MS AI team is already at 4 days (Mustafa's org)
Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
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Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
#32Maybe they don’t even want to rely on Microsoft Teams internally anymore…
Spoken like someone who hasn't witnessed 3 coworkers sitting a few feet apart do a teams meeting with each other (and no one else).
Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
#33Microsoft is committed to becoming as terrible as Amazon, I guess.
I think they’re realizing that there is no meaningful competition for these gigantic corporations. They’re worth 4 trillion. They saw Google got away without any consequence on the Chrome anti trust issue. They know they can keep bundling products, building new dark patterns, throwing up walled gardens, loss leading competitors (like Teams did with Slack), and all of that. And I’m sure Satya is currying favor with Trump like the rest of them to keep things that way. When you have such a situation, your company can get away with anything. If there was competition, workers and customers could go elsewhere.
Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
#34Microsoft is committed to becoming as terrible as Amazon, I guess.
I think they’re realizing that there is no meaningful competition for these gigantic corporations. They’re worth 4 trillion. They saw Google got away without any consequence on the Chrome anti trust issue. They know they can keep bundling products, building new dark patterns, throwing up walled gardens, loss leading competitors (like Teams did with Slack), and all of that. And I’m sure Satya is currying favor with Tr…
It just makes me sick growing up in the USA, hearing about the beauty of “competition”, and then growing up to see that not only does it not exist… they cannot even be bothered to pretend.
Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
#35Microsoft Teams is such a horrible product that Microsoft employees need to be in the same office to collaborate.
Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anecdotally, I'm at a larger multinational corporation and our site has been mandating a new RTO policy and have not been granting exceptions based solely on seniority. In my personal opinion I believe it's mostly a soft layoff, so they can approve exceptions on a case-by-case basis.
No disagreements there (I'm at Microsoft). I should also note that in the part of the org I work, exceptions are re-evaluated every quarter.
Indeed. Apart from really aggressive, "love the bad press" type of employers most would try to appear reasonable from outside while largely rejecting wfh/remote requests lasting more than few months.
Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
#37The 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.
Interesting. I've been remote for 5 years across three different companies, and if anything I've had the opposite experience: my remote coworkers are far more responsive than my on-site coworkers, who are always in meetings, in transit, having in-person chit chat, or taking a break.
Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
#38This announcement is pretty much meaningless, as it's completely up to the VPs of a given org to set the policy. Many teams have already been back 3-5 days a week for over a year, and exceptions aren't hard to get if you're a senior+ employee or otherwise have considerations that prevent this from being feasible.
I don't think I'd call it meaningless; this sets the new default for the many orgs who haven't set a mandate already, and it seems to indicate that exceptions will now be harder to get.
Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
#39The 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 have a more nuanced take here. For low performing or junior employees, remote work was generally a terrible thing that led to less productivity (and more managerial overhead). For strongly performing employees with obligations at home, there were many who preferred working at home.
I fall more into the latter camp (at least I hope so) and, given I've only worked in nice offices with catered lunches, gyms, video games, offsites, etc, I enjoy a 3 day hybrid schedule works best for me.
Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I assume that any GitHub employee within 50 miles of a Microsoft office will be expected to commute.
Would they have space? Considering that Github was always remote, that's a lot of people to fit into existing space. Though I guess it depends on how many Github employees are within 50 miles of Redmond.
And, in my experience, a 50 mile commute into a big city isn't really sustainable--and that was with a fair bit of travel, etc. mixed in so I wasn't going in every day and pretty accessible commuter rail service if I was going in 8-5 or thereabouts.