New OPM memo on RTO

[Anonymous]

If the transition teams had actually been around during the transitions, they would have actually had time to work out a plan. This is just wishful thinking and willful disregard to any consequences. I was ordered in last week. I was fine with it because my husband was still able to telework. Now he’s being ordered back in. Am I surprised? Not at all. Am I frustrated, yes. This feels a bit like when schools closed. Suddenly we have to make all kinds of adjustments without any advanced planning, because our employers can’t get their shit together. Luckily our family situation is more flexible than it used to be. Our kid is old enough to be home after school for one. People can’t just get after school care at the drop of a hat. The 2-3 hours a day people spend commuting (if they’re lucky) eats into so many families plans and pocketbooks. Combine that with already high costs for everything, this is a nightmare for families with two working feds. No flexibility to telework at all is going back to the 90’s. None of us were ready for that.

[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.

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.

Maybe if you had a commute you would read the news more:

https://www.axios.com/2023/11/30/biden-zients-federal-workers-return-to-office

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/federal-report/2024/04/return-to-office-in-4-parts-fed-facing-the-may-5-deadline/

RTO is not new for feds and if feds had not ignored agency heads who tried to push RTO under Biden, (e.g., Gina Raimondo did not get far with Commerce) it is possible they would be better positioned to push back under Trump.

[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.

.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.

What does it matter to you what people were doing in the block of time that will now be spent commuting? Just because someone is at the grocery store, gym, walking the dog, or playing video games at 3 pm doesn't mean they haven't already put in a full day of work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

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.

Maybe if you had a commute you would read the news more:

https://www.axios.com/2023/11/30/biden-zients-federal-workers-return-to-office

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/federal-report/2024/04/return-to-office-in-4-parts-fed-facing-the-may-5-deadline/

RTO is not new for feds and if feds had not ignored agency heads who tried to push RTO under Biden, (e.g., Gina Raimondo did not get far with Commerce) it is possible they would be better positioned to push back under Trump.

I don't know even know what office I'm going to be reporting to when the dust settles on this. But if you have an axios article on that, by all means share it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

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.

Maybe if you had a commute you would read the news more:

https://www.axios.com/2023/11/30/biden-zients-federal-workers-return-to-office

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/federal-report/2024/04/return-to-office-in-4-parts-fed-facing-the-may-5-deadline/

RTO is not new for feds and if feds had not ignored agency heads who tried to push RTO under Biden, (e.g., Gina Raimondo did not get far with Commerce) it is possible they would be better positioned to push back under Trump.

uh, we did follow RTO under what Biden demanded, which was being in office 50% time. My entire office has done that. Even pre-covid, we were in office 80% time. I was prepared for pre-covid levels. My issue is that childcare for those extra 2 hours/day doesn't just happen immediately. It takes some looking around, particularly given we aren't at the start of the school year when before/after care get lotteried into. I have figured out childcare for my current schedule, but now there's a glut of people looking for those same 5 babysitters in the neighborhood. I'll just take leave (paid until it runs out, then unpaid) until I can secure something.

What I don't lack is the utter lack of understanding from my own supervisor, who expected us to cover for him when he had a family emergency last year. Just ~zero~ understanding or even discussion of what to do.

[Anonymous]

::don't LIKE

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

Yep. Same and I’d take it at this point.

[Anonymous]

There are some out of touch people on here. The vast majority of the country (me included) had no idea what “RTO” meant because we had no idea so many people had never returned to the office after COVID. The rest of us returned four years ago! Boy would you guys be furious if I was still teaching your kids online because it was more convenient for me.

[Anonymous]

I'm wondering from the lawyers here what your take is on this article:
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/president-trump-and-the-civil-service--day-1

My layman (non-lawyer) conclusion from reading this is that there are virtually no restrictions on telework rules absent CBA but there many more hurdles to arbitrary firing, new Schedule Fs, etc. than the avg fed realizes.

Is that the right takeaway? I'm trying not to take an irrationally pessimistic view of all these changes.

FWIW, I agree with others that chaos, fear, and attrition is the point -- not "making gov't better/more efficient". It's owning the libs and hollowing out govt regardless of if the American public suffers from lower quality service. In that world, "resistance" could be not quitting, not getting fired, and standing up using every available right.

[Anonymous]

I haven’t dementia any discussion about how the OPM memo relates to the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010? Which says agencies should telework to the maximum extent possible without compromising performance? Isn’t it in conflict with that law?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I haven’t dementia any discussion about how the OPM memo relates to the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010? Which says agencies should telework to the maximum extent possible without compromising performance? Isn’t it in conflict with that law?

*seen any… not dementia. Sigh, autocorrect.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

.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.

What does it matter to you what people were doing in the block of time that will now be spent commuting? Just because someone is at the grocery store, gym, walking the dog, or playing video games at 3 pm doesn't mean they haven't already put in a full day of work.

Right I will be quitting my gym because I now have to commute. But it doesn't matter what I did with that 2 hours. The gym said hey are getting many similar calls. I guess it is good for downtown businesses but not the suburbs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are some out of touch people on here. The vast majority of the country (me included) had no idea what “RTO” meant because we had no idea so many people had never returned to the office after COVID. The rest of us returned four years ago! Boy would you guys be furious if I was still teaching your kids online because it was more convenient for me.

As a former teacher and current parent and Fed, I could not agree more. So glad my kid's teachers are back in person. Thank you for your service.

My job involves writing code and analyzing data, mostly independently. Occasionally I meet with colleagues to discuss the work. It's done equally well at home or in an office. Your appreciation for my service is welcome.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If the transition teams had actually been around during the transitions, they would have actually had time to work out a plan. This is just wishful thinking and willful disregard to any consequences. I was ordered in last week. I was fine with it because my husband was still able to telework. Now he’s being ordered back in. Am I surprised? Not at all. Am I frustrated, yes. This feels a bit like when schools closed. Suddenly we have to make all kinds of adjustments without any advanced planning, because our employers can’t get their shit together. Luckily our family situation is more flexible than it used to be. Our kid is old enough to be home after school for one. People can’t just get after school care at the drop of a hat. The 2-3 hours a day people spend commuting (if they’re lucky) eats into so many families plans and pocketbooks. Combine that with already high costs for everything, this is a nightmare for families with two working feds. No flexibility to telework at all is going back to the 90’s. None of us were ready for that.

The “what will we do about childcare?!” argument is the most egregious, yet people still shockingly make it. If your private employer knows you work from home and simultaneously monitor (at minimum) your children, have at it. The fact that so many feds were responsible for their children while on the taxpayer payroll is evidence of why RTO had to happen - there are so many bad actors in the federal workforce, as evidenced by this thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the transition teams had actually been around during the transitions, they would have actually had time to work out a plan. This is just wishful thinking and willful disregard to any consequences. I was ordered in last week. I was fine with it because my husband was still able to telework. Now he’s being ordered back in. Am I surprised? Not at all. Am I frustrated, yes. This feels a bit like when schools closed. Suddenly we have to make all kinds of adjustments without any advanced planning, because our employers can’t get their shit together. Luckily our family situation is more flexible than it used to be. Our kid is old enough to be home after school for one. People can’t just get after school care at the drop of a hat. The 2-3 hours a day people spend commuting (if they’re lucky) eats into so many families plans and pocketbooks. Combine that with already high costs for everything, this is a nightmare for families with two working feds. No flexibility to telework at all is going back to the 90’s. None of us were ready for that.

The “what will we do about childcare?!” argument is the most egregious, yet people still shockingly make it. If your private employer knows you work from home and simultaneously monitor (at minimum) your children, have at it. The fact that so many feds were responsible for their children while on the taxpayer payroll is evidence of why RTO had to happen - there are so many bad actors in the federal workforce, as evidenced by this thread.

If you have paid attention at all to the 1000 posts here explaining it to you, no one is actually worried about all day childcare. That’s not happening.