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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

#311

Post by dan-robertson »

ponector wrote: post #222
zero_shift wrote: post #190

At $org, we too are undertaking a mandatory RTO order, enforced with door access logs. People are up in arms, particularly those in our smaller locales, where the offices we have are perfunctory at best. The rationale is the usual one: collaboration, watercooler chat, unspecific evidence / "research" about productivity (that we are told definitely exists, but is yet to be shared). I remain baffled by executives' obse…

>> where it comes from It's a power play. To show regular folks their place. Big corpo is a modern feodal state, where CEO is an emperor, c-suites are kings, managers are barons, IC are peasants and external contractors are slaves(but leased from other owner). It's not only RTO, it's also about timetable and dress code. Yes, I had a beef with IT manager about dress code in the development office of a bank. Just becau…

A big difference between feudalism and modern societies is that in feudalism, you expect to earn much less than the value of the land you inherit and pass on (or the custom or right of your family farming the land) whereas in modern societies most people will earn much more in lifetime earnings than they would inherit or pass on. This results in far more social mobility and much more freedom in praxis. I don’t think companies are like feudal societies.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#312

Post by Izikiel43 »

fzeroracer wrote: post #207
SilverElfin wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deaths are one problem, but they may also not be distributed evenly. Some cities or states have more issues on public transit than others. But also you can still be a victim of assault, harassment, theft, and other issues on public transit. Many of these issues also go unreported or don’t get counted in official stats if not accompanied by a formal police report or whatever. So it doesn’t tell the full story of what…

I live in Seattle and take the public transit almost every day since I don't have a car. The real experience which you seem to care about is that I haven't had any issues and most of the fear people spread around public transit is made up.

I always dread travelling by bus in seattle, waiting for what crazy will get on that day, and it affects most buses as they all go to downtown, where most of the homeless/addicts are.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#313

Post by dghlsakjg »

aeternum wrote: post #275
johnnyanmac wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should know by now that all these RTO initiatives are not grounded in any reasonable logistics nor financial reasoning. Right now all of tech is in cut mode, and RTO's are a great way to do layoffs without calling them layoffs. Note that when Google got "too many" people RTO'ing, they did layoffs anyway. If your office does try to make things stricter, it's another layoff attempt. I don't think it will work, becau…

This theory is often-quoted but doesn't make much sense. Big tech including Microsoft already did multiple rounds of layoffs. Why not just do another round?

Layoffs are expensive and destroy morale of those that remain (to say nothing of those that have to leave). When people suspect layoffs are coming, all work comes to a screeching halt around the event.

Getting people to quit is much cheaper (no severance if that exists, and your unemployment insurance costs don't go up).

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#314

Post by Izikiel43 »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #78
SilverElfin wrote: post #27

Terrible. Especially given that the Seattle area has terrible traffic and also issues with safety on public transportation (like many other cities in America). What is the point exactly of getting workers into an office just so they can be on Zoom calls (or Teams, in this case)? This seems a lot like what Amazon was accused of - a way to shake out some workers and get them to quit when they cannot rearrange their lif…

Isn’t most Microsoft presence in the Seattle area on the east side? I haven’t heard of the kinds of public transit safety issues that happen in the city happening there. Traffic still applies though.

The 520 bridge and the i5 conection have hov dedicated lanes, or are working towards it.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#315

Post by toomuchtodo »

xtracto wrote: post #278

Just out of curiosity, how much compensation would people be willing to leave on the table in lieu of "Remote" work? (this is different to, how much would you ASK to go from remote to a new in-office job). 10%, 25%, 50%? I've worked remotely for 5 years now, and there is NO way I would return to an office based job. I even have moved to a small town where there are practically 0 tech jobs; and at this point there's N…

> Just out of curiosity, how much compensation would people be willing to leave on the table in lieu of "Remote" work? (this is different to, how much would you ASK to go from remote to a new in-office job). 10%, 25%, 50%?

~$250k, ~50% of potential day gig comp.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37094928

(remote 10+ years, I'll retire before I go back to an office, I want more time and quality of life, not more money)

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#316

Post by JustExAWS »

neilv wrote: post #170
scarface_74 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really doesn’t take a lawyer to know what “at will employment” means. A case for what unless it’s discriminatory. Your employer doesn’t have to justify letting you go - at all. Even looking at your citation, it shows that constructive dismissal is only actionable if you can show that they made working conditions harder and they were targeting you under a law meant to protect you against discrimination Companies ha…

Also, in combination with possible constructive dismissal, the company is possibly defaming the employees in a way that predictably adversely affects their ability to gain new employment. And there may be other potential problems that aren't apparent to me, since I'm not a lawyer. Talking to a lawyer about this is low-effort, low-risk. You get a lawyer's name from friend/family or another kind of lawyer you know, or…

Who said anything about defamation? My n=1 experience at BigTech is that they won’t say anything about why an employee left and you don’t even talk to a human to confirm dates of employment. They redirect you to TheWorkNumber (a real website).

I was Amazoned in 2023 and in none of the five interviews I had within the next two weeks did they ever ask why I left Amazon. I did get LinkedIn recommendations from my former managers there - ie not my then current one.

And we are talking about well paid Microsoft employees who are asked to come into the office. Cry me a river these aren’t “vulnerable” low paid wage slaves.

Yes I work remotely and if I had still been working at Amazon when they announced their “field by design” roles were being forced into RTO six months before it happened, I would have been interviewing and taken the pay cut.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#317

Post by renewiltord »

neilv wrote: post #145
scarface_74 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And? As long as it isn’t discriminatory, since 49 of the 50 states are at will employment, you can be let go at anytime for any reason or no reason. It might come into play with unemployment insurance but the weekly amount is so low it’s laughable.

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.)

Why do people say this? “Talk to a lawyer”. It’s the most useless advice. Okay, you don’t know. That’s fine. Don’t waste everyone’s time. Why just give this content free advice?

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#318

Post by JambalayaJimbo »

oldmanhorton wrote: post #307
nickff wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be demanding some proof of the RTO side, which is a reversion to the mean, while providing none for your own side. I see and hear people talking about all the non-work things they due while being paid, and am unsurprised that their managers suspect a negative impact on productivity.

If people aren't getting their work done, then they should be having discussions with their manager that eventually lead to pip or firing if not resolved. If they are getting their work done... Who cares if I do a "non work thing" at a "work time"?

If your work could be easily quantified and measured like that, it would be contracted out to the lowest bidder.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#319

Post by jbm »

rjsw wrote: post #195
jbm wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, honestly my whole karma score is built from pithy comments about Teams. Thankfully it no longer crashes Chrome all the time, but everything else is meh. I still can't tag people in Japanese. The security settings are a trap for poor quality system admins and checkbox checkers. The meetings crash, the screen sharing only allows one way (so no easy pair programming), etc.. I much prefer working with slack and goo…

Given that Teams doesn't work in anything other than Chrome, I would hope that it didn't crash all the time.

But it did crash Chrome all the time. I started runnung it in a VM so it would be less annoying when it crashed

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#320

Post by vjvjvjvjghv »

zero_shift wrote: post #190

At $org, we too are undertaking a mandatory RTO order, enforced with door access logs. People are up in arms, particularly those in our smaller locales, where the offices we have are perfunctory at best. The rationale is the usual one: collaboration, watercooler chat, unspecific evidence / "research" about productivity (that we are told definitely exists, but is yet to be shared). I remain baffled by executives' obse…

At the same time they are offshoring to countries on the other side of the globe so working hours never overlap.
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