New OPM memo on RTO

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.”

My DH in the private sector was hired 100% remote, as was about 90% of his company. If that changes (there is talk that it might), he will leave the job. It upends our childcare arrangements, our insurance, etc. I don’t think it’s entitled of him to expect the work arrangement he was hired into and negotiated for or to talk to recruiters now that it might change.

What about all the people at IBM who were hired remote decades ago had to go back to the office or the people at Starbucks, Amazon, or Meta who have RTO recently? Of course people are looking for new roles if they don’t want to RTO, but no company or organization owes employees indefinite anything. Feds are not the first employees to find themselves in this position. There is nothing exceptional about having to RTO after being remote or hybrid. Some Feds may make less than some private sector peers, but this is untrue of every fed. And feds who may make less than they would in the private sector are not entitled to remote or hybrid conditions just because they are paid slightly less. The market will dictate if feds have better options than staying and I predict for many feds jumping to the private sector will not be better from the standpoint of remuneration, especially if FERS is taken into account.

My husband's org is doing RTO. They have months to prepare and will still have situational telework. That's very different from what's happening here. Of course being remote doesn't have to be permanent, but springing it on people like this is something you only do when the point is to make their lives worse, and I don't know why anyone would defend that.

Except it’s old news. Biden and Zients wanted this two years ago. There was an entire thread on DCUM mocking Zients’ email to agency heads to RTO. DeSantis, Musk, and Trump were saying this on the campaign trail over a year ago…Trump was saying this in the lead up to his inauguration and there were threads on here about whether the RTO order would be signed on day 1. If you missed years of messaging that RTO was coming you literally have only yourself to blame.

And this is true of the private sector too. All the Amazon people knew this was a possibility. The angry people at JP Morgan definitely should have known, David Solomon at Goldman is obsessed with RTO so Goldman people knew it was coming back. We all wanted it to last forever, but no one should have made permanent plans based on RTO.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

A good chunk of the attorney workforce (especially among DCUM posters) came from biglaw and likely could return. When these new changes take effect biglaw will offer MORE workplace flexibility than government. This will be disastrous for retention and hiring—which seems to be the plan.

No way. They’ve gone soft. They couldn’t handle that lifestyle anymore.

Not to mention, some of them may have taken the paycut for flexibility, but I bet the majority were pushed out bc it’s a very “up or out” culture.

Why are you guys so insistent on fighting this? It’s really bizarre.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.”

My DH in the private sector was hired 100% remote, as was about 90% of his company. If that changes (there is talk that it might), he will leave the job. It upends our childcare arrangements, our insurance, etc. I don’t think it’s entitled of him to expect the work arrangement he was hired into and negotiated for or to talk to recruiters now that it might change.

What about all the people at IBM who were hired remote decades ago had to go back to the office or the people at Starbucks, Amazon, or Meta who have RTO recently? Of course people are looking for new roles if they don’t want to RTO, but no company or organization owes employees indefinite anything. Feds are not the first employees to find themselves in this position. There is nothing exceptional about having to RTO after being remote or hybrid. Some Feds may make less than some private sector peers, but this is untrue of every fed. And feds who may make less than they would in the private sector are not entitled to remote or hybrid conditions just because they are paid slightly less. The market will dictate if feds have better options than staying and I predict for many feds jumping to the private sector will not be better from the standpoint of remuneration, especially if FERS is taken into account.

My husband's org is doing RTO. They have months to prepare and will still have situational telework. That's very different from what's happening here. Of course being remote doesn't have to be permanent, but springing it on people like this is something you only do when the point is to make their lives worse, and I don't know why anyone would defend that.

I’m not sure how this is “springing it on” when Trump was elected Nov 6 and had said this was the plan. In the two and half months after that, we’ve all been expecting this Exec Order to come on Jan. 20.

That's not the same at all as leadership saying "you have x number of months and this is how it's going to work." We still don't know how it's going to work for everyone, even though some people are fully RTO immediately. If you want to compare this to the private sector, saying "they're doing RTO" misses what's actually happening here.

Or feds have had years longer than the private sector to enjoy RTO. Yes, this approach leaves much to be desired but they probably think feds will drag it out for years if they don’t ask for immediate RTO.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.”

My DH in the private sector was hired 100% remote, as was about 90% of his company. If that changes (there is talk that it might), he will leave the job. It upends our childcare arrangements, our insurance, etc. I don’t think it’s entitled of him to expect the work arrangement he was hired into and negotiated for or to talk to recruiters now that it might change.

What about all the people at IBM who were hired remote decades ago had to go back to the office or the people at Starbucks, Amazon, or Meta who have RTO recently? Of course people are looking for new roles if they don’t want to RTO, but no company or organization owes employees indefinite anything. Feds are not the first employees to find themselves in this position. There is nothing exceptional about having to RTO after being remote or hybrid. Some Feds may make less than some private sector peers, but this is untrue of every fed. And feds who may make less than they would in the private sector are not entitled to remote or hybrid conditions just because they are paid slightly less. The market will dictate if feds have better options than staying and I predict for many feds jumping to the private sector will not be better from the standpoint of remuneration, especially if FERS is taken into account.

My husband's org is doing RTO. They have months to prepare and will still have situational telework. That's very different from what's happening here. Of course being remote doesn't have to be permanent, but springing it on people like this is something you only do when the point is to make their lives worse, and I don't know why anyone would defend that.

Except it’s old news. Biden and Zients wanted this two years ago. There was an entire thread on DCUM mocking Zients’ email to agency heads to RTO. DeSantis, Musk, and Trump were saying this on the campaign trail over a year ago…Trump was saying this in the lead up to his inauguration and there were threads on here about whether the RTO order would be signed on day 1. If you missed years of messaging that RTO was coming you literally have only yourself to blame.

If you knew how this would play out for people hired remote, congratulations, but my agency still doesn't know, so I still don't know exactly what I was supposed to see coming. Also, "there was a thread on dcum" is not really your employer telling you something. My office is not prepared for this, so you can think a lot of people have themselves to blame, but that doesn't change that this is intentionally punitive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

A good chunk of the attorney workforce (especially among DCUM posters) came from biglaw and likely could return. When these new changes take effect biglaw will offer MORE workplace flexibility than government. This will be disastrous for retention and hiring—which seems to be the plan.

No way. They’ve gone soft. They couldn’t handle that lifestyle anymore.

Not to mention, some of them may have taken the paycut for flexibility, but I bet the majority were pushed out bc it’s a very “up or out” culture.

Why are you guys so insistent on fighting this? It’s really bizarre.

I suspect the people thinking that feds can't compete for private sector jobs are deeply worried about the increased competition that is about to happen. Aside from RTO, if they lay off the 220,000 people that are currently in probationary periods, those people are flooding into the private sector. Those are going to be people who will take whatever they can and are going to work like dogs.

[Anonymous]

I hate RTO because it’s obviously just a punitive action trying to make people quit and break the government. If they had just gone back to the agencies pre-pandemic telework status I think most people would be fine with it. I agree that I always looked a bit askew at the people who moved far away based on telework (still in the same locality pay area—this whole people getting high locality pay while living outside the locality is more Republican propaganda). I like a 20 min walk from work. But hey, DC is expensive and I have some very fortunate circumstances so I’m not sure what it’s like in their shoes. Who I really feel bad for are the people hired fully remote that were assured while being hired they would always be remote. What do the Trump apologists say about those people? Should have just planned better? Most of these people have jobs in red states.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.”

My DH in the private sector was hired 100% remote, as was about 90% of his company. If that changes (there is talk that it might), he will leave the job. It upends our childcare arrangements, our insurance, etc. I don’t think it’s entitled of him to expect the work arrangement he was hired into and negotiated for or to talk to recruiters now that it might change.

What about all the people at IBM who were hired remote decades ago had to go back to the office or the people at Starbucks, Amazon, or Meta who have RTO recently? Of course people are looking for new roles if they don’t want to RTO, but no company or organization owes employees indefinite anything. Feds are not the first employees to find themselves in this position. There is nothing exceptional about having to RTO after being remote or hybrid. Some Feds may make less than some private sector peers, but this is untrue of every fed. And feds who may make less than they would in the private sector are not entitled to remote or hybrid conditions just because they are paid slightly less. The market will dictate if feds have better options than staying and I predict for many feds jumping to the private sector will not be better from the standpoint of remuneration, especially if FERS is taken into account.

My husband's org is doing RTO. They have months to prepare and will still have situational telework. That's very different from what's happening here. Of course being remote doesn't have to be permanent, but springing it on people like this is something you only do when the point is to make their lives worse, and I don't know why anyone would defend that.

Except it’s old news. Biden and Zients wanted this two years ago. There was an entire thread on DCUM mocking Zients’ email to agency heads to RTO. DeSantis, Musk, and Trump were saying this on the campaign trail over a year ago…Trump was saying this in the lead up to his inauguration and there were threads on here about whether the RTO order would be signed on day 1. If you missed years of messaging that RTO was coming you literally have only yourself to blame.

And this is true of the private sector too. All the Amazon people knew this was a possibility. The angry people at JP Morgan definitely should have known, David Solomon at Goldman is obsessed with RTO so Goldman people knew it was coming back. We all wanted it to last forever, but no one should have made permanent plans based on RTO.

I only want to hear this from someone who turned down a promotion to their dream job because it was remote, or moved to DC on their own dime at today's high prices and interest rates just in case, even though they weren't given a desk there. In some cases making life decisions around potential RTO instead of the opportunities right in front of you is actually the irrational move.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I hate RTO because it’s obviously just a punitive action trying to make people quit and break the government. If they had just gone back to the agencies pre-pandemic telework status I think most people would be fine with it. I agree that I always looked a bit askew at the people who moved far away based on telework (still in the same locality pay area—this whole people getting high locality pay while living outside the locality is more Republican propaganda). I like a 20 min walk from work. But hey, DC is expensive and I have some very fortunate circumstances so I’m not sure what it’s like in their shoes. Who I really feel bad for are the people hired fully remote that were assured while being hired they would always be remote. What do the Trump apologists say about those people? Should have just planned better? Most of these people have jobs in red states.

I'd like a 20 minute walk to work too, but my spouse and I have been married for almost 15 years, and since grad school we've never been able to find two jobs very close together. We've never had the option of BOTH having a short commute. We all do our best with the choices we have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

A good chunk of the attorney workforce (especially among DCUM posters) came from biglaw and likely could return. When these new changes take effect biglaw will offer MORE workplace flexibility than government. This will be disastrous for retention and hiring—which seems to be the plan.

.05% of the federal workforce have law degrees, this is a total non sequiter

[Anonymous]

I’m sure biglaw is ecstatic. They can probably poach experienced lateral attorneys for like $300k instead of the going rate of $600-800k. Biglaw hours/demands plus another $100k seems appealing over full time RTO, even though I left when I was making $550k.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I hate RTO because it’s obviously just a punitive action trying to make people quit and break the government. If they had just gone back to the agencies pre-pandemic telework status I think most people would be fine with it. I agree that I always looked a bit askew at the people who moved far away based on telework (still in the same locality pay area—this whole people getting high locality pay while living outside the locality is more Republican propaganda). I like a 20 min walk from work. But hey, DC is expensive and I have some very fortunate circumstances so I’m not sure what it’s like in their shoes. Who I really feel bad for are the people hired fully remote that were assured while being hired they would always be remote. What do the Trump apologists say about those people? Should have just planned better? Most of these people have jobs in red states.

That was supposed to be I have a 20 minute walk to work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

A good chunk of the attorney workforce (especially among DCUM posters) came from biglaw and likely could return. When these new changes take effect biglaw will offer MORE workplace flexibility than government. This will be disastrous for retention and hiring—which seems to be the plan.

.05% of the federal workforce have law degrees, this is a total non sequiter

This is DCUM, which might as well stand for DC upper-middle (class professionals). Go to Reddit if you want to hear the perspective of IT employees upset about RTO because it cuts into their video game time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

A good chunk of the attorney workforce (especially among DCUM posters) came from biglaw and likely could return. When these new changes take effect biglaw will offer MORE workplace flexibility than government. This will be disastrous for retention and hiring—which seems to be the plan.

100%. The plan is to get everyone out of the federal government and into the private sector. Get yourself out and find a better job for yourself.

+1. The economy goes up if the federal workforce dumps out into the private sector. It goes down as feds stay in the federal government, passing policies and regulations that hamstring the private sector. The people who write here seem to not understand that this is all by design. They want a smaller federal workforce. They don't want the best and brightest bringing their talents because then there will be stronger regulations, more expansive policies, etc. I know most people here will only listen to mainstream media. But if you do that, you cannot understand the administration's plans. Trump’s people do not give long interviews to the mainstream media, and when they are interviewed, it's hostile and antagonistic so the core ideas never come out. You have to listen to interviews on right wing media to hear the plans. Tucker Carlson has been interviewing administration officials for months and they've spelled out their entire plan, including litigation strategies. I have known all this was coming for months and have been surprised by nothing, and I even understand the time frames and some of the logistics. If you can't stomach listening to opposing views, I am not talking to you. If you're genuinely seeking to be able to know what they are planning to do and when they plan to do it, I am talking to you.

70% of the federal workforce are VA, DoD, Natl Security. Do you think those employees are writing regulations that hamstring the private sector?
The problem with the way the free market disciples view our economy and government is that they miss the actual elephant in the room: Big business has infiltrated/corrupted government to the point that it’s not much of a free market. The dominant players in just about every major industry are tilting the playing field by controlling politicians. The fact that 3 tech bros, who happen to be the 3 richest people in the country, were in camera frame at the inauguration, intermingled with family and closer than cabinet nominees, should scare the sh*t out of any rational person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I hate RTO because it’s obviously just a punitive action trying to make people quit and break the government. If they had just gone back to the agencies pre-pandemic telework status I think most people would be fine with it. I agree that I always looked a bit askew at the people who moved far away based on telework (still in the same locality pay area—this whole people getting high locality pay while living outside the locality is more Republican propaganda). I like a 20 min walk from work. But hey, DC is expensive and I have some very fortunate circumstances so I’m not sure what it’s like in their shoes. Who I really feel bad for are the people hired fully remote that were assured while being hired they would always be remote. What do the Trump apologists say about those people? Should have just planned better? Most of these people have jobs in red states.

I was hired fully remote. No one knows yet if the people who aren't within 50 miles of an office will be told to relocate. But I think they would be foolish to do so, given that this might just be the first phase.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

A good chunk of the attorney workforce (especially among DCUM posters) came from biglaw and likely could return. When these new changes take effect biglaw will offer MORE workplace flexibility than government. This will be disastrous for retention and hiring—which seems to be the plan.

If they have a book of business or are in a highly desirable practice niche, perhaps. Most people who leave Big Law for govt do so after it’s made clear to them they’re not making partner and have a timeframe to find another job. The vast majority of govt attorneys will not be able to find jobs in Big Law and will struggle to find private jobs, period.