New OPM memo on RTO

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

What did you have got childcare when you previously worked full time at the office?

[Anonymous]

I’m in the office 5 days a week. Not a fed. The transition is hard but then you will get used to it. And you may even like it. Nothing beats in person interactions. Parents these days are over involved in their kids lives any way. Do you really have to be at every single class event in elementary school. Or every single soccer game?

[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.

We have repeatedly told you, over and over, why childcare is an issue in an abrupt RTO mandate, even though we don’t actually watch our children during working hours. I have an hour commute each way plus an 8.5 hour day. The childcare I currently have lined up (to match my wfh schedule since 2015) is 8:30-6. How does this math work? Luckily I have a spouse. But he works in person and we have one car. Grow some empathy. Even our overlord Elon apparently has childcare challenges. He’s towing that kid around the halls of government all the time.

[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.

Look, I work in a school too. Our job requires us to work with students in- person... Overall, trying to actually work on goals over Zoom or Teams was challenging. The commute stinks, but at least we're AI-proof.

Here's the thing… my husband was hired remote and is successfully able to do his job that way. He worked in tech before COVID, and he was hired remote then too. It's not fair that they’re pulling the rug out from under us, causing us to move in the middle of the school year. When schools were remote, we knew it was temporary. That's the difference.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Right. If you read you see the extra childcare is now needed because of the commute. Keep up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

What did you have got childcare when you previously worked full time at the office?

Dude, I haven’t worked 5 days in the office with no flexibility since 2003. Before kids. You’re incredibly out of touch with how working families make their schedules work. Telework is a MAJOR part of what allows us to do things like go to the doctor, attend after school events, cook dinner, etc. while also putting in 8-10 hours of work every day.

You’re not very good at math or logic if you can’t figure out what the problem is when parents suddenly have to spend 2-3 hours a day commuting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m in the office 5 days a week. Not a fed. The transition is hard but then you will get used to it. And you may even like it. Nothing beats in person interactions. Parents these days are over involved in their kids lives any way. Do you really have to be at every single class event in elementary school. Or every single soccer game?

Do you have a stay at home spouse?

There are many dual Fed families around here, telework and schedule flexibility is a key part of how our lives makes any sense at all. In my household both parents have hour plus commutes. We have to stagger our schedules so that we’re really never home together at the same time during the week because of this. It’s a terrible way to live and raise a family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

What did you have got childcare when you previously worked full time at the office?

Try reading again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m in the office 5 days a week. Not a fed. The transition is hard but then you will get used to it. And you may even like it. Nothing beats in person interactions. Parents these days are over involved in their kids lives any way. Do you really have to be at every single class event in elementary school. Or every single soccer game?

eyeroll. Aren't you maga types supposed to want to support families?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

What did you have got childcare when you previously worked full time at the office?

As stated, I did not work full-time in the office, and for my current schedule I have child care covering all work hours.

You are bad at this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m in the office 5 days a week. Not a fed. The transition is hard but then you will get used to it. And you may even like it. Nothing beats in person interactions. Parents these days are over involved in their kids lives any way. Do you really have to be at every single class event in elementary school. Or every single soccer game?

Do you have a stay at home spouse?

There are many dual Fed families around here, telework and schedule flexibility is a key part of how our lives makes any sense at all. In my household both parents have hour plus commutes. We have to stagger our schedules so that we’re really never home together at the same time during the week because of this. It’s a terrible way to live and raise a family.

NP but that’s par for the course for a dual income couple with young kids. We’ve never had quality adult time in the mornings and afternoons. Actually the dual Fed couples we know are better off than those of us in private bc they rarely log in at night, so they can watch movies together or chat while doing housework after the kids go to sleep.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m in the office 5 days a week. Not a fed. The transition is hard but then you will get used to it. And you may even like it. Nothing beats in person interactions. Parents these days are over involved in their kids lives any way. Do you really have to be at every single class event in elementary school. Or every single soccer game?

Do you have a stay at home spouse?

There are many dual Fed families around here, telework and schedule flexibility is a key part of how our lives makes any sense at all. In my household both parents have hour plus commutes. We have to stagger our schedules so that we’re really never home together at the same time during the week because of this. It’s a terrible way to live and raise a family.

NP but that’s par for the course for a dual income couple with young kids. We’ve never had quality adult time in the mornings and afternoons. Actually the dual Fed couples we know are better off than those of us in private bc they rarely log in at night, so they can watch movies together or chat while doing housework after the kids go to sleep.

“Rarely log in at night”. Ok now this thread is just silly.

[Anonymous]

RTO sucks for kids too. I know several neighborhoods where the parents would free range their 6-10 year olds in the afternoons while they wrapped up work. The kids would roam around and in and out of each others houses, like back in the 50s with SAHMs around. I am not in such a neighborhood but was envious of all the unstructured time they got. Now those kids will all be stuck in aftercare. Blah.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m in the office 5 days a week. Not a fed. The transition is hard but then you will get used to it. And you may even like it. Nothing beats in person interactions. Parents these days are over involved in their kids lives any way. Do you really have to be at every single class event in elementary school. Or every single soccer game?

Do you have a stay at home spouse?

There are many dual Fed families around here, telework and schedule flexibility is a key part of how our lives makes any sense at all. In my household both parents have hour plus commutes. We have to stagger our schedules so that we’re really never home together at the same time during the week because of this. It’s a terrible way to live and raise a family.

NP but that’s par for the course for a dual income couple with young kids. We’ve never had quality adult time in the mornings and afternoons. Actually the dual Fed couples we know are better off than those of us in private bc they rarely log in at night, so they can watch movies together or chat while doing housework after the kids go to sleep.

“Rarely log in at night”. Ok now this thread is just silly.

Please don’t act like the average Fed is logging in at night to work. Most of them do their 8 hours and whatever gets done, gets done. I don’t say this pejoratively btw. I would love to do that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m in the office 5 days a week. Not a fed. The transition is hard but then you will get used to it. And you may even like it. Nothing beats in person interactions. Parents these days are over involved in their kids lives any way. Do you really have to be at every single class event in elementary school. Or every single soccer game?

Do you have a stay at home spouse?

There are many dual Fed families around here, telework and schedule flexibility is a key part of how our lives makes any sense at all. In my household both parents have hour plus commutes. We have to stagger our schedules so that we’re really never home together at the same time during the week because of this. It’s a terrible way to live and raise a family.

NP but that’s par for the course for a dual income couple with young kids. We’ve never had quality adult time in the mornings and afternoons. Actually the dual Fed couples we know are better off than those of us in private bc they rarely log in at night, so they can watch movies together or chat while doing housework after the kids go to sleep.

Another NP. But do you think that is a good thing??? Don't you think policies that allow the work to be completed AND allow families quality time is BETTER???

WTF with the whiners making stuff up to argue that there is any merit to this RTO nonsense. This decree from on high has nothing to do with efficiency, nothing to do with savings, and nothing to do with work quality. It is merely designed to inflict pain to make people quit. We have had remote work and ad hoc telework since before the pandemic. It works fine.