Now that all of the drama about his potential cage match with Space Karen has died down, Mark Zuckerberg is free to remind the world just why we all hated him in the first place. Yup, Lizard Boy is back to doing that other thing he loves best: being a shameless billionaire who is all about those shareholder profits, baby!

Back in June, Meta, like many companies, updated their remote work policy, and it was basically one big “just kidding!” Despite Zuckerberg once declaring that Meta would be largely a remote company, the new policy required employees to be back in person three days a week. Late last week, an internal memo went out with some pretty strict return-to-office policies. Remember all of those podcasts and think pieces declaring that thanks to the pandemic, employees held all of the power? Well, quelle surprise, but we are now in the “The Empire Strikes Back” phase of workers vs. big business.

Mark Zuckerberg, once a champion of fully remote work, has doubled down on Meta’s crackdown on working from home—with the company threatening to discipline anyone who doesn’t abide by the looming rule changes.

Late last week, the Facebook and Instagram parent company laid out the precise details of its return-to-office mandate in a staff memo, the details of which were published by Insider.

Describing the shift as an “In-Person Time Policy,” Meta’s head of HR Lori Goler reiterated that from Sept. 5, it would be mandatory for all employees—except those with management-approved exemptions—to be back in the office three days a week.

Meta first told its employees in June that it was updating its remote work policy, meaning they would be expected to work from their assigned offices at least three days a week from September—a move that came much later than many of its Big Tech peers like Google, Apple, and Twitter.

The social media titan said at the time that this “distributed work” framework would allow its staff to “make a meaningful impact both from the office and at home.”

It marked a significant U-turn from CEO Zuckerberg’s pandemic-era assertions that half of Meta’s tens of thousands of employees could be working remotely by the end of the decade, and that the tech giant would become “the most forfƒƒuvward-leaning company on remote work.”

[From Fortune]

I am no legal scholar, but I think that Meta probably has every right to update their remote-work policy. Once the other big companies started ordering employees back into the office, it was only a matter of time. It still sucks that Meta did such a 180 on its employees. Even with three months’ warning, I would be mad if I had completely rearranged my life and, say, moved someplace more affordable and out of the Silicon Valley area based on my own CEO’s words. I have firsthand stories from people who were hired by tech companies during the pandemic for a fully remote position, only to have them turn around and give those workers the ultimatum of going into the office (even if it meant moving halfway across the country) or find a new job. Is Meta trying to get employees to leave so they don’t have to pay to lay them off?

I’m curious to hear what people think about remote vs in-person work now and if their preference has changed since businesses started bringing people back into the office. I love working from home but am also a giant extrovert, and need to have some form of human interaction for my mental health. I think it’s different for everyone because we all have different work-styles, you know? I work better when I’m at home without distraction but have had coworkers tell me they are more productive when they’re in-person, so I guess personally, if I had to choose, I’d pick a hybrid situation with 1-2 days in the office.