All federal agencies ordered to terminate remote work–ideally within 30 days

> American taxpayers are wasting billions to pay for owned and leased federal office space that remain largely vacant

Maybe this is an opportunity for savings instead of a forced RTO?

Then again, I doubt it's worthwhile to reason about this decision; we've seen more controversial ones already (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42785891 ) and I guess this is not the final one.

Employers, government or not, still wield far too much power over the personal lives of employees. I think it is rather meaningless to try and understand why RTO is en vogue now.

Why is the discussion so rarely focused on the fact that your boss can demand that you uplift your life or else you're fired, immediately and with impunity, and what you have to say about it means absolutely nothing?

Maybe I am baffled by this because I live and work in Europe where the relationship is a bit better (though I am not sure for how much longer it will remain as such). Americans seem very content to allow this behavior as normal because, obviously, other employees (but not me, I am a great employee!) must serve their stakeholders better so we can gain every bit of efficiency and increase precious income in the economy.

You can see 18F frantically making policy updates on https://github.com/18F/handbook/commits/main/

Feds have a hard time hiring under current hiring requirements and resources, so this is just going to restrict that further.

Sounds inefficient.

I wonder if they’ll also start paying a market price for skilled labor.

Well, at least now we have RTO firmly associated with the gesture the head of DOGE made on his speech a couple of days ago.

Does playing golf all day count RTO? Or does the president himself not have to return to the office?

We're still waiting guidance as to whether this applies just to remote work or if it includes telework. (A few years ago, we were told that the difference was remote workers worked completely remote; but, teleworkers have a cubicle or office.) The Executive Order says "remote work arrangements"; but, it then says. "require employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis" Most of our personnel telework one, sometimes two, days per week. We do have a couple of remote workers, who are military spouses and they're wondering if that falls under the possible exemptions.

This will be interesting to see how this plays out in DC. Gridlock traffic? Will Metro ridership will go back to pre-Covid levels? I am skeptical this will be nothing more than a hybrid work arrangement for most people.

Simultaneously they also want to sell a bunch of federal real estate - I support that, but it seems like there's an inherent contradiction there.

People assume effective bureaucracy is small bureaucracy but ultimately the size and effectiveness aren't correlated - you're just creating queues if it's too small.

I find this American style of leadership fascinating. It is certainly easier than the Dutch style of endless meetings and giving everyone a say.

I hope they have enough office space ready for this RTO.

Amazon did not and had to delay RTO and even some start dates for new hires.

Disappointing, but hardly surprising at this point.

The idea that productivity will be improved by increased "supervision" is hilarious. It will cause the higher performers to start looking elsewhere; but perhaps that is the aim.

It's amazing that in our lifetimes we got to witness both the creation of the internet and the destruction of America.

Attacking clean energy, defunding medical research, mass purging federal workers. The Trump administration has done more to harm Americans in a few days than Al-Qaeda, the Soviets, Iran or China could have hoped to do in years.

My condolences to everyone affected by this and my thanks to everyone working to maintain a functioning society through this time.

With all the BS the new administration is coming up with, I guess the federal government lose anyone competent that is not a very loyal Trump supporter.

The cost of dealing with remote employees who are not contributing as they should falls on the agencies. That's not insignificant. By requiring everyone to return, that cost is eliminated (or at least much less). IMO, in-person, on-site that cost is much less and the problems are easier to spot early and deal with before they get worse or become more widespread (more and more workers start slacking off).