#rto

An Open Letter to Executives Forcing Return-to-Office

I was hired under the clear promise of being a full-time telecommuter. I delivered as a high performer, year after year, proving remote work was not a compromise but a strength. I built my life — my routines, my family commitments, my finances — around that agreement. And with little warning, you’ve torn it away. Now I’ll sit in an office four days a week, alone, while my team remains remote.

This isn’t “culture.” It’s disregard. It tells me the company’s word means nothing, and that the lives employees built in trust don’t matter when weighed against optics or unused real estate. You’ve broken promises, disrupted families, and drained morale — not because performance demanded it, but because control did.

Ask yourself this: if someone told you tomorrow that your life no longer mattered in the equation — that your commitments, your children, your health, your stability were irrelevant — how would you feel? That is what you’ve told us. That is the message every employee hears in your decision.

The truth is, most of us don’t fully empathize until we are the ones enduring the upheaval. But leadership without empathy is not leadership at all — it’s cruelty dressed up as policy. How do you, as human beings, reconcile dismantling the lives of people who trusted you? How do you justify it when you lay your head on the pillow at night?

You may think workers will comply quietly. But the truth is clear: the best people are leaving — not because they can’t adapt, but because they refuse to be treated as expendable. And when they’re gone, you won’t just have weakened a company — you’ll have to live with the fact that you were the one who broke the trust, dismantled lives, and chose control over humanity. That’s not a business failure. That’s a moral one.

50% of his org was impacted by RTO while ATT as a whole was only 30%

What’s that tell you?

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/07/on-precipice-of-incredibly-contracting-workforce-says-jobs-expert.html

Look around, it’s already happening here. They’re trying to force out the 55+ crowd, but instead the under 30 crowd is leaving in droves for companies that actually offer flexibility and trust. Five-day RTO isn’t appealing, it’s a deal breaker.

RTO isn’t saving culture, it’s driving young people out. If AT&T wants to stop the bleeding of “new talent”, it needs to end RTO and start listening before there’s no one left to listen to.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/ford-employees-told-could-fired-093101107.html

So far, most salary employees are still working from home. No one that I know of have been fired. It's a joke with this company.

60-90 minutes devoted to commuting.
Coworkers constantly stopping by to chat about non work related things.
Leaders encouraging team lunches that last an hour.
Scrambling to find private space for sensitive calls.

I’m hitting my time but getting a lot less accomplished. But I’m at my desk. That’s what matters, right?

I see Wall Street analysts have finally figured out The Stink's offshoring and RTO are just cost savings moves which try to hide the fact that there is no innovation (or hope) at AT&T. The downgrades and lowered target price points keep rolling in.

List companies that still have assigned work areas for their employees to assist in job search

MW did not answer how he's going to try to win back the employees who have absolutely no trust in him and any of the leadership at Chevron. Morale is at the worst its ever been. The RTO mandate does nothing to help this either and comments that we need to be like the workers in the field. When teammates are in India how can you "collaborate"? The reorg is a disaster. He didn't make tough decisions, he made decisions to pad his pockets!

Says the executive living in a multimillion-dollar home just 30 minutes from Deerfield, with a $100,000 car parked in a heated garage. If I were making $500,000 a year, I’d probably enjoy the daily commute in a brand-new Mercedes too.

If executives truly want camaraderie, perhaps they should rent city apartments and commute alongside us - waiting for buses and trains together this February when it’s -15 degrees with windchill would certainly build solidarity.

The truth is, we already proved during Covid that collaboration doesn’t depend on geography. Microsoft Teams and instant communication make it possible to deliver on time and at a high standard. To suggest otherwise is 100% disingenuous.

I was genuinely hoping for more detail on RTO during this afternoon’s Town Hall. Instead, it was barely mentioned. But at least now I know how many kids our executives have and which sports teams they root for - that’s exactly the information I needed to finally sleep soundly tonight.

Listening to the Townhall now, leadership turned off the user comments on the video. Surely, leadership knew the text chain would be a constant barrage of employees stating they do NOT want to return to office at Deerfield.

Verizon and T-Mobile just named new CEOs, and it really makes you wonder… is AT&T next? The mood across the company says it all. People are exhausted, morale’s crushed, and trust in leadership is at an all-time low.

If a change at the top actually happens, you can bet there’ll be a huge sigh of relief across our hubs. It wouldn’t just be about a new name. It’d be about hope for a new direction, one that finally listens to employees and fixes the mess RTO and poor leadership have created.

We’re overdue for a reset. Maybe this time, real leadership will show up…

I don’t know how they can accommodate OPO people.

Alright, enough is enough. We’ve been doing 5 day RTO for almost a year now, and things have never been worse. Morale is shot, people are exhausted, and everyone’s sick of wasting time and money commuting just to sit on Teams calls all day.

The under 30 crowd is leaving in droves for companies offering hybrid or remote work because they actually value flexibility and trust. Meanwhile, AT&T is ranked dead last among the major telecom players, and the stock keeps sliding.

Maybe it’s time leadership admits the obvious: this isn’t working!! If the goal was to improve culture, performance, or retention, 5-day RTO has done the opposite. Time to stop doubling down on failure and try something new. If the goal is headcount reduction just have a standard layoff instead of pi----g off anyone willing to stick around. You’re nearing the point of no return.

What's the current situation? "Asking for a friend."

If i stop showing up in the office, how long will it take to get a package? My situation is i have enough money to retire. I can't stand sitting in the office with the freak show there. If i stop going can they fire me, or will then default to writing me up and then PIP and then give me a package. My package is worth like 6 months, so i want it. I fu--ing hate working at this place so bad. Its painful working here.

So many of you are complaining but you’re the reason why the higher ups have to babysit us. I can’t tell you how many people I witnessed who would come in at 8 or 9 and leave by 11-12. I’m sure there were many others who even stayed less than that. You took advantage and now we all have to pay the price. If you don’t want to work then quit. If you find another gig, chances are you’ll have to RTO there as well. It’s industry wide. This company has always been slow trimming the fat and boy do we have more than what around Derek Flowers waist

AT&T made some half a55ed promises to smooth out the RTO experience. I've not seen changes of any substance. Tell us where your office is located and list a few specific things that must be addressed to make that work location somewhat tolerable.

well looks like they did it. mixed and confused messaging from leadership in infosec

It’s been two years since AT&T blindly followed Amazon into the RTO disaster. And for what? Nothing’s improved… morale, productivity, retention, all worse than before. The only thing that’s gone up is burnout.

Since then, almost no one else has moved to 5x RTO. The vast majority of major companies are still hybrid because they see the damage this kind of policy does to reputation, to employee engagement, and to the bottom line.

And to the guy claiming “5-day RTO is becoming the industry standard” - no, it’s not. It’s been two years, and nobody’s joining this sinking ship. No other major company in the industry does more than 3 days. You’d have to be completely delusional to believe otherwise. Or maybe you just think we’re a tech company. LOL.

Has anyone heard anything? Apparently an email has gone out to leadership and it’s coming. If WF is implementing this, then it’s only a matter of time before we do as well.

Place is empty compared to last year. I guess they didn’t like RTOing.

This is how I understand things will play out as well. If anyone can confirm, please do.

All of this is purely speculation, but given that remote workers are included in Phase 2, the coming layoffs will probably be related to other factors and not necessarily if you're remote or not. Then next year, you'll all be assigned a NY/LA office and you'll need to relocate by Q3, or else be let go.
OP: @ap+1k6xpxpth

The purpose of the recent Return to Office order is simple, quit now or be laid off when they don't get the workforce reduction they want. There is no plan to address the "Real Estate Challenges" of bringing everyone back other than reducing the amount of people needed to fill those seats.

If you live near an office and go in above and beyond the three days 8 hours a day requirement- say working a half day in office on day 4 - this will actually hurt you. The calculation is looking at average hours in office per day so a half day will lower your average. So there's no point in going in unless you plan to spend the full day

Additionally,if you take a half day PTO and then go in the office the second half of that day, this will also hurt your average. A half day of PTO is considered a full day in office so do not go in beyond that.

Its a combination of badge swipes and connection to office network.

Average is currently calculated on a 4 week basis but the intention is to ramp up to a 13 week average.

Get ready fellow Intelites! ROSE is a new platform that replaces the VF Calendar streamlining vacation tracking, improves ahoft visibility, and supports automated alerts and approvals.

Also, admins and managers can track your location.

Good luck to employees who want to defy return to office! Automated micro management at its finest!

Has anyone heard anything about the hours we need to be in office for RTO? Is there a dashboard with hours?

Anyone have any insight into any bombshell set to be dropped at today's all associate meeting? Is this when they lay the RTO onto people, or any new reorg%alignments/RIFs planned that will come out today?

Remote work needs no defending. Common sense has to tell you that if you erase 10 hours out of someone's week, you can't expect them to produce the same amount of work as when they didn't have to spend that time commuting. I don't care how many clothes I wash or dishes I do, I'm not spending anything close to 10 hours per week on that. Poor management is the weakness that gets exposed when employees are working remotely. Instead of setting realistic goals, following up on them, and holding people accountable, they want to judge their performance by what they look like they're doing. It's mo--nic, lazy, and they'll unfortunately have to learn the hard way.

Who Knows

How does XOM reconcile the narrative of "we need to collaborate and work next to each other" with the design to have remote support teams staffed with people who have no industry knowledge or communication skills? I don't question the case for change but its hard for me to see how moving professionals to Edmonton fixes anything when we already can't set up customers or pay vendors.

I see some posts with people saying Cisco is making people to work from the office/hybrid now. Is that a mandatory for everyone? I know that big % of company is still 100% remote, so I'm interested how things can change in the coming monts for EMEA

$T down nearly 10% after Stankey doubles down on RTO. Wall Street’s not buying the “culture” fairy tale either. You can’t rebuild trust by draining morale and calling it collaboration. That 8/1 email did irreparable damage. Put a nice hole in his golden parachute too. PROOF RTO DOES NOT WORK!

the RTO is so successful that they have already had to resort to bribery.

This week there are raffles for iPad, iPods, Grills/Air Fryers etc, what an absolute cluster

Hearing it's going to be big org changes. Also, all you publicly complaining about RTO and trying to protest coming into the office, you will get the response of finding out who is in charge.

Ah the results of RTO are upon us!

Look at all that productivity!

That’s a 20 Billion dollar loss. Way to go Stankey and BOD!

Get reports that are business critical? I mean there are so many things that are backwards but we’re focusing on keystrokes and badge swipes? Priorities seem a little backwards. If employees can’t deliver get rid of them for cause. If employees deliver and they aren’t in the office a certain number of hours what’s the difference?

Leadership's pursuit of personal short-term gains fosters a culture of self-interest that undermines the organization's long-term success. This mindset spreads downward, encouraging employees at all levels to adopt similar behaviors, such as avoiding risks or long-term projects that don't yield immediate benefits.

Dell is the epitome of managerial hypocrisy and short-termism, lauding remote work's efficiency and sociability, only to pivot to hybrid work with false promises of promotions, then enforce full-time office attendance, all while surreptitiously laying off a large percentage of the workforce and overburdening others to evade severance costs, prioritizing savings and control over employee trust and well-being.

If this is documented in Teamworks or somewhere else, let me know, but does 4 hours of PTO still count as a day in the office? And if we take 4 hours on two separate days during the week, does that count as two days in the office?