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

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

#201

Post by lostcolony »

munk-a wrote: post #163
lamontcg wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think that would be a great - but we also employ by the hour not by the task which I also think is great. Sometimes I get tickets marked with three story points and think "Ha, let me just push up a quick patch" and other times I discover a dark dark hole at the bottom of assumptions that eats away at days. It's really hard to generally evaluate employees on productivity - especially in CS - and so our compromise is…

Every place I've worked as an FTE, the focus was on the job, not the hours. In fact, I've had many bosses say as much, usually implying that after hours work might be necessary and they'd expect me to take it uncomplainingly.

And I have, though it's always tempered by two things, namely, A. If the job routinely requires > 40 hours a week, then the job is poorly defined and we need to modify expectations, and B. That if I'm working to the job and not the hours, it doesn't matter if I only put in 30 hours one week, if the work is being done (and, likewise, if THAT is routine, the job is also poorly defined, and I need to ask for more things to do).

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

#202

Post by minsc__and__boo »

cletus wrote: post #189

Speaking as someone who now works remotely permanently, this has been... life-changing. So for 10 years I lived in NYC and--don't get me wrong--there are lots of things I liked about NYC but I'm so over the summers and the winters. Also bear in mind that I think NYC is infinitely better for most people to live in than the Bay Area. But I now live in Florida. It's about the 182nd day in a row where it's been 70-80F. S…

>It's worth noting that this doesn't enable a true digital nomad lifestyle if that's what you want.

This isn't that hard to circumvent with a mailing address. The real blocker has been pre-covid management not being comfortable with 100% remote.

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

#203

Post by jreese »

tracyhenry wrote: post #197

The title missed one important piece: employees who don't choose remote work are required to come to office at least half of the week (i.e. three days). This is a less of a good news for most people.

Note that that's starting in October at the earliest, depending on how/when your local office reopens up. The Menlo Park campus is only "10% open" right now, so the only people in the office are the ones desperate to get out of the house, and we're not expecting the office to be 50% open until September. There is plenty of notice and time for people who really care about working from home to either apply for remote work or slowly adjust back to office work.

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

#204

Post by lamontcg »

munk-a wrote: post #163
lamontcg wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think that would be a great - but we also employ by the hour not by the task which I also think is great. Sometimes I get tickets marked with three story points and think "Ha, let me just push up a quick patch" and other times I discover a dark dark hole at the bottom of assumptions that eats away at days. It's really hard to generally evaluate employees on productivity - especially in CS - and so our compromise is…

> we also employ by the hour

do you punch a timecard or do you get the same check every month or whatever your pay period is?

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

#205

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

Sunspark wrote: post #171
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.

Awful that so much of corporate culture is oriented around having a middle-manager bully. Always yipping and yapping about "productivity" never focusing on what you do as opposed to how much of whatever. Never wanting you to take breaks, but always wanting you to work unpaid overtime and taking all the credit for themselves. Super quick to make sure the blame is yours whenever there is an issue. Engineers are some of…

IMO bitching about bad middle managers is like bitching that the kid making minimum wage at McDonald's isn't the epitome of gracious customer service.

I have been a middle manager, and can say pretty confidently that it is a very difficult and a very shitty job. This is one reason that it tends to pay quite well is that there are fewer people who want to go into it (as opposed to, say, high level IC).

A middle manager gets to make very few decisions but gets to be the messenger for the majority of them.

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

#206

Post by minsc__and__boo »

mustafa_pasi wrote: post #130
skeeter2020 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if that's me, but I'm a engineering manager that focuses on personal relationships and remote has made my job harder and take way more energy. High fidelity communication is hard or impossible and the alternatives frankly, suck. I don't _think_ I get high from controlling an office environment (not sure what that means) but I sure miss white boards and in-person collaboration.

It's not just you. I cannot manage to do people stuff over videochat. Not to mention virtual whiteboards are a frustratingly poor imitation of the real deal. On the other hand, I do work better on my own, when I just need to grind out some work. I guess my ideal would be 2 or 3 days remote and the rest in office.

Whiteboarding has been a real loss here. It feels like ages since I picked up a marker and made a data model.

There really is no remote alternative that isn't super expensive or lacks the responsiveness of in-person.

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

#207

Post by dado3212 »

leoh wrote: post #191
dado3212 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're basically evaluated according to L5 requirements. Given that you weren't promoted at that point, it's likely you're not performing at those requirements, and you'll be slowly managed out. More often as people get close to the red zone, they just swap companies preemptively.

How does this contrast with Google?

Google’s terminal level is L4. Not sure what happens if you’re not promoted in the given timeline.

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

#208

Post by er4hn »

minsc__and__boo wrote: post #202
cletus wrote: post #189

Speaking as someone who now works remotely permanently, this has been... life-changing. So for 10 years I lived in NYC and--don't get me wrong--there are lots of things I liked about NYC but I'm so over the summers and the winters. Also bear in mind that I think NYC is infinitely better for most people to live in than the Bay Area. But I now live in Florida. It's about the 182nd day in a row where it's been 70-80F. S…

>It's worth noting that this doesn't enable a true digital nomad lifestyle if that's what you want. This isn't that hard to circumvent with a mailing address. The real blocker has been pre-covid management not being comfortable with 100% remote.

State taxes are generally not something you want to circumvent.

Ps - great baldurs gate 2 ref in your username :)

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

#209

Post by jreese »

leoh wrote: post #191
dado3212 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're basically evaluated according to L5 requirements. Given that you weren't promoted at that point, it's likely you're not performing at those requirements, and you'll be slowly managed out. More often as people get close to the red zone, they just swap companies preemptively.

How does this contrast with Google?

AFAIK, Google has a very similar policy. At FB, E5 is a "terminal level", so once you hit that level, there's no push or expectation to reach beyond that. I've been in the E4 red zone at one point, and spent about a year getting evaluated at E5 levels before getting the promo. You're not automatically out if you don't reach it in time, but you have to be showing progress, and it does get more urgent the longer you spend in that zone.

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

#210

Post by porknubbins »

tayo42 wrote: post #160
FartyMcFarter wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In particular I'm curious on the impact to junior employees. Some people think that junior people are having trouble learning things when WFH.

Why? I would think most tech related learning happens with out other people involved. Learning languages, self study, Stack over flow and simmiliar, reading books. Idk if junior employees need to coddled as much as people think. Maybe just the bottom doesn't cut it. Developing your knowledge on your own is a skill you need any way.

I’ve always felt this way about learning too. I’ve never had anyone offer to be any kind of a teacher or mentor long term. However there is a huge narrative around mentors and people talking about how much they learned from others so I have to conclude its either my personality type or just something that used to happen more in the past.
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