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Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

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Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#181

Post by michaelt »

_qulr wrote: post #148
_qulr wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do not see this around me at all. Are you denying the existence of rampant age discrimination in tech, which has been highlighted countless times by many people? Otherwise, I'm not sure what the comment was intending. > there are plenty of people around me There's a bit of survivorship bias there. The older people driven out of tech may be invisible to you.

Here's some data from the Stack Overflow 2020 developer survey: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#developer-pro... Only 17% of professional developers surveyed were age 40+. That vastly disproportionate with the age demographics of the overall human population.

I don't deny there's age discrimination, but that survey also says JavaScript is 2x as popular as Java, and 3.4x as popular as C++

Whereas [1] says among job board postings, C++ is about as popular as JS, and Java is 1.7x more popular than JS.

Perhaps the holders of StackOverflow accounts aren't representative of the profession as a whole? I could certainly believe people who were programming professionally before SO existed, and who have decades of experience, would have gotten good at solving problems without asking for help.

[1] https://www.codingdojo.com/blog/the-7-most-in-demand-program...

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#182

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

st1x7 wrote: post #6
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #4

IMHO companies need to either embrace WFH fully or not at all. This current "we're kinda mostly WFH but not really sometimes" is the worst, as you have archaic processes still in place from pre WFH days that are still enforced, and most importantly, if management is in the office and you're not, over time, the colleagues who will be in the office will seem to get really lucky in regards to promotions and opportunitie…

Yes - for someone living in a big city half office, half WFH is the worst of everything. It means that I have to maintain an expensive home office, don't get all the benefits of working in an office with other people (which I prefer) and I can't move out of the big city.

I completely disagree, and I am in that situation. I feel like working from home 3-4 days a week, and then in the office 1-2 days a week is the best of everything:

1. I have much more freedom to choose where I live because my commute is much less of an issue if I'm only doing it once or twice a week.

2. I feel like I get the best of all worlds: I get great "focus time" when I'm working from home, but I am still able to have more personal relationships from meeting people in person at the office.

3. Our company I think has done a great job segregating heads-down work time from specific days where we have more meetings or more collaboration.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#184

Post by nsgi »

apexalpha wrote: post #174
ahelwer wrote: post #3

The really interesting thing here is the possibility of part-time work. I recently switched from full-time work to independent contracting, and have a single part-time contract while looking for a second. Honestly, part-time contracting work is really, really nice. The pay is more than enough to live on and I have a ton of free time which I am devoting to rock climbing, finally writing a bunch of blog posts, and lear…

In the Netherlands it's the law that you're always allowed to reduce your hours, while keeping the same (hourly) salary and benefits. If your employer disagrees the burden of proof is on THEM to proof that your job would not be doable part-time. This (and to be honest also fiscal policy) has resulted in the largest part-time workforce in the world. In Dutch e-mail it's very common to find the days people work in the…

That gender gap sounds rather concerning

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#185

Post by paulpan »

As with Twitter's announcement back in May for allowing their employees to WFH permanently, this puts pressure on other big software companies to adopt similar policies. Microsoft being as big as they are really pushes other similar-sized companies like Google.

We've seen Facebook follow suit to shift their workforce in a similar manner. It makes you wonder when we'll hear something similar from Google, Apple, and even a reverse course for Netflix. If they don't, then recruiting might suffer as a candidate would likely pick the more WFH-flexible company.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#186

Post by torben-friis »

apexalpha wrote: post #174
ahelwer wrote: post #3

The really interesting thing here is the possibility of part-time work. I recently switched from full-time work to independent contracting, and have a single part-time contract while looking for a second. Honestly, part-time contracting work is really, really nice. The pay is more than enough to live on and I have a ton of free time which I am devoting to rock climbing, finally writing a bunch of blog posts, and lear…

In the Netherlands it's the law that you're always allowed to reduce your hours, while keeping the same (hourly) salary and benefits. If your employer disagrees the burden of proof is on THEM to proof that your job would not be doable part-time. This (and to be honest also fiscal policy) has resulted in the largest part-time workforce in the world. In Dutch e-mail it's very common to find the days people work in the…

That sounds awesome.

Does the reduction have to be in blocks of days? or can you just work, say, 5 hours a day instead of 8 ?

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#187

Post by EForEndeavour »

_qulr wrote: post #148
_qulr wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do not see this around me at all. Are you denying the existence of rampant age discrimination in tech, which has been highlighted countless times by many people? Otherwise, I'm not sure what the comment was intending. > there are plenty of people around me There's a bit of survivorship bias there. The older people driven out of tech may be invisible to you.

Here's some data from the Stack Overflow 2020 developer survey: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#developer-pro... Only 17% of professional developers surveyed were age 40+. That vastly disproportionate with the age demographics of the overall human population.

But that "professional developers" histogram is almost indistinguishable from "all respondents," so really your statement should be "the age distribution of StackOverflow developer survey respondents is different from that of the overall human population."

What's the sampling bias of this survey? How many pro developers over 40 were contacted for the survey but did not respond? Is StackOverflow usage higher among people aged 20-39 compared to 40-59, all else being equal?

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#188

Post by slimed »

nsgi wrote: post #184
apexalpha wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Netherlands it's the law that you're always allowed to reduce your hours, while keeping the same (hourly) salary and benefits. If your employer disagrees the burden of proof is on THEM to proof that your job would not be doable part-time. This (and to be honest also fiscal policy) has resulted in the largest part-time workforce in the world. In Dutch e-mail it's very common to find the days people work in the…

That gender gap sounds rather concerning

That so many just assume this to be the case, without understanding the preferences of the individuals involved, is concerning.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#189

Post by [deleted] »

nsgi wrote: post #184
apexalpha wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Netherlands it's the law that you're always allowed to reduce your hours, while keeping the same (hourly) salary and benefits. If your employer disagrees the burden of proof is on THEM to proof that your job would not be doable part-time. This (and to be honest also fiscal policy) has resulted in the largest part-time workforce in the world. In Dutch e-mail it's very common to find the days people work in the…

That gender gap sounds rather concerning

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#190

Post by netcan »

iammru wrote: post #183

Working remotely WITH MANAGER approval. This is something that was already in place but the new policy open it up so this is more commonly accepted.

The paper policy can stay the same, but the policy policy changes. Call it a norm if you like.
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