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Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

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Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#131

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #50
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think this is the tech job market to leave your job, and then what? Try and get in at someone else about to return to office? Freelance? IDK about anyone else, but I haven’t considered a contractor since AI Coding hit hard, I had poor experience with contractors anyhow, now I’m not sure I see the point of rolling those dice again. It’s kind of a soft market unless you are working directly on AI models. So, is thi…

>You think this is the tech job market to leave your job, and then what? 1. take that time to startup that business you've been thinking of doing 2. Coast on the months of savings and years of stock until things get better. Perhaps you even have enough for a soft retirement. 3. try to rapidly interview and hope you have a ship to jump to before the hammer comes down. 4. interview anyway because you know this means a…

On number one, sure, take all the risk yourself. It pays off sometimes. And when it comes to hiring people you need to work as hard as you do, you can tell them they can work from home.

Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#132

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

ribosometronome wrote: post #97
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Honestly I wouldn't be shocked if I'm more productive in an office (due to pressure to seem busy, which correlates somewhat with amount of time actually being busy) As a hiring manager, I appreciate the honesty and nuance. There is so much bullshit about remote work from the people doing it that it’s a little too much “doth protest”. “I get so much more work done and I cracked the code to productivity, and surely no…

>As a hiring manager ... it’s a little too much “doth protest”. Have you considered evaluating your own beliefs with this perspective?

That’s a fancy “no u” but it doesn’t make any sense.

I have remote employees, and I have people I would never allow WFH because they can’t handle it.

I don’t care what you do. I’m explaining from the position of someone responsible for a team that MANY people who are strictest about WFH being absolute are the people abusing it. This shouldn’t even be remotely controversial… yet… all I see is more protest and digital foot stomping.

Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#133

Post by deadbabe »

I have found that at many companies with these kind of policies are selectively enforced. If you don’t show up, nothing will happen to you, until someday they need some kind of reason to fire you. This ensures you have a steady pool of employees you can drop at a moments notice, if for instance some major market crash forces you to quickly dump people in order for the company to survive.

Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#134

Post by staplers »

roadside_picnic wrote: post #80
kkolybacz wrote: post #16

"We're also offering the option to transfer from the MPK to SF office for those people whose commute would be the same or better with that change." So wait, you'll be able to switch offices even though your team might be in the second one? What's the benefit of working remote from your team but next to random, noisy people?

> What's the benefit of working remote from your team but next to random, noisy people? The illusion of control? I mean we can pretend we don't know what this is about (well it's probably also about encouraging a reduction in force), but we do know right? By far the people who bemoaned working from home the most were people whose job doesn't typically involve any actual "work". Not saying that there weren't exception…

  What I don't understand is why we still pretend like this is a mystery.
The theatrical ego has a chokehold on the world currently. No surprise it's seeping into corporate structures as well.

Large grandiose parades and such.

Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#135

Post by gerdesj »

dexwiz wrote: post #55
paxys wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pre-covid - an entire working team is clustered in the same office and have desks near each other. People collaborate via in-person meetings, hallway conversations and general proximity. During covid - hiring is mostly remote since companies figure they don't have to be constrained by geography anymore. Employees work at home and collaborate over Zoom meetings. It's difficult at first but everyone adjusts. Productivi…

I work in a post Covid office and even with about 1 to 6 ratio of desks to rooms, along just as many fart pods, it can be a struggle to find space during peak hours.

Do you really have one desk per six rooms? That's pretty sparse 8)

Now the real issue is: what on earth is a fart pod?

Anyway, my (quite literally mine as in I'm the MD) tiddly company still clings to the notion that remote working is a good thing, in general. Pre-pandemic I was a sceptic and post-pandemic: I'm happy that a lot more remote working happens.

There do need to be additional controls but not of the intrusive, automated variety. I deliberately ring people up and encourage using the dog and bone and frown on email for immediate requirements.

It is a fact of modern corporate life that people will use email as it was intended: a reliable store and forward communication mechanism. A side effect is that what should be sorted out now can be ... legitimately ... punted off into tomorrow.

Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#136

Post by meowface »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #30
meowface wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm thankful I was "grandfathered in" by starting a remote role pre-COVID. Honestly I wouldn't be shocked if I'm more productive in an office (due to pressure to seem busy, which correlates somewhat with amount of time actually being busy) but I overwhelmingly prefer remote work.

>Honestly I wouldn't be shocked if I'm more productive in an office (due to pressure to seem busy, which correlates somewhat with amount of time actually being busy) As a hiring manager, I appreciate the honesty and nuance. There is so much bullshit about remote work from the people doing it that it’s a little too much “doth protest”. “I get so much more work done and I cracked the code to productivity, and surely no…

Yeah, people differ, and there are different forces that can increase and decrease productivity in an office and at home. If I'm honest with myself, being remote gives me more opportunity to slack off and do whatever I want, which often is not really working. But if I'm in an office I also am less able to get in a flow state.

An ideal working environment for me would probably be working from home, alone, perhaps with some stimulants (I have severe ADHD, or at least am diagnosed as having it and perceive myself as having), a close deadline, a lot of intrinsic motivation and interest in a task, and no distractions. In practice, most of the time I find working on a laptop at a library or cafe or on a laptop/desktop in an office does push me to do more work-related stuff more frequently on an average day, since I know people near me may notice I'm spending ages on Twitter or HN or whatever and that somewhat discourages me from doing non-work things.

I don't think you deserve to have been downvoted. I love having a work-from-home job and love that I was able to get one pre-pandemic, but I also don't necessarily blame higher-ups for wanting more people to work in an office. It's complicated.

Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#137

Post by _ea1k »

roadside_picnic wrote: post #86
paxys wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pre-covid - an entire working team is clustered in the same office and have desks near each other. People collaborate via in-person meetings, hallway conversations and general proximity. During covid - hiring is mostly remote since companies figure they don't have to be constrained by geography anymore. Employees work at home and collaborate over Zoom meetings. It's difficult at first but everyone adjusts. Productivi…

> Pre-covid - an entire working team is clustered in the same office Just a reminder that there were plenty of great distributed teams long before Covid. I had had only a few "in office" jobs in my pre-covid career (and generally found collaboration better on remote teams, though goofing off has a bit harder to organize). I also find it funny that somehow software engineers completely forget about the existence of op…

Reading this made me wonder if I have an alt account that I forgot about, because this is exactly how I think about our current state.

Hey, remote work isn't productive, lets go into an office and push all our code to github and deploy to Linux (both largely developed by distributed teams, thankfully without Zoom).

But you are right, organizational and productivity theater dominate at many companies.

Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#139

Post by subw00f »

tayo42 wrote: post #125
JoshTriplett wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the employees most likely to quit will be ones with responsibilities that make it difficult to do the commute 5 days a week Or senior people who have a dozen offers waiting in their inbox that they've neglected responding to because they're reasonably happy where they are...until the prospect of commuting.

That's not how the job market is right now. There's like 5 companies in the world that can compete on compensation while allowing remote work with meta.

I would take a lower comp for remote work and a better work environment. They will never pay me the amount that would make me choose 2h in traffic everyday instead of having enough time to cook breakfast to my family, take my kids to school, have lunch with my wife, etc.

Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#140

Post by apercu »

paxys wrote: post #37
kkolybacz wrote: post #16

"We're also offering the option to transfer from the MPK to SF office for those people whose commute would be the same or better with that change." So wait, you'll be able to switch offices even though your team might be in the second one? What's the benefit of working remote from your team but next to random, noisy people?

Pre-covid - an entire working team is clustered in the same office and have desks near each other. People collaborate via in-person meetings, hallway conversations and general proximity. During covid - hiring is mostly remote since companies figure they don't have to be constrained by geography anymore. Employees work at home and collaborate over Zoom meetings. It's difficult at first but everyone adjusts. Productivi…

A lot of us have worked remote for a long time - I did it 2004 - 2007, and 2015-present. Sometimes across many time zones. The issue is with (lack of) leadership, and specifically lack of accountability for leadership.
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