Work from home so good for me. I don't see any valid reason to throw it away. Companies can not force me do what's clearly not in my best interest as long as they need me more than i need them.
Meta Layoffs
111–120 of 282 posts
Re: Meta Layoffs
#112> The overwhelming opinion amongst developer types is that remote is better in every way It doesn’t check out to me that this is an overwhelming opinion. People definitely like remote and hybrid work but the tradeoffs vs being in person at least some of the time are well known to the point of being obvious. Partially-remote teams inherently have higher communication bandwidth between the in-office cadre versus the re…
For what it's worth: I'm a 'developer type' who agrees with you.
Re: Meta Layoffs
#113His poignant take on weekly remote work is being wrestled to the ground stick me the most: > To me, although I’d certainly concede that WFH pares down meeting culture and certainly has benefits in logistics, it’s always been fairly obvious that in-person collaboration is more effective, produces a much stronger culture, and I suspect is important especially to larger orgs because it helps to even out performance. Hig…
> In person work, though a logistical headache and social annoyance, drives team cohesion.
This is probably true, but the thing is, I don't care. Team cohesion is not worth commuting. So any company that wants people who feel the same as I do to work for them is going to have to bite the bullet on the tradeoff.
Re: Meta Layoffs
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is meaningless without knowing how productivity is being measured. It's very possible that said metric inherently favors in-person collaboration over remote collaboration - which would then skew the results of any further analysis of that metric. Why is it supposed to be problematic for the metric to favor or skew towards one over the other? The goal of the metric should be to measure something the company wan…
> Why is it supposed to be problematic for the metric to favor or skew towards one over the other? It's akin to asking whether a weightlifter or a marathon runner is more athletic. If I'm measuring athleticism by one's max jogging distance, that'll disproportionately favor the runner. If I'm measuring athleticism by one's single-rep max deadlift, that'll disproportionately favor the weightlifter. This ain't problemat…
> Facebook might have good reasons to use metrics that inherently prefer in-person work
What's an example of such a metric?
Re: Meta Layoffs
#115> > Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely. This analysis also shows that engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week. This requires further study, but our hypothesis…
> I'll say this: If these companies tanked during the height of Covid, they'd blame it on WFH. Of course, the financial performance for these companies was quite good, so now that there's a bit of correction, they search for reasons to bring employees back to the office. What's entertaining is that the various faang companies performance is likely unrelated to employee performance, and Elon musk's twitter will show a…
I don't think anyone could replicate the utter disaster that Elon is every single day
Re: Meta Layoffs
#116I just have to point out the irony that a company which believes so much in virtual work that they renamed themselves after the "metaverse" is now thinking to require employees to return to the office.
I don't see that as ironic. It in fact reinforces the importance of the metaverse. If there is a benefit to being in person, but not everyone can physically be in person being virtually present would be the next best thing.If presence wasn't shown to be valuable it would mean that the metaverse wouldn't be valuable for work purposes. Remote work is here to stay in society so finding ways to improve it will be valuabl…
Metaverse and anything reachable is so much not "in person" that it is comical.
Re: Meta Layoffs
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is anyone meant to respond to that? Can’t you apply this thinking to any company?
Office structure doesn't affect what products people are willing to pay for.
That one made me think.
Conway’s law may result in products’ appeal, thus what people are willing to pay for.
Re: Meta Layoffs
#118I just never understood how come “tech” companies never used the same concept used within their products, async communications!! Sync communication is a blocking one, you need to block all involved parties to discuss X that most of the times is useless, just use async ones, I email/text/or even video record when I have the time, and you respond when you do, not really that hard!
Async is great for a lot of communication and very efficient but sometimes you just need to tie someone down and get on the same page in a way that takes ages over async.
Re: Meta Layoffs
#119Re: Meta Layoffs
#120This piece goes from talking about meta layoffs to an indictment of remote work surprisingly quick. I love remote work, because I grew up in a small city with no companies operating in my industry and when covid hit I was able to go full remote, move back home, and be around my friends and family while contributing to my company and to my local economy. The biggest thing that has helped my dev team thrive and be able…
>To me, although I’d certainly concede that WFH pares down meeting culture and certainly has benefits in logistics, it’s always been fairly obvious that in-person collaboration is more effective, produces a much stronger culture, and I suspect is important especially to larger orgs because it helps to even out performance. The anti-WFH screeds are always nearly indentical: extremely vague and non-quantifiable in a wa…
> extremely vague and non-quantifiable in a way that makes them technically impossible to argue against
this is why it's a shame people are ridiculing Zuckerberg's post ... they actually did quantify it and actually did come up with some nuanced insight into what works well and what doesn't and he says they are going to keep studying it to learn more.
To me, it seems like there are two tenets to this. (a) remote / distributed anything is hard. but at the same time (b) remote / distribute anything is powerful. Do it well and you will have enormous advantages that your competitors, shackled to their mere physical earthly pinprick of a location on this planet can never match.
Which is to say, it's actually worth trying to do well and I respect that Zuckerberg has taken this more nuanced approach to try and get there.