They do a lot of mental heavy lifting to support a corrupt and incompetent administration- sunk cost fallacy I imagine.

> Until I see median real income start to actually go down

I'm not sure I understand this, it doesn't feel like what I have "lived" for the least 30 years.

Median real income might not be down statistically, but the purchasing power of professional incomes relative to housing, education, and major life costs clearly feels lower than it did in the mid 90s. An inflation-adjusted six-figure salary today does not deliver the same lifestyle position it once did.

Man... healthcare costs, too. Hell, even computers! Raw computing power per dollar is cheaper than ever, but the minimum spec required to function professionally has risen so much that the real cost of staying technologically current feels higher.

According to a random inflation calculator I found with a lazy Google search, $50,000 in 1996 is about $106,000 today.

Was $50,000 a lot of money in 1996? Did it afford a nice house in a good neighborhood? Or is it that 6 figures just isn't what it used to be?

I had my first house built in the burbs of Atlanta - 2700 square feet 3-2 and a bonus room for $170k.

Going by the house shouldn’t be more than 3.5x your income. That puts the necessary income less than $50K.

Heck I had my second house built in the northern burbs of Atlanta in “the good school system” for $335k in 2016. We sold it in 2024 for exactly twice the price.

I bought my first house in the 90s on a 65k base salary in an ok neighborhood in a great city. Anecdotally anyway.

> I don't think it was a soft layoff, I'm sure that might have been part of it, but I think the majority of it was about telling the working class that the owning class is back in power and they want you to know it.

Or both.

I think that's the question - did RTO increase productivity? I haven't seen any audited economic evidence that actually happened. Same as AI - I've seen a lot of PR and hype, but no audited company financials indicators.

Historically though, the data suggests that mass layoffs have a huge impact (negatively) on productivity after a short term "boost" by the survivors.

How is this any different from loafers who don't do anything? If you can do two jobs at the same time, you weren't really doing anything at first job to begin with.

The previous one, while not great, was reasonably competent.

That's not a global issue though - I have people who I have worked with for years, we're highly productive and we've never met in person.

Especially these days where it's soooo easy to chat, video call, share screens, etc.

But would you be more productive in person? I am just describing my experience. In a 4 hour block, people will ask a dozen questions in-person. WFH, I'm lucky to get a single phone call despite begging them to call to ask questions.

I entered the workforce during covid, underwent a return to office mandate only to get a new job that is fully WFH.

I am easily twice as productive in my own hive than I am in the office. The office is full of distractions, noise, it is not as ergonomic as my setup at home and i get to waste 90min a day commuting.

In some very specific instances i see value in going to the office, productivity during everyday work is not among them

I know what you mean. I'm not sure why my office doesnt have distractions. We take breaks, but its not like when I was at a fortune 20 company where I'd spend an hour drinking coffee and catching up with people in other departments.

If I had to guess, we are such a small office that its obvious if someone is distracted and I can nudge them back to work.

Saying all of this outloud, you are making me realize I have the office style of a panopticon. At least my workers seem to genuinely like working.

I'm not sure that counting "How it's going?" as a productivity stat is the win you think it is.

When they say 'stuck...' and we fix a problem, I'd count that as a win.

I get that, and a lot of people like to be social with other people. But just because 10% (made up number) like it, there's no reason to force it on the rest of the workforce (not that you are).

I encourage people who are remote but want human contact to rent a desk once a week at a co-working space.

For me personally, I want to do my work as efficiently as possible, in as little time as possible, and then have my social time, which has very little in common with my work and/or colleagues.

I might be an exception, but I get up very, very early and work almost right away, and I don't want to be on a roll and then have to pack up, get in the car at a terrible traffic time where (some) people are driving like animals, hunt for parking and then find a desk. That's a huge _tax_ on my productivity.

But I don't expect or demand that the rest of the world do this.

As a side comment, I would agree with you though, that 2 in the office is better than one. But I also had a very effective pattern around 10 years ago, where I spent 2 days in the office per month, and that worked really well for me (though those days were far, far less productive than my at home work days).

Now, if the world adopted a 32 hour, 4-day work week I would probably be ok with the office 1 day a week.

I don't see what it has to do with "me too"

Take block:

AFAICT, it was just really badly managed. A long time ago it got about as much share of its main market as it was going to get. They took the cash flow from that and hired a bunch more engineers to try to break into adjacent markets, and failed, and failed and failed.

Now they are just retreating to the steady income from their core business

Pretty sure by putting "me too" in quotes and not saying #MeToo, what they're talking about is really FOMO. The companies are performing layoffs because of the trend

Oh, probably

As previous commenter said “me too” in the (lack of) leadership vein, not the sexual harassment tag.

You are being downvoted because of the 'me too', but think you are refering to companies copying other companies (Amazon hires 10k? We hire 10k! Google fires 5k? we fire 5k) and not the 'me too' movement about sexual assault/harrassement.

People are downvoting because they think is "that" me too. What op meant is all the copycat management. "They use roflcopter.js? Then we must. They use AI? Then we must. They hire/fire 9070 people? Then we must."

I don't really see any relevance to "me too". Far more likely it's to cover from insane overhearing in the pandemic era, and no one wants to admit they overdid it.

I would guess the opposite, that anti-woke statements from management is a big red flag correlating with poor company performance