Reading all of these takes stating WFH leads to poor productivity simply doesn’t make sense to me.<p>If your employees cannot be trusted to fulfil their responsibilities (whether in an office, their home or a tent in a woodland) that is not a geographical issue. It is a mentality issue and you are always going to face productivity issue from that employee regardless of from where they work.<p>I’ve been told time and time again by an array of managers in a bunch of departments and companies that my productivity never changes. That is regardless of whether I am travelling or at home. This is including being in Sri Lanka during their worst economical crisis and facing power cuts of 8 - 12 hours everyday. As a responsible adult I prepared in advance. I bought power banks which could charge my laptop and ensured they were charged when the power worked. I bought SIM cards for all mobile networks and ensured I had data. It really is simply a matter of taking responsibility of one’s situation and having a sense of respect for, and from, your employer/employee.<p>Forcing people into working conditions in which they are uncomfortable is only going to harbour resentment towards the company and if you are in a country where workers actually have real rights you will have a hard time firing them.<p>I fear that this is all simply a smokescreen for the authoritarian shift which has occurred throughout the globe. It started pre pandemic and was exasperated during it. Scary times lay ahead.
It's not about productivity at all. These same companies were commissioning studies during Covid that told their analysts "look how productive our employees are now that they are working from home!"<p>It's about crushing labor.<p>WFH forces employers to compete. It gives a lot of power to employees, because they can apply for far more roles, work fewer hours, moonlight for multiple companies, etc, apply for other jobs during work hours, etc. These companies know that white collar workers are not fungible. Their intellectual workers are genuinely very difficult to replace and produce a lot of value.<p>For talent that isn't fungible, it's RTO. For talent that is fungible, offshoring.
For your comment about the turn towards authoritarianism, yeah, there's a reason every DEI program at every large corporation was pulled back within a few months, and it's not because the C suite all reads the same Musk tweets on X.<p>Employees started making demands of management to actually look at some... structural issues. Those demands had teeth because employees acted and organized as a bloc. Only a matter of time before other lines of questioning besides race and sex were explored at work.<p>Yeah.
As Office Space says: it is a question of motivation.<p>If you care, it'll get done. If you don't, you'll find a way to slack off, even if you're at the office.
Is it not likely that people are more motivated to collaborate, talk about their work, plan together, feel a sense of excitement about work, etc. when they are communing in person? The ol watercooler mindset or whatever.<p>I mean - there’s this popular topic of the issue of loneliness lately. People are less motivated to do things that would maybe normally bring them social joy and get them out of their own homes and bring them together with others in the flesh. You’d expect people to be motivated to do that kind of thing, maybe? But it’s hard. And it’s harder every day when there’s a zeitgeist of growing isolationism.<p>I certainly don’t think the inflexibility of a 5 day in person work week with a hellish, uncompensated commute is the answer to the loneliness issue, nor the lack of motivation to do good work. But maybe there is some middle ground that would serve as a kick in the pants of sorts, without making us all miserable little ants going to and fro once again, that could help people get back out there in a way that helps.<p>I mean, at least, it doesn’t seem like the metaverse or whatever else is filling that gap as the techno-seers foresaw… but maybe future generations will prove that to be more realistic than bringing people back out together in meatspace. Or maybe we just stoop deeper into this new reclusiveness without any real stand ins for grabbing lunch together at all.
I am pretty sure that 99% of the anti rto is exclusively due to the god awful soul crushing commute.<p>5 days a week an hour each way 10 hours of death each week.<p>There is no authoritarian “shift” this has been business as usual for the last 100 years. Stupid business but business nonetheless
Good thing for you that you’re productive anywhere.<p>I’m not. I much prefer working from an office. I’m way more efficient and happy in an office than working from home.<p>It’s not a matter of mentality. It’s a matter of being in an environment conducive to work.<p>You would benefit from not assuming that everyone is the same as you.
The core issue is like you said - responsibility.
"We're also offering the option to transfer from the MPK to SF office for those people whose commute would be the same or better with that change."<p>So wait, you'll be able to switch offices even though your team might be in the second one?
What's the benefit of working remote from your team but next to random, noisy people?
>What's the benefit of working remote from your team but next to random, noisy people?<p>People have been asking that since companies started phasing out WFH after the pandemic.<p>I left my last company when they made me go to the office when I worked for a dispersed team, I was the only one in this office and the rest of the team was dispersed across multiple timezones. Every team meeting was literally a zoom meeting, and conference rooms were scarce so everyone just did zoom calls at their desk.<p>When I was WFH I didn't mind getting up in time for a 7:30am meeting to meet with the overseas team before they went home for the day, but I wasn't willing to leave the house at 6:30 to get to the office in time for that meeting, and I wasn't going to join a 7:30am meeting at home, then head to work after already putting in an hour of work.<p>My boss agreed it made no sense, but there were no exceptions to the rule -- I left before it became mandatory 5 days a week in the office.<p>The CEO made a big deal of going to the office every day so everyone should do it, but it didn't escape notice that the company literally opened an office just for the finance and executive team that happened to be in the same wealthy suburb that he and most of the other top execs lived. That would have turned a 45 - 60 minute commute into a 10 minute commute for him.
That timezone thing really threw one of my client's management for a loop. During covid they expanded some of their India and Philippians office presence and depending on what you're working on, you need to have regular communication with some of those folks. When they did full RTO they were trying to "make" some of the staff (engineering and management) come in at 5am so they could meet with the offshore staff before they went home but everyone bucked, as you'd expect. When folks were WFH they just went with it. Eventually executive staff just said "you guys figure it out". So they ended up changing the meetings from twice a week to once a month and now projects keep slipping deadlines, including one that went from approx on time to 2mo behind, and it's costing them serious revenue since they cant sell it yet.
Pre-covid - an entire working team is clustered in the same office and have desks near each other. People collaborate via in-person meetings, hallway conversations and general proximity.<p>During covid - hiring is mostly remote since companies figure they don't have to be constrained by geography anymore. Employees work at home and collaborate over Zoom meetings. It's difficult at first but everyone adjusts. Productivity is <i>allegedly</i> lower, partly due to the remote nature, partly because employees are slacking off.<p>Now - employers start mandating return to office. Teams are still distributed, so rather than collaborating via physical proximity employees have to spend their day trying to find meeting rooms and sitting on Zoom, just in the office instead of their homes.<p>Is the company actually more productive now? Some McKinsey consultant has a slide deck showing that it has gone up from 6.5 to 7.2, so the bosses all pat themselves on the back.
> Pre-covid - an entire working team is clustered in the same office<p>Just a reminder that there were plenty of great distributed teams long before Covid. I had had only a few "in office" jobs in my pre-covid career (and generally found collaboration <i>better</i> on remote teams, though goofing off has a bit harder to organize).<p>I also find it funny that somehow software engineers completely forget about the existence of open source software which worked in a more extremely distributed fashion than any remote company I've worked for at a time when IRC and email where the only tools for remote communication. Most of the most used and most successful software was written by globally distributed teams that only met face to face every few <i>years</i> if ever.<p>This timeline you are presenting applies only to <i>large corporate</i> jobs, where my experience has been "work productivity" always takes a back seat to organizational theater.
Open source software is not the best argument for distributed teams when you need to iterate fast.<p>Hell, I had commit rights to a popular open source “AWS Solution” when I was there and it took so long to get something approved to be pushed into the mainline that I ended up forking it for individual customers (AWS ProServe) and then eventually getting most of it merged back in later.<p>Now that I’m not at AWS, even though I know the team there, I doubt I could get something approved to merge back in even though I was the third highest contributor to the project for awhile.
> Open source software is not the best argument for distributed teams when you need to iterate fast.<p>You want to actually compete for fast iteration? We'll happily take you on over at ardour.org ...<p>Yes, there are <i>some</i> FLOSS projects which may take a long time to approve PRs. Even in our case, that happens sometimes when someone proposes something we're not convinced by but also cannot reject immediately.<p>Meanwhile, it's not unusual for comments in our discourse server to lead to direct changes in the main branch within hours.<p>So while FLOSS may contain examples against distributed teams, it also contains very strong, and very numerous examples that argue in favor of it.
Reading this made me wonder if I have an alt account that I forgot about, because this is exactly how I think about our current state.<p>Hey, remote work isn't productive, lets go into an office and push all our code to github and deploy to Linux (both largely developed by distributed teams, thankfully without Zoom).<p>But you are right, organizational and productivity theater dominate at many companies.
I literally had a customer decline a meeting today with this as the reason:<p>"Couldnt find a proper space to conduct the meeting"
I work in a post Covid office and even with about 1 to 6 ratio of desks to rooms, along just as many fart pods, it can be a struggle to find space during peak hours.
>along just as many fart pods<p>You mean phone coffins?
Do you really have one desk per six rooms? That's pretty sparse 8)<p>Now the real issue is: what on earth is a fart pod?<p>Anyway, my (quite literally mine as in I'm the MD) tiddly company still clings to the notion that remote working is a good thing, in general. Pre-pandemic I was a sceptic and post-pandemic: I'm happy that a lot more remote working happens.<p>There do need to be additional controls but not of the intrusive, automated variety. I deliberately ring people up and encourage using the dog and bone and frown on email for immediate requirements.<p>It is a fact of modern corporate life that people will use email as it was intended: a reliable store and forward communication mechanism. A side effect is that what should be sorted out now can be ... legitimately ... punted off into tomorrow.
None of these executives are using data driven decisions. It’s said as much in the memo. It’s vibes based.<p>I suspect there’s more at play with this. Maybe they’re expecting attrition from this and that’s their actual goal. They never reveal their core intentions.
Many executive jobs are little more than “being in the office” - they have to “go to work”. This leads them to think presence = work being done - they don’t know what actual work or productivity is. If they don’t have people present to lord over then their job starts to be seen for what it really is… a suit and tie in an office and nodding while saying “hmm” at meetings.
This. The actual numbers show that remote workers are more productive and that fully remote companies generate outsized returns when compared to companies that RTO. Executives know this and chose to ignore it.<p>This is about the appearance of doing something, not actually doing something.
> They never reveal their core intentions.<p>Is it so hard for them to say, FU, office time now because I like it, or because we want to force attrition, or we bought all this RE and by god we are going to use it?<p>I mean, if they give the honest non vibe reasons, it would be the same, but at least honest.<p>Wall Street doesn't care as long as the stock goes up.<p>Customers don't care as long as they get the product.<p>And employees can't do anything other than vote with their feet.<p>So what's the downside of being honest?
A lot of us have worked remote for a long time - I did it 2004 - 2007, and 2015-present. Sometimes across many time zones. The issue is with (lack of) leadership, and specifically lack of accountability for leadership.
My personal experience has been that teams were not in close physical contact since about 1994. Basically since the internet became ubiquitous. In 1999 I was working in an office in Silicon Valley and realized that I never sat across the table from any of the people I was working with. Some were in other buildings around the campus. Some were in France. Some were in the field. Some were down the hall on the same floor, but if you wandered over to talk to them chances were they weren't in their cube. So I decided to move to Montana. COVID occurred 21 years later.
> What's the benefit of working remote from your team but next to random, noisy people?<p>The illusion of control? I mean we can pretend we don't know what this is about (well it's probably also about encouraging a reduction in force), but we do know right?<p>By <i>far</i> the people who bemoaned working from home the most were people whose job doesn't typically involve any actual "work". Not saying that there weren't exceptions, but the vast majority of working engineers I knew rejoiced in finally getting heads down time, while everyone whose job is primarily "performance for leadership" hated how difficult it was to perform visible theatrics on a camera.<p>Especially in large orgs "leadership" and "team success" are largely about optics. Being <i>seen</i> working in the office late is so much more important than <i>getting any actual work done</i>. It's only in small companies where <i>actually shipping</i> something has any value at all.<p>What I don't understand is why we still pretend like this is a mystery. Recognizing this I've completely avoided working for large orgs, and continue to enjoy remote work we're I can be valued for the results of what I build (well there's always <i>a little</i> theater) over office productivity performativity.
It's mystifying, but pretty much the entire tech leadership class has a deep conviction that taking Zoom calls on Airpods from your desk or a random corner of the office is the ideal way of working.
I interviewed there in 2024. Said no because they said I would have to commute from SF to Menlo Park 4 days a week. They explicitly said I could not work from the SF office before I even asked.
It’s called soft launching. Obviously it would be better if everyone was in the same office, but some people might have moved in the remote years and now their commutes are longer. So you accommodate for those people by letting them go to another office. Going forward hiring for teams is going to be collocated, so this problem solves itself with time.
My RTO'd team of 13 is distributed across 3 office and not evenly distributed (8, 4, 1) so the probability of the person you need being in the same physical office is ~43% instead of the 0%. So overall it's better if you value in person and I say this as the 1
There's a 100% chance that you can't work in person with your full team, so if you think in-person work is important I'm not sure how overall it can be better value, since you won't get that.
Sure, you're still effectively working remotely by being in two different offices, but The vibes are totally changed and the seats are warmer now with all those asses in them! And yes, yes your boss is working from some expensive resort in Tahiti and the CEO is in an undisclosed location on his yacht, but they're totally on board!
The benefit is that people quit and then Instagram can claim "AI efficiency" to juice the stock.
How do you know they are random or noisy?
> <i>What's the benefit of working remote from your team but next to random, noisy people?</i><p>You'll cross-pollinate across functions. Or at least increase the chances of that happening. Not saying that's worth the tradeoff. But my time in the office often finds serendipitious value in random off-team conversations, not scheduled time.
I am currently an engineer at Meta. No one in my office is cross pollinating among different teams. In fact most of us are not even talking to each other unless there’s a dedicated meeting time for it. This whole thing about collaborating is better in person has never been my experience, because the collaboration (at least for engineering) is most of the time better done in a document.<p>There are, however, a few times when getting together and discussing something in person is valuable, but this is no more than maybe a couple times a month. I can definitely see this being different for other roles.
> <i>most of us are not even talking to each other unless there’s a dedicated meeting time for it. This whole thing about collaborating is better in person has never been my experience</i><p>Obviously varies by culture. And while I've never worked for Meta, I've been at your Mountain View and New York campuses more times than I care to have been. Everything–including communal spaces–seems laid out for individual work. (This was true before the metamates nonsense, though that obviously accelerated it.)
This is the huge benefit of in-person work. Personally I've not found it worth the tradeoffs, but it cannot be discounted.
I’ve had that happen like a grand total of 5 times in 15 years of work. In which kind of companies or offices do these things happen?
> <i>which kind of companies or offices do these things happen?</i><p>Frankly, the ones that tend to play, goof off and shoot shit together. And it’s not necessarily companywide nor evenly distributed. But it’s something I value tremendously in work cultures, both because it’s productive and fun.
For me it's been like 1-2 times in 25 years, if that
Are the worker bees really cross polinating? I don't even get to choose what to work on, my manager and tech lead tells me what to do and all of that is approved by the director. The everything becomes an okr and it's a huge deal to pivot half way through the half. I'm told this is pretty typical.
I think you're going to get downvoted to oblivion but as far as I'm concerned, that's been my impression as well.
A ton of teams are already distributed. The RTO makes no sense unless your team is already mostly in one office but that’s not how a lot of teams are.<p>Tons of team are completely split up across multiple states/timezones.<p>I think IG might be more local teams than distributed but I’m not sure.
One of the teams at my workplace has 5 members in 5 different offices. They’re still forced to come to office and attend calls via Microsoft Teams from their respective offices than from their homes.<p>These are reasons I can think of - they want to prevent people from doing second job, they want to maintain commercial real estate prices (even if it is artificially propped up) or most likely, it is just the good old ego thing (“you work for me, I make you do things just because I can”).
It makes over-employment more difficult; it also makes unexpected North Korean employees less likely to slip in.
They most likely have a long-term plan to realign team boundaries with office locations, but want to minimize the short-term disruption for people who've moved around the Bay Area based on current working schedules.
I doubt it. A company that is doing RTO is also a company that is aggressively offshoring and expecting you to spend your early mornings/late nights on IST friendly calls. It's just a general turn against US-based software engineers as belts tighten and the balance of power in the labor market shifts.
To what end? This achieves exactly what for teams?
Yeah, that might be the long-term idea, but most likely it will take multiple quarters of internal mobilities to achieve the final shape during which they're forcing people to come to the office and having all meetings and team interactions on a call.
Suboptimal decision in my opinion.
Isn't this the same story for every moderately large company that did RTO over the last few years? It's not about efficiency, it's about shaking out some people by forcing them back into an office.<p>Around 2023 I was working at a company that was, at the time, just threatening RTO, and when hiring we had to decide if it was worth it to hire someone who (might) report to a different office in a different time zone. Which was not an issue at all a month before, when the company was still committed to being fully remote. The hours talking about it were a waste of my life for what, in the end, didn't even matter because they laid off most of the team six months later.
The concern is reasonable, but I'm not sure there's a great way to make people act as though RTO is happening other than actually doing the RTO. A number of companies never said remote work was going to be long-term in the first place, yet still had employees moving around randomly based on an assumption that peak Covid norms were the new status quo.
This literally has never happened.
Instagram chief orders quiet layoffs to please investors in 2026<p>fixed that title for you
And the employees most likely to quit will be ones with responsibilities that make it difficult to do the commute 5 days a week - kids to pick up from daycare, health issues to manage, a social life in the evenings, travel plans - basically the exact category that a company like Meta would want to replace with a younger, more exploitable bunch.
> And the employees most likely to quit will be ones with responsibilities that make it difficult to do the commute 5 days a week<p>Or senior people who have a dozen offers waiting in their inbox that they've neglected responding to because they're reasonably happy where they are...until the prospect of commuting.
No point in quitting, reduce workload.<p>If leadership needs to manage folks out make them do the work and collect a paycheck while it happens.
> pick up from daycare, health issues to manage, a social life in the evenings, travel plans<p>You're not going to like hearing this, but this shit on company hours is exactly why RTO is being pushed.
There have never been "company hours" in tech. Until recently (before badge tracking became a thing) asking your manager what time you were expected to come in and leave would be met with blank stares. "We don't enforce set hours here, just get your work done". And conversely "I came to the office and worked 8 hours a day like you asked" is never going to be accepted as an excuse when you fail to meet your targets at the end of the quarter or miss a page in the middle of the night. Heck you can't even work on your own projects after hours or patent your own ideas because the knowledge in your head is company property. Simply put - they are hiring you for your skills and your output, not for warming a seat at an office for 8 hours a day. Tech companies have always treated employees like adults and expected adult behavior in return, and both sides have benefited greatly from this arrangement. Sadly it seems like the new crop of tech leadership seems adamant on making their companies more like a call center.
So you'd think right? Nobody would like anything better than to just get output without worrying about hours or location or anything like that. But if you were in a management position when WFH started, you would've seen velocity go through the floor and stay there. And to be fair, there are absolutely a limited set of employees who are perfectly capable of working remotely with no issues whatsoever. But for the majority.. the feedback we've gotten is there is too much temptation to just do the laundry or dishes or "my wife needs a hand with X", and output just continues to stay low. And while it would be great to separate employees into groups based on who can be trusted to WFH and who can't, it feels too discriminatory and would cause way too many headaches.<p>So, as I'm sure you've seen in the news stories over the last few years, basically every large organization everywhere has enacted some sort of RTO mandate. I'm sure there are a few smaller startups kicking around who want to keep trying things the other way, but for the most part, the industry has spoken. We can keep complaining about it but short of another pandemic it's unlikely covid-style work is going to make a comeback IMO.
> if you were in a management position when WFH started, you would've seen velocity go through the floor and stay there<p>Comp has also gone through the floor thanks to inflation and stayed there. You get what you pay for I guess?
> you would've seen velocity go through the floor and stay there<p>Is this “velocity” in the room with us right now?
> But if you were in a management position when WFH started, you would've seen velocity go through the floor and stay there.<p>I spoke with my manager about this. This wasn't true for our team, and it wasn't true for any other team in our (fairly sizable) division. I didn't give a shit about any other group, so I didn't ask.<p>If your employees are spending their days fucking around instead of working when they're working from their home office, I'm here to tell you that when they were in the corporate-leased office, they were browsing Reddit on their phone or off on yet another coffee break to "get the pulse of the office". Slackers and shirkers are gonna slack and shirk, no matter where they are.<p>The thing to do is to fire folks who aren't doing enough to justify their pay. That's something that hasn't ever changed.
Or, just maybe I'm doing the daycare and social life and whatever in the spare time I have from no longer commuting (~2 hours extra a day for me).
Looks like you don't know how to properly manage your team.<p>I had a similar argument with a previous manager I had. Careerist dude started on some bullshit management-speak on measuring workers by ass-to-seat-hours while he had no idea I had a management degree from one of the most respected business colleges in my country. Had to rebuke him with Business Management 101.<p>Of course, this definitely contributed for him pushing me out afterwards, as small minds can't handle being wrong, and he even had the gall of trying and pushing me an unethical assignment. I got out with a nice severance package, and from the grapevine (it's a small community down here after all!) I hear every quarter somebody quits from his team or moves to a different one.<p>So yeah, bad managers got to career.
It's called a work-life balance. I know, crazy idea.
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The practice of an entire working population commuting from an hour+ away to a few buildings in the center of the city, sitting on their ass for 8 hours a day, eating a packed lunch, and commuting back home is <i>at most</i> a couple hundred years old. But sure, go on about your "hundreds-to-thousands of years of history".
><i>Covid was fun, I get it, but that was a long time ago man.</i><p>I don't understand what you gain from trying to be super abrasive on a forum. Is it fun?
> Throughout hundreds-to-thousands of years of history your options have been<p>You might want to brush up on your anthropology a bit.
People did this, I used to do jiu-jitsu with a ups guy that would stop and join the class mid day, then go back on his route.<p>I Had a manager that would go and drink beers in his car durring breaks.<p>I had Coworkers that would leave the office to pick up their kids pre covid.<p>Lots of people are messing around
>Throughout hundreds-to-thousands of years of history ... but that was a long time ago man.<p>This seems like a self defeating argument.
Honestly, if the bus/delivery driver needed a mid-shift break to deal with some life stuff, yeah by all means, I personally think they should be able to do that kind of stuff (though maybe we start by giving them bathroom breaks?). The business hiring them should adapt.
99% of the working class doesn’t have the expectation of answering a page at 2 am, or working long hours without extra pay to make a deadline.<p>Don’t act like that’s an apples to apples comparison
Where does GP say that this is done on company time?
Aw, come on, shed a tear for the commercial real estate industry.
You think <i>this</i> is the tech job market to leave your job, and then what? Try and get in at someone else about to return to office? Freelance? IDK about anyone else, but I haven’t considered a contractor since AI Coding hit hard, I had poor experience with contractors anyhow, now I’m not sure I see the point of rolling those dice again.<p>It’s kind of a soft market unless you are working directly on AI models.<p>So, is this IG looking to cut fat by keeping what they considered the most committed employees? Maybe. Is it because most of us can admit that it takes the right people to work remotely and that isn’t a majority? That’s more my take.
We are observing the most valuable people leaving, because they easily can get a job at place where they care more about value you get to company than the bonus you will get as C-level after firing highly paid workers.<p>In the cases we know (I have a group of people working in different small and medium corps in Poland and Germany) - the people that are staying are either too lazy to change work or they are just not enough to get remote job.
Ok, sweet deal if you are one of the most valuable employees in big tech. Sounds like a perk that many people would seek out.<p>Are you?<p>If yes, cool. If no, well, seems like you have rationalized that not everyone will get WFH regardless on your feelings about it
>You think this is the tech job market to leave your job, and then what?<p>1. take that time to startup that business you've been thinking of doing<p>2. Coast on the months of savings and years of stock until things get better. Perhaps you even have enough for a soft retirement.<p>3. try to rapidly interview and hope you have a ship to jump to before the hammer comes down.<p>4. interview anyway because you know this means a layoff round is coming even if you wanted to move because not enough people quit on their own.<p>> is this IG looking to cut fat by keeping what they considered the most committed employees<p>If by "committed" you mean "most compensated", then yes.<p>>Is it because most of us can admit that it takes the right people to work remotely and that isn’t a majority? That’s more my take.<p>Sure, maybe. But Meta knows that isn't the reason. They lost the BOTD since 2017 in my eyes.
On number one, sure, take all the risk yourself. It pays off sometimes. And when it comes to hiring people you need to work as hard as you do, you can tell them they can work from home.
This is the <i>exact</i> tech job market to start looking and have interviews/offers scheduled so you're not screwed when layoffs happen.
It's unfortunate there wasn't more resistance by tech employees to RTO post-covid. It seemed like one of the very, very rare solutions to the systemic problems of housing and commuting in the US. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that WFH effectively doubles or even triples your total compensation when it means (a) actually affordable housing and (b) no time/money lost to commuting, especially if you have kids.
Because there's a five-letter scare word you're not allowed to say that would be required for tech workers to have any power over their managers, but that sort of collective action is dead on arrival in the current milieu. If you don't want to go back into the office, you have the power to enforce that, but you have to like... work together.
even though biden's already left I am still quite surprised how little views his pro union videos got <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZpUD9KgYc4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZpUD9KgYc4</a> this video was on whitehouse's youtube channel
no one wants to work at shops that actually have unions compared to other places. it's just silly to actually suggest it makes things better.
I dunno where you live but in my part of the country getting into union work is the best way to prosper and succeed as just an average person. Maybe that isn't true for tech work at the moment, but union carpenters, plumbers, HVAC, pipe fitters, arborists, linemen, auto and factory workers, all make significantly more doing union work with better and safer work conditions.
<a href="https://kickstarterunited.org/" rel="nofollow">https://kickstarterunited.org/</a>
Yeah, speak for yourself. I'd love to work at a place where I can't be fired because my manager had a bad day and I didn't move the right Jira tickets around to his satisfaction, where I'm treated like a human being in stead of fungible cattle. I also don't want to go back into an office. Ever. But if people actually want to affect change at their workplace, instead of just kvetching, that's basically the only way to do it, short of praying to Money Jesus for another ZIRP boom like the 2010s (I'm not a praying man, but I wouldn't hold my breath).<p>I'm just saying, if workers want control over their working conditions, they have to recognize the power they have. It's up to them if they decide to wield it. You don't have to, and that's fine! Enjoy your long Bay Area commute.
Because these mandates coincided with a recession and the worst tech job market in a couple decades, and saying no meant you'd potentially be unemployed for a very long time.
"coincided" is understating it; it is precisely the bad job market that leads to this sort of mandate, because employees have little choice but to go along. in a good job market companies are very willing to offer remote work as an incentive to join them rather than the competition.
Yes, it would require a lot more coordinated organizing and some level of pain, though I think the payoff would be worth it.
Really sad to see the WFH era ending, it's such a better way to work - especially as these companies embrace distributed teams so you now get the worst of both worlds with RTO.
Sad, because before COVID, no one at Meta cared where you worked as long as you were getting your shit done. There was never available meeting rooms, and the open floor plans were so loud, that people would spread out all over the campus and use single person VC rooms to communicate in.<p>Basically, everyone trusted everyone.<p>This is 100% just a soft layoff.
I notice US tech companies have also become really tough on white collar workers in order to suck up to Trump and his country goons.<p>No more diversity programs, work life balance no longer promoted, that kinda stuff. This fits in with that trend.
Oof my employer still lets us WFH 3 days. We actually signed a new contract for it just after the pandemic. They can't have everyone in the office anyway since they closed half the floors.<p>If they mandate this (not sure where they'd find the space!) I'll just refuse to sign the new contract. I'm in Europe so none of that "at will" stuff. If they want to let me go they'll have to give me a package for 15 years worked.<p>Ps I don't actually go twice a week right now ;) More like once. None of my team members are in my country anyway so what's the point.
<p><pre><code> Employees are encouraged to decline meetings that interfere with focus time.
</code></pre>
That deep focus time that comes from being in an open office environment.
OK, so... Employees are compelled to go into the office, so they can have better in-person collaboration. They are also encouraged not to go to meetings (aka in-person collaboration sessions), so they can have more focus time.<p>I haven't seen the Insta offices, but I would bet they don't have walls. In which case, you know where the best focus time is to be had? Out of the office.
Yeah those open floors are so terrible. When i started late 90s I had my own office when as an intern. Everyone just had a little office. You could close the door if you needed to focus and you could open it if you needed a chat.<p>Then came the terrible time of the cubicles and then the open floor which was even more horrible.<p>I really hate tech work these days. Also because it's not really tech anymore. I don't get to do the nuts and bolts, I just have to tick boxes in the crap cloud admin panels that Microsoft gives us. I wish I could do something totally different.
The headline makes it seem like every role in the company needs to switch to full-time in-office.<p>But anyone who was hired in a remote role is exempt.<p>This order only applies to in-office workers with assigned desks.<p>He's basically saying that they can't expect to have a hybrid work schedule, although not so strict that they can't ever work from home.
Exempt temporarily. Very temporarily.<p>This is a standard boiling the frog playbook:<p>* No more remote hires<p>* Mandate non-remote employees into office (Instagram is here)<p>* Mandate remote employees who live within X miles of office return to office (significant chunks of Alphabet, etc. are here)<p>etc. - this will get ramped up and very soon
Yep. I've been through almost exactly that, and know many other folks who have. If you're working in the US or other places that don't have really good labor regs, "RTO exemptions" are <i>temporary</i>, no matter what you're being told today.<p>Though, in my case bullet #1 was more like<p><pre><code> No more remote hires. However, we will more than backfill the folks quitting or being laid off in the US and the EU with folks in India and China. We hope you enjoy the in-office synergy when communicating with your new teammates who are literally half a world away!</code></pre>
Same here.<p>It’s amazing how much intense of a Scrooge McDuck vibes we’re getting from the MBA executive class.<p>Crank the screws, tighten the belt, offshore, increase profits at all costs. The next generations are going to have it rough since these elites have intentionally hoarded prosperity at the expense of their countrymen
I'm thankful I was "grandfathered in" by starting a remote role pre-COVID. Honestly I wouldn't be shocked if I'm more productive in an office (due to pressure to seem busy, which correlates somewhat with amount of time actually being busy) but I overwhelmingly prefer remote work.
I'm one of the rare remote in an office where most are full time there and I'm there one day a week.<p>I have no idea how they get anything done in there. I feel they only can focus before and after business hours.<p>So don't be so sure. Home has distraction when the mind is distracted. But once working I feel we are much more productive and capable due to long uninterrupted stints.<p>It does take discipline but that's what deadlines are for.
>Honestly I wouldn't be shocked if I'm more productive in an office (due to pressure to seem busy, which correlates somewhat with amount of time actually being busy)<p>As a hiring manager, I appreciate the honesty and nuance. There is so much bullshit about remote work from the people doing it that it’s a little too much “doth protest”.<p>“I get so much more work done and I cracked the code to productivity, and surely no one would abuse this system, especially not you ultra worker 5000. Anyone who disagrees with me is a threat to the oversightless system I have an I must try and protect this by attacking them.”
>As a hiring manager ... it’s a little too much “doth protest”.<p>Have you considered evaluating your own beliefs with this perspective?
That’s a fancy “no u” but it doesn’t make any sense.<p>I have remote employees, and I have people I would never allow WFH because they can’t handle it.<p>I don’t care what you do. I’m explaining from the position of someone responsible for a team that MANY people who are strictest about WFH being absolute are the people abusing it. This shouldn’t even be remotely controversial… yet… all I see is more protest and digital foot stomping.
Depends what you see as “abusing” the system. By working from home, I can take a walk in the garden when I find it hard to think, it energises me. At my office I can (and do) take a walk in the car park, but inevitably I leave the office with a headache caused by constant noise and fluorescent lighting<p>At home, I can put my family first if needed. When I’m at the office and something comes up at the kids’ school that I need to deal with, it’s a mad dash to get away soon enough that I almost have to drop everything and run<p>The times working in the office has been good as a software engineer: when we are prototyping on physical hardware I do not have at home. That’s it<p>It’s great if people love to go to the office. That’s fine. It’s managers that enforce it who are the problem — the people who work for you aren’t children and if you feel like you can’t trust them to make the decision to work from home, why on earth would you trust them in your office?
Yeah, people differ, and there are different forces that can increase and decrease productivity in an office and at home. If I'm honest with myself, being remote gives me more opportunity to slack off and do whatever I want, which often is not really working. But if I'm in an office I also am less able to get in a flow state.<p>An ideal working environment for me would probably be working from home, alone, perhaps with some stimulants (I have severe ADHD, or at least am diagnosed as having it and perceive myself as having), a close deadline, a lot of intrinsic motivation and interest in a task, and no distractions. In practice, most of the time I find working on a laptop at a library or cafe or on a laptop/desktop in an office does push me to do more work-related stuff more frequently on an average day, since I know people near me may notice I'm spending ages on Twitter or HN or whatever and that somewhat discourages me from doing non-work things.<p>I don't think you deserve to have been downvoted. I love having a work-from-home job and love that I was able to get one pre-pandemic, but I also don't necessarily blame higher-ups for wanting more people to work in an office. It's complicated.
5 days is stupid. I am fully remote and I can see how face time is important. After a few years remote I am definitely feeling a little detached from the company. But 5 days makes no sense. I think 2 or 3 days in the office is perfect. You get the opportunity to talk to people and you have days where you can fully focus.<p>Most ridiculous is to have to come to the office and then talk to your distributed team members over Teams or Slack. Even more fun is to have them spread around the globe in different time zones .
5 days is just offensive babysitting level amount of butts in seats. People need room to run their lives, meet contractors, sign for a package, etc. 2-3 days in office is the perfect reasonable sweet spot.<p>Requiring 5 days in office is going to decrease their available talent pool to only get lesser talent who is desperate for any work and can't get any better offers.
Folks it’s very simple. They want to reduce labor for free.<p>Why? Because no company can afford the bills for LLM infra.<p>These companies are spending 100s of billions on building infra. Most countries have less GDP than this. The numbers are insane!<p>And Nvidia demands payments in cash today. Not amortized in 5 years. Every employee slashed is extra compute the hyperscalers can buy today.
Smells like management trying to recapture the glory days by brute force.<p>> "focus on building great products, not preparing for meetings"<p>That says it all. The intent is to try to spark the freewheeling, creative, startup days. Wouldn't be the first company that tries to reconnect with its startup roots. Won't be the last, either. Unfortunately, it never works, because those rockstar startup employees cashed out their stock and moved to the Napa Valley. Your workforce is now indistinguishable from IBM or Exxon Mobile. Good luck!<p>> Mosseri joined Facebook in 2008 as a designer and became Instagram's VP of product in 2018<p>Bingo. Old dog, new tricks. Good luck!
I know better than to think I might have anything useful to add to the WFH debate, but buried further in the memo:<p><i>”More demos, less [sic] decks”</i><p>I love it, but I’m surprised that an org of that caliber needs to say it out loud. Even the top tier people get bogged down in PowerPoint limbo, I guess?<p>Nothing is more compelling than, as they say in show business (ie that Bill O’Reilly meme), than saying “f*** it…”:<p><pre><code> (╯°□°)╯
┳━━━━┳ WE’LL DO
IT LIVE!</code></pre>
White collar office society can barely cope with the relatively minor friction that technology brings from allowing work from anywhere and we're expected to believe it, it can deal with somewhat unaccountable and unknowable AI smoothly? Hard to think anything else than that we're in for a wild couple of years imo
The whole memo just reeks of not trusting your employees.
These memos are always basically admissions of their own incompetence. If you distrust your employees this much and have created a culture where people aren't getting their work done without it being noticed, that's on you.
Isn't it a "we want to reduce our workforce but we don't want to pay redundancies, so we're hoping many of you leave 'voluntarily'.".
A lot of the anti WFH wave comes from companies discovering that they actually <i>can't</i> trust some employees to do much work from home.
Well I don't trust my employer so...
Another winning call from Mosseri<p>After shitcanning the london office because he wanted to move back home(800 people gone) hes now doing the RTO, because as we know all the cool kids love working in the office.<p>The problem with instagram is not where people are working, its the culture of piss poor direction setting and no user experience advocates. Well none that are being listened to.<p>There are too many grand initiatives, which are poorly run, never really prototyped and just yeeted into years long slog that fuckup repeatedly (shops I'm looking at you)<p>Then to get a promotion you need to move a metric somehow. That means doing stupid user hostile stuff, like instantly shoving tits in your face.<p>Don't get me started on the horror that was instagram for kids
I enjoyed working on campus for a bit - because I also lived there, sleeping, eating, showering etc. and saved a lot of money! Of course, you have to hide that and they eventually caught me...
I have a job where I'm 5 days a week. The biggest problem isn't the juniors which are all happy to leave their small apartments to go into the office. Its the senior guys with big houses out in the suburbs that have the long commute. Unfortunately the new grads are having fun hanging out together but aren't getting the face time from the seniors.
Basically soft layoff
ins't this the same guy who moved to london [0], just because he could control things better ?<p>or maybe the tide has changed from remote working so again the minions are pushed around!<p>[0] - <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/02/instagram-boss-adam-mosseri-to-relocate-to-london.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/02/instagram-boss-adam-mosseri-...</a>
I am here to repeat my sort-of non-but-almost conspiracy theory: It's not about the work, it's about the value of the Listed Property Trust (LPT), as a construct, if the entire central business district price model behind buildings tanks.<p>Every company of this scale is in LPT. They have shitloads of money tied up in the declared value of the office space either they invested, or they leveraged. If it tanks in value, they are on call for the decline in value related to that.<p>Thank you for reading my almost but not quite tinfoil hat conspiracy theory.
This isn't even a conspiracy theory, it's just true. I mean, some of it is definitely induced attrition (you always want the expensive people to quit, in the Milton Friedman cinematic universe), but the rest is that the commercial real estate market would collapse tomorrow if businesses couldn't justify their 10- or 15-year commercial leases. Not for nothing did endless headlines about how "going into the office is super cool, actually" run in our most august financial publications, like WSJ and the Economist, right around the time RTO mandates started showing up.
This isn't a conspiracy theory it is just a fact. They already invested in the offices and the people who own everything have a lot of money in commercial real estate.
They mean the office in the Metaverse, right?
I have found that at many companies with these kind of policies are selectively enforced. If you don’t show up, nothing will happen to you, until someday they <i>need</i> some kind of reason to fire you. This ensures you have a steady pool of employees you can drop at a moments notice, if for instance some major market crash forces you to quickly dump people in order for the company to survive.
How independently does Instagram operate from Meta?
other divisions within Meta have recently made similar changes —- more time in office, less meetings. i’m guessing the orders are coming from the top but they’re allowing each org to roll out the changes “independently”
I think Instagram has pink headings and Facebook has blue. So they’re practically different companies.
> the change applies to employees in US offices with assigned desks and is part of a broader push to make Instagram "more nimble and creative" as competition intensifies.<p>I don't think RTO or fewer meetings is going to reverse or even slow Instagram's slide down the enshittification chute. I recently returned to the app to connect with some friends and local communities, but the density of ads and dark patterns is pushing me away. IMO Instagram and Facebook in their twilight (which will still last another decade or so), where the path forward has more to due with extracting the remaining value from their existing users rather than outcompeting the alternatives.
I’m actually grateful I don’t need to worry about marketing via Instagram anymore.
The stated purpose of RTO may be more-nimble-whatever.<p>In practice it makes more sense if you always assume the intended purpose is to thinly veil constructive dismissal.
> I don't think RTO or fewer meetings is going to reverse or even slow Instagram's slide down the enshittification chute.<p>In my view it's been well down that chute since shortly after its acquisition by Facebook. Facebook bought them as a hedge as young people left the FB platform and, for a time, it's worked to keep users under the Meta umbrella, but as with everything Zucc touches, the end-user experience has been in a state of steady degradation.
In Canada meta pushed back (by not letting you link to or summarize recognized free press news sites) due to laws designed to encourage sharing revenue with news organizations for copying their content and posting it without their consent. The result has been a total vacuum of truth, and the platform is literally a anti-vax, agarthan racists wet dream when you open it up as a new user. It's ripe for replacement. I can't believe it's lasted this long.
As much as I dislike Meta, these laws are trash - as I understand it the Canadian law was based on the one we have here in Australia, which explicitly defines publishing a <i>link</i> to an article on a news site as being <i>exactly the same</i> (for the purposes of the law) as copying and displaying an entire article.<p>Then the supporters of the law said Facebook was "using" the news content by linking to a news site, as if they were actually displaying whole articles! Meta generally sucks but these laws (and the people calling for them) sucked just as much.
> laws designed to encourage sharing revenue with news organizations for copying their content<p>By “encourage” and “copying,” you mean “require” and “linking” respectively. These second order effects were entirely predictable before the legislation was passed.
> agarthan racists wet dream<p>That one slipped my by in recent years, I'm not keeping up with the rebranding of rocks the nazi bars keep hiding under.<p>~ <a href="https://felixonline.co.uk/articles/slurs-hatred-and-nazi-ufos-what-really-hides-beneath-imperials-popular-agarthan-society/" rel="nofollow">https://felixonline.co.uk/articles/slurs-hatred-and-nazi-ufo...</a><p>I'm not sure the self description as "Light hearted, mostly satirical Nazi white supremacist content not to be taken seriously" really hides the moustache.
Just a move to get rid of people, some people won't do the RTO and they can easily let them go.
>Additional changes include fewer meetings<p>Where have I heard this before, wait at every job I have ever worked at. Every time it is said, meeting time increases.<p>Where I worked, Friday was the only day real work got done. Why, everyone was at home, but that was my go to office day. Thursdays was my WFH day because that whole day was nothing but meetings.
I would honestly not mind 2-3 days a week but PDX is dead for tech jobs, and the pay is trash.<p>Can't wait to have to move to SF and pay 5k for a shoebox so I can work in an overcrowded office in a boring, crappy part of town.
What's going to happen when all the remote first companies re-neg on their commitments? Will it be an intentional way to force layoffs and resignations?
STUPID. STUPID. STUPID.
You of course need a team of at least 8 people to develop the "Fuck you, log in to view any photos" pop-up box
I think its okay for there to be jobs that require you to be in a specific place, especially so if you were hired under such an arrangement originally. If there is a significant advantage for companies that are remote, then they will have a significant advantage on talent.
Layoffs by another name.
Trying to date as a single men in my 20s... 95% of women in their 20s seem to have it and then ask you if you have one or connect with her or stay in touch on it.... shitty ad infested bloatware gambling/pron promoting pos application I wish I could get rid of yesterday. Don't hate the player, hate the game.
The comment initially confused me, but after reading it twice, I completely agree with you.<p>I would love to delete the app, but Instagram has really become the norm for dating and connecting with people. The opportunity cost of not using it in your 20s is significant. I hope to delete it once I’m fully settled, but that might not happen anytime soon given the modern dating culture.<p>Sometimes, I wish I could live like the Amish.
By some irony, I only created an instagram account so that I could get some cookies to pass to yt-dlp to download some videos from a wedding shoot my wife and I did.
When you have a real LTR they become jealous of you being on it.
My relationship is quite long-term, it can almost get its learner's permit, and we use Instagram all the time to, like, share cute animal videos from the Explore/Reels screens to each other, share stories to our friends of whatever we're doing together, or not together, and see our friends' stories.<p>idk if your partner is jealous of you using one of the top five social networking apps in the world that seems a little weird and maybe your relationship is not very healthy? it's instagram, not tinder or okcupid...
I gotta be honest if my partner was sharing cute animal videos more often than every great once in a while, I’d probably end the relationship.
As long as you stay on a happy path, it's only like 5% thirst traps. But many people don't like it when those things are popping up in their SO's feed, so Instagram isn't good for those relationships.<p>I avoid it now mainly because I don't need infinite scrolling of anything. But a side benefit is that it can't provoke any jealousy.
> As long as you stay on a happy path, it's only like 5% thirst traps.<p>I’m an infrequent facebook user, but every couple months I’ll visit the website for something on fb marketplace or an event I’ve been invited to and 100% of the reels that are shoved at me are softcore pornography. My only interaction with them has been to click the “hide this item” (or whatever it’s called) on every reel I’ve ever seen.
> I would love to delete the app, but Instagram has really become the norm for dating and connecting with people<p>Really??
In my social circles, at least, the answer is yes. I live in a major city with many people from diverse backgrounds. It might be different in areas where tech people make up the majority.<p>I know for a fact that I wouldn't have been invited to some parties or met some really fun people if I didn't have Instagram. You don't have to post or be very active; you just need to have an account.
News to me. But I just left my 20's so maybe I'm late off the boat.<p>I'm not installing anything Meta for any potential date. maybe Twitter but that's already pushing it.
No, this is not true.
Instagram is pretty bland, not anywhere close to TikTok in the scale of societal malaise. It can be used as a plain photo sharing app, reels is still a secondary feature, and the only place you'll find both of those things. Stories is mostly snaps from your friends if you don't follow any 'influencers'. It has replaced Facebook as they way most people in their 20-50s connect, and a handle is better than giving away your phone number.<p>I wish we had better ways (coming with the DMA and chat interoperability? maybe), but it's tolerable.
Once employees accept tools like Time Doctor with screenshots and webcam shots, employers will accept work from home
the owners; actual owners no doubt have their finger in the commercial real estate pie too. And they are obviously not ready to get a haircut on that portfolio so here it goes. COVID-19 hasn't disappeared yet, so all this is going to do is accelerate infection and churn through more people quicker. ASHRAE did update and release ASHRAE 241 but I really doubt building managers are eager to implement that costly compliance standard especially still shell shocked from WFH
I have a question for anyone who knows.<p>When the productivity fell in covid days due to communications overheads and people just suddenly finding it easy to execute "lazy", did the ever so efficient corporate machinery pick this up in a jiffy and propose salary cuts to match? Or were they just too nice to do that?