New OPM memo on RTO

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If Trump can work at Mar-a-Lago, I can work from my cul-de-sac.

You work for him. He doesn’t work for you.

"Of the people, by the people and for the people."

Yes, you should tell the DEI folks on admin leave to say that to Trump.

Just because he doesn’t want that to be true, doesn’t mean he is right. He works for the American people.

super naive

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This isn’t about “white collar” feds like lawyers and engineers. In an honest moment, I’m sure the MAGA folks would tell you that this is about the caricature of a “federal employee” — the overweight, lazy secretary or HR cog with only a HS education, who likely would be waiting tables if forced to be in the private sector.

The lawyers and engineers are just collateral damage — not the true targets of the RTO policy.

In a perfect world, I’m sure MAGA would prefer to issue the RTO mandate only for “certain occupations” in the federal workforce. But that would be too obvious, controversial, and probably illegal.

What I find so galling about this is that my agency made all those caricature employees contractors decades ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can’t believe people thought working from home full-time would continue indefinitely.

We knew this would happen at some point, especially if a GOP President was elected. It wasn’t just Trump, DeSantis said he’d do the same.

You're acting like telework started with COVID. People have been successfully teleworking for decades. And now they aren't allowed to do it. Make it make sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m a private sector lawyer and we are allowed to work from home two days a week. I’m also expected to work overtime for no additional pay when it’s needed for the job, or to drop everything for a deadline if needed. There are people at my firm who come in less but they get their work done and that’s fine, they aren’t given a hard time. It’s standard in the industry. I thinking general fed attorneys make significantly less money than private sector attorneys do, also. But anyway, working from home sometimes has been a fairly standard benefit in the legal industry, post Covid. After all, we kept the industry afloat working from home 5 days a week for two years during Covid. We kept everything going at a normal pace of work even though for me it meant working til 1am a lot to get my assignments in while my kid did school from home. Folks realized you don’t need to be in the office 5 days a week for the industry to keep rolling, and that’s the industry standard for lawyers now - telework is offered at least about 2 days a week.


Good luck, folks, hope things works out.

Thank you.

[Anonymous]

The vast majority of people are compensated and work in conditions based on what the market will bear. No one earns remote or hybrid working conditions in perpetuity based on past achievements. Employers in most industries have an upper hand in this market and have called back talented, high achieving employees who were previously hybrid or remote. These employers include Amazon, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Microsoft, Citigroup, AT&T, JP Morgan, Disney, IBM, ebay, Meta, Apple, Salesforce, state governments, and various nonprofits. It’s safe to assume that at least some employees at all of these organizations believed, based on the conditions of their employment when they joined, that they would be remote or hybrid for the extent of their employment. What makes these people different from feds needing to RTO in the next few months or years? Nothing.

The current market conditions, while not the main driver for Trump’s RTO policy, make the policy appear unremarkable to most non feds. Let’s also not forget that this was something that Biden and Zients were trying to do nearly two years ago. If anything, feds’ general unwillingness to compromise on RTO in 2023 and glee at playing (or overplaying) their hand on RTO served to bolster Trump’s campaign trail characterization of a supercilious civil service class obsessed with enacting DEI measures while working from home in pajamas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The vast majority of people are compensated and work in conditions based on what the market will bear. No one earns remote or hybrid working conditions in perpetuity based on past achievements. Employers in most industries have an upper hand in this market and have called back talented, high achieving employees who were previously hybrid or remote. These employers include Amazon, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Microsoft, Citigroup, AT&T, JP Morgan, Disney, IBM, ebay, Meta, Apple, Salesforce, state governments, and various nonprofits. It’s safe to assume that at least some employees at all of these organizations believed, based on the conditions of their employment when they joined, that they would be remote or hybrid for the extent of their employment. What makes these people different from feds needing to RTO in the next few months or years? Nothing.

The current market conditions, while not the main driver for Trump’s RTO policy, make the policy appear unremarkable to most non feds. Let’s also not forget that this was something that Biden and Zients were trying to do nearly two years ago. If anything, feds’ general unwillingness to compromise on RTO in 2023 and glee at playing (or overplaying) their hand on RTO served to bolster Trump’s campaign trail characterization of a supercilious civil service class obsessed with enacting DEI measures while working from home in pajamas.

I don't think anyone owes me or anyone else a permanent remote job. But if anyone at those other organizations was also informed that they needed to go from a job that was hired as fully remote to in an office up to 50 miles away five days a week with almost no time to prepare, I think that's pretty terrible, too, and I wouldn't tell them to not complain about it.

Also, I wasn't a fed in 2023, so I wasn't playing or overplaying anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes. This is correct. Right now (three days a week and my husband the other 2) get kiddo off bus at 4:15. We won’t be able to do that so $700 per month to get after. So yes, I’m crying.

This implies that you were providing childcare instead of working during those times, part of what RTO is meant to address?

New poster here. For f&#k's sake. Let me spell it out for you like a child. I WFH from 7:30 to 4:00. That is a full work day. No child is in the house. I can quickly go pick my child up from school at 4:15 because it's just around the corner. When I go back to work, I will be an hour away at 4:15 and will not be able to pick up my child from school. Thereby requiring expensive after care.

Just work from 6:30 to 3:00. Problem solved.

And have a little empathy for those of us who have NEVER had the luxury of popping out to pick our kids up from school because we had jobs that require us to do their job in person. Be grateful you had this privilege for as long as you did. I understand feeling sideswiped by this and do think the government should give more people time to adjust but then you have to suck it up.

The bait and switch and no time to adjust *is* the issue here. I'm very glad I've been able to telework for years, which was mostly not as a fed. But this wasn't a favor my employers were giving me, it was a way of hiring people with my skill set. This is the equivalent of a significant pay cut for me -- would you feel gratitude at previously outearning other people if you took a job due to the pay and then they cut it?

Exactly. Telework is the only reason a lot of us chose the jobs we chose. I have a highly desirable skill set. Nothing is keeping me in the federal government now, and I'm not the only one. Pretty sure you're going to be left with people who have zero skills and it will all come to a screeching halt. But this is what MAGA wants.

Right. There are people with in demand skills and who are highly qualified. I was offered other jobs that paid significantly more and chose a fed job with better telework. Telework was the single deciding factor. Now I really wish I had taken the higher paying jobs and am going to go back and try to see if those options are out there still.

I’m a former fed who left for the prior sector and this talking point about private sector paying significantly more is such a fallacy. Sure if you have a highly specialized skill or degree but for the vast vast VAST majority of feds, they’re not finding salaries lots better than they have it. The people who say that in forums are just giving away the fact that they’ve literally never job searched.

I am the poster who wrote that. It’s my lived experience- had two opportunities to leave in the last five years with less flexibility but a lot more money. But I’m a lawyer so the options for leaving gov are generally going to have higher salaries.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The vast majority of people are compensated and work in conditions based on what the market will bear. No one earns remote or hybrid working conditions in perpetuity based on past achievements. Employers in most industries have an upper hand in this market and have called back talented, high achieving employees who were previously hybrid or remote. These employers include Amazon, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Microsoft, Citigroup, AT&T, JP Morgan, Disney, IBM, ebay, Meta, Apple, Salesforce, state governments, and various nonprofits. It’s safe to assume that at least some employees at all of these organizations believed, based on the conditions of their employment when they joined, that they would be remote or hybrid for the extent of their employment. What makes these people different from feds needing to RTO in the next few months or years? Nothing.

The current market conditions, while not the main driver for Trump’s RTO policy, make the policy appear unremarkable to most non feds. Let’s also not forget that this was something that Biden and Zients were trying to do nearly two years ago. If anything, feds’ general unwillingness to compromise on RTO in 2023 and glee at playing (or overplaying) their hand on RTO served to bolster Trump’s campaign trail characterization of a supercilious civil service class obsessed with enacting DEI measures while working from home in pajamas.

most non-Fed white collar workers absolutely have the flexibility to WFH a few days a week or situationally as needed. I’m not interested in comparisons to Blackrock or Goldman unless they want to pay me 5x my salary. I’m also super uninterested in hearing about how I am “supercilious” in the face of Trump literally stating his goal is to torture civil servants. That’s shockingly unethical, bad government, and should concern everyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can’t believe people thought working from home full-time would continue indefinitely.

We knew this would happen at some point, especially if a GOP President was elected. It wasn’t just Trump, DeSantis said he’d do the same.

You're acting like telework started with COVID. People have been successfully teleworking for decades. And now they aren't allowed to do it. Make it make sense.

Not just teleworking they were actively pushing us to go remote so our office spaces were free... in 2017, during the first Trump admin.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because people need to wake up and understand how privileged they are. And stop whining.

Privilege implies we didn’t earn it. Which we did.

You didn’t earn it any more than I earned it as someone in private equity who has RTO’d or more than my husband who works at Goldman and is RTO 5 days has earned it. There is a near hysterical level of entitlement on this thread. And your attitude is horrible and elitist, like you’re better than every doctor, pharmacist, uber driver, lawyer, banker, teacher, firefighter, scientist, or professor who didn’t “earn it.”

Most professors I know telework. Six or so hours on campus a week. The microbiologist I know teleworks a lot too (experiments run themselves to some extent). Other occupations can telework a little--annual training and paperwork and reports can be done at home by most of the professions listed.

[Anonymous]

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so.”

-- Russell Vought, Trump’s nominee to lead the U.S. Office of Management and Budget

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so.”

-- Russell Vought, Trump’s nominee to lead the U.S. Office of Management and Budget

Interesting attitude toward the people you’ll be relying on to implement your agenda. Sure would be a shame if those bureaucrats accidentally didn’t understand what you wanted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can’t believe people thought working from home full-time would continue indefinitely.

We knew this would happen at some point, especially if a GOP President was elected. It wasn’t just Trump, DeSantis said he’d do the same.

You're acting like telework started with COVID. People have been successfully teleworking for decades. And now they aren't allowed to do it. Make it make sense.

Not just teleworking they were actively pushing us to go remote so our office spaces were free... in 2017, during the first Trump admin.

GSA staff won major awards for saving tens of millions in tax payer dollars by getting rid of leases and office space. Just like COVID, there will never be a publicly released report detailing the extravagant cost of signing new leases across the country just to make sure no one is teleworking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The vast majority of people are compensated and work in conditions based on what the market will bear. No one earns remote or hybrid working conditions in perpetuity based on past achievements. Employers in most industries have an upper hand in this market and have called back talented, high achieving employees who were previously hybrid or remote. These employers include Amazon, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Microsoft, Citigroup, AT&T, JP Morgan, Disney, IBM, ebay, Meta, Apple, Salesforce, state governments, and various nonprofits. It’s safe to assume that at least some employees at all of these organizations believed, based on the conditions of their employment when they joined, that they would be remote or hybrid for the extent of their employment. What makes these people different from feds needing to RTO in the next few months or years? Nothing.

The current market conditions, while not the main driver for Trump’s RTO policy, make the policy appear unremarkable to most non feds. Let’s also not forget that this was something that Biden and Zients were trying to do nearly two years ago. If anything, feds’ general unwillingness to compromise on RTO in 2023 and glee at playing (or overplaying) their hand on RTO served to bolster Trump’s campaign trail characterization of a supercilious civil service class obsessed with enacting DEI measures while working from home in pajamas.

I hate to admit that this rings totally true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The vast majority of people are compensated and work in conditions based on what the market will bear. No one earns remote or hybrid working conditions in perpetuity based on past achievements. Employers in most industries have an upper hand in this market and have called back talented, high achieving employees who were previously hybrid or remote. These employers include Amazon, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Microsoft, Citigroup, AT&T, JP Morgan, Disney, IBM, ebay, Meta, Apple, Salesforce, state governments, and various nonprofits. It’s safe to assume that at least some employees at all of these organizations believed, based on the conditions of their employment when they joined, that they would be remote or hybrid for the extent of their employment. What makes these people different from feds needing to RTO in the next few months or years? Nothing.

The current market conditions, while not the main driver for Trump’s RTO policy, make the policy appear unremarkable to most non feds. Let’s also not forget that this was something that Biden and Zients were trying to do nearly two years ago. If anything, feds’ general unwillingness to compromise on RTO in 2023 and glee at playing (or overplaying) their hand on RTO served to bolster Trump’s campaign trail characterization of a supercilious civil service class obsessed with enacting DEI measures while working from home in pajamas.

most non-Fed white collar workers absolutely have the flexibility to WFH a few days a week or situationally as needed. I’m not interested in comparisons to Blackrock or Goldman unless they want to pay me 5x my salary. I’m also super uninterested in hearing about how I am “supercilious” in the face of Trump literally stating his goal is to torture civil servants. That’s shockingly unethical, bad government, and should concern everyone.

I feel like I had a little sympathy prior to this thread. If you think Blackrock or Goldman is paying most of you 5x your salary for the same work and skills you have you are so delusional you should not be working for taxpayers.