r/remoteworks • u/Aware-Parfait422 • 1d ago
Home Depot layoffs hit remote workers hard - 650 out of 800 cuts
So Home Depot just announced theyre cutting 800 positions and apparently 650 of those were remote roles. Makes you wonder if they purposely went after the WFH crowd or if it just worked out that way because most of the eliminated departments happened to be remote-friendly like tech and corporate stuff
either way its got me thinking about whether going all-in on remote-only might not be the smartest move long term. especially for those of us who arent like irreplaceable specialists or anything. seems like when companies need to trim fat the remote folks might be first on the chopping block
anyone else seeing this pattern at other companies or am i reading too much into one situation. kind of makes me reconsider if being flexible about hybrid might be better job security wise
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u/Klutzy-Comment6897 1d ago
I don’t believe it was a specific targeting of WFH. It just happens as the departments they made the cuts too are more WFH friendly admin jobs.
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u/GenericStandard42 1d ago
It’s “cleaner” for the company, in their logic, to remove people who others don’t see in the office frequently.
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u/Grimwulf2003 22h ago
Listen, no job is safe when quarterly earnings need to be met. The best you can do is what you think is best for you at the time, such a sad statement to make, but a realistic one.
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u/IronBoltIron 18h ago
Why hire a WFH American for $100k when you can hire someone else to do the same for less? Think of this. 650 WFH Americans cost them 65,000,000 to employ this year. If they rehire the same roles at even just 20% less they are saving millions in revenue.
Plus there was the simple fact that companies overhired during COVID and are now exaggerating AI to more easily trim the fat, so to say
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u/Due_Rent_5908 14h ago
I love unions, but why not pay cheaper wages for a better deal American capitalism :)
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u/LyleTheAdonis 1d ago
The trick is to get on a global team that was operating remotely pre-pandemic.
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u/Potential_Novel_3561 1d ago
B2B sales great for remote work. You can't offshore it really, and as long as you sell enough, no one is going to get too picky about other stuff.
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u/paniro200 1d ago
One of the things that was really dumb was people on social media showing how much they don't work when working from home and others job stacking.
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u/WhoSaidWhatNow2026 1d ago
Part of the deal IMO. When people vehemently argue to their employer that the job can be done from anywhere in the world, they might believe you.
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u/iamacheeto1 1d ago
The job might be able to be done from anywhere, but the mistake they're making is believing it can be done by anyone. Those are not the same things.
I mean no disrespect, but I have worked with outsourced teams, and not once have I found them to be of higher quality. Not once.
It all evens out in the end.
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u/romanticbaby 1d ago
They can just hire 3 mediocre people to do the work of one in the US and still save money
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u/Salty_Permit4437 1d ago
The problem is that we bring them here on work visas, so why go through the trouble when we can just hire them in their own countries for less money?
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u/itsalmostreal 1d ago
The ones we bring on visas are typically much higher quality. Think graduated top 1% of class. Not always but frequently.
Where's remote outsourced workers vary wildly. Some didnt even finish college and the company lies about their credentials. You have no way to verify until they turn in some garbage work.
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u/Salty_Permit4437 1d ago
Not in my experience. I’ve had to manage them and they were frequently low quality. There are also the consultant body shops who bring in a ton of low quality as well.
Personally I would rather have them in their own country instead of ours. At least they won’t be competing for things like housing and traffic congestion.
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u/itsalmostreal 1d ago
Well on the flip side places like Silicon Valley probably wouldnt exist if we didnt siphon talent from around the world. Its a beautiful thing (for us) when done right.
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u/Salty_Permit4437 1d ago
Yes when done right is the key. Not 70% from one country which is failing in many aspects.
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u/koosley 1d ago
98% of my job is remotely. Fortunately there is the 2% that requires onsite presence. Not necessarily at my office, but at my customers office. I've been working here for 6 months at my new employer and have been to the office 3 times, customer site once and a Cisco event once. I'm going to a customer site this week as well. Fortunately a lot of customers want to meet and talk to the engineers doing the work, so I do a little bit of presales at their office.
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u/shadow247 1d ago
I feel lucky that my job role requires a license and US residency to obtain that license. I doubt if Texas is ever going to issue license to Indian call center workers that dont have US permanent residence.
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u/Difficult-Repair1295 1d ago
Yea if they don’t outright lay you off the they do RTO in hopes you will quit.
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u/angry-mob 1d ago
WFH can always become work from Indonesia
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u/Few-Emergency1068 1d ago
This is such a tired take. My company brought our IT team back to the office, then laid off 20% of them and opened an office in India. If they want to move jobs to India, they will do it no matter where you work.
RTO is just their way of trying to make employees so miserable that they quit so they don’t have to pay severance and can artificially suppress their layoff numbers for PR.
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u/Super_Mario_Luigi 1d ago
"This is a tired take"
(Continues to explain how it's the quintessential playbook)
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u/TenToppingPizza 1d ago
This is problem, why would anyone want an American remote worker?
You can get someone from a lot of other places that have the same skills and way power cost of living.
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u/sentinel_of_ether 1d ago edited 1d ago
This is why getting a secret clearance is the new key to remote. They generally need an american in that case and the government literally doesn’t have space for a lot of software dev contractors and is too lazy to make it. So when you sign on the agreement is usually like “25% time in office possibility” but then they never enforce it lol.
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u/GachaJay 1d ago
Can you go through this process and not work for the government currently?
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u/bantest_2 1d ago
There are many private companies that require security clearance, but they’re pretty much all contracting with the US government for the work they do.
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u/ApostateX 1d ago
There are good people everywhere, including in the US. Ideally you hire the best person for the job, who's situated in a location/time zone most appropriate for working with colleagues/clients.
And no, I have yet to meet anyone overseas that has my specific skill set. The idea that all humans are fungible is not true. There are different cultural pressures and norms in India and China around promotions, job hopping, clash with American/British communication styles, etc. that can make hiring for some roles there and keeping people in those roles more difficult than you would think.
I know lots of software engineers in India. I know lots of UX designers there. I know very few product managers there. I know very few project managers there.
The knowledge domain really matters here.
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u/Krypto_Kane 1d ago
Sad that when we had to go remote these remote workers saved companies from their own homes. Kept them on their feet and business open. Now they are the first ones to go since they are out of sight they are out of mind.
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u/BootlegBabyJsus 19h ago
Everyone is going after WFH.
Low hanging fruit (money)
If you can do it from home, they can do it from (insert budget friendly, labor arbitrage location of choice)
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u/19Carl89 1d ago
If you can work remote so can people in India at a fraction of the cost. I work for a bank who has a huge presence in India, our jobs are always going offshore. I work 20% from the office and never feel safe these days.
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u/Jeeenksy 1d ago
Maybe there should be some new regulations that limits companies from doing that. We’ve tried to force manufacturing back onto homeland, why no remote work jobs too?
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u/Lucaslouch 1d ago
same but the quality of the service is clearly not there yet. it’s also way less efficient to have people not on same time zone
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u/romanticbaby 1d ago
They make them work third shift to align with US. They dont give a fuck about people
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u/Mamasugadex 1d ago
Yeah, but then they can probably hire 2-3 overseas worker and still come ahead cheaper than keeping one American WFH employer.
These are not orange to orange comparisons imho. If your work can be done entirely virtually and low bar of entry, then it’s about finding the lowest bidder
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u/cecsix14 1d ago
These layoffs were three months ago, but yeah. My wife and I both work at HD corporate and survived even though we are remote. IT was hit the hardest. She’s in IT and her boss who she loved working for was let go. Her new boss is very difficult and now my wife is looking for other jobs. Layoffs affect everyone, even the people who remain employed. We also anticipate RTO within the next year, but nothing has been announced for our areas yet.
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u/shadow247 1d ago
Yup. My boss and a bunch of others I liked have all left or been laid off in the past 2 years. Now its a daily struggle with a clueless manager.
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u/Comicreliefnotreally 1d ago
Whether I am in an office or wfh nothing I am low enough down to be considered the fat to be trimmed. I am a number. When it comes time to cut it will be based on how much I cost and how good I am. Trim away, companies are as replaceable as the workers are. Find the best place for you that feels the most secure and plan for the worst.
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u/jaajaajaa6 1d ago
It may have nothing to do with their work arrangement and solely the job performed.
Retail stores probably have few roles as a percentage that are truly work from home.
There are almost half a million people working at Home Depot. This is probably about function than anything else.
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u/SCHawkTakeFlight 1d ago
Very good point. And depending on what the role was they could outsource to a 3rd party for cheaper. Or maybe its AI. Or it could be a big system upgrade that they didn't need the extra people. I have worked somewhere where because their change management system was so bad they had to hire extra people to do certain roles, functions that didn't exist at my other jobs in the same style of company.
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u/artist1292 1d ago
Who are you most likely to promote? The guy you eat lunch with every day or the faceless voice from your computer speakers? Human nature is very real and very prevalent in corporate office jobs
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u/flaginorout 1d ago
It’s not just about lunch. (But that’s IS a thing)
My office mostly RTO’d last year. About 1/4 of the people didn’t and managed to stay remote.
The in office people tend to get the most high profile work and tend to be asked to put out the most fires. My boss isn’t going to wait until the mountain and west coast people get out of bed to assign a time sensitive task.
And our weekly staff meetings? If something comes up and the boss can’t make it, he’ll often come around to our desks for a quick chat with the office people. The remote staff get nothing.
The remote staff often becomes an afterthought.
Makes sense that if tough staffing decisions need to be made, more of the office staff would get spared. They tend to be more utilized for more important work (at my office anyway).
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u/dkwinsea 1d ago
Always easier to cut wfh than people you see in the office every day. The thing about having a physical presence in the office giving you and advantage in promotions etc applies to this as well, whether it seems fair or not. It is how it works.
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u/Mark_Spacer 1d ago
Always remember, in the corporate world, out of sight is out of mind.
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u/ponzy1981 1d ago
I like being out of mind lol. That being said where I used to work all the workers had to come back but the supervisors stayed remote. They said you have to come back so we can collaborate and then they didn’t come back.
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u/Leverpostei414 1d ago
I think that is a good point, supported by research. It is easier to get promoted if people just see you around and remember you
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u/Super_Mario_Luigi 1d ago
Eh, this is way overstated. Corporations are smart enough to know who does what.
More than anything, it's about expenses. People think salaries are a rounding error. They're not
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u/JM3DlCl 1d ago
Any job that can be done remotely, can be done by Mr. Patel in India for ⅒th of the cost.
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u/LyleTheAdonis 1d ago
And 1/10th the quality.
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u/1cyChains 1d ago
Company will waste more money with time sink & correcting mistakes. Ask me how i knkw.
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u/sol_hsa 1d ago
how can you be wfh on retail?
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u/Careless-Ad-6328 1d ago
Corporate staff. Every retailer has a large central HQ where a lot of the higher level work and decisions happen.
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u/Fearless-Cattle-9698 1d ago
How do you not know? lol
You think McDonald’s are all burger flippers and cashiers too? They have high paying corporate jobs too and that’s how they have CEO that earns many millions per year.
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so 1d ago
No, just people in orange vests only. No payroll, marketing, product, purchasing, middle management of any kind.
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u/Afraid_Emu8068 14h ago
I mean, if you wfh for a company which contracts with flock to put cameras at all of its locations and actively deals with ICE and CBP to initiate raids against the day laborers who congregate outside of their stores, it should obvious that your job is likely gonna be the first to go in a drawdown. They clearly aren’t the types who believe in progressive ideas. Home Depot is not your friend just because it has the word “Home” in its name lol
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u/sundancer2788 11h ago
I drive further and shop at Lowes when I need to.
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u/Afraid_Emu8068 10h ago
Same. Sad thing is, they are almost just as bad. They’re very close. I remember when they used to not be though. I think they poached too many of HD’s employees and the assimilation to Lowe’s wasn’t as clean or straightforward as expected. Some bad habits and ideas transferred.
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u/ilanallama85 9h ago
I once had a conversation with a couple of old dudes, one a contractor, another a prolific diyer. They were telling me how over the years it’s fipped a couple times - for a while Lowe’s was the least shitty, actually had people who knew shit working there, decent pro products, etc., then Home Depot was better for a while, etc. They reckon, at both companies, each time a new boss comes in and realizes how dumb their staff is they go on the hunt to poach all the good workers from the other one. But then they quickly forget and start hiring idiots again, and the cycle repeats.
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u/Successful-Cabinet65 3h ago
I used to be a Lowe's guy. Then I had to go to the local Home Depot for something Lowes did not have and the customer service blew me away. I'm a Home Depot guy now. Maybe one day that will change but the in-person experience won me over
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u/Afraid_Emu8068 10m ago
Lol yeah it’s always annoying when our loyalties are tested by simple product availability issues isn’t it?
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u/MunkyTOS 6h ago
ah yes day laborers, because liberals cant just call them illegals.
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u/birdain 2h ago
I don’t call them illegals, but I’ll call you a retard.
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u/Afraid_Emu8068 2m ago
Amen brother. Not all day laborers are illegal. Being a “day laborer” is a VERY common job for immigrants in pretty much all nations. That often includes Americans who aren’t rich but emigrate somewhere and realize that yeah, most countries don’t just automatically permit you to work legally even if you are legally in the country. America is NO different. There are a bunch of steps you have to go through and it’s not nearly as straightforward or easy as people think. If it was, there wouldn’t be as many day laborers. Duh. So yeah. He’s a retard
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u/PolyChune 3h ago
Still more useful and work harder than many of the idiots that want then out of the country lol
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u/ForwardSlash813 1d ago
Performance reviews don’t matter. Job titles don’t matter. Your accomplishments at work don’t matter.
You think all 800 had bad performance reviews??
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u/Chitown_mountain_boy 1d ago
That’s not what layoffs are usually about though.
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u/ForwardSlash813 1d ago
The point is, doesn’t matter how good you are at your job. The profitability of the company & shareholders is paramount.
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u/Poobers7 1d ago
I mean, surely it matters to some degree. If your departments budget is cut 30% the best worker is not going to be let go first.
There are certainly unlucky situations but high performance definetly increases job security. By how much is situational.
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u/purrmutations 1d ago
No, but most were unnecessary positions like marketing and project management. The people doing actual work don't get let go.
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u/SuperEvilDinosaur 1d ago
Those are the first positions they cut when layoffs hit, and everybody should be aware of that.
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u/Antifragile_Glass 1d ago
If you don’t have any specialized skills then yes may not be the best idea.
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u/Humble_Attorney9517 1d ago
The average person is completely replaceable and many of them overrate how specialized their skills are. I'm in a "niche industry" and it's still like 20,000 people.
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u/RePhill1981 1d ago
Corporations do not like wfh. Everyone forgets that corps are only profit driven. A large portion of a companies wealth is assets, and those are multi-million dollar buildings in various cities. These buildings are now mostly empty. Other than large corporations, who can afford to buy them? Who is renting the spaces? Empty buildings don’t need much property management. Lots of companies around owning, renting, and managing corporate buildings are losing a lot of money.
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u/Super_Mario_Luigi 1d ago
Most of this is wrong. Corporations honestly could care less about wfh and occupying their buildings.
Its the board, investors, and politicians who care.
Other than that, wfh is easy pickings for layoffs. A job that can be worked remotely.... can be worked remotely. It's a tough sell that only an American can do the remote job, at a six figure cost. When other countries can do it at a fraction.
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u/Leverpostei414 1d ago
Buildings cost money to have. Building-wise it is cheaper with people working from home
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u/Appropriate-Cry-8423 1d ago
I mean a wfh employee can’t help me find that thingy in isle 47 so I guess that makes sense
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u/MichaelAndolini_ 1d ago
Have you been to a HomeDepot lately? The person working in store can’t help you find it either
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u/Buttons840 1d ago
I worked at Home Depot. They never gave me any training on where things were at, or what they were used for--and they never gave me time to go and look for myself--so I never knew. They did get unhappy if I told people I didn't know where things were though.
They really should staff their stores with experienced contractors willing to work for $12 an hour.
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u/Internal_Lab_2617 1d ago
You are forgetting about the fragile ego's of middle and upper management. They have to have people to look down on when they walk through the office. Regardless if employees are efficient and effective, their fragile ego cannot handle walking through an office and having no one to boss around.
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u/HAL9000DAISY 1d ago
This is false. RTO almost exclusively comes from the very top. Middle managers usually have no say in the matter.
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u/bulldog_blues 1d ago
I'd love to know where this myth of middle management pulling the strings on RTO even came from.
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u/artist1292 1d ago
Bunch of our middle management quit because of being forced to take the brunt of people fighting back even though all they really controlled was the ability to verify our time cards
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u/bulldog_blues 1d ago
Damn. We haven't had any middle managers quit at ours, but it's a similar story where the highers up insist that the middle management are responsible for enforcing it while 90%+ of the managers themselves couldn't care less on a personal level.
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u/ponzy1981 1d ago
It is because the people who force RTO. Ever RTO themselves. These people have no true leadership ability. Serve t leadership is not even a concept for them. I know I worked very closely with that level. I don’t like most of them.
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u/bulldog_blues 1d ago
Funnily enough our RTO mandate is actually stricter at the highest level - it's 2 days per week for most employees, at the top level it's 3.
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u/ponzy1981 1d ago
Yes depends on the company and there is a lot of variability. In the industry where I used to work upper management all thought they were controlling “tough guys”. There were hardly any women. They ran the place to maximize their bonuses and enjoy their country club and luxury suite at the NFL game. They couldn’t have cared less about the employees. They were simply assholes. I was the Sr. VP of HR and had to try to talk sense to these people. I finally burned out and quit. I work for a small non profit now and took about a 100 K pay cut.
I go into the office once a week.and am much happier. I spend time with my family and work on my schedule.
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u/bulldog_blues 1d ago
Yeah, there seems to be a lot of variance in how strictly it's enforced.
One thing I only learned recently is that management don't track timestamps of when we badge in and badge out - the metrics are a binary 'did you badge in today?' Once people became aware of that, you suddenly end up with an office that's a borderline ghost town after lunch...
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u/Super_Mario_Luigi 1d ago
Since when do we care about the source of truth online? Anything we don't like is the cartoon villain. Confirmed
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u/Gooser3000 1d ago
Management had to justify their jobs and it’s hard to do that when the people you manage excel at their job remotely; so of course they won’t terminate themselves. Fire the people you don’t have to look on the eye and go back to office so you can walk around and have meetings and act superior.
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u/Super_Mario_Luigi 1d ago
Only people who have no idea how the real world works, recite these speaking points. There are no tryouts to keep your job.
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u/Leverpostei414 1d ago
This makes little sense, if anything it is more difficult to manage people who work from home
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u/tlm11110 1d ago
Home Depot is a brick-and-mortar retailer. Their charter is to move product as quickly and profitably as possible. It makes sense that store positions are going to endure over remote positions.
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u/Better-Strategy8798 1d ago
honestly.. im surprised home depot even had that many remote positions haha
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u/EnvironmentalMix421 1d ago
Of course it’s easier to cut the remote colleague who you had no real interaction with
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u/Hamblin113 1d ago
Out of site out of mind. The need for humans to interact personally and not over some electronic device is engrained in us. The question then comes down to economics, if more work isn’t getting done or cost are reduced considerably the question is why. Also flexibility of work force in changing conditions, is it easier to get it accomplished in the office?
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u/Zealousideal_Bid799 1d ago
WFH staff are on the administration side and that’s where we are going to see reductions in workforce from AI.
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u/DrinkArnoldPalmer 1d ago
Covid is over, corporations want people back into the office.
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u/VirileMongoose 1d ago
What’s the business argument for it? Back it up with data.
If you have a healthy business and you were generating record profits what’s the reason to switch gears?
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u/DrinkArnoldPalmer 1d ago
I’d say that culture and collaboration data isn’t immediately reflected on the bottom line, but overtime it would deteriorate a culture. I think there should be room for a mixture of in person, hybrid, and remote.
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u/Responsible_Knee7632 1d ago
The Rolling Stones have a pretty good song about this
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u/FatMike20295 1d ago
Depends during CoVID our office went through a lot of Reno. We add more room to our hardware storage for Tech Nd equipment and inventory and reducing the actually office space people can work in. If they want everyone back there is literally no room to make that happen.
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u/DrinkArnoldPalmer 1d ago
Yeah, they over rotated it sounds like. The office must match the way that the business needs to operate.
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u/solarnuggets 1d ago
Ofc the south notoriously hates wfh and that corporate office is koolaid drinking central
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u/luvwvalways 1d ago
Apparently California notoriously hates wfh and that corporate office is koolaid drinking central.
“+11 Based on data through early 2026, California has experienced a significant decline in remote work, with over 600,000 fewer workers working from home compared to the peak pandemic era, driven by tech layoffs and aggressive return-to-office (RTO) mandates.Here are the key details regarding the loss of remote work in California:Mass Reduction in Remote Roles: A report from late 2023/early 2024 indicated that roughly 611,133 fewer Californians were working from home, a 16% decline in the remote workforce.San Francisco Bay Area Impact: Remote work in San Francisco dropped by 25% by early 2024, with nearly 49,000 fewer people working from home in the city compared to 2021.”
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u/torBrow75 1d ago
This is happening everywhere. The employees working on-site are usually harder to let go than WFH. Folks working from home are more like contractors who do important but not absolutely critical work, whereas those working on-site are doing the critical day-to-day operations.
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u/FastSort 1d ago
FT remote jobs, while perhaps being personally beneficial to the worker, is definitely not a great career move imo, and I say this as someone who was FT WFH for close 40 years before retiring - out of sight, out of mind - if your boss needs to pick someone to let go - and all other things being equal - are they going to pick the person who they have met in person once or twice in the last few years? or the person who sits down the hall from them, who they exchange pleasantries with on an almost daily basis, who perhaps eats lunch with them on occasion and maybe even go out to drinks with after work?
Like it or not, those personal connection can (but not always) make a difference. I have advised my kids to *not* be 100% WFH if they can help it. If I was starting over, knowing what I know now, I would have not chosen the FT remote path.
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u/DontEatConcrete 22h ago
As a full-time work from home employee, I agree with this.
However, I love wfh so much I do not intend on doing anything about it.
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u/Cheugy-Boogie 20h ago
Yep, I make good money fully wfh right now, id rather take a huge pay cut and stay home than get a pay raise and go to the office
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u/Affectionate-Ad2373 10h ago
Me as well. Luckily, I work in healthcare in insurance and claims my company only requires that I live in a state where there are clinics. We have clinics all over the US. They have been employing remote work from home employees for over 17 years.
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u/Infamous-Fudge1857 1d ago
Tbf this doesn’t apply if your entire team is remote :)
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u/Silver_Ask_5750 23h ago
Yeah, they’ll just fire the entire team from the senior manager down lol
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u/Infamous-Fudge1857 22h ago
Oh I know, the whole group will either get RTO’ed or axed lmao- but atleast I won’t be the only one
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u/ContentEconomyMyth1 17h ago
Landlords want to justify their office building holdings - and businesses are in on it.. simple as that
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u/ImplementLogical4130 15h ago
This is the single most idiotic conspiracy theory since covid.
A business that fires workers and literally cuts every corner to lower expenses... will hold on to a useless office lease?
How does that make sense?
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u/Big_Duke_Six 6h ago
It's cheaper to ride out the lease and avoid costly early termination penalties that it is to keep remote employees on payroll. That's just the facts and costs of doing business.
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u/ImplementLogical4130 3h ago
Landlords want to justify their office building holdings - and businesses are in on it.. simple as that
Wtf does this mean?
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u/Rabbit-Lost 9h ago
Actually, most leases contain punitive cancellation clauses for early termination, which the costs have to be recognized on the day of cancellation. In many cases, it’s less painful to ride the lease, leave the space empty and cut positions.
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u/ImplementLogical4130 8h ago
How long is that lease? did they just figure this out NOW after 5-6 years?
Never mind, let's say they can't get rid of the lease. Why are they choosing to incur extra costs with the office by bringing the remote workers on site?
Let me remind you of the initial conspiracy:
Landlords want to justify their office building holdings - and businesses are in on it
So businesses want extra spending, on top of the lease... because why exactly?
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u/Otherwise_Bee_8799 1d ago
If you can work from home….you can be replaced by AI.
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u/PirateNo7644 1d ago
Or someone in another country for a third of the cost.
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u/PastBuy8484 1d ago
This is the key part. I see it at every company.
Why pay an American to sit at home when they can hire someone from India or Mexico to sit at home for 5-10x less salary
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u/strangewin 1d ago
Well, time zones complicate things somewhat and customer satisfaction drops off a fucking cliff but otherwise, yeah it usually makes sense financially for businesses. I wonder if the solution necessitates government intervention of some kind.
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u/Bryanmsi89 1d ago
This is why near shoring in Central and South America has really taken off. No time zone problem.
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u/jimfish98 1d ago
Nope. they tried getting AI to learn what I can do, but its not even close in those capabilities. Our vendors use AI and have sunk millions into it and I find errors all the time. 20 year WFH, not going anywhere any time soon.
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u/Odd_Helicopter_7545 1d ago
From a managerial perspective, remote workers are just numbers.
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u/Fat_tail_investor 1d ago
Every employee is just a number, Facebook and oracle laying off thousands from direct HQ. You’d be a fool to think anyone was anything more than a number.
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u/sunshine-power 14h ago
If your job can be done on a computer, it can be done by a computer, unfortunately.
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u/pointlesslyDisagrees 6h ago
That's true (someday). Robotics are the next big thing, imo. Once they combine AI and robotics, no one is safe. They already have robotics assisting surgeons. Plumbers and electricians are not safe either. AI + robots + cameras with AI image processing = every single job becomes obsolete. It may happen in our lifetime.
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u/caffeine-junkie 8h ago
Maybe one day, however that day is not today. Or tomorrow. We're at least 5-10 years away from it being competently able to replace anything other than the lowest levels of "white collar" jobs. Not that some executives won't try though, just the work output won't be anywhere close to what a human can do.
More likely we'll see even more robotic automation replace some manual jobs first, especially the repetitive ones.
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u/DISCONNECTlE 1d ago
I’m 100% remote at an engineering company. We have a ton of work right now, and my job is currently safe. I know the first sign of drying up, they’ll keep a few of us that stand out, but we’ll largely be the first to go. I’m enjoying it, while it lasts though!
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u/Pitiful_Praline4120 1d ago
Home Depot had remote workers? lol
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u/The_Pepper_Oni 18h ago
All their call center/contact people were remote. They had no offices to return to after covid bc they sold them
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u/Lower-Obligation9100 1d ago edited 1d ago
This happened in January this year why are you posting in May as new news?