Microsoft Forces Workers Back To the Office (nerds.xyz) 99
BrianFagioli writes: Microsoft has decided it is time to rein in remote work. The company will soon require employees to spend at least three days per week in the office, starting with those in the Puget Sound region by February 2026. From there, the policy will spread across the United States and eventually overseas.
More passive layoffs (Score:5, Insightful)
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I don't think Microsoft will suffer as much harm from this brain drain as we would like to believe they will. We don't like work-from-office mandates so it pleases us to think that those who make us suffer will naturally suffer because of it. Poetic irony, and all that. But really, Microsoft is too big and too rich to suffer from that. They can still find a way of retaining top tier talent, and abusing it too.
It is also natural for the higher-ups to distrust remote workers. They think it is fine for th
Re:More passive layoffs (Score:5, Insightful)
At this time, I doubt Microsoft has any "top tier talent" left. Or if they do, these people do not have much influence. MS products are bad and getting worse, and they are doing that at a time when pressure from attackers and increased reliability requirements are getting stronger. That does not indicate sanity or insight on their side. And all that money? Will not help one bit when it all comes crashing down because they were just a bit too greedy in some place.
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> I work at Micrsoft (Xbox controllers), and everybody I work with is much more talented, smarter, and friendlier than I am.
That says a lot more about you than MSFT.
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ok (Score:1)
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MS products have been horrible since before Bill Gates stepped down. They survive on brand recognition, compatibility, treachery, and having the greatest marketing team in the world.
And, that's clearly sufficient.
Re:More passive layoffs (Score:5, Funny)
We only have the Windows PC because my girlfriend needs to run some specialized Windows software and I don't want to be responsible for it not working on Wine. But if I could legitimately get rid of Windows I would at this point.
Have you considered upgrading the girlfriend?
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Unfortunately that would cost a lot more.
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Funny thing on (1.): I will upgrade my teaching laptop to Win11 and may do so for my gaming machine. (Rest is Linux or will go to Linux). It takes a bit of doing, but installing Win11 without an MS account is still quite doable. And on (2.): They cannot do that in Europe without massive fines incoming. I guess for the US, they will do exactly that though.
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Probably. But this is one area were I am willing to acquire some windows system knowledge.
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MS products have been horrible since before Bill Gates stepped down. They survive on brand recognition, compatibility, treachery, and having the greatest marketing team in the world.
And, that's clearly sufficient.
I do not disagree, except the thing is I think this being sufficient is slowly stopping at this time. Eventually peddlers of crap (like MS) find that times have passed them by. With a quasi-monopoly, it just takes longer.
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MS products have been horrible since before Bill Gates stepped down. They survive on brand recognition, compatibility, treachery, and having the greatest marketing team in the world.
And, that's clearly sufficient.
That's been their whole business plan since day 1.
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Windows 95 gave a usable GUI for a small fraction of the cost of a Unix workstation. Crap but much cheaper often wins in the business market.
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Sure. But the threat landscape is getting much more aggressive and MS has failed to keep up, despite making (again) promises of "Security is our highest priority". And then they just mess up again and again. The only explanation is that they cannot keep up, probably because of organizational dysfunction. And that one cannot be fixed. With this, the organization has to die and get replaced.
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I was referring to the comment about Microsoft relying on brand recognition and treachery from day 1. Windows 95 was legitimately a decent--if insecure--option for business and home use when it came out. It switched me from Linux to Windows for a few years before Vista sent me back to Linux.
But yeah, it's not clear to me whether the changes to Windows over the last decade (e.g. updates that break machines, spying on everything and pushing things users don't want) are down to dysfunction or malice. Given it'
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But yeah, it's not clear to me whether the changes to Windows over the last decade (e.g. updates that break machines, spying on everything and pushing things users don't want) are down to dysfunction or malice. Given it's Microsoft I tend to assume malice.
That is a difficult one. I think it is both. Dysfunction in that they really cannot do solid engineering and design. Malice in that they do not care how much damage their customers suffer as a result of using MS products. They really are going for "cheapest possible" on everything and sometimes lower and then things break.
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At this time, I doubt Microsoft has any "top tier talent" left. Or if they do, these people do not have much influence.
Heh. They still exist. In the Microsoft Research branch. Essentially, they are paid to do nothing so that they do not go work for competitors.
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It's also really 3 days. Sure it will go up later, but most RTO mandates are full 5 days. 3 days hybrid isn't a disaster and likely the best employment a lot of people can get.
Most people will be happy with 2-3 days hybrid - once you start getting to 4 days then things get a bit hectic. And with the economy the way it is, employers hold the cards so going for 3 days is still a lot better than everywhere else demanding 5 days.
Re:More passive layoffs (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, MS products have gotten worse and worse over the last 10 years or so. They are clearly heading for a cliff, but they do not see it. I am not sure there is much "brain" left to drain at Microsoft.
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Their hardware business contains the two products they make that don't suck.
Say what you will about their software, but IMHO, they make a damned fine keyboard and mouse.
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Say what you will about their software, but IMHO, they make a damned fine keyboard and mouse.
They used to. These days, you can get better from a lot of sources.
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There appears to be a current corporate hallucination that AI will be the next big thing for them. Time will tell, but I wouldn't bet money on them ever actually making a profit off selling AI.
Same here. I expect they will not even recover the cost.
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They are clearly heading for a cliff, but they do not see it.
What's there to see? They've set record revenue numbers year on year. Their Azure and 365 business is seeing record growth numbers and makes up 2/3 of their revenue. Show me where in the trends the cliff is and do so without invoking your feelings, base it on just the raw numbers.
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Money does not indicate your enterprise has a future. Arthur Andersen was one of the the larges multinationals when they drove off their cliff.
For example, there is this: https://www.cisa.gov/sites/def... [cisa.gov]
And then they learned nothing from it and keep screwing up. But you already knew that. You are just in denial because you lack insight.
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It's a good way of laying off the people who are good enough at what they do that they can find other jobs.
Re: More passive layoffs (Score:2)
Where is everyone going to go, that can match those salaries? Other places that also require in office work?
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The 20% who do 80% of the work will find work-from-home jobs elsewhere. They may even be willing to take a pay cut in return for working from home.
My guess is a lot of people can live better working from home with less pay than having to pay the cost of living in Seattle and commuting every day.
Re: More passive layoffs (Score:2)
They don't exist anymore. It's all in office now or hybrid if you are very lucky. It's so frustrating
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I don't know if misery is the right word. Some people love going to the office so their voice can be louder than anyone else's. What they don't realise if they're hurting their pocket through fuel costs. Microsoft still wins as it's effectively a pay cut, so people will leave.
Is the AI leg of the business the last part that will be effected? I guess everyone's fed up being forced to use Teams and not Zoom.
Re: More passive layoffs (Score:2)
I don't buy it. That might have worked for Twitter and Amazon back in 2022 when there was places still remote to jump but not today.
Name one employer that is remote? Salesforce RTO, Amazon RTO, Oracle RTO, Meta RTO, etc. Target and Klarna joined the return to office bandwagon too.
Literally that and Musk forcing the government to RTO destroyed the phenomenon and it's all pre COVID. Bosses don't trust people to work at home anymore is why
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Covid ruined a lot. Before, companies that had WFH were just doing what worked best for business and employee and weren't caught up in any kind of trend or politics. Then covid forces as many people into WFH as possible and it's basically like letting all the Septembers on the Internet. The bad apples ruin it for everyone.
Re: More passive layoffs (Score:2)
We have hybrid now yes but I knew one colleague who worked a 2nd job in secret and got caught and over employed was huge on Reddit so you are right.
IT did have remote roles pre COVID but these mandates hit them too as no one is allowed to work anymore at home for a lot of these companies. We waste so much on gas and time just to take calls an hour a way each day
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If most their competition* does similar, then the ill-will won't penalize MS relatively speaking. The bottom line is the better an industry is doing, the more they let employees do remote work because of competition for workers. During slumps, being a jerk is an easy way to trim employees. That's the corporate lemming pattern.
* Microsoft competition? Bwwaaaaa Haaaa HAAAA ha hooo Heeee Haaa ha ha...
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Increase misery to get rid of staff so they don't have to pay severance.
Yes, that's the first thing came to mind when I saw this headline.
More layoffs coming to MS. Karma, I would say.
And I laugh at those who think following the orders and go back to office could avoid being laid off. No, it would just get you a severance package at most.
The smart ones will stay remote working while looking for another job before getting disciplined for not going to office.
Coffee Badging? (Score:2)
The article does not state if employees are required to come in at specific times or for a minimum duration. If employees can get away with coffee badging around lunch, at least they'll be able to avoid the rush hour crush on I-405 and SR-520.
But they'll still have to absorb the added costs of coming into work. And I highly doubt that Microsoft is adjusting compensation upward to make up for it. So these folks will be poorer and will have their lives disrupted for what exactly?
Re:Coffee Badging? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's it. That's the rationale. Any other explanation given is bullshit.
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Re: Coffee Badging? (Score:2)
What they want to keep a secret is that they are trying to get people to quit or get cause to fire them without having to pay a severance or even unemployment.
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It reads the same to most people not. RTO == RIF
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s/not/now/
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Did anyone take a pay cut when they were working from home instead of going into the office? I don't think so.
I can imagine that Microsoft maybe should compensate employees if they change the location of their office- but not if people are going back to the same general area. I mean if they tell an employee that their office is now in Indiana, instead of Seattle- sure.
I worked with a lot of people (non-Microsoft) who worked from home for the past couple of years. Honestly- they have all stopped progressi
Re: Coffee Badging? (Score:2)
What by being watched like children to make sure they are not 5 minutes late or have their phones with managers staring at their screens? That is how they progress?
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Maybe that is how you work- but that is not what I am referring to.
Where I work, we have a big deadline tomorrow at 9:00 am. All the developers and QA were going through the system today making last minute changes, updates, fixes, etc.
The key was the immediate communication that we had. Everyone knowing what was going on, even in areas that they were not specifically part of. This made everything faster and better. If we were not in the same location, we absolutely would not have had the same level of
Re: Coffee Badging? (Score:3, Interesting)
How is Linux, kubernetes, and other open source advancing without an actual office ... You know for collaboration?
Collaboration is code for micro managing as they don't trust their employees to work independently.
If there is a deadline I don't want my employees leaving at 3pm to beat the 2 hour commute with traffic and pick up a kid. I don't want my employees to have stress from their marriage but forcing them to come home late so I can watch them work.
In such an event working late at home together gets it
Re: Coffee Badging? (Score:2)
"The key was the immediate communication that we had. Everyone knowing what was going on, even in areas that they were not specifically part of. This made everything faster and better. If we were not in the same location, we absolutely would not have had the same level of communication."
This is nonsense. These are things which can easily be communicated remotely. Video meeting followed by memo, done and done. This requires the same personnel be involved whether it is local or not.
Quiet Firing (Score:4, Insightful)
Taking Office 365 a little too literally (Score:5, Funny)
Office 365 does not mean you have to be there all the days of the year.
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It just means you are being snooped on all days of the year.
ROT backfires (Score:3)
By demanding that employees return to the office will have the effect of making it easier for Microsoft's competitors to poach the best people. Offering people the opportunity to work from home is a lot cheaper than a bump in salary, options, and signing bonus to get them to jump ship. The mediocre employees, those who are one poor quarterly performance review away from a PIP (Performance Improvement Plan), will stick it out and start coming into the office. Someone need to tell management to look up the term "unintended consequence" on Wikipedia.
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Someone is pretty mad their skillset doesn't let them work from home.
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:D
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Turns out not forcing everyone to commute an hour each way, sit in 7000k lighting, 60f ac, and loud convos all around, increases productive workload, while increasing morale and dedication to the work. You sound like someone pissed in your milk.
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Found the guy who can't work from home, and who's super fuckin' salty about it!
Re:go to work like everyone else (Score:4, Funny)
Found the office building real estate investor. Or the sociopath from upper management.
The horror (Score:2)
Get back to work people those matcha lattes won't drink themselves
Of course Microsoft wants employees at the office (Score:5, Funny)
The alternative is working through Teams. And if anybody knows how effective that is, it's the very company that inflicts Teams for remote working to the rest of us...
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Teams is bad, but it is generally functional. I have fewer problems with it than Zoom, which doesn't even do all the things it does.
The performance of Teams is inexplicably bad even for what it is (a web site stuffed into an app) but it usually works. I did weirdly have to upgrade my webcam after the last update though, I went from an old XGA res Logitech cam which used to work (mine) to a newer 1080p Logitech cam (issued by work) and that works fine. This was even before the Windows 11 "upgrade".
Incidental
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Literally all I wanted was for undo to work like a real application, but instead Microsoft fucked me. Why are they like this?
Satya Soprano: "Terrible what happened to your document. Be a shame if all these other document got eaten too. Maybe you can pay us for a Notepad Legacy subscription so that doesn't happen?"
Microsoft's goal is to extract as much money from you as possible. Whether you like that process or not isn't something they are concerned with.
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Amen! Teams is a train-wreck that uses a ship-wreck as a user interface.
It is slowly getting better, but at a snail's pace.
Puget Sound region (Score:2)
One gets the feeling that Seattle is taking away tax benefits to companies that aren't dragging enough employees into the city.
So no AI remote workers then ? (Score:2)
Sounds like MSFT is doubling down on good old fashioned face-to-face human colab needed for S/W dev - wonder how that reflects their internal level of success in using LLMs to write code ?
You Lose the Best Workers (Score:2)
The RTO mandates have two basic drivers:
1) The executives want to be able to summon their minions face-to-face on moment's notice.
2) They want to drive attrition without having to pay severance or the bad press of layoffs.
The problem is that these policies don't drive out the worst workers, they drive out the best workers- the ones companies spend a lot of money to retain and attract. The best workers tend to have options outside your company. The worst are going to have bad resumes and limited options.
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It hits different when someone physically comes to see you and say "aye aye sir!"
Insider Secrets? (Score:2)
Are you being forced into an office when it doesn't make sense for your job? Want to get back at the tyrants ruining your life? Lets chat, microsoftinsider@protonmail.com , only reach out from a new email address, preferably another protonmail account. DO NOT USE YOUR CORPORATE LAPTOP TO COMMUNICATE.
Directive name: (Score:2)
Microsoft Forces Workers Back To the Office
Microsoft Office 260.
American workplaces are essentially unregulated (Score:3)
Except for a few things like child labor and discrimination, the American workplace is essentially unregulated.
American companies bleat that it has to be this way because we need to be able to react quickly when business conditions change.
That's the main reason why we have "Employment At Will". The company (and the employee) can say "adios" at any time. Additionally, the deal can be "Altered" (Apologies to Darth Vader, Star Wars, and Disney) at any time by either party and it becomes "Take it or leave it" every time it happens. The problem is the power in the employer-employee relationship is highly asymmetrical with the employer holding most of the cards except in unusual circumstances.
This means when the employer changes the rules on a whim, the employee basically has 3 options: Accept them, reject them and be subject to disciplinary action, or quit on the spot. (Notice is not required, only being a professional courtesy)
The problem with at-will employment is that there is no "minimum standard" where regulation kicks in. This means we get a wide spectrum of different employment rules across many employers. The shitty ones will set rules as draconian as they can without running into problems with the Fair Labor Standards Act. The better ones will vary the rules depending on business conditions, but they also could end up with a rule set just as shitty as the shittiest employers if economic conditions are really bad.
One may say, "Well that's how the market operates, so suck it up". The problem with this is that if an employer can get away with implementing a shitty employee policy, they will if it helps them be more profitable regardless of economic conditions. With the power dynamic favoring the employer, the only lever the employee has is to leave. If enough people leave, the employer (If they're prudent) will eliminate the shitty policy. If they're incompetent, or bordering on financial solvency, they will go bankrupt.
So most employers given the profit motive will be as "shitty" to the employees as they can get away with. There will be a few "enlightened" employers out there, but they won't be public companies or owned by private equity. They will instead be owned by a family whose values "seep" into company policy. If we had more companies privately owned would be a good thing, but we don't. They're mostly public corporations, or owned by private equity.
So can a "regulatory floor" be set on employer/employee relations to prevent enshittification? Sure. the EU does it. The price that they pay for this is being branded as a "bad business environment". In a more regulated environment, more companies will fail in challenging economic conditions, and companies will vet every hire more rigorously. But this might be a good thing. Companies which treat employees like shit probably should not be in business in the first place. Something is terribly wrong with their business model.
For employees, it is crucial that you have a decent emergency fund. This counteracts the effects of At-will employment. If things get shitty enough t you have the abillity to walk away. Just live in a state which prohibits non-compete agreements.
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Just live in a state which prohibits non-compete agreements.
Kinda hard when the family is in the middle of Arkansas and your employer is in Redmond, and you've just been ordered back to the office. Or if every employer you can find is inexplicably governed by the laws of Delaware.
WFH is a tariff my employer pays (Score:2)
That is a tariff I expect my employer to pay.
If they won't pay it, I work somewhere that will.
Too bad (Score:3)
Yeah, it's too bad Microsoft doesn't have any decent tools for remote collaboration.
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I'm not at Microsoft but I have been told I have to start working from the office more regularly soon.
The rest of the team I work with are at least 300 miles away so I'll literally be driving into the office through the snow at 40 below zero to make Teams calls.
This is why I presume it's either just a new management fad going around or an attempt to make people quit.
Bad idea (Score:2)
Remote work is over (Score:2)
Every tech giant is 5 days a week or hybrid now. These places are the best to work at and prestigious?! If even they can't trust their employees to stay productive then what hope does anyone else? I blame you all (mostly WFH techies ruining that)
BLS and AAA showed employees login 2.6 hoursless hours per day than their in office counterparts. AAA as a result ended their great WFH perk and have butts in seats 5 days a week. I know one college who worked 2 jobs remotely in secret. Reddit has sooo many over emp
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What makes you think hours sitting in a chair has anything to do with productivity? As a poster way above this said, his office is full of people who are doing as little work as possible until they retire or get sacked. My last boss did that for several years before he retired.
And someone was asking me about a remote job just last week. Big Tech may believe butts in seats == productivity but companies who do real stuff rather than selling advertising want people who can do the work regardless of where they
Re: Remote work is over (Score:2)
If everyone and their brother is RTO now. Target and Klarna also justed all all WFH this week as well then there is a good reason.
I really do think login hours and reports like I described is why and theory X not Theory Y management is the main factor. If every employee works 2 hours a day that is 40 hours of lost productivity a month assuming a 20 day work week in the eyes of management every month
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It's weird that someone in 2025 thinks MBAs do anything for a reason other than increasing the value of their stock options until they vest and can sell and move to a different business to wreck.
People who didn't work at home will find plenty of ways to not work at work. They won't suddenly start working hard just because they're told to go back to the office.
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Cut the whining, moaning.... (Score:2)
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If you lived in a real city with real traffic, you wouldn't scoff at "just three days."
In related news (Score:2)
Microsoft is laying off thousands. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/0... [cnbc.com]