It’s an attrition strategy, just the latest in a long line. They’re always searching for new ways to cut headcount without paying for it. RTO is simply the newest. It was never about culture, collaboration, efficiency, or whatever convenient excuses they came up with. In the end, it’s about forcing people out without offering a dime.
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That is all you can do - call names, throw insults. Cannot innovate, cannot work, scheme to circumvent rules and regulations and leech on others work to line your pockets
Oh I forgot you are making America Great Again
Shows the lack of left brain cells - may be too much reefing ?
@14v+1jsyvzhy4 OK Boomer.
Oh, of course! You’re absolutely right—nothing is stopping you from setting up the Bank of Middle America in rural Kansas. I mean, why settle for a mere salary when you could redefine the financial industry from the heartland?
Go ahead, bring Wall Street-level pay to small-town America, recruit the best talent, and watch the locals line up for AI-powered trading algorithms. Just imagine the earnings calls—Kansas cornfields buzzing with high-frequency trading servers.
Honestly, with your innovation skills, I’m shocked you haven’t done it already. Make America Great Again, one rural bank at a time!
@dy+1jsyvzhy4 - it’s not pertinent to the discussion , but I’m a language nerd. “Mid six figures” is 400-600k. Six figures is 100k- 999k. No way the few folks here making that much are double dipping on consulting gigs. I think you meant to say 140-160k, which would mean engineers, for the most part. I once heard tell of one programmer in the 90s working 2 jobs in the same building for the same company, on different floors. That’s how disconnected our HR payroll systems were.
- Boomers are still in positions of power: despite being the generation that brought us the cell phone, the internet, and the personal computer, they're still technologically inept and refuse to modernize. They still buy into the antiquated romanticized post-war delusion that everyone should drive a car to work every day, get stuck in traffic, and be confined to a cubicle for 8 hours whilst occasionally chatting idle banter by the water cooler and going out for muh smokes every 15 minutes. Thus the concept of remote work completely baffles them.
- RV and Alejandro are former Goldman Sachs finance bros, a.k.a. cutthroat sociopaths who believes a true financial firm should resemble Wolf of Wall Street rather than a modern workplace or a home office.
- The pandemic showed that productivity can still be accomplished without the need for being in an office. The real dubious part is how the company is spread out far around the world, so most of the time when we have meetings in office they're virtual Teams meetings with people in NYC, Pittsburgh, Manchester, and Warsaw in various time zones. Wrap your head around that one.
- As much as the company touts how forward-thinking they are with charity work, they still want everyone to increase our carbon footprints by driving to work everyday.
- They need to justify usage of commercial real estate.
- Overpaid senior officers are out of touch with the rising costs of rents, gas, and food – hence they assume everyone can easily afford to live in these huge cities, or if not, drive long distances to BNY offices and get price gouged to park a car.
During the pandemic all those managers realized they were useless and panicked so now we have to go back so they can get their fill of micro managing.
@dy+1jsyvzhy4
Interesting but quite frankly those people working as vendors are more fringe elements than anything. Honestly now, everybody and their brother and sister are simply not working more than one job. Even based at home for many this job is overly demanding. The REAL reason for this ‘RTO hammer down’ is quite simply our leaders and their industry peers looking to assert themselves. They were in an awkward state during COVID where employees got to control their workplace. And now, these leaders need to show they are ‘managing’ and directing. They cannot justify spending vast sums of money on corporate real estate, rentals, leases, services, property maintenance if no one is there. That’s the real reason. Not to mention that these companies get immense tax breaks and incentives by having people come into these locations. There are also deals with cities and municipalities that companies have when people commute. How could Robin stand in front of his fellow board members and justify costs, service bills and property asset usage when he is getting less than 20% utilization? How could he make a case to NYC and other locations that not having people use mass transit and city services makes BNY a good neighbor? He would be fired for not leading and that certainly isn’t happening. Also not to mention, Industry leaders recognize the vast decline of commercial real estate usage and they now look for contract renegotiations opportunities to improve usage for cheaper costs. This is why some locations are being closed and bigger ones being pushed for near 100% utilization. We all know that working remotely is better for man and womankind, but it’s economics and politics at play. Question for Robin on May 8th- hey if this company really is devoted to going green, why are we all told to go back to the office and leaving huge carbon footprints??? 😎
Why are we still debating RTO?
The return-to-office (RTO) enforcement was introduced primarily to eliminate abuse. And yes, the abuse was substantial—particularly post-COVID, when a hiring frenzy brought in a wave of new employees who quickly learned how to game the system.
I personally know three individuals who managed to hold down two jobs simultaneously. How they pulled it off still baffles me. They were on our payroll, earning mid-range six-figure salaries—not pocket change—while simultaneously working 1099-NEC gigs elsewhere, often billing through their spouses. And they weren’t discreet about it.
Smart? Absolutely. But it had to stop. BNY likely recognized this and moved to curb the problem. Yet even with RTO in place, I still see people locking themselves in conference rooms, glued to personal devices, “consulting” for other firms.
Now that the worst offenders have largely been filtered out (though certainly not all), RTO policies are disproportionately impacting the "good" employees—those who thrived under the three-day in-office schedule. The previous system worked because employees had an understanding with their immediate supervisors regarding work arrangements, rather than being confined to a rigid badge-swiping, clock-punching structure.
This board can advocate for a return to the flexible arrangement instead of enforcing a strict five-day, eight-hour office schedule for everyone.
Will it happen? Hard to say. But pushing for its reinstatement is worth the effort—at least in U.S. offices, where flexibility was once the norm.
RTO doesn't matter. Most of these positions will be found in Poland and India anyway when re-staffing. Future remote work will be based out of India.
It’s just great taking remote calls via teams from the office. 🙄
Exactly. It’s just one of the sinister lies in Robin’s abuse toolkit to get rid of people and make it look like their fault so as to pay nothing. Being in this office benefits no one except street vendors, the lunch room, parking lots, tolls, buying gas at CITGO and paying money to municipalities and mass transit to land here in this dismal place. But surprise , surprise! No one is collaborating with my salary to meet these costs. A 1.6% raise doesnt cover it either. I talk to no one and rarely meet in person in the fishbowl rooms. The joke is, we are all on teams with our headsets on anyway. Gee, what’s next? Take that away too?
True, I also think the mandatory 4 day office for people managers is about reducing the number of managers or management layers in the company. It is not really to improve any performance. The 4 day managers means coming into the office when your colleagues/reports are not in (presuming they even work in the same office as you).