If you haven't looked closely at the new RTO change, here is what it actually does and who it actually affects.
The expectation has been 4 days a week. It has never been written down anywhere. It is not a formal policy, just what everyone was told. In practice, the bar was an average of 2, because PTO, sick days and other time off are not excluded. Every day out lowers your average, so 2 is what people planned around and 2 is what people met.
Leadership has now raised that bar to an average of 3 and applied it retroactively to Q1, Q2 and Q3. Those quarters are over. People followed the expectation they were given, and those same months are now being measured against a number that did not exist at the time, tied to a policy that still is not documented. No one can go back and be in the office on a Tuesday in March. A retroactive standard does not change behavior. It only penalizes it after the fact.
Fall short and you are "not in good standing." That means no promotion and no ability to apply for a role in any other organization within the company. You are effectively frozen in place over a rule that was never put on paper.
Consider who that actually affects.
The people who are not coming into the building made their decision during the first RTO push. They decided then that a promotion here was not worth it. This changes nothing for them. Restricting internal mobility means even less, because significant layoffs and company wide changes are coming. Many people do not expect to be here a year from now, and no one plans a career move inside a company they expect to leave.
The reasons are visible to everyone. The stock has fallen badly. Customers are leaving. Our products are interchangeable with every competitor's, and customers know it. Trust in leadership is gone. Disengaged employees will not start caring because of an unwritten expectation that keeps changing. They can see where this is heading and are planning their exit.
That leaves one group this policy truly reaches, the high performers who still care. The people who kept showing up, kept pushing and still wanted to build a career here. They are the only ones still invested in a future at this company, which makes them the only ones a promotion penalty can hurt.
This is not an isolated decision. It is a pattern from our executive team. Poor decision after poor decision, with the same behavior each time. No one at the top takes ownership of the results. No one asks why the buildings are empty. No one addresses the product, the customer experience or how employees are treated. The response is always a new rule, a new threat or another round of cuts. At this point it looks as though leadership is dismantling the company from the top. The stock has suffered. Customers have walked. The culture is gone. Now the talent is next, starting with the last people who genuinely cared.
To the executives who made this decision, this is on you. You did not lose the office. You lost the people. They stopped coming in because they were given no reason to, and rather than examine why, you chose a penalty, never documented it and made it retroactive anyway. The people you are pressuring are not the ones you should be worried about. The ones who still care are, and you have just given them every reason to stop. When your best people leave, do not call it attrition. Call it what it is. The result of your decisions.
To fellow employees reading this, if you never wanted the promotion, this does not affect you. Hold your ground. If you did want one, think carefully about whether this company deserves your best years. A lot of us don't think it will be here long enough to matter.