Our CEO got back from a trip to San Francisco, visited some tech startups, and decided that is the model we should follow. Five days a week in office by March 30. The announcement came with language about collaboration and energy and the kind of culture that builds great companies. What it did not mention is that we are not a 200-person startup. We are a company that has been through multiple mergers, a CEO departure, billions in writedowns, production cuts in North America, and is now asking the people who survived all of that to drive into an office five days a week to collaborate in a building that still has the cultural DNA of four different companies that were forced together. The engineers I know who could leave have left or are actively looking. The ones going to Tier 1 suppliers are getting pay bumps of 20 to 30 percent in some cases. The brain drain is real and nobody in the C-suite is connecting it to the RTO policy because they do not want to.
May 19, 2026 - 01:22
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The brain drain number you…
The brain drain number you cited is right and I have seen it at another company going through the same thing. But I want to push back on one piece of the framing. The C-suite is not failing to connect RTO to attrition because they do not want to. They are choosing not to connect it because the people leaving are expensive experienced engineers and the replacement plan is to hire younger people at lower salaries who will show up five days a week without complaint. The attrition is not a bug in the RTO strategy. For some organizations it is functioning exactly as intended. That is the more uncomfortable version of this story and it is why nobody at the top is changing course.
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