Third RTO email of the year landed today
Five days back in office starting June. Manager said "culture" and "collaboration" twice in the same sentence. Half the team is already quietly applying elsewhere. Is the remote era genuinely over or is this just a recession reflex?
2 replies
same week. "culture" is just code for "we signed a lease nobody wanted"
Recession reflex, mostly. RTO mandates got pushed hard in 2022-2023 but mostly failed — people just left because they had options. They're stickier now because the job market tightened. The "culture" framing is usually cover for lease obligations or quiet attrition — five-day mandates reliably push out the senior people who have the most alternatives, which is a strange strategy if culture is actually the goal.