Many tech firms have spent the last two years summoning workers back into the office—all the while threatening them with layoffs. Even Zoom reverted to in-person working last year.
But now, it looks like tech bosses have given up their war on working from home.
Just 3% of tech firms are now asking their workers to go into the office full-time—a significant drop from 8% last year.
Flex Index analyzed the flexible work policies for 2,670 tech companies that collectively employ over 11 million people—and it found that tech firms have conceded that flexible working is here to stay.
In fact, 79% of the tech firms surveyed are fully flexible, up from 75% in 2023.
Meanwhile, more and more firms are giving employees the choice of when and where they work.
The ones that flipped back must have hit their downsizing targets.
Or, their leases ran out and they were able to move to smaller, cheaper office space by telling everyone to stay home. And think of all the awful coffee that no longer needs to be bought in bulk.
My company has been 100% remote work since 2012. RTO mandates were a godsend for us. We were able to expand are fully staffed with a tier of talent we never thought we would be able to attract.
EDIT: In case I wasn’t clear, we poached the fuck out of the competition.
Getting top talent at a discount or at the same price as local talent seems like a no-brainer.
We pay more than the big guys. The problem is that we could never compete on benefits or resume clout.
Yeah but how many have mandated RTO hours? I know Amazon is demanding two-hour minimums for their office workers. A far cry from fulltime but not exactly commuter friendly.
Amazon corporate has still not budged. Not only do you have to go in for that minimum, but you also have to badge in at least twice a week or your manager and skip level get a ticket about it.
They’re only backtracking because they have to. Anyone with real talent is telling them to fuck off.
We’ve been full RTO since mid-2022, what’s that 3% actually counting?
Edit- mid 2022. Damn time is weird.
Just because your company is in the office doesn’t mean others are. A lot of us are still remote / hybrid. Especially in the mid size companies.
San Francisco’s SoMa district, arguably one of the nations most important tech hubs, is still a ghost town full of empty of empty offices and “for lease” signs.
This situation will continue for at least another couple years until businesses and the city figure out what a downtown should be for
My point was more about timeline. Is my company’s RTO mandate from 2022 part of the 3%? 8%? How are they counting? The article wasn’t very clear to me so I must be missing something.
The 3% is full RTO, down from 8% last year. The article goes into all the details.
Unless Google changes course, I don’t see a lot of wannabe tech companies changing their slow move back to the office.
