Flywheel Mama

RTO isn’t new. At least the term isn’t new to me, as I was ‘called’ back into the office in my mid-20s during my time at IBM, a corporation that was a pioneer in telecommuting since the 1970s.

Many of my co-workers from various business units lived across the country—East Coast cities like New York City and Boston, Raleigh, Jackson Hole, and numerous flyover states. While my colleagues enjoyed flexible locations, I commuted via Bart Monday through Friday to the San Francisco office, often called the Watson Hub of the West. As one of the few marketers engaging daily with product and engineering teams, my manager valued my role as the resident marketer aligning product and go-to-market strategies.

But that routine changed in 2017 when IBM announced all marketers had to physically report to one of five office hubs: San Francisco, Costa Mesa, Raleigh, Austin, or New York City. The company emphasized that in-person collaboration drives innovation, but the effectiveness of this claim remains debated.

Two primary obstacles deterred many employees from relocating:

• Family Roots: Many employees had deeply planted roots, with spouses’ jobs and children enrolled in local daycare or schools—relocation meant uprooting entire families.
• Salary Disparities: Relocation stipends were minor, and salaries were not adjusted for higher-cost locations, such as moving from Minneapolis to San Francisco without a pay increase, significantly impacting lifestyle.

Some speculated the move was a tactic to phase out higher-paid, longer-tenured employees in favor of younger, lower-paid hires to rejuvenate IBM’s culture and innovation.

Employees and their families were offered up to $2,000 in expenses to visit their reporting office location to make an informed decision.

What happened to those unwilling to relocate? They faced limited options, severance packages, COBRA insurance notifications, and support services for resume updates and interview preparation.

My Choice and Experience

I hoped to be assigned to the San Francisco office, given most product and engineering teams were based there. However, my role was aligned with the New York office because the CMO and VP of Marketing resided there, requiring relocation.

I had three options:

1. This was my opportunity to move to NYC like I always wanted! Experience the city that never sleeps for a year or two, and move back to SF if I wanted to. I mean that was the reason why I even considered applying to NYU’s Stern Business School!
2. I stay in SF and start interviewing for my next role.
3. I start engaging with career services in my current MBA program. Heck, if I am relocating to as far as NYC, then I might as well try my luck moving to Seattle, Boston, Chicago, and other cities that companies are recruiting at my school. I literally laughed-out-loud because I went through the recruiting process last Fall (months before the RTO announcement) with the rest of my MBA classmates just so that I didn’t have FOMO. But I held back in my interviews knowing that I couldn’t leave IBM even if I got offers because IBM was paying for my MBA and I was on the hook to work for IBM for two years after graduation.

My trip to NYC for a meet-and-greet

Though I was 70% positive that I wouldn’t move, I took a trip to NYC to meet and greet the leadership and the team. I hoped that people I’d meet would change my mind and I’d relocate to NYC.

I was wrong.

I only met with the head of marketing for our business unit for a coffee at a Starbucks across the reporting office, and took a tour around the office with a facilities person in charge of this RTO plan for NYC.

Meeting with the head of marketing wasn’t memorable, and I don’t even remember how exactly it went. The head of marketing showed up just to check it off her list that she tried her best to get her team to relocated to NYC. And it didn’t make me feel confident that moving to NYC was right for me. It felt like I was just a number.

My conversation with the facilities person gave me more perspective. She told me that I was young and from Silicon Valley, which would give me vast opportunities in the future. Why am I even considering moving away from my family just to follow a job? She went on saying that even if I wasn’t married (and I wasn’t at the time) with kids, I shouldn’t change my destiny just because someone else told me to move. And to add on NYC triple taxed.

It was enlightening. I walked away satisfied with this meet-and-greet.

I walked back to my hotel, where my sister was waiting for me to have brunch and explore what the city had to offer.

I told my boss and sent a written letter that I wasn’t going to relocate to NYC. She congratulated me on making the right choice.

Keep the momentum going,

Flywheel Mama