Bay Area tech firm Roblox plays favorites in brutal office-return plan

Last week, the Bay Area-based video game giant Roblox announced that if employees don’t start coming into the office three days a week, they’re out. Those rules, though, only apply to some of the company’s workers.

In a blog post last Tuesday, the San Mateo firm’s founder and CEO David Baszucki told employees they have until mid-January to decide whether they’ll begin working from the office three days a week or leave the company. But the new policy has a noticeable carve-out for employees “with niche skills or institutional knowledge,” “multi-disciplinary skills” and “deep expertise with Roblox systems,” as well as employees whose jobs are “required to be remote.” 

Before this announcement, Roblox employees had been allowed to stay remote and just come in for “quarterly get-togethers,” according to a blog post spotted by CNBC. Workers have until Jan. 16 to tell the firm whether they’ll start coming into the office, according to Baszucki’s post last week. Those who decline will get severance pay and be out of their jobs by April 15; those who accept will be paid to relocate, and expected to be working from San Mateo by mid-July next year.

To explain the change, Baszucki cited “Zoom fatigue,” as well as concern that early-career workers may miss out on mentorship opportunities without in-office interactions. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg used similar reasoning when announcing Facebook’s return-to-office plan earlier this year, and his firm has also allowed a chunk of its workforce to stay remote. Reports from the BBC and CNET have found that unequally applied policies have fueled resentment among workers, particularly when employees feel such double standards are not fully explained.

In an email, Roblox spokesperson Will Nevius declined to answer questions about how the firm would decide which workers are skilled enough to be exempt, and how many.

Hear of anything happening at Roblox or another tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at [email protected] or on Signal at 628-204-5452.