Why lay people off and pay severance when you can get them to leave on their own? The Return to Office policy in it's current form has no tangible, quantifiable benefit. Just a way to get people to leave. Are we supposed to believe that people who live beyond 25 miles of an office only benefit from coming into the office 4 times a year, whereas people who live within a responsible 25 mile distance need to come 25X more? And senior leaders who are classified as remote employees can effectively lead large organizations when they also only show up in an office a handful of times a year?? An employment lawyer would have a field day with this one. Which is why it hasn't actually been enforced. Oh and "performance management" - set the bar and get rid of anyone who can't get over it. Another move targeted to drive voluntary attrition. Personally, I've been on this roller coaster for a long time now. What goes up will go down. Once leadership attains their objective or realizes what a CF this has created....it's gone. Buckle up for the ride!!
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"a few top performers"
You mean what we would have called mediocre 10, 15, 20 years ago?
Netapp is on a glide ... and at some point will stall. :shrug:
You don't need to overthink it, you're right @OP. They want attrition without the negative press that comes with layoffs. They will make it increasingly easier for you to consider "leaving." The majority of people realize that in this job market, it's better to stick around like a fish out of water than to quit. It is difficult to find an equal role with equal or greater pay for most IC's right now. There's been a ton of layoffs and company performance continues to get better YoY and QoQ. If all those individuals that have been laid off or fired were "needed", how is the revenue continuing to grow with 20% less staff? CEO understands this, therefore the bleeding will continue until it has a negative effect, which it will at some point. RTO and PIPs will continue to weed people out.
It's already impacted teams. More than a few top performers have jumped ship for greener pastures. Highly doubt the company will continue seeing performance increases YoY and QoQ now. Yes revenue is growing slowly but it usually takes at least 1-3 quarters for the loss of top performing ICs to negatively impact business.
It was never about efficiency and entirely about the implications on the economy for commercial real estate and municipality tax breaks. What do you think the primary stock holders and board want for RTO if they have their hands in commercial real estate? Voluntary attrition is certainly the overarching goal; but leadership also has other incentives to force RTO. Their friends and potentially even leadership themselves have their hands in stock that would be negatively impacted by a truly remote work force.
It's quite humorous to see how leadership so obviously dodges these questions during the last all hands meetings. Most employees just want a frank conversation about it, but they would rather give vague bullsh-t reasons for forcing people in because it's easier than being honest.
NetApp will follow the rest of the tech industry as they make RTO more and more strict. Best case outcome for this will be remote workers will be barred from career advancement. Worst case scenario being remote workers "voluntarily" leaving if they can't make the RTO mandate.
You don't need to overthink it, you're right @OP. They want attrition without the negative press that comes with layoffs. They will make it increasingly easier for you to consider "leaving." The majority of people realize that in this job market, it's better to stick around like a fish out of water than to quit. It is difficult to find an equal role with equal or greater pay for most IC's right now. There's been a ton of layoffs and company performance continues to get better YoY and QoQ. If all those individuals that have been laid off or fired were "needed", how is the revenue continuing to grow with 20% less staff? CEO understands this, therefore the bleeding will continue until it has a negative effect, which it will at some point. RTO and PIPs will continue to weed people out.
They always use the excuse that "lots of people are asking for it" in feedback. But if they truly want to make a evidence based decision they would send out a company wide survey email to see if RTO or WFH is the majority preference. Same with reviews. But they don't. The "lots of people asking for it" is just an excuse to soften the blow.