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Real reasons why tech giants are hugging “Remote Work”

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Re: Real reasons why tech giants are hugging “Remote Work”

#11

Post by slavapestov »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #3

Cynical but in a dumb way. A moment of thought will tell you that lost productivity by being all remote outweighs the benefits money that the FAANGs are saving. If they could just shovel that money they're saving to the employees to get that productivity back, they would. A smarter cynical take would be that it's more likely that 1) they know their employees don't want to risk COVID-19, 2) they don't want to risk the…

> A moment of thought will tell you that lost productivity by being all remote outweighs the benefits money that the FAANGs are saving.

I don’t think any productivity differences between distributed and co-located teams have been conclusively demonstrated one way or another.

Besides, even if your claim were true, a company that hired outside of a single metro area (in most cases, the SFBA) stands to gain more from drawing upon a much larger talent pool in the long run.

Re: Real reasons why tech giants are hugging “Remote Work”

#12

Post by shuckles »

The real reason may just be the failure of a legitimate second hub after the Bay Area: Facebook needs to hire 10k more people this year and maybe tens of thousands more over the next decade. There is no single place they can do that, and by the time they tally up all the possible other offices it might just make more sense to shrug your shoulders and make it officially and literally “anywhere.” In this version, it’s likely the emerging technology hubs which lose to cities with simply great quality of life or low costs, and the Bay Area continues relatively unaffected.

Re: Real reasons why tech giants are hugging “Remote Work”

#13

Post by bobthepanda »

voisin wrote: post #8
paulryanrogers wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A moment of thought will tell you that lost productivity by being all remote outweighs the benefits money that the FAANGs are saving. Really? Three years working remote and I'm still more productive.

N = 1. The fact is no one knows how it shakes out across teams and organizations and whether it heightens the learning curve for new employees who do not benefit from the informal chatter around them, or whether it increases employee turnover in the long run. Seems irresponsible to make organization wide bets like this without proper testing. “Move fast and break things” applies to culture too I suppose.

Even if it makes some people more productive, it also doesn't necessarily apply to everyone, and wasn't a core complaint of remote workers that remote work policy was too one-size-fits-all?

I would imagine you would see more flexibility afforded by employers but full remote is probably a fantasy.

Re: Real reasons why tech giants are hugging “Remote Work”

#15

Post by rcurry »

Working remote just makes so much more sense. My old routine was - get up, have some coffee, start dreading the one hour commute, then do the one hour commute, then get to work and spend an hour decompressing from the one hour commute... now it’s get up, pour a cup of coffee, start enjoying working on stuff in my bathrobe. And the coffee is way better than what the office was paying for :-)

Re: Real reasons why tech giants are hugging “Remote Work”

#16

Post by slavapestov »

voisin wrote: post #6

It is a huge bet that productivity in the long run is equal to or greater than the savings in rent. When you do the math on the occupancy cost per square foot relative to the labour cost on a per square foot basis (using a company’s occupancy numbers divided by square footage of the office), it works out to 4 - 7%. If you increase employee turnover slightly or decrease productivity in the long run by a small amount,…

> It is a huge bet that productivity in the long run is equal to or greater than the savings in rent.

And also, that not every potential employee who can add value to the organization wants to relocate to the same place. I think that’s a more important bet in the long run.

> Oh, and if you give your employees a bunch of money to fit out their home offices and start paying for their internet at home and give them money for lunches and whatnot,

Isn’t this called “salary”? I don’t expect my employer to cook and feed me lunch and I don’t really need a special lunch stipend either.

Re: Real reasons why tech giants are hugging “Remote Work”

#17

Post by [deleted] »

voisin wrote: post #6

It is a huge bet that productivity in the long run is equal to or greater than the savings in rent. When you do the math on the occupancy cost per square foot relative to the labour cost on a per square foot basis (using a company’s occupancy numbers divided by square footage of the office), it works out to 4 - 7%. If you increase employee turnover slightly or decrease productivity in the long run by a small amount,…

[deleted]

Re: Real reasons why tech giants are hugging “Remote Work”

#19

Post by pzh »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #4
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #3

Cynical but in a dumb way. A moment of thought will tell you that lost productivity by being all remote outweighs the benefits money that the FAANGs are saving. If they could just shovel that money they're saving to the employees to get that productivity back, they would. A smarter cynical take would be that it's more likely that 1) they know their employees don't want to risk COVID-19, 2) they don't want to risk the…

> A moment of thought will tell you that lost productivity by being all remote outweighs the benefits money that the FAANGs are saving. Really? Three years working remote and I'm still more productive.

It’s also a matter of culture. For remote employees to be fully productive, the company’s culture needs to be heavily geared towards remote. You can’t have 50% of the employees in the office having impromptu hallway conversations and whiteboard discussions while the rest of the team that is remote is half-isolated, separated from the in-office idea generation, and only gets to hear about what was decided by email. You’ll effectively end up creating two classes of employees: the in-office superstars and leaders who are highly paid, and the cheaper remote workers who have a glass ceiling on their career progression and are mostly relegated to the execution of the in-office team’s vision.

Re: Real reasons why tech giants are hugging “Remote Work”

#20

Post by option »

voisin wrote: post #6

It is a huge bet that productivity in the long run is equal to or greater than the savings in rent. When you do the math on the occupancy cost per square foot relative to the labour cost on a per square foot basis (using a company’s occupancy numbers divided by square footage of the office), it works out to 4 - 7%. If you increase employee turnover slightly or decrease productivity in the long run by a small amount,…

The full WFH also means your talent pool to hire from is more global, and, on average, cheaper
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