Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 489 posts

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

#141

Post by dreyfan »

munk-a wrote: post #135
dreyfan wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There were a lot of big words there but am I right at reading your statement as - "I'm exploiting employers so that I can found a start up that is able to monitor truant employees?"

Not interested in employee monitoring but otherwise spot-on.

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

#142

Post by postalrat »

ipaddr wrote: post #131
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would only hire that 10%, those 90% are saying I need more hand holding.

10% are saying they enjoy no responsibility.

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

#143

Post by fbggthro »

schoolornot wrote: post #43
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…

For new hires I suppose it's okay but to adjust the pay of an existing worker whose output remains the same afterwards because they relocated is a bit insulting to me. It's a pay cut, not a "COLA".

>whose output remains the same

This is irrelevant, though. You aren't paid based on your output, you're paid based on how much you cost.

Think of how much you pay for water. In place A, you might pay $0.02 per gallon of water. You move to place B, and they only charge $0.01 gallon of water. Are you going to keep paying $0.02/gallon? The value that the water provides to you hasn't changed, but why would you keep paying $0.02 when you could get it for $0.01?

In FB's view, you aren't any different. Even if you provide the same value, there's no reason to keep paying you $300k when they could pay you (or someone who replaces you) $150k.

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

#144

Post by rllearneratwork »

someelephant wrote: post #28

Let's be real. The loser here is middle managers. Not all of them. Just the ones who feed off of the high they get from having control over the office environment.

I am an engineering manager at Bay Area tech company and I love WFH. We have on-boarded lots of new employees and interns remotely and while there are difficulties the benefits seems to prevail.

Actually, I don't have anyone who is physically in California (I am the only one on my team who is physically there).

EDIT: list of WFH benefits (not complete): no commute (this is huge for some), ICs tend to do more focused work, ability to hire talent globally, giving option to people to live where they want to live (vs work), less seasonal colds, etc.

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

#146

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

schoolornot wrote: post #43
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…

For new hires I suppose it's okay but to adjust the pay of an existing worker whose output remains the same afterwards because they relocated is a bit insulting to me. It's a pay cut, not a "COLA".

My experience with these kind of dislocations is that your HR department starts tracking your target number internally based on your new circumstances and you don't see any pay rises until that number exceeds your actual.

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

#147

Post by gerdesj »

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…

"but working from home for only a year, in pandemic conditions"

About 18 months here (UK.) I'm a business owner (IT services) and I now do see the value of WFH. I really, really know the upsides and the downsides.

My staff don't go off the boil when they are at home - they lose it and drift off when they don't feel ... loved. Call it what you will but when you are sat in a room at home which may not be very comfortable or large enough. Your internets are shit and you only have a small laptop screen.

I have forked out on a shit load of screens, wireless keyboards and mice. You want a docking station - OK. Whatever you want. Yes I have sent the phone and yes just plug it in ... the VPN adds a bit of latency, just slow down a bit when you talk.

I am not just quite good with deploying VPNs, I'm a fucking ... OK, I can make VPNs work quite well. I've seen a few use cases recently.

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

#148

Post by fbggthro »

spamizbad wrote: post #108
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 fo…

>compared to their buzzing open-plan desk in the office, making them more productive.

I think this point gets really overblown by people who put too much of a tech lens on things. I've been in many, many different offices (I'm a consultant) and open plan offices are very rare outside of tech, and on top of that, most non-tech workers do not see "more quiet and focused" as a good thing. Most of my non-tech clients have constant back-and-forth dialog in the office, and removing that has, at least in my experience with these companies, made them less productive.

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

#149

Post by lamontcg »

prmejc wrote: post #87
munk-a wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's an interesting point - most of us more senior folks either have an innate work ethic or have been trained for years to fear a boss looking over our shoulder when we're checking facebook or whatever... Training good work ethic into people who have never worked in an office is an interesting question society will face - but do bear in mind that there are plenty of jobs that are pretty much unsupervised f…

That is why facebook can do full wfh. They don't care if you look at facebook all day.

Businesses need to stop caring about if you're on facebook 8 hours a day. If you're getting your work done at the end of the week that's all that really matters.

The idea that the business owns your ass for a minimum of precisely 40 hours a week where you must be solely focused on the outcome of the business is both toxic and nonproductive.

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

#150

Post by resonious »

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.

I'm under the impression that video games are always crunching anyway, so maybe the pandemic was just a good excuse to delay and finally get the time they needed.
Post reply on HN