Snap employees who avoided the 20% layoff in August just got bad news: they need to spend at least 80% of their time back in the office. The timing makes sense for the company to capitalize on employees’ gratitude for having a job. Tech downsizing might not give Snap employees who want to leave a lot of options.

I don’t see the full memo online, but here’s the bottom line from CEO Evan Spiegel:

"I believe that spending more time together in person will help us to achieve our full potential. What each of us may sacrifice in terms of our individual convenience, I believe we will reap in terms of our collective success."

Spiegel also wrote:

"We've been working this way for so long that I'm afraid we've forgotten what we've lost—and what we could gain—by spending more time together. I believe that 'default together,' while retaining flexibility for our team members, will help us to accelerate our growth and deliver on our strategic priorities of growing our community, reaccelerating our revenue growth, and leading in AR."

Business communication faculty often teach students to avoid qualifiers like “I believe” and “I think” for persuasive communication. In this case, Spiegel writes “I believe,” and it fits. This is bad news, and the qualifier softens the tone. Company leaders can’t say with full confidence that working in the office will have these certain outcomes. Without “I believe” or “we believe,” they might sound like jerks, which they might be, anyway. I don’t see a lot of compassion, at least in these excerpts.

Also, writing “I believe” three times in four sentences is a bit excessive. A spokesperson repeated the phrase when responding to CNET about the story:

“After working remotely for so long we're excited to get everyone back together next year with our new 80/20 hybrid model. We believe that being together in person, while retaining flexibility for our team members, will enhance our ability to deliver on our strategic priorities of growing our community, driving revenue growth, and leading in AR."

In case you missed it, The New York Times ran an article about young employees “romanticizing” working in an office. Their employers are lucky that these TikTok videos are so popular.

Image source.