Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees • Hacker News Board

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

#431

Post by aphextron » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 3:01 PM UTC

dreyfan wrote: post #294

ipsum2 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much work are you doing at these 10 companies? Are you writing code or just literally doing nothing?

Yes writing code, I provide enough actual progress that people must assume I'm either extremely methodical or woefully incompetent. I put in about an hour per job per day. I'm logged-in on slack/teams/etc and disable idle indicators. I use a virtual KVM to switch between laptops as needed. The biggest problem I run into is video meetings occurring at the same time, those I usually just disable video and blame it on i…

You are my new hero.

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

#432

Post by ipaddr » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

skizm wrote: post #167

ipaddr wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It has nothing to do with hand holding. Almost every blocker is tribal knowledge that there is no way to acquire other than asking.

Aside from asking you should be exploring, probing, reviewing anything you have access to. Clues are everywhere and relying only on others to teach you will be a difficult strategy. If documentation is missing identify and get the docs fixed, opportunities can exist.

I have never interned. Maybe you expect that. I usually get thrown into the deepend of some codebase and asked to figure it out. My advise would be to get use to it and get good at it.

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

#433

Post by roberto » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 4:15 PM UTC

missedthecue wrote: post #181

benatkin wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This hinges on the following: > "Zuckerberg said employees who want to work in an office will be asked to come in at least half the time." I agree - part time remote work will be bad for micromanagers.

It will be bad for the permanent wfh employees. While they are eating lunch at home, their coworkers will be grabbing lunch with the boss, building those relationships, and getting all the promotions and raises.

I'd rather have the option of having lunch at home, with my family, than at work with my boss, even if it costs a promotion.

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

#434

Post by raydev » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

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.

How do you prevent them from suing you if they find out?

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

#435

Post by dboreham » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #379

dboreham wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've now spent decades working with people I never met.

If you've been working remotely for decades, you: A) Have a totally different work experience than 99.99% of folks out there B) Might have different personality type than a huge chunk of people out there (hard to quantify, a guesstimate of mine would be at least 60%)

Perhaps. I note that when I worked in the bosom of the valley long ago (Netscape campus on Ellis), often I was working with others in the organization who were in different buildings and I never met them. Working with others in different countries has also been the norm for me for decades, predating my own remove move.

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

#436

Post by ping_pong » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

bradlys wrote: post #344

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.

10 remote is a bit excessive. You only need like 3 to hit $1.5m and that’s far more manageable.

They would have to last 1 year to get the full TC which isn't the point. They do the minimal amount of work to collect a $150k salary and then get fired in 4 months and move on.

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

#437

Post by akramer16 » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 5:21 PM UTC

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.

I'm a tech culture reporter at Protocol and I'd love to talk to you about this, if you're down! I'm at akramer@protocol.com or @anna_c_kramer on Twitter, and happy to provide my Signal over email if that's preferred. Let me know if you'd be interested in chatting.

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

#438

Post by bluishgreen » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

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…

There is a right number of days per month where you have to meet people and socialize. It wasn't 22. It is not 0 either. But I believe it is closer to 0 than 22. Personally I feel about 5 days a month would be the right amount to trigger all the benefits of in person knowing.

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

#439

Post by dreyfan » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 5:58 PM UTC

raydev wrote: post #434

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.

How do you prevent them from suing you if they find out?

This is the US, anyone can sue anyone for anything. That said, California has very favorable employee-protection laws around non-compete, non-solicit, notice periods, at-will employment status, and ownership of work. It's very unlikely an employer will sue over $10-20k. So far, they all just fire me and move on.

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

#440

Post by __turbobrew__ » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

chris11 wrote: post #387

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my experience as well. Companies are aiming for equality of outcomes even though WFH and office employees work in different environments. I think it is totally fine for an employee to make the decision to work from home and obtain greater freedom at the cost of worse promotion outcomes. The problem is that if employers say “hey you can work from home, but you are less likely to get promoted than your peers wo…

I'm not sure about an increased risk of lawsuits, though worse promotion outcomes is a bad answer for other reasons. That sounds like remote employees are less productive than on-site employees. I don't think companies would want to design a remote-work policy with that belief.

> That sounds like remote employees are less productive than on-site employees

The linked study (in my comment) says otherwise. WFH employees were better performers on average. This means that WFH employees — when normalized for performance — had much worse promotion rates that their office peers.