Well, the RTO purge has pretty much run its course. Anyone who couldn’t relocate, wouldn’t commute, or flat out refused to play the badge swipe game is already gone or has one foot out the door. That was the whole point, force attrition without paying severance. Mission accomplished.
So what now? The RTO hammer can’t keep falling because there aren’t many left to force out. The novelty is wearing off, and the execs can’t keep blaming remote work forever. Sooner or later, the whole RTO obsession will fade into the background, and we’ll be right back to the good old AT&T tradition: cyclical layoffs every 6 months.
That’s the real playbook. Not collaboration. Not culture. Just headcount reduction on a timer. Watch, the headlines will quietly shift from “RTO enforcement” to “restructuring” and “realignment.” Different buzzwords, same outcome.
RTO was never about making the company stronger. It was a temporary stick to thin the herd. And now that the herd is thinned, the machine goes back to business as usual: cut, shuffle, repeat.