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

businessinsider.com

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

#101

Post by Aeolun »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #64
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? You'll cross-pollinate across functions. Or at least increase the chances of that happening. Not saying that's worth the tradeoff. But my time in the office often finds serendipitious value in random off-team conversations, not scheduled time.

I’ve had that happen like a grand total of 5 times in 15 years of work. In which kind of companies or offices do these things happen?

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

#102

Post by Aeolun »

pbreit wrote: post #84
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?

How do you know they are random or noisy?

Stap into any office? It’s full of random people, and it’s full of noise. I’ve not seen places where the knowledge work wasn’t set together with the noisemakers.

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

#103

Post by paxys »

parliament32 wrote: post #83
carlm42 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called a work-life balance. I know, crazy idea.

[flagged]

The practice of an entire working population commuting from an hour+ away to a few buildings in the center of the city, sitting on their ass for 8 hours a day, eating a packed lunch, and commuting back home is at most a couple hundred years old. But sure, go on about your "hundreds-to-thousands of years of history".

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

#104

Post by parliament32 »

paxys wrote: post #92
parliament32 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

There have never been "company hours" in tech. Until recently (before badge tracking became a thing) asking your manager what time you were expected to come in and leave would be met with blank stares. "We don't enforce set hours here, just get your work done". And conversely "I came to the office and worked 8 hours a day like you asked" is never going to be accepted as an excuse when you fail to meet your targets at…

So you'd think right? Nobody would like anything better than to just get output without worrying about hours or location or anything like that. But if you were in a management position when WFH started, you would've seen velocity go through the floor and stay there. And to be fair, there are absolutely a limited set of employees who are perfectly capable of working remotely with no issues whatsoever. But for the majority.. the feedback we've gotten is there is too much temptation to just do the laundry or dishes or "my wife needs a hand with X", and output just continues to stay low. And while it would be great to separate employees into groups based on who can be trusted to WFH and who can't, it feels too discriminatory and would cause way too many headaches.

So, as I'm sure you've seen in the news stories over the last few years, basically every large organization everywhere has enacted some sort of RTO mandate. I'm sure there are a few smaller startups kicking around who want to keep trying things the other way, but for the most part, the industry has spoken. We can keep complaining about it but short of another pandemic it's unlikely covid-style work is going to make a comeback IMO.

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

#105

Post by dxxmxnd »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #64
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? You'll cross-pollinate across functions. Or at least increase the chances of that happening. Not saying that's worth the tradeoff. But my time in the office often finds serendipitious value in random off-team conversations, not scheduled time.

I am currently an engineer at Meta. No one in my office is cross pollinating among different teams. In fact most of us are not even talking to each other unless there’s a dedicated meeting time for it. This whole thing about collaborating is better in person has never been my experience, because the collaboration (at least for engineering) is most of the time better done in a document.

There are, however, a few times when getting together and discussing something in person is valuable, but this is no more than maybe a couple times a month. I can definitely see this being different for other roles.

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

#106

Post by zem »

paxys wrote: post #96
OGEnthusiast wrote: post #85

It's unfortunate there wasn't more resistance by tech employees to RTO post-covid. It seemed like one of the very, very rare solutions to the systemic problems of housing and commuting in the US. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that WFH effectively doubles or even triples your total compensation when it means (a) actually affordable housing and (b) no time/money lost to commuting, especially if you have kid…

Because these mandates coincided with a recession and the worst tech job market in a couple decades, and saying no meant you'd potentially be unemployed for a very long time.

"coincided" is understating it; it is precisely the bad job market that leads to this sort of mandate, because employees have little choice but to go along. in a good job market companies are very willing to offer remote work as an incentive to join them rather than the competition.

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

#107

Post by jfindper »

baiwl wrote: post #100
jfindper wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Covid was fun, I get it, but that was a long time ago man. I don't understand what you gain from trying to be super abrasive on a forum. Is it fun?

The "I know, crazy idea." from the parent comment is even more abrasive.

Calling out every abrasive comment would take more effort than I'm willing to expend, and would itself be pretty abrasive. So I picked the comment where they called Covid (the event where many people died, had their businesses ruined, etc.) "fun" over the one that mentioned work-life balance.

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

#108

Post by bradlys »

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…

None of these executives are using data driven decisions. It’s said as much in the memo. It’s vibes based.

I suspect there’s more at play with this. Maybe they’re expecting attrition from this and that’s their actual goal. They never reveal their core intentions.

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

#109

Post by randycupertino »

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #71

5 days is stupid. I am fully remote and I can see how face time is important. After a few years remote I am definitely feeling a little detached from the company. But 5 days makes no sense. I think 2 or 3 days in the office is perfect. You get the opportunity to talk to people and you have days where you can fully focus. Most ridiculous is to have to come to the office and then talk to your distributed team members o…

5 days is just offensive babysitting level amount of butts in seats. People need room to run their lives, meet contractors, sign for a package, etc. 2-3 days in office is the perfect reasonable sweet spot.

Requiring 5 days in office is going to decrease their available talent pool to only get lesser talent who is desperate for any work and can't get any better offers.

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

#110

Post by crooked-v »

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?

The benefit is that people quit and then Instagram can claim "AI efficiency" to juice the stock.
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