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Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

businessinsider.com

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Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#251

Post by nickff »

squigz wrote: post #226
nickff wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this idea that there is a 'CEO RTO mania' to be absurd; if WFH was just as good for the company, and more attractive to employees, we should see a boom in WFH-first companies, which does not seem to be happening. Instead, it seems like CEOs see RTO as a way of getting rid of 'slackers', preventing people from multi-tasking while 'working', and in some cases increasing 'teamwork'. In any case, it makes sense to…

This assumes that executives are all perfectly rational beings and so wouldn't do anything based on personal feeling or beliefs. Sadly, this is not true.

I don't think there have ever been many ‘perfectly rational’ business (or governmental) leaders; the successful ones are just ‘sufficiently rational’. In fact, some business leaders are probably instituting RTO for irrational reasons, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a bad move for most in-person-based businesses.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#252

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

fzeroracer wrote: post #217
ponector wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is always an answer to unionizing and other demands: hiring freeze plus offshoring overseas. Eventually even unionized people will be replaced with offshore buddies.

Offshoring always ends in disaster, companies have tried this time and time again but the end result is an awful product that requires more money to fix than they needed to make it in the first place. And that also doesn't solve the problem of dealing with institutional knowledge loss if you decide to aggressively cull employees trying to unionize. In either scenario the solution is for union workers to become even m…

Offshoring might frequently be a disaster. On the other hand, Microsoft and the rest of FAANG and other large tech companies have had overseas development centers staffed by full fledged FTEs for many years now with, as far as anyone can tell, success. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any reason they couldn't expand those.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#253

Post by dymk »

black_puppydog wrote: post #184

50 miles 3 times a week? That seems like a lot . Or maybe I'm getting my miles>km conversion wrong here. Not a commute I'd accept if it's not by high speed commuter rail (and even then...)

Yeah, I'd be spending 30% of my 40-hour work week in traffic if I were to commute in (~2 hours each way).

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#254

Post by Consultant32452 »

Mobius01 wrote: post #139

I work in a large company that mandated 4-day RTO last year. Even taking a completely objetive point of view on the situation leads to the conclusion that something else is needed. We spend our days at our desks, on Zoom calls. People won’t get up to join in person - mostly because the conference rooms are all blocked by “special projects”, but mostly due to the offshoring of positions and distributed workforce post-…

Executives have done all manner of things which reduced productivity. Hoteling alone must have cost billions in lost focus.

They’re suspicious of work from home because employees like it. If they were concerned about productivity they’d make deals where you can work from home but have to work 10% more hours or something to make up for whatever imagined productivity was lost.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#255

Post by Aurornis »

thr0waway001 wrote: post #86
sugarpimpdorsey wrote: post #22

The only thing I hated worse than going into the office was our remote employees, who never seemed to be available when you needed them, had their status set to Away (or wouldn't respond for hours if they were green). It was a privilege, people abused it, and now it's over. And managers were the worst offenders.

At our company some people outright admitted on a survey sent out to employees that they would go out and run errands during work hours. Like, how stupid do you have to be to kill your golden goose of life work balance?

That's nothing.

One company near me had parents cancel their daycare when they were allowed to WFH. A lot of employees were trying to care for young kids and "work" at the same time.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#256

Post by ghaff »

rgblambda wrote: post #77
sugarpimpdorsey wrote: post #22

The only thing I hated worse than going into the office was our remote employees, who never seemed to be available when you needed them, had their status set to Away (or wouldn't respond for hours if they were green). It was a privilege, people abused it, and now it's over. And managers were the worst offenders.

I'm very pro remote working, but I think people like me need to realize that this is a real issue. It happens in the office too, but it's a bit harder to get away with, and it's really a performance management issue which brings us nicely to your second point. I agree, managers are always the worst offenders when it comes to this sort of thing. But they do the same in the office by disappearing into meeting rooms for…

>I'd love to know how you can effectively manage a team by constantly being in meetings with other managers.

Hopefully, they work meetings with their team in but meeting with other managers is a big part of their job--and shielding people from stuff coming down from above.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#257

Post by Aurornis »

dymk wrote: post #244
neilv wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For better or worse, neither of us is a lawyer, but I'm comfortable in saying that the affected people should: Talk. To. A. Lawyer. Isn't that better than us random Internet people telling them -- although we think something shitty is going on -- they definitely don't have a case, and they definitely shouldn't talk to a lawyer? (For all we know, an actual lawyer might tell them that they actually do have a case.)

Talk to a lawyer is good advice, and there are approximately zero employment lawyers able to take on new clients in the Puget Sound area.

FYI no reasonable lawyer is going to take a constructive dismissal or defamation claim for this case, like some aggressive commenters are instructing people to do.

These aren't winnable claims. If a lawyer did take your case and start billing you for it, they're just milking you for cash until the inevitable dismissal.

This is why the "I'm not a lawyer, but" advice on the internet isn't as benign as it seems. It gives some people false ideas about what lawyers can do for them which leads to a lot of wasted time talking to lawyers at best, or a lot of wasted money on a dead-end case at worst.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#258

Post by ponector »

Philadelphia wrote: post #122
tokai wrote: post #66

Commute time should be salaried time. Then the whole office/home work discussion could be taken with the true costs involved.

And workers should be paid to have space to work from home and internet service and food and office supplies and electricity.

And also workers should be paid for not working 26 days per annum, it's more than a full month!

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#259

Post by nomel »

JohnFen wrote: post #154
nomel wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporate analysts were "gifted" with a two impossibly rare step functions, that will probably never be repeated in our lifetimes: Near 100% -> near 0% percent in office, then 0% percent -> partial% in office. With most (all?) of the big companies following the same path, I think it's safe to assume the data points to the same conclusion: in whole, humans work better together. It makes you wonder if it's a fundamenta…

> With most (all?) of the big companies following the same path, I think it's safe to assume the data points to the same conclusion That is, at best, very weak evidence supporting your conclusion. I agree, by the way, that humans do work better together. That doesn't mean, however, that humans work better in an office environment. There are huge drawbacks to that environment that may very well exceed the benefit of p…

> That is, at best, very weak evidence supporting your conclusion.

Please see the definition of "assume" to help you interpret what I wrote in a way that's closer to what I wrote/was trying to communicate.

Please also see the last sentence, that you missed entirely:

> It would be very interesting to see their rational.

This sentence strongly implies, nearly directly states, that I, in fact, do NOT know their rational.

What's your opinion? Why do you think they're all converging on the same policies? Do you think they're acting irrationally in opposition of data, or without data?

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#260

Post by Consultant32452 »

neilv wrote: post #89

> Microsoft's new approach is the latest sign of the company increasing performance pressure on employees. It has fired thousands of employees deemed low performers this year and introduced a new performance improvement plan meant to exit low performers more quickly. Claims who? These also sound like typical sketchy headcount reduction tactics. Also, it's throwing employees under the bus, because the company is tarri…

At my shop employees had to RTO but us consultants are still remote. I suspect this is exactly what it looks like.
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