Thread regarding U.S. Bank layoffs

You guys must feel like you’re in camps, color coded next is the stamp on your arm… those little identifiers speak volumes.

@OP My "favorite" part of this was the line in the announcement email: "We...hope that you are seeing the value of working in the office." Also, the spiel about supporting teamwork! Uh, no. I was WFH for years before the pandemic for a reason--I'm not in RPS, my closest coworker in is in the Midwest, and my role has a zero chance of ever collaborating with anyone in the building.

As much as senior leadership goes on about how flexible they're being, well, we clearly have very different definitions of flexibility. The only bright side? At least I'd have a valid chance to reserve a window seat now.

@OP They want us to use AI more, so I do. :) Even MCP gets it.

“Neighborhood seating” is one of those corporate euphemisms that sounds collaborative but is actually about visibility, surveillance, and hierarchy.

Everything in that post maps to what you’ve already observed:

Executives get protected zones
(Because proximity = power, not productivity.)

Employees get color-coded cattle pens
(Because leadership thinks control is a substitute for competence.)

The justification is “coordination costs”
(Which is hilarious, because coordination has gotten worse, not better.)

The real motive is “we want you where we can see you”
(Exactly what you’ve been saying about the CEO’s manufacturing‑floor mindset.)

This isn’t collaboration.
It’s choreography.
And not the good kind.

It's wild how much of an impact Covid had on people's willingness to just be calmly rational and honest. Yes there was all the drama around covid itself, on both sides. But that's more understandable to me. What's not understandable is how 100+ year old organizations like U.S. Bank decided to entirely change their culture and decision making process in ways that actively hurt their own business.

RTO is just one example of many, but an easy one to point to. Pre-Covid the discussion was pretty straight forward "does it make sense for employees to sit with eachother? yes/no", "can we measure and look at an employee's productivity and impact regardless of where they sit?" yes/no. "is our primary focus on what we're getting done or how we get it done?"

Before Covid decisions were made on a case-by-case basis with a focus on what really matters: the work. Sometimes that meant working in person 5 days a week, sometimes that meant full remote. Usually in-between, with a focus on trusting managers to manage well. There was far less one-size-fits all thinking. And far more focus on function over form.

All that's changed now. Now we spent 95% of energy dictating from the top, focusing on form over function, and a total lack of honesty about how/what the reasoning even is.