How many of you are quitting over return to office?

I’m considering leaving my company, but not for the reason you’d expect.

We’ve fully embraced work from home, even though officially there is an expectation that people start coming back to office in the future.

I’m more frustrated because with WFH, a team I’m primarily involved with right now has essentially checked out. The manager doesn’t want to manage, and work that should take hours or a couple days stretches for weeks at a time.

There’s little accountability, and I feel like more senior leadership isn’t doing much about it because it hasn’t really hit the bottom line.

WFH is great I think when you have motivated people. With WFH, it’s an “out of sight, out of mind” situation with people not even coasting so much as they’re checked out. To be clear, I’m not blaming WFH. I do think it’s not helping a deeper problem.

I have. Commuting is dangerous and expensive, and lowers my disposable income by half.

The office was also unproductive. It was loud, uncomfortable chairs, slow computers. We didn't really do agile either, meaning if it took 4 minutes to compile and can't hit the deadline, that's my problem. WFH actually covered a lot of the productivity loss from working in office, but not enough. My home office is a very productive place, with essential oils and a 4K monitor.

I think there's an element of disrespect. You're in the office not to work, but to bring up the prestige of the boss. It's not so much a problem with trust, but it's a problem when my role as a seat warmer takes priority over my role as a developer.

Slightly different situation. I want to work in office full time due to kid daycare logistics, but there appears to be some chance that our office will be changing to 100% hotdesking for everyone, presumably to save costs while most people WFH most of the time.

That does not work for me. I work with hardware. I constantly have robot bits or DAQ/RT systems on my desk. I'm not hauling that stuff home every day.

I have already told my employer in no uncertain terms that I plan to quit if they impose hot desking.

I worked at a 3rd tier (being generous), rural private liberal arts college that has had roughly 50% of the department leave within the past 3 months. Some (including myself) due to the essentially mandatory return (they have a new WFH policy that requires multiple approvals, but they just don't grant them, "why not come into office for a few months and then we'll reevaluate the situation") and others for general displeasure with the organization as a whole. Their entire schtick is "we are a collaborative family as a university, so we need face to face contact" (they required nearly all in person classes, too) and it ended up driving away the competent people who have worked in jobs outside of academia. The only people left are the lifers who have never worked anywhere else and are fearful of finding a new job. It is 100% the college overplaying their hand and entirely ignoring the workers and current state of the labor market.

My department was already fully remote since they got rid of our office three years ago, but I did feel now was a good time to switch for other reasons (one being the company hadn't given out any raises to anyone in our department above 1.0% for the past three years).

I had several recruiters contact me that were saying the company required a hybrid situation and I stayed away from those. New company allows full remote right now, with optional come into the office whenever you feel like it. Hopefully it stays that way. If not, I'll probably start looking again.

And yeah, I also think hybrid is just a way for most companies to ease people back into requiring full-time in-office again (or 4 days in-office, 1 day out possibly).

It's really hard to pin down how likely companies are to stay full remote though right now. I only got a clear answer from companies that were remote since before the pandemic.

I have. My company wanted to begin hybrid next month, while I didn’t feel comfortable doing so until January 2022. When I initially broached the subject in May/June, they weren’t accommodating so I gave my notice. (Hybrid require a big move on my part.)

Recently, they’ve pushed back return date to November at the earliest and become more accommodating, but that ship has sailed, unfortunately.

I know people quitting (or at least upset) because they want to go back to an office, but our company has switched to fully remote. I think people are upset in both directions.

My sense is that a lot of companies are using the current work-from-home moment to push through a stealth pay cut. The thing is, many people got very small pay increases in 2020, so if they now make anything above their 2019 level, they feel like they've moved forward. But most of my clients are handing out large increases to get software developers who show up at the office. If the folks at home get a 10% pay increase they feel like everything is going great. Meanwhile the folks showing up in the office are getting 30% increases.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with taking less pay for more flexibility. I know a lot of women with kids who have been asking for this for a long time. They'd be happy to trade away 25k to get to stay home and run some errands during the day when the kids are at school. There is nothing wrong with this on either side: some workers see the increased flexibility as a big perk, and some corporations are happy to offer that flexibility in exchange for slightly lower pay.

Still, I've been reading articles that try to paint the current moment as a kind of revolution for workers, and I don't think that is accurate. A lot of workers have some leverage this year thanks to several trillion dollars of stimulus money that the government has handed out. But I don't think there has been any kind of long-term change in the balance of power between labor and capital. I'd need to see several years of big pay increases for work-from-home workers before I think any of the current "revolutionary" rhetoric would be justified.

In particular, there is the open question of who will get the big promotions. Who will be in leadership positions in 5 years? Everything I've seen so far convinces me that the leadership in 5 years will be the people who show up at the office.

Of course, not everyone wants to go into management, and that is fine. If people would rather work-from-home and be happy, rather than running after promotions, that is fine. Everyone should do whatever is going to make them happy. Life is short, so don't waste your time doing something that is going to make you miserable. But none of the rhetoric about some kind of revolution is justified if the promotions go to the folks who show up at the office.

Also, keep in mind, my experience is limited to clients in New York City. I've no idea what is happening elsewhere.

I want to return to office. My wife wants to keep working from home. Neither of us are worrying about it much because we are both pretty sure that people are being premature even talking about it. The Delta variant is tearing around america and people here have started wearing masks everywhere again. It's one thing if you just want the excuse to quit, but seriously, we'll all be working from home again by halloween.

Not me. As freelancer I work from home over 5 years. Many friends was sceptical about that until all of them had to work from home as well. Soon they realised it has many advantages, especially if you have small kids. It is not a stigma to work from home any more.

I got prints curling off the walls at my house. Air conditioning is a big appeal at my office as well as interesting people.

It wasn't specifically for that reason, but I chose this as a good time to retire. It was probably 1/40th of the reason I chose to leave the work force.

Myself and a number of people I know have flatly said they will not return to the office. Occasional visits or team meetings are ok, but regular office time is off the table.

But the place I work has publicly announced that they surprisingly discovered overall equal or better productivity during COVID, even despite the learning curve of everyone going remote.

I believe that much of the long term success of remote work depends on upper management being open to the idea and willing to postpone judgement until adequate time (a year) has passed.

It may not really matter, though, because it's possible that COVID and other similar global problems will come up often enough to forever change how we operate as human societies.

My company has pushed the return to the office back so many times, at this point no one believes it'll actually ever happen. So no one is quitting over it yet.

The organization I work for planned for people to be in the office at least half the time in September.

I feel like they will probably change their minds before then.

It's a strange feeling, that the next month or two is preordained and the authorities are all in denial.

I guess I don't think it will be too bad to go in, if it's only half as crowded, on the streets, in the office, etc.

But it will kind of surprise me if it goes according to plan.

I quit my previous job over WFH, even before the pandemic. They moved the office farther north, farther from my home, through some nasty traffic. I asked to work from home, they said no, I quit.

Now, they have all been working from home for a while and embraced remote work for the entire company. Good for them. It just didn't work out for us.

I quit my job over the lack of a return to office.

Interacting with people to solve problems is a lot of what I enjoyed about being a software developer, and particularly after starting a new job mid-pandemic where I didn't already know people (the old company imploded for pre-pandemic reasons), work was much more isolating and less rewarding than it was in 2019.

Once it became clear return-to-office was not on any sort of definite timeline, and that I would be fully vaccinated as more places reopened, it became an easy decision to quit. And it's one of the best decisions I've made. My mental health has improved considerably, and I've discovered new hobbies and am in better shape than I ever have been. I should probably have taken a multi-month gap at least once before.

I met a colleague from my old company today (in-person, of course), who reported that ten people have left this year, from an initial number of roughly 60. It's a consulting company, and as far as I know no one has been mandated to return; most of the clients were already remote. So that's a ballpark 15-20% figure, albeit with a small sample size, of people leaving over 7 months from a company without a strong return to office movement. Many of people leaving were people with low tenure at the company, and thus not having the in-person ties that might encourage staying with their friends and colleagues.

I quit early 2021.

Among other things, the fact that my employer was okay seeing me commuting 3 hours daily and paying it out of my pocket.

Honestly, I didn't mind the commute (first class train, direct line, time deductible if I work in the train, office 2 mins away from train station) but the topic of long commutes and their health impact started becoming regularly covered in the news. I began to realize I was being mistreated/disrespected. I shared my feelings with my manager and HR and they didn't offer me any support.

Along with the invisible career path, that was enough reason to quit.

I found a job a few days after quitting. Got a 10% pay raise + unlimited travel pass for the entire country + WFH/flex.

I miss my colleagues though :)

I'm not but almost did for a while. It wasn't that the return was the issue, more like a catalyst - I prefer office working (my commute is a 5 - 15 minute walk) but one of my work colleagues is an absolute predator and a few are vocal anti-vax. It's difficult to deal with face to face. We were always flexi/remote work if we wanted but the anti-vax lot have been campaigning against that too. The underlying cultural issues aren't going to change so I'm going to hold off and quit in 12 months so I can get my personal life together

The company I work for has simply given the possibility to amend the employment contract and let people switch to full remote.

Many colleagues didn't quit because of this.

I'm on a "wait and see"... if they force me to go back to fully onsite, I'm quitting.

If they make it flexible / hybrid, I'll stay for a bit more.

I was already on the fence due to the lack of career growth, it would be the final shove. OTOH I was looking forward to some low-stress time as I'm getting married and was going to use a lot of time off, I'm not looking forward to switching jobs just yet.

I’m ready to quit if I am told I have to go back to the office even if it is 1 day a week or something.

I’ve lined up a new role through Toptal and can make that more full time and drop my other one if I get any push.

So far I haven’t been pushed to go back but there have been a few times where “everyone is going into the office” and I just don’t want to - more importantly I don’t need to.

In my case, I would gladly WFH 100% as it gives me more free time and also it gives me responsibility on how to manage my own work without having judging eyes all the time over me, also it gives me freedom on how to arrange my workspace.

BUT, company culture must be results oriented because otherwise stress could burn you out!

Talked to a recruiter who said that companies were reversing the return-to-office directive in some European countries as employees were refusing, concerned about Corona obviously, and travelling on public transport.

Petitioned & got remote work for all

I know for my part I wouldn't mind a position that is hybrid or requires an office as long as it is local, as I don't like working remotely at least all of the time.

My problem is the companies that are requiring both in-office and proof of vaccination, like I think Google is doing. That, would having me quitting.