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Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

cnbc.com

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Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#101

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #76
skizm wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New hires and mentors too. Remote / virtual on boarding sucks. I’ve been on both ends this pandemic. No fun either way.

I think it is subjective. Having done both a few times, from both sides, and I still prefer remote. Little is lost and much is gained in terms of control over ones environment.

We surveyed the opinions of our 2021 summer intern population before they started and something over 90% of them expressed a preference to be in the office.

Of course, summer interns are a slightly odd population as the choice they're making is probably between doing their internship remotely from their bedroom at their parents house or spending ten weeks in the big city so there is that.

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#102

Post by dreyfan »

magneticnorth wrote: post #84
dreyfan wrote: post #75

I currently have 10 fully remote engineering jobs. The bar is so low, oversight is non-existent, and everyone is so forgiving for under performance I can coast about 4-8 weeks before a given job fires me. Currently on a $1.5M run-rate for comp this year. And the interviewing process is so much faster today, companies are desperate, it takes me 2-3hrs of total effort to land a new job with thousands to chose from.

This is fascinating. What's the long-term plan? Save enough on this plan to retire early? Eventually work a smaller number of them "for real"?

It's not very satisfying so definitely not retire early. However, it's a good way to raise the equivalent of a seed round without having to give up any equity and simultaneously execute on practical customer discovery regarding the needs of modern engineering teams in a remote-only world.

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#103

Post by Shish2k »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #69
wintermutestwin wrote: post #35

The bloomberg article mentions potential CoL adjustments: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-09/facebook-... It is interesting that the Slashdot crowd was fairly universal in panning the idea of paying people less if they lived in a low cost area. In my 17 years as a designated "teleworker" at a SV megacorp, they adjusted compensation ratios. This meant that they didn't reduce my salary when I moved from…

I don't understand this take at all, it's effectively saying that your pay should be driven by your needs as opposed to the value you create. I can see companies deciding that in-person value is different than remote, but where you are remotely doesn't matter. Especially in the same timezone. Working remotely from Kentucky vs Brooklyn makes no difference to the company, so why should they pay them differently? Do you…

> why should they pay them differently?

tl;dr: because they can. You’re not paid based on how much value you provide - you’re paid the smallest amount possible to stop you from quitting.

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#104

Post by nanidin »

cromka wrote: post #98
throwaway6734 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest question right now about sustained wfh is how much of the current productivity is the result of relationships that were built in the office. A year ago, I remotely onboarded for a new position and recently I can head back into the office, and there's a massive difference for me between the virtual relationships I built and the in-person ones. I learned more about people that I had spent months zooming/emai…

> I learned more about people that I had spent months zooming/emailing with over the past few weeks talking to them face to face. One thing I thought of that could alleviate this would be the team work getaways. Think 2 weeks away, 3-4 times a year. Obviously not everyone can every join all of them, but I'd imagine most still would do 2. Ideally the families should also be invited. I am sure it would still come out c…

I worked remote for 5 years before COVID. I was somewhere around 10% travel to customer locations, and about 1 week per year to HQ overseas. It was a great balance. I’m not sure how that would scale to an entire company though as one week of travel expenses worked out to around $2000 for domestic travel within the US. Does the cost of carrying office space work out to more or less than $8k per person per year?

COVID style isolated WFH ruined WFH for me and contributed to burnout.

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#105

Post by paulryanrogers »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #69
wintermutestwin wrote: post #35

The bloomberg article mentions potential CoL adjustments: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-09/facebook-... It is interesting that the Slashdot crowd was fairly universal in panning the idea of paying people less if they lived in a low cost area. In my 17 years as a designated "teleworker" at a SV megacorp, they adjusted compensation ratios. This meant that they didn't reduce my salary when I moved from…

I don't understand this take at all, it's effectively saying that your pay should be driven by your needs as opposed to the value you create. I can see companies deciding that in-person value is different than remote, but where you are remotely doesn't matter. Especially in the same timezone. Working remotely from Kentucky vs Brooklyn makes no difference to the company, so why should they pay them differently? Do you…

This actually happened to one of my former teams. We lost 50% of the team in the space of a few months. As far as I know everyone got 10%+ raises from value-focused employers over the regionally paid company.

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#106

Post by ghaff »

cromka wrote: post #98
throwaway6734 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest question right now about sustained wfh is how much of the current productivity is the result of relationships that were built in the office. A year ago, I remotely onboarded for a new position and recently I can head back into the office, and there's a massive difference for me between the virtual relationships I built and the in-person ones. I learned more about people that I had spent months zooming/emai…

> I learned more about people that I had spent months zooming/emailing with over the past few weeks talking to them face to face. One thing I thought of that could alleviate this would be the team work getaways. Think 2 weeks away, 3-4 times a year. Obviously not everyone can every join all of them, but I'd imagine most still would do 2. Ideally the families should also be invited. I am sure it would still come out c…

Yeah, as a long-term essentially remote employee, IMO you need to have week-long team meetings. Probably quarterly. I hesitate to require weekends. On the other hand, I have traveling about 130 days per year pre-pandemic.

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#107

Post by jeremyjh »

munk-a wrote: post #70
ribosometronome wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't the video game industry fairly impacted by the transition?

The video game industry noticeably rolled back a number of release dates but I don't know if it's fair to attribute that to team productivity or just a combination of supply line issues (big name games tend to launch with merch and physical perks that definitely would be impacted) along with the cost and stress of dealing with the pandemic. We've got some confounded variables here so it's hard to tell.

Delays in video game releases are highly visible. Many companies had regular schedules that were clearly and obviously disrupted. It would be far less visible in many other software sectors, at least in the short-term. How would I know if AWS launched 18 new services instead of 27 last year? Often new product features/releases are not announced until they are ready to ship.

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#108

Post by spamizbad »

magneticnorth wrote: post #12

I am really curious to see where we'll be in a year, two, three down the line wrt remote/office/hybrid work at major companies. This forced experiment has had some surprising outcomes about the effectiveness of remote workplaces, but working from home for only a year, in pandemic conditions, is clearly not the same as indefinitely in normal times. But there's reason to think that may go even better, not worse; I am r…

I do think many of the WFH productivity gains seen can probably be attributed to 2 things:

1) Many workers (but certainly not ALL workers) had a much more quiet and focused work environment at home, compared to their buzzing open-plan desk in the office, making them more productive.

2) COVID severely limited socializing, so some people poured that time into work out of boredom.

#1 is constant, and might get better for some when schools and daycares fully reopen.

#2 is starting to go away and will be gone by next year.

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