Brain drain strain

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ICYMI last week: Inside LinkedIn’s 2025 predictions according to industry leaders (and what they mean for tech)

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Are Return to Office mandates causing brain drain?

A new working study from the University of Pittsburgh suggests it just might. 

This study looked at a sample of 3 million LinkedIn profiles of employees at large tech and financial firms between April 2020 and June 2023 to track job movements after return-to-office (RTO) mandates started rolling out. 

Here are their preliminary findings on employee turnover:

• Companies with RTO policies saw a 14% jump in turnovers compared to their pre-RTO baselines

• Employees who left were more likely to be women

• There is also a high concentration of mid- and top-level managers leaving, rather than IC roles

• Plus, they found turnover is concentrated among employees with more self-reported skills listed in their LinkedIn profiles

And this is what they’ve found about employee hiring:

• It takes longer for RTO organizations to fill job vacancies – increasing by approximately 23%

• They tend to hire fewer new employees compared to pre-RTO policies 

• Top talent has options, and those who prefer remote roles will be in demand 

• Disruptions in operations that come from losing employees, recruiting, and hiring, can be costly

Why does this matter?

The move to remote work wasn’t really optional for many companies – COVID played a major role. 

Now executives are leaning on RTO mandates to get people back in the office, but many have admitted it’s based on intuition, not data. And based on these early findings…return to office isn’t smart business sense. 

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Let’s dish 🤭

Bye-bye, Moxie

In 2020, tech company, Embodied, released an $800 companion bot for children aged 5-10 years old. After just four years, the company is taking its product offline.

Moxio is a small, kinda creepy (in our opinion) bot that uses a ChatGPT-style large language model and animated expressive display to carry on conversations. 

Now kids will have to say goodbye to their AI-powered friends, as Embodied announced it will shut down operations due to financial challenges. Without Embodied keeping Moxie’s AI capabilities up and running, all bots will go fully offline – and kids will have to say goodbye to their robot friends 🙁

@heatherfraziertiktok

This could be my last convo with moxie. Got an email saying hes being shut down forever. This is like a sad pixar movie. This robot had so... See more

While this is a sad story for kids who got emotionally attached to their Moxie companions, Popular Science points out this is part of a larger trend: a shift away from owning products outright, as they increasingly come attached to services.

Who else is feeling the subscription fatigue?

See you next week! 👋