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Will workers hired as Remote all be laid off in next wave?

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Re: Will workers hired as Remote all be laid off in next wave?

#71

Post by lr4444lr »

gspencley wrote: post #16

I personally don't care what FAANG does. They all sound like horrible companies to work for, and I don't care for the products they produce either. I was working remotely before the pandemic and will continue to work remotely in the future. It's great that we have more opportunities now than before, but they always existed. So what the "mainstream" or "big tech" world does in current year is their own business. I won…

> I personally don't care what FAANG does. They all sound like horrible companies to work for, and I don't care for the products they produce either.

They're still market movers: if they dump a lot of talent, that will affect wages, and the people who work at those companies learn habits that they bring to other companies. I don't particularly "like" them, but I'm very concerned that they slowly fizzle out rather than make sudden moves.

Re: Will workers hired as Remote all be laid off in next wave?

#72

Post by sokoloff »

lelanthran wrote: post #63
gardenhedge wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in a union and got a 1.5% raise, benefits have decreased and we're forced into hybrid working. I'm in a country where I can't just be fired without notice so that union doesnt do much for me there either. I'm just pointing out that unions don't mean you get everything you want.

> I'm just pointing out that unions don't mean you get everything you want. Maybe not, but if the companies can band together and collectively decide what is best for employers[1], then it's only fair that employees should be able to band together and collectively decide what is best for employees. Unions are for collective negotiation; getting what you want is a nice side-effect of collective bargaining. [1] Yeah, d…

> it's only fair that employees should be able to band together and collectively decide what is best for employees.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that it's unfair for employees to form unions if they want. Employees who want to do that absolutely should be able to.

Not everyone wants to be in a union and employees who don't want to be should also be able to do that.

Re: Will workers hired as Remote all be laid off in next wave?

#73

Post by danwee »

Depends on your contract I would say. I'm working for a company (not FAANG) that has recently mandated RTO (partially, 2 days/week) but they couldn't enforce to some employees like me because in our contracts it's stated our regular place of work (in mine, it's the city in which I live, which is around 300KM from the nearest office). So, I'm still working remotely.

This in Europe. Perhaps it's different in other places.

Re: Will workers hired as Remote all be laid off in next wave?

#74

Post by scruple »

keikobadthebad wrote: post #3

Something you have to understand about being remote - at any time, this was true decades ago - is that you are not there when people talk and you can't correct them or defend yourself. People with commutes and requirements to be under the eyes of management resent those who don't have that problem and can all agree on that. Remote gigs will always be more tenuous than prison-jobs.

I had a wonderful remote working gig for about 8 years. My first year was in-office, then I negotiated part-time remote for 1.5 years and full-time remote for the remainder of my time there. This is where I worked for most of the '10s.

> you are not there when people talk and you can't correct them or defend yourself

And you'll never suspect it from the people who are doing it the most / worst. As a mid level, I worked under a lead who was 100% in-office and who was, on a daily basis, stealing credit for all of my work with engineering management while at the same time pushing for me to get a promotion! His career / role catapulted into the high-rises, he threatened to leave unless X, Y, and Z demands were made, they capitulated because they believed he was so crucial, I had no idea any of this was going on until years after the fact, and I made Senior. Whoopity fucking doo.

I was later told that this person was eventually fired, because he found his personal Peter Principle level and had run out of subordinates to abuse, but he's still out there in industry fucking things up for other people, I'm sure.

Re: Will workers hired as Remote all be laid off in next wave?

#75

Post by kypro »

A lot of think about remote work in a very binary way when really it depends on a lot of factors.

Some engineering jobs benefit from close collaboration others don't.

A lot of engineers prefer remote work so not offering remote roles limits your talent pool, this is especially true if your office is not based in a place with a lot of hot tech talent.

If a company that over hired during the pandemic and now needs to cut back it's workforce it's relatively easier to get those new hires to leave by asking them to return to the office.

Companies that embrace remote can reduce costs since they don't need offices or to provide on-site perks (free food, gyms, travel expenses, etc).

Whether there will be a mass layoff of remote employees is going to depend mostly on the company.

Re: Will workers hired as Remote all be laid off in next wave?

#76

Post by afavour »

nsxwolf wrote: post #55
eropple wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm in a country where I can't just be fired without notice so that union doesnt do much for me there either. In most countries, this didn't happen out of nowhere.

Point out the underperformance of unions and the response is always yeah but they got us weekends off 100 years ago. What have you done for me lately?

Union membership has been declining for decades. They’re not as effective when they don’t have the numbers to back it up.

Re: Will workers hired as Remote all be laid off in next wave?

#78

Post by gspencley »

scruple wrote: post #68
gspencley wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've just heard a lot of horror stories from colleagues about every single one of them. To be fair a lot of the complaints are typical of working for any large corporate machine. I'm not anti-corporation or anti-capitalist but the bigger a company gets the more bureaucracy, red tape, polices, layers of middle management and overall inefficiencies and burdensome "structures" get put in place. I'm happy to hear of a co…

You're hearing from people who had negative experiences and allowing it to color your perspective of the experience of, like, well over 1,000,000 (? I don't really know, just spit-balling here) people who currently collectively work for these organizations. That's kind of short-sighted, right?

Not at all.

1) These are colleagues I know and trust and have a lot to say about their time there. I wouldn't pay attention to them if we didn't have certain things in common, re: cultural expectations and opinions on what a good place to work for looks like, which increase their weight. It's not like I'm reading random Tweets or something (I don't have a Twatter account and wouldn't work there either).

2) I have worked with a lot of middle managers that came from FAANG. They have had this weird kink / fetish about FAANG companies and how projects and people should be managed, and they constantly talk about their time at those companies and how they are taking these processes and cultural opinions directly from that world. Many are some the worst people I have ever met and they are directly representing those companies. It might be a small sample-set, but if that is any indication of the types managers that work at those places then it's enough for me to not be willing to take the risk.

3) Facebook gave us React and GraphQL, Microsoft gave us Windows & Telemetry, Google gave us a world of tech surveillance and Apple gave us... well... every Apple product ever. Those companies can't NOT be toxic based on their products. It might not be fair to single them out since they're not the only companies to produce evil but I can infer what goes on in those corporate offices after 30 years in this industry, and seeing how people from that world operate. That was implied in my initial comment. You don't have to agree with me about how evil they are, it's not a crime to have wrong opinions :P

Re: Will workers hired as Remote all be laid off in next wave?

#79

Post by edgyquant »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #65
nsxwolf wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point out the underperformance of unions and the response is always yeah but they got us weekends off 100 years ago. What have you done for me lately?

Working on the 4 day workweek in the US at the moment. Progress takes time, it's impossible until it is done.

What Unions are working on this and what progress has been made?

Re: Will workers hired as Remote all be laid off in next wave?

#80

Post by meiraleal »

That's just their problem. The paying is good enough for the ones that are willing to sell themselves to create those soul-sucking algorithms used by the mentioned companies. One thing none of them deserve is empathy - as they have none for the whole world.
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