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Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

businessinsider.com

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Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#331

Post by iteria »

jedberg wrote: post #258
rcbdev wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I hear U.S. commute times, I keep thinking they must be grossly overstated. How is your infrastructure so inadequate for... living?

They're overstated. The median commute time in the USA is about 27 minutes each way. NYC is the highest at 33 min.

For tech hubs? Because tech hubs tend to be in some of the most traffic nightmare cities. I have worked in DC and Atlanta. My commute for all my jobs except 1 was an hour. The one exception was 20mins because it was a small weirdly placed company that just happened to be in the suburb one over from me.

For all other jobs, I had to commute to a business district I didn't live close to because business district and low price (when young) or great schools (when older) don't mix often.

Yeah, I know the median commute in these areas is low, but they are counting retail workers and teachers. I bet the median for tech workers is pretty high because of the reality of how they tend to be placed.

Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#332

Post by croon »

legostormtroopr wrote: post #254
imcrs wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've already kind of made it clear here where I stand on this, but I gotta tell you, you really do sound a lot like management. Do you really think your superstar programmers are well and truly doing intellectual work, the kind of work that produces business value, from the time they hit the coffee machine at 9AM to the time they grab their briefcase to go home at 5PM? If you believe this, I think you might be intere…

I don't expect someone to do deep focused work from 9am to 5pm. But at the same time, I don't expect them to spend their 9-to-5 working for another company at the same time. As a founder, who respects the 9-to-5 and supports WFH, if I'm paying for 8 hours of work, I want 8 hours of output. Not 4 hours of output, and then you working 4 hours for another job. If multi-jobbing becomes a thing, then WFH becomes untenable…

To be fair, you're either paying for hours or for output, because I assure you you are not paying staff accurately for their output. You can of course sack someone who outputs notoriously little, but if you get output exceeding your average "8 hours of output", you shouldn't care if someone made it in 1 hour or 16, or at least you wouldn't be able to tell.

I'm using "output" as quoted in context, it's such a nebulous measure unless you're specifically buying a product.

Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#333

Post by jeena »

LunaSea wrote: post #309
bambax wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody was ever prohibited from coming to the office. If you like it, do it. But forcing people to come to the office when they hate it, is counter-productive.

A lot of people are not responsible enough to work well remotely.

Then they are also not responsible enough to work at the office, you can't pay a nanny who sith with them and tells them to keep working 8 hours a day at the office anyway. Those people need to be let go because you can't trust them.

Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#334

Post by makingstuffs »

amrocha wrote: post #229
makingstuffs wrote: post #194

Reading all of these takes stating WFH leads to poor productivity simply doesn’t make sense to me. If your employees cannot be trusted to fulfil their responsibilities (whether in an office, their home or a tent in a woodland) that is not a geographical issue. It is a mentality issue and you are always going to face productivity issue from that employee regardless of from where they work. I’ve been told time and time…

Good thing for you that you’re productive anywhere. I’m not. I much prefer working from an office. I’m way more efficient and happy in an office than working from home. It’s not a matter of mentality. It’s a matter of being in an environment conducive to work. You would benefit from not assuming that everyone is the same as you.

> You would benefit from not assuming that everyone is the same as you.

I’m sorry if it came across that this was the point I was making. I was not. I acknowledge and understand everyone is different.

The point I was making was about trusting people to be responsible adults and do what is right for the productivity without dictating a binary decision.

People who are more productive at home should not be punished because others are not and likewise for the inverse.

Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#335

Post by codr7 »

I've worked remotely most of my career, long before Covid.

Last few months I've been in the office almost every single day.

And I get what they're saying, there are definite advantages to having everybody in the same room. I don't think pretending otherwise is going to help us much.

There are definite advantages that go the other way as well.

The goal has to be to find a good compromise, you can never go back.

Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#336

Post by himinlomax »

dkga wrote: post #307
messe wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you think you're more likely to get those four hours in an open office environment with distractions aplenty, as opposed to my effectively noise-proofed home office where I can actually focus?

It really depends. I believe and apply a lot of Cal Newport advice, and benefit greatly from it. But I also see in my daily life how just being close to people you work with, and (crucially) being a short walk away/floor from people in other groups, creates immense value by helping unclog processes and especially by creating new ideas and products that wouldn‘t otherwise exist.

I don't think we read the same Deep Work book.

Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#337

Post by billy99k »

makingstuffs wrote: post #194

Reading all of these takes stating WFH leads to poor productivity simply doesn’t make sense to me. If your employees cannot be trusted to fulfil their responsibilities (whether in an office, their home or a tent in a woodland) that is not a geographical issue. It is a mentality issue and you are always going to face productivity issue from that employee regardless of from where they work. I’ve been told time and time…

"Forcing people into working conditions in which they are uncomfortable is only going to harbour resentment towards the company and if you are in a country where workers actually have real rights you will have a hard time firing them."

They are forcing them back into the office, which was pretty much the norm pre-covid. Having hard to fire employees isn't a good thing for the company or the well-being of other employees, when dealing with a bad employee.

If you want to work from home forever, contract with a company, and put it in your contract. This is what I've done for over a decade now.

Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#338

Post by UncleMeat »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #197
venturecruelty wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there's a five-letter scare word you're not allowed to say that would be required for tech workers to have any power over their managers, but that sort of collective action is dead on arrival in the current milieu. If you don't want to go back into the office, you have the power to enforce that, but you have to like... work together.

no one wants to work at shops that actually have unions compared to other places. it's just silly to actually suggest it makes things better.

Then you will forever be at the whims of the bosses.

Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#339

Post by rafterydj »

fijiaarone wrote: post #216
AngryData wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno where you live but in my part of the country getting into union work is the best way to prosper and succeed as just an average person. Maybe that isn't true for tech work at the moment, but union carpenters, plumbers, HVAC, pipe fitters, arborists, linemen, auto and factory workers, all make significantly more doing union work with better and safer work conditions.

Tech workers used to not be average people.

This is a frustrating comment. Please elaborate with a real point! Just highlighting something that used to be the case, does not imply that it should always be the case, nor does it imply that it reflects the case now.

Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#340

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

venturecruelty wrote: post #153
ggm wrote: post #143

I am here to repeat my sort-of non-but-almost conspiracy theory: It's not about the work, it's about the value of the Listed Property Trust (LPT), as a construct, if the entire central business district price model behind buildings tanks. Every company of this scale is in LPT. They have shitloads of money tied up in the declared value of the office space either they invested, or they leveraged. If it tanks in value,…

This isn't even a conspiracy theory, it's just true. I mean, some of it is definitely induced attrition (you always want the expensive people to quit, in the Milton Friedman cinematic universe), but the rest is that the commercial real estate market would collapse tomorrow if businesses couldn't justify their 10- or 15-year commercial leases. Not for nothing did endless headlines about how "going into the office is s…

I'm pretty sure that Meta don't own most of their buildings, so this wouldn't apply to them.
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