2023 has exposed this companies true colors. Schwab stock got pounded when the whole Silicon Valley Bank saga was happening. There is no doubt in my mind that the “executive council” felt pressure to get the stock price back up. I imagine some conversations going something like this: “How do we go about getting our stock price back up?” “I have an idea, we could lay a bunch of people off, especially since this merger with TD Ameritrade is going pretty darn smooth and we hired a bunch of people anticipating an absolute disaster!” “That’s an idea, but wouldn’t it make us look bad if we laid a bunch of people off, especially since we just hired a ton of people?” “That’s true. Oh, oh! What about this! Instead of firing people, we just require that everyone must come back to the office with little to no exceptions! That way, a bunch of people who developed an extremely healthy work/life balance while working remote will realize that getting sucked back into the archaic way of doing this is not for them and they will voluntarily leave! We’ll achieve a similar result to firing a bunch of people without having to fire a bunch of people! “You are brilliant!”
