Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 489 posts

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#31

Post by thrwn_frthr_awy »

rejectedandsad wrote: post #25
justapassenger wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that Apple ever had a vibe as being especially great for employees. Secrecy to a level that you may not know what product you're actually working on, and heavy top down management as a result.

Yeah, in terms of software working at Apple is impressive for the fact that their products are luxuries, not for any real technical reasons. Hardware is totally different though

You don't think Apple has technical challenges in their software? That's really interesting to hear. I worked on software there for five years and it was some of the most interesting work I've been a part of. What do you consider impressive in software?

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#32

Post by varispeed »

magneticnorth wrote: post #12

I am really curious to see where we'll be in a year, two, three down the line wrt remote/office/hybrid work at major companies. This forced experiment has had some surprising outcomes about the effectiveness of remote workplaces, but working from home for only a year, in pandemic conditions, is clearly not the same as indefinitely in normal times. But there's reason to think that may go even better, not worse; I am r…

I can see that many people who worked in cafes before the event, will retrain to work as therapists and will be helping people to adjust to normal life, in the sense, for example, teaching how to find friends outside of work, how to meet with local people for lunch and so on. There will be a lot of opportunity to teach people how to cook and do other tasks that they couldn't do because of commuting, no time outside of work etc. I think this will lift us out of depression and improve economy in many ways.

The gravy train for property speculators, chain tax dodging cafes and "restaurants" is over.

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#33

Post by ribosometronome »

magneticnorth wrote: post #23
admissionsguy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> has had some surprising outcomes about the effectiveness of remote workplaces Curious, what are the outcomes?

I was mostly just referring to the fact that team/org/company productivity does not seem reduced compared to pre-pandemic times. As far as I know, no major tech company is dealing with more outages/incidents or slower product launches than they typically saw, unless their business model was directly impacted by spending pattern changes. I think most companies expected lower output from forced-all-remote teams but don…

Wasn't the video game industry fairly impacted by the transition?

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#34

Post by dado3212 »

leoh wrote: post #30
nick0garvey wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

L3 is new grad L4 is an intermediate level - you must be promoted to L5 in a fixed time frame (2-3 yearish) L5 is a senior level

>you must be promoted to L5 in a fixed time frame (2-3 yearish) What happens if you don't?

You're basically evaluated according to L5 requirements. Given that you weren't promoted at that point, it's likely you're not performing at those requirements, and you'll be slowly managed out. More often as people get close to the red zone, they just swap companies preemptively.

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#35

Post by wintermutestwin »

The bloomberg article mentions potential CoL adjustments: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-09/facebook-...

It is interesting that the Slashdot crowd was fairly universal in panning the idea of paying people less if they lived in a low cost area. In my 17 years as a designated "teleworker" at a SV megacorp, they adjusted compensation ratios. This meant that they didn't reduce my salary when I moved from an expensive city to a cheap mountain town, I just didn't get raises for a few years because my comp ratio was too high. I don't understand why people would rail against this kind of policy. It certainly didn't motivate me to move back to an expensive city.

I'm not sure how well this would work out for those geo-arbitrage digital nomads, but I don't think that companies should be particularly accommodating that corner case.

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#36

Post by ed25519FUUU »

warkdarrior wrote: post #27
rejectedandsad wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if they do them they’re extremely unlikely to be significant

After you move to a low COL area, you are really at their mercy, no?

A year ago? Sure. Now the market for remote engineers is competitive.

I basically eliminated my mortgage by selling and moving. My salary can go way down without affecting my living standards.

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#37

Post by benatkin »

someelephant wrote: post #28

Let's be real. The loser here is middle managers. Not all of them. Just the ones who feed off of the high they get from having control over the office environment.

This hinges on the following:

> "Zuckerberg said employees who want to work in an office will be asked to come in at least half the time."

I agree - part time remote work will be bad for micromanagers.

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#38

Post by throwaway6734 »

magneticnorth wrote: post #12

I am really curious to see where we'll be in a year, two, three down the line wrt remote/office/hybrid work at major companies. This forced experiment has had some surprising outcomes about the effectiveness of remote workplaces, but working from home for only a year, in pandemic conditions, is clearly not the same as indefinitely in normal times. But there's reason to think that may go even better, not worse; I am r…

My biggest question right now about sustained wfh is how much of the current productivity is the result of relationships that were built in the office.

A year ago, I remotely onboarded for a new position and recently I can head back into the office, and there's a massive difference for me between the virtual relationships I built and the in-person ones.

I learned more about people that I had spent months zooming/emailing with over the past few weeks talking to them face to face. Also having a dedicated workspace and a mental break between home & work has increased my productivity.

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#39

Post by digbert »

magneticnorth wrote: post #29
digbert wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Clearly great news for Facebook employees. For some Facebook employees, definitely. Personally, I think I'll be finding a job elsewhere now.

I'm curious to hear why - what do you see as the drawback of more remote coworkers?

Mostly that by having remote co-workers I get many of the downsides of remote work without any of the upsides.

Once a few colleagues are remote, all collaboration has to assume remote as the default. Even if I'm in the office I'm still stuck with remote collaboration, but I still have a commute.

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#40

Post by ditonal »

magneticnorth wrote: post #29
digbert wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Clearly great news for Facebook employees. For some Facebook employees, definitely. Personally, I think I'll be finding a job elsewhere now.

I'm curious to hear why - what do you see as the drawback of more remote coworkers?

I'm mixed on remote work, even as an engineering IC, despite claims that only management want in-office.

To me, the downside of remote coworkers is we've already seen a dynamic at many companies that start with "we'll allow remote workers" straight to "if we allow any in-person collaboration, then remote workers will be second-class citizens, so to pre-empt that, we will actively discourage any in person collaboration."

For example, Coinbase didn't just allow remote but shut down the SF office for this reason. Twitter is re-opening their office but in a crippled state, where the food options are massively downsized, and employees are actively discouraged from eating with any teammates.

If you're the type of personality who gets energized by collaboration with teammates, if you like the real teammate relationships that more easily develop with facetime, then it's not a matter of allowing remote coworkers but whether those remote coworkers now get to advocate for actively destroying any office culture.

Again, I understand why there's many advantages of remote work, but let's not pretend the people who didn't want to go remote are unaffected.

Post reply on HN