171–180 of 472 posts
I have a question for anyone who knows. When the productivity fell in covid days due to communications overheads and people just suddenly finding it easy to execute "lazy", did the ever so efficient corporate machinery pick this up in a jiffy and propose salary cuts to match? Or were they just too nice to do that?
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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.
And, of course, serendipitous collaboration rarely happens when everyone is sitting with noise cancelling headphones, focusing on hitting their ambitious individual goals for the quarter/half/year.
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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.
The headline makes it seem like every role in the company needs to switch to full-time in-office. But anyone who was hired in a remote role is exempt. This order only applies to in-office workers with assigned desks. He's basically saying that they can't expect to have a hybrid work schedule, although not so strict that they can't ever work from home.
Exempt temporarily. Very temporarily. This is a standard boiling the frog playbook: * No more remote hires * Mandate non-remote employees into office (Instagram is here) * Mandate remote employees who live within X miles of office return to office (significant chunks of Alphabet, etc. are here) etc. - this will get ramped up and very soon
Though, in my case bullet #1 was more like
No more remote hires. However, we will more than backfill the folks quitting or being laid off in the US and the EU with folks in India and China. We hope you enjoy the in-office synergy when communicating with your new teammates who are literally half a world away!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.
You mean phone coffins?
> "focus on building great products, not preparing for meetings"
That says it all. The intent is to try to spark the freewheeling, creative, startup days. Wouldn't be the first company that tries to reconnect with its startup roots. Won't be the last, either. Unfortunately, it never works, because those rockstar startup employees cashed out their stock and moved to the Napa Valley. Your workforce is now indistinguishable from IBM or Exxon Mobile. Good luck!
> Mosseri joined Facebook in 2008 as a designer and became Instagram's VP of product in 2018
Bingo. Old dog, new tricks. Good luck!
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Exempt temporarily. Very temporarily. This is a standard boiling the frog playbook: * No more remote hires * Mandate non-remote employees into office (Instagram is here) * Mandate remote employees who live within X miles of office return to office (significant chunks of Alphabet, etc. are here) etc. - this will get ramped up and very soon
Yep. I've been through almost exactly that, and know many other folks who have. If you're working in the US or other places that don't have really good labor regs, "RTO exemptions" are temporary , no matter what you're being told today. Though, in my case bullet #1 was more like No more remote hires. However, we will more than backfill the folks quitting or being laid off in the US and the EU with folks in India and…
It’s amazing how much intense of a Scrooge McDuck vibes we’re getting from the MBA executive class.
Crank the screws, tighten the belt, offshore, increase profits at all costs. The next generations are going to have it rough since these elites have intentionally hoarded prosperity at the expense of their countrymen
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> Don't get me started on the horror that was instagram for kids Please do get started. Is this an actual thing they/you were building?
https://www.npr.org/2021/09/27/1040857033/instagram-kids-pau...
I was all gung-ho for "You don't need regulation (imprisonment) for something that's just a mirror held up to society" before realizing Facebinstapp literally does things like this
"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?
People have been asking that since companies started phasing out WFH after the pandemic.
I left my last company when they made me go to the office when I worked for a dispersed team, I was the only one in this office and the rest of the team was dispersed across multiple timezones. Every team meeting was literally a zoom meeting, and conference rooms were scarce so everyone just did zoom calls at their desk.
When I was WFH I didn't mind getting up in time for a 7:30am meeting to meet with the overseas team before they went home for the day, but I wasn't willing to leave the house at 6:30 to get to the office in time for that meeting, and I wasn't going to join a 7:30am meeting at home, then head to work after already putting in an hour of work.
My boss agreed it made no sense, but there were no exceptions to the rule -- I left before it became mandatory 5 days a week in the office.
The CEO made a big deal of going to the office every day so everyone should do it, but it didn't escape notice that the company literally opened an office just for the finance and executive team that happened to be in the same wealthy suburb that he and most of the other top execs lived. That would have turned a 45 - 60 minute commute into a 10 minute commute for him.
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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.
I've worked at a cubicle farm before. Partitions were high enough to avoid being able to see people in a sitting position, but high enough that you can still stand up and ask your neighbor a question. The cubicles were spaceous, had ample desk space and didn't feel claustrophobic or "caged in" at all. If anything, it felt like I had my own little space that I was in control of.
The partitions had steel sheets in them to allow people to use magnets to hang up documents/whatever. My cubicle walls were covered in [documents and datasheets](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNzIxZmIzYjEtZGMyZi00...). Some of my colleagues had extensively decorated their cubicles with photos and tchotchkes. Others had their entire desk space littered with PCBs and tools.
Managers got cubicles on the sides of the building with windows, theirs were larger and had higher partitions, with a window filling in that extra height.
The extra desk space was great. I worked as an embedded SWE and I often needed the space for tools and the devices I was working on. The few times I needed an oscilloscope, I could easily find room for it, no need to move my setup to a lab.
Cubicles get a bad rep. It's actually quite a nice way to work, if executed properly, that is.
That said, I did have noise issues before. But that was always the same colleague. She luckily only came in on Wednesdays. She totally lacked the concept of an indoor voice while on the telephone.
