RTOs are stealth layoffs - they don't backfire, they work entirely as intended.
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2026
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RTO, like AI, is advertised as the magic tool to make employees more productive. In both cases, those claims have been proven dubious at best.
And in both cases, people got laid off because of it.
Businesses are just trying to fire people. They have no interest in AI, they don't care where you work, they just want a reason to fire you.
I think the reality is that "leaders" know this already, but a lot of them just don't care.
They want their castle populated with little laboring serfs they can see running around. Remote work is something that used to be the realm of those leaders, who came in once a week in between thousand-dollar business lunches they flew first class to, and they'll be damned if the peons get even one of their 'special privileges '.
Next they'll be expecting to be compensated for traveling for work, and commuting will be classified as traveling for work! What a crock, having to pay people for the things the company demands they do!
RTO doesn't benefit anyone other than commercial real estate and middle managers struggling to explain their use.
There are still a lot of "old school" people in charge of these companies who think if they can't see you "working" with their own two eyeballs, that they are not.
I can't wait to see what the spike in gas prices here in the US will bring.
Thank goodness I have an actual medical reason to work from home for two days a week, RTO came just months after taking the job on the promised hybrid schedule.
I feel like I can get different sorts of productivity at home and at work, and depending on how my workload lines up I often need both in office and at home time to make progress.
Managers and others up the chain absolutely cannot know what's best for individual workers productivity and so try to micromanage instead