#returntooffice

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.

The worst part about everything happening lately is the complete lack of accountability from senior leadership. They’re the ones who championed the Spotify model. They’re the ones who forced people into different roles to support it. They’re the ones who went on a hiring spree during the pandemic. They’re the ones who shut down overflow sites. They’re the ones who dragged their feet on AI adoption. And now they’re laying off some of their strongest supporters while forcing everyone else back into the office without a clear strategy or any acknowledgment that mistakes were made along the way.

Our department head held a Q&A today, and it felt like a wasted opportunity. This could have been a moment for honest discussion about the layoffs and reassurance for employees. Instead, it came across as heavily managed dramatics. Submitted questions were either ignored, removed, or reworded in ways that changed what people were actually asking. There still weren’t any answers about the reasoning behind the layoffs or the return-to-office push. They said employees should stay home when sick, but also warned there are consequences for missing too many days without defining what that means. Then the meeting ended with comments about how stressful this situation has been for leadership and suggestions that employees seek therapy to cope.

If a workplace is creating so much stress that employees are being told to talk to a therapist, maybe leadership should reflect on what that says about the environment. People who dedicated years to Fidelity are now worried about supporting their families, finding new jobs, or remaining in the country, and leadership wants sympathy for how difficult this has been on them? Pardon the language but b!tch please.

Don’t talk about transparency while filtering out uncomfortable questions. Don’t frame this as a shared hardship when employees are paying the price for leadership decisions. Whatever culture used to be here years ago is long gone. The rot is here and it won't go away because it starts at the top.

there’s something weirdly perfect about the badge becming the symbol of Ford now... not the blue oval not the products, not eng mastery... not quality.. not even the trucks anymore... it's all about the the badge. that plastic thing everybody has to drag into the building so some system somewhere can decide whether you were “collaborating” hard enough that day!

maybe that sounds dramatic, but what else are people supposed to think?? for years mgmt talked about trust, flexibility, culture, teamwork. They tlaked doing the right thing, all that normal corp sh-t that gets repeated on slides until nobody hears it anymore. then suddenly it all became hotel desks, badge tracking & attendance monitoring, Teams noise + tickets with no context, Outlook chaos, and this fu--ing feeling that your actual contribution matters less than whether your body crossed a doorway at the correct frequency.

That is the part i dont think mgmt gets. RTO was never just about driving in. it was never just about sitting near people. People already said this a 1000 times but it keeps getting ignored, guess it's easier to ingore. The work was getting done. Teams were oeprational & functioning. People had lives arranged around the expectations the company itself created. then the message changed and instead of giving adults an honest explanation. sooo... Ford gave everybody vague culture talk and a badge reader. once a company replaces trust with measuring kpis and attendance, we start measuring back...

That’s where we are now!!

We dont talk about vision anymore... They talk about which buildings badge in and badge out. they talk about hidden readers - wtf??? they talk about whether laptops are being tracked - wtf??? they talk about who gets to stay remote while everybody else burns time commuting to a hotel desk - wtf?? they talk about who is actually in the office and who just appears to be - disgusting .

I dont even know what is true anymore and that’s kind of the point... the rumor is now more believable than the official message because at least the rumor matches how the place feels.

people joke about badge games and the old badge switcheroo and whatever... the badpart is that nobody is shocked. that tells you pretty much all. when attendance becomes the culture - then compliance becomes the game. u are what u measure... when presence becomes more important than output we stop thinking like builders and start thinking like defendants - thats where we are right now. how do i protect myself and how do i avoid getting tagged and how do I make it through the week without becoming somebody’s spreadsheet problem. fu-k that - that is surveillance with a better word attached to it. the office itself doesnt even feel like a place people are excited to go to. hotel desks, noise, random seating, Teams sh-t, scattered documents, meetings that dont need to exist (and half people on the call are remote anyway - they are just 'luckier' than us) and tickets thrown over the wall with barely enough info to understand what anyone wants. Then we are supposed to pretend this is some magical face to face culture revival?? OMG!!! if anything, it makes the dysfunction harder to ignore because now everybody gets to sit inside it physically while being told it is good for them.

The double standard is what really eats at people some people are full remote some people call in from home. All whileothers deal with the commute and the badge counts. some people get flexibility and some people get monitored. leadership can dress that up however it wants but employees notice. they always notice. you cannot build morale on exceptions that nobody will ever explain. u cannot keep saying fairness and culture while one person gets freedom and another gets tracked like a bad actor by default...

F still has people who want to do good work... they are still here. engineers, IT people, managers trying to shield teams, coworkers helping each other survive the mess, people carrying extra responsibility after job cuts... people who know how broken the systems are but keep things moving anyway. the company is still being held together by people. not your fu--ing badge data. not your fu--ing attendance dashboards. not another fu--ing leadership slogan. just us, tired people who r trying to get through the day without letting the place take more from them than it already has.

so yea... the badge became the culture. NOT because we wanted it that way. because trust left first.

Three people are dead from a hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship. Two infected patients are now in biocontainment at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. Georgia residents who were already in the community after exposure are being monitored.

Officials say "no risk to the public."

We heard that before. In 2020. About something that ki-led millions.

Now look at where AT&T is forcing its employees to sit. Five days a week. No assigned seats. No dividers. No open air. Two feet between people in a sealed office with recirculated air. Badge tracked. Hour monitored. No flexibility. No exceptions.

This is what "market-based culture" looks like when a pathogen arrives in your city.

The Andes strain of hantavirus.... the one behind this outbreak.... is the only strain known to spread human to human. Scientists are still investigating exactly how it spread among cruise ship passengers in close quarters.

Close quarters. Recirculated air. No dividers. Sound familiar?

We've seen this movie before. We know how it ends. Take care of yourself.

I wish I knew who I could rant to but I'm way too careful about sharing my work-place political views. RTO has totally uprooted my life from cost of childcare, time wasted on commute, routine, and even my work itself. Talk about being more efficient, eh? Literally cannot get the same amount of work done if im being pulled in 12 different directions each day just to make sure im doing my work from one spot and not another i.e my home. What a super cool and awesome thing this all is. The only thing that motivates me more than getting yelled at for "non-compliance" is SPITE. You want me to quit? No thanks. However, with my flexibility now gone, there goes yours as well. Taking calls after hours? No. 110% effort? Try 50. It's been said before but dear lord what are they thinking? THOUSANDS of employees with FOUR MONTHS time to get read for the dreaded RTO yet ZERO MF GUIDELINES?

The guidelines are vague by design, because they want us to assume what the rules are. I dont want to tell others what to do but please dont make this easy on them. Most of our positions were originally based around a hybrid schedule from the get-go.

Companies may be able to enforce attendance policies, but they cannot force genuine engagement or loyalty. When businesses prioritize rigid systems over practical realities and employee trust, they often risk losing their most valuable people.

https://m.economictimes.com/magazines/panache/rules-are-rules-employee-quits-after-company-forces-5-day-office-return-manager-regrets-it-a-month-later/amp_articleshow/130970516.cms

It's been an attrition tool everywhere else, first and foremost. But people are hanging on to their jobs. The market is brutal, so they're meeting all the RTO demands. I wonder how this will actually play out here.

To have a modern workforce, nimble, ready to work at anytime and anywhere, and now they return us to our father’s old fashioned office drudgery.
We aren’t “liberated” we’re back to being pawns and cogs whatever you want to call it!
All that investment in tech just to have it wasted with commutes into the office wasting time on traffic on delayed subways or the MBTA commuter rail.
“We’ve come a long way baby”
Fools oops you didn’t think licking us down for three years in Massachusetts would have a deleterious effect to the local economy real estate and restaurants?!!
Now six years into it all of a sudden it’s back to work slave.

Due to the Iran war and the mess at the Straight of Hormuz, I've heard that the USA could reach an oil/gas/diesel lack of supply crisis by as early as this July. I could see the federal government issuing stay at home orders or at minimum work from home mandates to attempt to significantly reduce demand.

Would mean all of this RTO tracking mess would end up being for nothing.

Any thoughts?

Was your office busy?

It’s falling apart 45 min delay due to equipment shortage
And now they expect us to come in everyday?
I’ll be dead outside waiting for a train this won’t work.
Do they not see the impact with cars on the roads in the parking lot the mbta being useless!
She needs to get Maura involved. Maybe Maura can fix it.

lol yea right and vrabel didn’t cheat on his wife

WFH already proved it works. We did it for years. Output didn’t drop, and in most cases it actually improved. Turns out it’s the person doing the work that matters, not the chair they’re sitting in.

The irony is we sell global connectivity, yet don’t trust our own employees to work remotely on the very networks we provide. It’s a “do as I say, not as I do” situation, and everyone sees it.

If the goal were cost and efficiency, the answer is obvious… let people work from home. Less real estate, no commute drain, same or better output.

Instead, we’re spending more to force people into buildings to do the same work… on a screen.

So what’s the real objective here?

Fidelity Investments will require many employees to return to the office five days a week. This new policy begins in September for staff at its Boston headquarters and other locations. Managers at the vice president level and above are also included across all company sites. Previously, most employees worked two weeks in the office out of every four. The company believes physical presence fosters connection, mentorship, and learning.

Boston, Massachusetts

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/04/30/newsletters/fidelity-return-to-office-five-days-boston/

They have done RTO since what 2023/4? We are now in 2026 and they still haven’t assigned people to desks. I don’t understand how they can continue to play games with their employees legally. I know the question was asked several times during town halls and they always punted the answer down the road. I just understand why they insist on making things like Last Man Standing. Just curious if they can be sued and forced into assigning seats to people

On Workday

By being 6 years into this.
Some were hired as hybrid, and yes I know a company can change their business model whenever they want, but it also breeds bad faith and discontent. Many people were hired as hybrid or having spent 6 yrs wfh have built up an at home office. This maneuver shows zero respect for employees this late in the game.
And I think if/when another situation arises it may not work so well by the powers that be making these life altering decisions.
I sure hope they are sympathetic to employees if they need to be working from home if their kids are sick, on school vacation, doctor appts that don’t lend themselves to driving in and back twice there MUST be some flexibility. Seems to me all “US” companies like the visa payroll better and we’re about to see the ugliest side of globalization we’ve ever experienced coupled with the AI job ki-ling revolution

Good times. 🥵

See question. Haven't heard anything from corporate regarding this. How to dispose of this computer

I see people bragging that they badge in, have a coffee and leave. That is not return to office and is in violation.

If you want to work remote, that is your choice but work remote with a different company. I go in at least 3 days, some weeks I go in all 5 days.

Several long time employees were FIRED last week for not returning to the office despite manager approval. Fired, no severance, gone after high performance and decades of service. Nothing descent matters to these people.

:(

Rumors are that some companies (mostly west coast) are returning to Work From Home due to the dramatic increase in gas prices. Any local confirmation of that?

I will never be available outside office hours again.

Can’t believe it’s here. Is anyone planning to skip this id--tic “mandate”?
I have been remote 13 years in this company. Now I have to go sit in a random office by myself and do the exact same thing I would do at home. Thinking of skipping and letting the cards fall as they may.

At what point does the company give people driving to work for RTO an official break from coming to the office? Gas is at 4.49 currently out east and I cant imagine what the price is at on the west coast. Its clearly even more of a pay cut now.

The reddit post on the official Fidelity page titled "Fidelity to bring employees back to the office 5 days a week" with links to news articles was removed after 20+ hours of significant backlash

https://www.reddit.com/r/fidelityinvestments/comments/1t25xm6/removed_by_moderator/

I have zero motivation Since the announcement to return to office. I did very little between then and now and it will be the same all next week. Anyone else?

My department has a lot of deadweight and has been toxic/hostile since the start of the pandemic. I was hopeful there would be some clean up with the RIF but it doesn’t seem like we’re part of it since most of us are low level.

The head of my department appears to have been publicly demoted but that seems like the only impact. We’re back in the office full time but we’re not developers or project manager. What’s the point of us going back full time if the in office weeks will stay the same?! It’s impossible to get work done in the office because of how bad the culture is.

I’m kind of devastated. I was honestly hoping for better days after how much of an impact the last few years have had on my health.

Abby, you win. I am going to try to leave. I woke up thinking about how bad things are.

Hi, I don’t work at the firm anymore. I heard that phone positions only need to come to the office one week a month. I am unfamiliar with what phone rep people deal with, but I know they deal with a LOT of crazy stuff. So, salute to you guys.

That being said, assuming what I heard is true, why do phone rep people only need to go one week? What is it about their work specifically that they can go in just one week? Why not all the other positions, like software engineers? Will phone reps continue to only need to go in one week after 2027?

Thanks