I’m going to manage this indefinitely. I have no energy once I leave that place, my household chores are going untouched, and I barely have the energy to cook dinner for myself. Surely this isn’t the American dream?…

Haven’t seen a single person fired over not RTO’ing yet. They just get a warning call from the AD, come back to work for about a week, then do it again.

Something more people should know. Just saying...

• I was already working from home two or three days a week before COVID.
• Dell had remote and hybrid work long before COVID.
• I was remote well before COVID.
• Gas, tolls, parking, and vehicle wear make RTO expensive.
• I was saving hundreds of dollars a month working from home.
• I am more productive without constant office interruptions.
• My home office has better equipment than the office.
• Most of my collaboration still happens on Teams even when I am in the office.
• There is not enough face-to-face collaboration to justify the commute.
• I reorganized my life around WFH.
• I invested in a dedicated home office.
• I have better control over my time working from home.
• I made major life decisions based on the previous remote-work policy.
• I bought a house based on being remote.
• I moved farther away because I was told remote work was permanent.
• I enrolled my kids in school based on where we moved.
• I sold a car because I no longer needed to commute.
• I can exercise at lunch instead of spending that time commuting.
• I have been fully remote for years. COVID had nothing to do with it.
• Dell previously encouraged remote work and then reversed the policy.
• Some remote employees do not even have an office to return to.
• I worked longer hours and was more available when I was remote.
• My commute is now two hours each way.
• I am not spending four hours a day commuting.
• Now I consider my commute part of my workday.
• The problem is not returning to how things were before COVID. Things were already hybrid or remote before COVID.

If someone was already commuting to an office before COVID, why is going back such a big deal now? I get that it's tough for people hired during the pandemic, but if you did it before, what's actually different? My case is different as I joined relatively recently and I used to work at the place that never switched to working from home (aside for a brief period during COVID).

I am doing the bare minimum to not get PIPped and then fired. I'm no longer available in the evenings and no longer working weekends. Mentally checked out and physically exhausted. I am planning my exit for shortly after bonuses hit.

How is everyone else handling this RTO bs?

Is it full time RTO or still 2 weeks a month?

What does it say when you have to force 5-day RTO and then build a new HQ loaded with golf, tennis, pickleball, kayaking, basketball, bowling, shopping, a nail salon, daycare and a mental health clinic?

With all these distractions, how exactly is this supposed to improve productivity? 😂

I thought the whole argument for RTO was that people were “stealing time” while working from home… Apparently that was the problem. Now you can steal time on prem, surrounded by every possible distraction, while still getting credit for being physically at work.

Here’s the question I’d really love to see answered… If every Plano employee were given a completely free choice between working from home or coming into this new HQ, how many would actually choose the office?

I’d bet the overwhelming majority would still choose WFH and that is incredibly telling.

You can build the most elaborate office in the world. You can put a fu--ing country club inside it. You can force people to badge in five days a week. But you cannot force people to actually want to be there. People value flexibility more than corporate playgrounds.

Most people just want to go in when there is a reason to go in, get their sh-t done, and go home. They don’t want to spend their evenings hanging around the office because AT&T installed a bowling alley or a pickleball court.

This is the part leadership seems completely incapable of understanding. The problem isn’t that the office isn’t nice enough. The problem is that people don’t want to be required to be there five days a week anymore.

You can force attendance. You can build the amenities. You can spend whatever you want on the building but you can’t manufacture buy-in.

And forcing people into an office they don’t want to be in while spending a fortune trying to make that office more appealing is about as backwards as it gets.

We are still trying to solve a 2026 workforce problem with a 2006 answer.

On top of the recent layoffs, they are forcing return to office, 5 days. In the middle of when gas prices soaring. People asked “are we getting adjustments, extra PTO for when we can’t afford to come in?” And they were berated for ridiculous questions because it “didn’t sound like it was for the students?” Joke of an answer. Gaslight their employees for asking HOW THEY ARE GOING TO SURVIVE!!! Keep in mind, they hired Florida wide. And revoked remote privileges/exceptions for them and said “come in with a 6 hour total commute or quit.” One even suggested their $20/hr employee just “up and move” because “Full Sail shouldn’t cater to you”. That came from a higher up male 6-figures. I know a few people truly affected because of pregnancies and cancers. And it was basically “too bad, so sad”. No remorse. And Garry “Sc--w You All” Jones. They told us that it was because parents were complaining that campus was empty (apparently that is worthy of giving people less than a month to find a job). But I know this will be a shock. It has been planned for years. They couldn’t find the right time and apparently their best option was $5 gas prices and groceries increasing every month was beneficial to all. THEY DONT CARE! Plus their accreditation for a few programs are being questioned (and probably revoked) unless they find a way to scam their way out of it. And I could be wrong. Maybe Garry Jokes will let his employees stay in his actual mansion that those people worked hard for him to get. That is not even the tip of the iceberg. The corruption and nepotism runs much much MUCH deeper.

Team,

As many of you know, we are navigating an unprecedented convergence of commodity headwinds. Aluminum prices have skyrocketed. Diesel remains stubbornly uncontrollable. Inflation continues, regrettably, to inflate.

In light of these macro realities, we are making a few adjustments that we're confident will bring us closer together as a family.

Compensation: There will be no raises this year. We know you understand.

Effort: We need everyone to work significantly harder. To be clear, this is not related to the compensation update above.

Travel: Effective immediately, all business travel is suspended. To support this, we need each of you to travel to the office. In person. Regularly.

We recognize many of you accepted remote roles and relocated based on our assurance that you could live wherever you liked. We stand by that. You can still live there. You just need to be here.

Vehicles: To help with that commute, we are reclaiming the company vehicles provided when you accepted your roles.

Every one of these decisions was made with a single goal in mind: helping you become an even better employee of the company you love.

Thank you for your continued sacrifice. We truly couldn't do this without you. Literally.

Leadership