Since the waning days of the pandemic, corporate goliaths like Meta (META) , JPMorgan (JPM) , and Google (GOOGL) have been ushering employees back into the office — and sending those who protest or pout home with pink-slips. One of the final holdouts of flexible work is now copying their playbook.
On Tuesday, The Seattle Times reported that Microsoft MSFT would call its employees back into its Redmond, WA headquarters by Feb. 2026. The move, first reported in a Business Insider report last month, suggested the company would require workers to be in office at least three days per week.
The policy will apply to any employees within 50 miles of the company’s largest site. Microsoft, Washington state’s third-largest employer, has over 53,000 employees based out of its sprawling campus, or nearly a quarter of the company’s global headcount. The company, like other tech giants, will consider attendance in performance reviews.
It remains to be seen how the remote work policy will trickle down to Microsoft’s regional offices, but The Seattle Times reports that there’s “no set timeline for those employees yet.”
Microsoft’s Chief Human Resources Officer, Amy Coleman, told The Seattle Times that Microsoft found that people work better together and “deliver stronger results” while working in office. The company holds that an RTO policy is crucial as the company focuses its efforts on AI.
However, researchers have found that return-to-office has another intent: headcount reduction. Instead of laying off tenured employees and paying severance, return-to-office has allowed many of America’s most valuable firms to induce workers into resigning. Alternatively, companies can simply fire employees for not showing up after they change the rules.
Since the start of 2025, Microsoft has laid off over 15,000 employees, per data from layoffs.fyi. The company has also been criticized in recent months as it has continued to tap the H1-B visa program to hire foreign-born workers, drawing the ire of tech employees and immigration-critical cultural conservatives. It denies any connection between the two.
Return to office is bound to shake up the morning (and evening) commute even further in the Puget Sound region. Earlier this year, across Lake Washington, tech giant Amazon (AMZN) expanded its return-to-office policy, forcing corporate employees back into the office for the whole workweek.
One of the more aggressive return to office campaigns, the move has worsened traffic in neighboring Seattle, about 15 miles to the west of Microsoft HQ. Other regional employers like Starbucks (SBUX) and Boeing (BA) have also implemented similar policies.
RTO has become increasingly common among American corporates, seemingly accelerating in recent months. Just today, NBCUniversal (owned by Comcast (CMCSA) ) also announced that employees would need to spend four days in the office.
Microsoft (MSFT) stock rose just 0.042% today.
