Covid proved that wfh works, micromanagers think otherwise, jokes on us.
Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026
271–280 of 472 posts
Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
The core issue is like you said - responsibility.
My previous employer ran an experiment. They had us come in two days per week for six weeks and ran the numbers. We ended up going 100% wfh with a downsized office. We been planning to double our office capacity before the pan. I’m convinced that more than half of orgs would see similar numbers if they cared to look. I bet a bunch of the ones mandating RTO see them but do it anyway.
The market will solve this problem eventually. In industries where WFH is more efficient, eventually the companies that go that route will outperform their peers. It’s inevitable really. It will take time because companies feel the need to use their offices while they have an ongoing lease, but when it comes time to renew the savings are difficult to ignore.
Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not about productivity at all. These same companies were commissioning studies during Covid that told their analysts "look how productive our employees are now that they are working from home!" It's about crushing labor. WFH forces employers to compete. It gives a lot of power to employees, because they can apply for far more roles, work fewer hours, moonlight for multiple companies, etc, apply for other jobs du…
> It's not about productivity at all. > WFH forces employers to compete. It gives a lot of power to employees, because they can [...] work fewer hours, moonlight for multiple companies, etc Probably "working fewer hours" and "moonlight for multiple companies" has negative effects on productivity that employers would like to avoid.
I’ve hired remote employees, made them come, offered stimulating work, 5% above their requested pay with mentions that I could double it in one year, but I could never get them to the smartness and clarity of analysis they had during the interview. After 6 months they were clearly winging it in I fired both the employees and the manager. This “remote employees don’t moonlight” is a union trope.
Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've already kind of made it clear here where I stand on this, but I gotta tell you, you really do sound a lot like management. Do you really think your superstar programmers are well and truly doing intellectual work, the kind of work that produces business value, from the time they hit the coffee machine at 9AM to the time they grab their briefcase to go home at 5PM? If you believe this, I think you might be intere…
I don't expect someone to do deep focused work from 9am to 5pm. But at the same time, I don't expect them to spend their 9-to-5 working for another company at the same time. As a founder, who respects the 9-to-5 and supports WFH, if I'm paying for 8 hours of work, I want 8 hours of output. Not 4 hours of output, and then you working 4 hours for another job. If multi-jobbing becomes a thing, then WFH becomes untenable…
How do you measure whether some output corresponds to 8 hours of work, and not 4 or 16 hours?
Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026
#275Reading all of these takes stating WFH leads to poor productivity simply doesn’t make sense to me. If your employees cannot be trusted to fulfil their responsibilities (whether in an office, their home or a tent in a woodland) that is not a geographical issue. It is a mentality issue and you are always going to face productivity issue from that employee regardless of from where they work. I’ve been told time and time…
Good thing for you that you’re productive anywhere. I’m not. I much prefer working from an office. I’m way more efficient and happy in an office than working from home. It’s not a matter of mentality. It’s a matter of being in an environment conducive to work. You would benefit from not assuming that everyone is the same as you.
There are offices where I definitely feel productive. Today’s tight open offices just are not those places.
Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a middle ground though between "employees can't be trusted" and "all is well". It's possible for there to be a genuine difference in affordances such that people are more productive in some places than others. I think many people would be less productive in a dank basement than in a pleasant office, but then again maybe you don't want it to be too cushy or productivity may go down. I don't think it's realist…
> What we need is for people to be happy that is irrelevant to company management - in so far as that happiness has negligible effect on productivity. However, from anecdotal evidence i've gathered (only sample size of 5-7 or so), in office has been more productive, but they (with the exception of one, who lives 5 mins from their office) all dislike RTO and would've preferred WFH; but not enough to quit over it as it…
> that is irrelevant to company management
That's right, that's why a lot of company management needs to be smacked down and if necessary fined and jailed. That laser focus on productivity is a cancer on society.
Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not about productivity at all. These same companies were commissioning studies during Covid that told their analysts "look how productive our employees are now that they are working from home!" It's about crushing labor. WFH forces employers to compete. It gives a lot of power to employees, because they can apply for far more roles, work fewer hours, moonlight for multiple companies, etc, apply for other jobs du…
For your comment about the turn towards authoritarianism, yeah, there's a reason every DEI program at every large corporation was pulled back within a few months, and it's not because the C suite all reads the same Musk tweets on X. Employees started making demands of management to actually look at some... structural issues. Those demands had teeth because employees acted and organized as a bloc. Only a matter of tim…
With DEI you had to care about the same "structural issues®". It wasn't exactly employee representation and much more of a HR tool to sanction mostly low level employees.
Usually I don't care about race and sex at work and I am not sad that DEI is gone. Creates room for issues much more relevant to work. Like working hours, salaries, holidays, health insurance and general work benefits. Stuff that matters.
Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
We are observing the most valuable people leaving, because they easily can get a job at place where they care more about value you get to company than the bonus you will get as C-level after firing highly paid workers. In the cases we know (I have a group of people working in different small and medium corps in Poland and Germany) - the people that are staying are either too lazy to change work or they are just not e…
Ok, sweet deal if you are one of the most valuable employees in big tech. Sounds like a perk that many people would seek out. Are you? If yes, cool. If no, well, seems like you have rationalized that not everyone will get WFH regardless on your feelings about it
If you’re the C-suite making this decision without realizing your best remote workers will quit even in this job market because they’re your best employees, you shouldn’t be the C.
If you do realize this, as you most definitely should since it is not rocket science in any way, your projections about short and long term value of institutional knowledge these folks take with them better be accurate.
Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've already kind of made it clear here where I stand on this, but I gotta tell you, you really do sound a lot like management. Do you really think your superstar programmers are well and truly doing intellectual work, the kind of work that produces business value, from the time they hit the coffee machine at 9AM to the time they grab their briefcase to go home at 5PM? If you believe this, I think you might be intere…
I’ll attempt a steelman and say, no, employees are not doing deep work from 9–5, but I could see being in an office 9–5 setting the stage for a lot of deep work to be done. Moonlighting for another company I could especially see as detrimental to focus at work.
Deep work with an open office? Dont make me laugh. Please for the love of god bring back cubicles.
The steel man is that in the office you get cross team pollination organically. Team lunches, talking about an idea with another team on how to do something better as in that moment the idea came up. This happens more often in person than remote.
Does it need 5 days a week in the office? Absolutely not. 1-2 is plenty.
Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've already kind of made it clear here where I stand on this, but I gotta tell you, you really do sound a lot like management. Do you really think your superstar programmers are well and truly doing intellectual work, the kind of work that produces business value, from the time they hit the coffee machine at 9AM to the time they grab their briefcase to go home at 5PM? If you believe this, I think you might be intere…
I don't expect someone to do deep focused work from 9am to 5pm. But at the same time, I don't expect them to spend their 9-to-5 working for another company at the same time. As a founder, who respects the 9-to-5 and supports WFH, if I'm paying for 8 hours of work, I want 8 hours of output. Not 4 hours of output, and then you working 4 hours for another job. If multi-jobbing becomes a thing, then WFH becomes untenable…
8 hours of output? I get it but poor phrasing.