#returntooffice

When does it take effect?

It was to go RTO full time.
You cannot go half a decade and blow it up like that.
It’s a cauldron of bad mojo and stupidity sprinkled with greed.
Bad corporate decision made my dei and fools.

Whats stopping us from collectively and politely saying no, collectively staying home, and forcing their hand? They are doing it in bits because they are scared of p*ssing off everyone all at once.

In all this mess, good thing is that no one is controlling if you work from office 3 times a week for a long time. So stay home, learn new skills, and send those applications

How do I tell on someone in the business who is taking advantage of RTO and ruining it for everyone else?

This person in particular is taking the kids to the pool everyday during work hours and still counts it as working.

I believe she will falter and rethink the FT RTO. It’s a bad decision it’s creating animus and very bad publicity which isn’t good for the bottom line.
People don’t like seeing their accounts handled by newbies outsourced and disgruntled employees.

Forcing employees into an office while our entire executive team and most of our upper management is remote has to be the most hypocritical thing this company has ever done. At least under Mike, he and others were actually in the office.

If RTO were really about collaboration and face to face time, our execs would relocate, open more offices, and ALL employees would be mandated to go to an office or risk being made redundant, just like FAANG did post-COVID. So what's the real reason here?

As others have said, most likely hoping for natural attrition, especially since they did this while gas is at an all time high and increases/equity are at an all time low. If they don't get the reduced headcount they hoped for by the October deadline, you can bet there will be another big lay off in Q4.

Hi Wells Fargo friends,
I am with Edward Jones and here for some info & advice.

As a remote employee (not in St Louis), I feel that my days are numbered because Edward Jones put in place 4 day return to office.

As Wells has had return to office for longer, wondering how they had handled remote employees. Were all remote employees terminated? Did they run a survey to ask who would relocate and terminate those who said no? Or was there a different criteria?

I appreciate any insight you can share. My sense is Edward Jones will copy Wells and other industry peers in how they handle remote employees.

Does anyone know whether badge swipes are actually being tracked and if they are to what extent?

I’m not trying to call anyone out, and I certainly won’t be naming names, but it’s getting increasingly difficult to justify coming into the office five days a week when the building feels emptier by the day.

The communication around RTO has been incredibly vague. Other than the dry a$$ generic email that went out in January, there hasn’t been much clarity on expectations, enforcement, or how compliance is being measured.

If badge swipes aren’t being tracked, what exactly is the point of complying and coming in?

PP is cutting again - this time is massive almost a quarter of all employed. It's going to be about 300 people which in the grand schema of things is not that big but for us at PP it's the biggest round ever - the impacts are massive. JH got her promo, kudos girl, but you are responsible for the mess as much as anyone else. this time they are not blaming it on ai cause by now everyone knows that story is all bs. i shall be back with a rant on RTO and all failed promises the execs sold us over last few years. well done jill.

Hey California ,any update on you guys going rtm q3 ,or any other region updates ..
Let’s keep the nation informed

Are you guys still doing 35 days per quarter? Disclosure: I work for a competitor and was just curious (comparing it with 5/wk that we have)

Here we go! Day one of ELT's move to get more of us to quit. Post your concerns, complaints, funny stories, frustrations, etc in this thread so we can keep the comment section active for our neighborhood ELT trolls who love to lurk here (they are useless anyway, so might as well give them something to do today). Good luck everyone, and enjoy the collaboration this week! 🤡

PS. r/st louis (edward jones) has a post from a few days ago that links this site if reddit is more your scene.

Considering taking a position with the company but am reading about their strict onsite policy. Is it tracked by how many days you are on site or how many hours? How is it addressed if you have an offsite meeting or had to work from home part of your day (such as a coworker asking you to join an early or late meeting before or after you are at the office)?

I'm looking forward to reading all about "return to office" four days a week tomorrow in this forum.

Seems suspicious/retaliatory to me since there don’t seem to be any other roles being recalled this week?

3 hours a day.
15 hours a week.
60 hours a month.
720 hours a year.

That’s 30 full days of your life spent commuting every year.

One entire month annually sacrificed sitting in traffic so a presence report can show the “right numbers” for work that still just happens on a laptop and Teams calls.

Thousands in gas, tolls, parking, wear and tear, and unpaid time gone forever.

And for what? Morale is worse. Burnout is worse. The stock is down. People are leaving.

That’s #LifeAtATT

Heard there are changes coming to WPE . What is it, 4 days a week or non consecutive days in the office?

Hope they relax the RTO policies soon !!!

That’s all.

just had an all hands. VP announced that all leaders now must RTO 4 days/wk. hasn't trickled down to ICs yet but we all know it's a matter of time. and if you have been remote and don't live anywhere near an office? tough luck, I guess that means you can no longer serve your job requirements and will be let go.

this makes no sense because it's not like our entire team will be in the same office anyway even if we went full RTO. we'll all just be in different offices across the country.

Does the power structure in this company understand that forcing people into the office on Thursday next week after having Memorial Day off feels like a punishment for having the audacity to acknowledge a federal holiday?

I know they don't care but really? Waste our money and time and the company's utility bills because we've just GOT to have 3 days in the office?

Zero benefit, only inconvenience and annoyance. I suggest everyone just chit chat all day and use the bathrooms as often as possible.

Come on guys!! I know gas has doubled now but we gotta keep the collaboration going and our great culture!! We gotta keep making Rick and the EC millions!!!

is the 5 day RTO expected for the durham office? There's barely any space!

I hear from multiple sources an announcement will be made end of May, effective after Labor Day. Four days a week in the office if you have an assigned seat. You will have to attest to compliance with the policy. Three non-consecutive days in the office if you reserve your space. True? I guess time will tell. Just passing along some rumors hoping to compare notes with what others are hearing.

This site was once a community and source of knowledge. It’s in a tailspin of conspiracy theories.

• When someone makes a reference to an exec from 3 years ago, and is no longer here. Ignore them.

• When someone makes an outrageous claim like “30% of us will be laid off” - do the math. That would be the largest layoff in USAA history times 3. That’d be nearly 11,000 employees to be laid off this year. They have no details. No sources. Just vague fear and round numbers. Ignore them.

• When someone is posting about a single person every week. Ignore them. That’s an unhinged person.

• We need to collectively stfu about RTO. There’s quite literally nothing we can do about it. The company has moved on. Society has moved on. Every other company has moved on.

Sales is only doing outbound calls with an automated dialer now…. Don’t know where incoming calls are going to…..Just voicemail after voicemail being left to sign up for VHI Lite internet. Are we trying to get a whole team to just quit at one time? Is that how we fix the return to office attitude? Are sales calls now going to the Philippines with horrible customer service? New PIP process will be epic by the end of them month if this is how it’s gonna be from now on. SMH.

After more strict changes for RTO (Thrive Together initiative) It seems remote people are being targeted more than office people in RTP and NANE locales, anyone else seeing that?

They sent an email re buildings A and B in Chandler. What do you think, will we get a stupid open office design with no cubicles, or a layout that will cram us in further so that we can all come in 5 days/week? Both? I loathe the open office setup, it's so distracting.

Are there any changes to 5 days?

1) Current leadership appears to believe staffing levels expanded too aggressively during prior growth periods. Recent layoffs and return-to-office initiatives are being framed around AI and efficiency concerns, although many employees do not view the reductions as directly connected to AI adoption.

2) A broader organizational issue remains unresolved despite restructuring efforts. Cost reduction initiatives continue to focus primarily on headcount reduction, particularly among contractors and remote employees, because those areas are easier to target operationally.

3) The challenge with this approach is that it may not address underlying performance issues. During the pandemic, the company significantly expanded access to national talent pools through remote hiring. If productivity metrics such as revenue per employee are declining despite broader access to highly qualified technical talent, the more important question may be why the organization has struggled to convert that talent into stronger business outcomes. Cost cutting can improve short-term financial optics, but it does not necessarily resolve structural execution problems.

4) Recent operational and strategic missteps suggest that many issues originate at higher management layers rather than within technical teams themselves. Even after workforce reductions, competitive challenges are likely to remain if leadership and organizational alignment issues are not addressed. Managing distributed teams effectively requires different operating models, and return-to-office mandates alone may not solve coordination or productivity concerns.

5) A stricter return-to-office policy may also reduce access to specialized talent that competitors continue to recruit nationally. “But Amazon is doing RTO also” is a failure of leadership to understand their competitor - Amazon has headquarters in every tech capital
of America. RTO does not affect their access to this pool of talent. An alternative strategy could have been deeper investment in fully remote corporate operations alongside stronger management accountability, clearer execution priorities, and improved organizational communication. Employees generally respond more positively to leadership engagement that produces measurable business outcomes rather than highly polished internal presentations with limited operational impact.

6) Many employees joined the company because it was perceived as having a stable culture and experienced workforce. However, there appears to be growing disconnect between leadership and technical staff. Compensation structures and long-term incentives that may have retained prior generations of employees do not necessarily create the same loyalty among newer talent pools. Leadership may benefit from evaluating how effectively the organization supports, retains, and empowers the employees responsible for maintaining and building critical systems. After this abject failure of management, it will take years to earn any trust at all.

My top 10

It increases commute time & stress. Period...
It raises costs for emplyees...
It can reduce worklife balance.
It limits access to wider talent pools.
It hurts productivity for focused work.
It creates unnecessary office overhead.
It can lower employee satisfaction.
It makes caregiving harder.
It can increase burnout risk.
It is not improving collaboration.

What equipment do we return upon resignation? I assume just laptop and charger, but if there are other things, please let me know.

Just resigned from my position here in the U.S. How do I go about returning my laptop and equipment? No direction has been provided by my manager - will I get a box in the mail?

What’s the magic word these days, strategy?

Because I have to ask, what actually makes a company great?

Is it the awards? The software? The return to office mandates? The endless systems and process changes that somehow make everything more complicated but never better?

Is it leadership that rebrands failure as transformation, then asks employees to trust the next pivot?

Is it accountability, or just accountability for everyone below a certain level?

Maybe greatness now means HR has enough time to monitor salaried employees’ attendance but not enough influence to protect institutional knowledge, experience, or morale.

And maybe AI really is the perfect corporate employee. It never pushes back, never says “this does not make sense,” and never reminds leadership that people actually matter.

But what is the strategy here? Not the slogan. Not the slide deck. The actual strategy.

Because from where a lot of employees sit, it does not look like a strategy. It looks like churn. New systems, new processes, new messaging, new priorities, every few months, while the people who know how the business actually works are treated like interchangeable parts.

A company is not great because it says it is. It is great when leadership knows where it is going, tells the truth about where it is, and respects the people who built the place before asking them to believe in the next transformation. Endless transformation isn't "transformation" it's chaos that drives poor quality, subpar results and unhappy employees.

It feels like a lot of people are carrying quiet exhaustion right now.
The layoffs.

The uncertainty.

The pressure to “be grateful.
”
The full-time RTO mandates after building lives around flexibility.

The feeling that everyone is pretending things are normal when they clearly aren’t.
If you’re struggling mentally, emotionally, or physically from all of this, you are not alone.
A lot of us are waking up anxious, doomscrolling before work, feeling guilty for not being productive enough, or trying to hold it together while watching teammates disappear overnight. It’s heavy. And pretending it isn’t only makes people feel more isolated.

A few reminders for anyone having a hard time:

• Your worth is not tied to your badge access, productivity score, or performance review.
• Fear is an exhausting long-term motivator. Rest is not weakness.
• Staying connected to people matters more right now than acting “fine.”
• Small routines help: sleep, water, walks, sunlight, boundaries, logging off when you can.
• If work is consuming your identity, try to reclaim one small thing that belongs only to you.
  Most importantly: check on the quiet people too. Sometimes the people saying the least are carrying the most.
  This is a dark season for a lot of workers right now. But I hope we can at least make it lighter for each other by being human again.

Crime-ridden Pittsburgh strikes again. This time a 19 yr old shot and ki-led less than 500 feet from headquarters. [https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/pittsburgh-man-shot-market-square-police-investigation/] And just like clockwork Bill and the execs are silent regarding employee safety in and around the buildings. Not surprised considering how they treated the RTO announcement. Just set it and forget it. Not to mention they are also incredibly silent about the cost of RTO. Remember folks RTO has nothing to do about collaboration and innovation, no, no, no, RTO is purely demanded to keep real estate numbers up. Don’t you get it folks. We are a disposable pawn used as leverage to keep over extended real estate purchases meaningful. I’m so thrilled to spend $5/gallon $38 parking, to commute 75 minutes to a highly distracting open office and take calls with people all across the nation and fake smile like I enjoy being here. Our team output is dropping like a rock. Lead dev left to go to a competitor. Team morale is slowing losing the battle. Our wallets are screaming. Our raises are comical (if you get a raise). Compensation is 15 years behind. I’m looking at stopping my 401K contributions just to afford the cost of living. What really pi---s us off is everything we did in office last week was no different from what we did while remote. But remember the real estate investments. If you ever wanted to see a real life example of shooting yourself in the foot, look no further. We are watching it play out and we have all summer ahead of us. Don’t forget the real estate investments and the CEO’s 30% comp increase. I hope this drop in production doesn’t hurt me and my team’s end of year reviews.

Is it really tracked by badge swipes?????

It is deeply frustrating to navigate a demanding, long-distance Return to Office (RTO) mandate while balancing personal caregiving responsibilities, especially when that burden is not shared by the executive team.

The Reality of RTO Disparity

1) Executive Perks vs. Employee Costs: While executives often have commuting costs (limos, premium transport) covered as business expenses, average employees face thousands in annual fuel, vehicle maintenance, and parking costs.

2) The Caregiver Burden: RTO policies disproportionately impact employees with young children, creating immense pressure on work-life balance that senior leadership—whose families are often grown—frequently fail to recognize.Impact on

3) Retention: Research indicates that 80% of companies that enforced strict RTO mandates experienced talent loss, with high-skilled, senior-level staff, and women being the most likely to leave.

Comment your hot takes here.