Apple, SpaceX, Microsoft return-to-office mandates drove senior talent away

We currently have a stacked roster thanks to those mandates. Even more hilarious is that we are helping three clients who's projects are currently underwater because they lost key staff thanks to return-to-office mandates. We are not a staffing agency, we are a highly specialized firm, so right now they are paying six times the cost for specialists to do what they used to do with in-house staff. Funnier still, we have been a 100% remote work firm since 2012, so ultimately the office is still empty. SMH

- Ultimately, these mandates are because executives don't work for the same reason normal people do. Most people work to support themselves. But a single year working at an exec at a major company will be enough to let you retire very comfortably, never working another day in your life. Once you have ten million in the bank, you're not really working for money anymore.
  Instead, you're working for prestige and power. Execs and high-level managers work for a few reasons. Some work because they want to have power over people. They get a thrill out of having complete authority over other human beings. And sociopathic need to control others is an itch that simply can't be scratched by working remote. Others like to mandate in-office because they're professional shmoozers. They do very little real work. Instead, they just go from meeting to meeting, spend afternoons golfing on the company dime, etc. The company is basically just their own personal social club. Others work because they have a savior complex. They think they're God's gift to mankind, and they need the sycophantic praise that can only come by forcing people to work in person. Finally, some are simply sexual predators. For some, the primary benefit of coming into work is the ability to coerce sex out of their underlings. And it's hard to sexually assault an employee who is working hundreds of miles away.

Who could have fucking predicted
Unless that was the point and this plus big layoffs are meant to lower salary ranges for tech
- Sure as fuck happened to journalism. Except they had the balls to offer buyouts instead of just saying "your service counts for nothing unless I see the back of your head every time I meander around with a coffee mug."
  The truly absurd bit of it to me is absent Covid, already working remote for years would not have been a problem. I went remote in 2016, and there's no fucking way I'd be like "oh, the recent grads you hire to chew and spit out are an issue for remote? Sure, why don't I restart the pointless thing of driving for an hour and a half a day with concomitant fuel costs, having to choose my food for the entire day at 7 a.m. or paying four times as much, and generally being more surly in my personal life so that you, dear boss, can prove you have something to do?"

Of course senior talent left, that was the point. It was a deliberate move to reduce headcount due to economic headwinds and over hiring. I was one of the people that left for this reason.
- Yeah, they don't care that senior talent left because that was the whole point.

It's all in effort of "line goes up" in the immediate short-term despite the fact that a year from now these companies are going to struggle to complete difficult projects. My company has layed off a number of 10, 15, 20+ year veterans because they were highly paid. Now there are gaps in knowledgeable folks to tap for help and Juniors are being forced to perform to a Senior level without proper support.
The pandemic growth periods caused every company to loose their damn mind to make growth projections based on those insane numbers for a time that should have been ruled out as an outlier. I know these MBA fucks had to take a business stats class, but literally dropped the fundamentals when they saw big $$$. Now they're cutting the talent that fostered their primary growth and will be looking back 6 months from now wondering why they still aren't growing. Well surely the Juniors aren't working hard enough!

- Yeah but they're called talent for a reason. The senior talent are generally better than the juniors at what they do.
- Senior talent tends to be "T people", while juniors tend to be "I people". Removing that T scaffolding, is how corporations end up like Boeing or the Titan.
- I've seen this before in the 90s. The companies that forced out the best, highest paid staff always suffered.

I have seen another contributing factor in CS: it is really hard for the management to keep a good senior to junior ratio ie. A lot of juniors are trying to enter the workforce today. It means that during covid and shortly after the companies definitely relaxed as much as they could the geographical constraints for senior remote roles, also being senior they trusted them to work remotely not needing too much direct supervision. And now it backfires when your company is in silicon valley and you ask your senior developer from the boonies Colorado to move to an industrial concrete jungle.

I wonder where they went?
- I think this is the real question.
  Did they quit and join a competitor who offered a better WFH option? Or did they get a taste of the good parts of white collar pandemic life --- no commute, flexible hours, work from anywhere --- and decide that actually, their entire identity is not just their professional life, and maybe they should retire to see the world/spend time with family?
  There are definitely some high profile rage quits over return to office, but I think there are a lot more of the "hey this was fun but time to take care of myself" quits.

@Powderhorn In our company, we have theoretically had a "one day at home per week" rule for several months now. In practice, people usually work about 3 days a week at home. This is partly due to the fact that there is a works council agreement for some of my colleagues that is binding and can't be overruled by management (thanks for German labor law!).