Roblox, the $19 billion gaming giant, has joined a growing number of tech companies abandoning remote work and those who don’t want to work from the company’s physical offices in California at least three days a week (which for some means employees who are relocating). CEO and founder David Baszucki warned the company would have to find another way out.
“Join our three-day office schedule (Tuesday-Thursday) or get your severance package,” Baszucki said recently wrote in a memo to employees..
Employees have until mid-January to carefully consider the ultimatum and make a decision. But Baszucki said that whether they like it or not, companies will now “transition from remote work” to in-person work beginning most of the week of July 15, 2024.
Roblox assures that those who need to relocate closer to the company’s San Mateo headquarters to comply with the company’s new policies will receive assistance with relocation costs.
Meanwhile, employees who cannot be transferred will have another three months until April 15 to find work, or, as Baszucki put it, “move out of the role of full-time employees.”
Roblox did not immediately respond of wealth Request for comment.
Roblox CEO: Office return is necessary for innovation, but virtual workspaces aren’t good enough
Like most tech companies, Roblox went fully remote when the pandemic began in March 2020. Although Baszucki said he was initially “impressed” with how employees were working from home, he soon said he was dissuaded. “Zoom fatigue” and lack of internship opportunities for new employees.
“We had many in-depth discussions during this time and kept coming back to the idea that, ultimately, Roblox is an innovative company and we need to get back to work on the ground,” he wrote.
Baszuki added that this was the company’s first in-person meeting since quarantine and made him realize what his business was missing by simply connecting through screens.
“Within 45 minutes, I ended three separate conversations and spontaneously completed what I wanted to do and acted on it, which had never happened in the past few years of video conferencing,” he added.
Plus, despite Roblox’s foray into the virtual world—the company recently launched a virtual career center where job seekers can step into an immersive reimagining of its headquarters to see firsthand what it would be like to work there—even Baszucki isn’t quite there. Believe it will be so. Comparisons with real life are currently possible.
“While I believe we will reach a point where virtual workspaces are as engaging, collaborative and productive as physical spaces, we are not there yet,” he insists.
CEO issues ultimatum – but not without risks
Baszuki is not the first CEO to take a firm stance on returning to work. Last year, Tesla CEO and Twitter (now Otherwise just leave.
“If you don’t show up, we will assume you have resigned,” he wrote in an email to Tesla employees, then issued a similar order to Employee X later last year.
The bold move met with backlash at the time, but others have since followed suit.
Most recently, Amazon’s angry CEO Andy Jassy told employees who have resisted the company’s return-to-office directive for months to either accept the new rules or move on.
“If you can’t disagree and commit, you’re probably not going to be successful at Amazon,” he said, adding that some employees work three days a week in the office while others refuse to do so. is incorrect. .
Grindr issued a similar ultimatum to employees last month. But this aggressive strategy is not without risks. Grindr’s executive team quickly discovered that employees could issue ultimatums to their employers.
The dating platform lost nearly half of its staff in two weeks, including much of its engineering team, leaving the company facing technical issues due to aggressive RTO orders. Meanwhile, the operations of Twitter (now
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