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

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

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At work, we have the opportunity to choose. Many people are like you and find that going to the office helps their productivity and mental health. Most of us (including me) visit the office only a few times a year. I think having the choice is great. Although it comes with its own challenges, it works really well when you establish the right culture.

Luckily that's what's happening here, just at a company level. Plenty of companies are remote only or remote friendly. Hopefully people who prefer remote work can leave here and find work at one of those companies, and maybe people who prefer in person work will find their way here.

I put this in the same bucket as the horrifying "996" trend, or even consultancies that require 80-100% travel. If you want to broadcast that you have a toxic work culture, all I can do is applaud your honesty and look elsewhere for work.

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

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No point in quitting, reduce workload. If leadership needs to manage folks out make them do the work and collect a paycheck while it happens.

Yeah I don't get people who quit when RTO or unreasonable changes are made. Quitting makes it easy for them and means they stop paying you now. Letting them fire you means at worst you end up with the same outcome, at best you call their bluff and get paid a few months more (or forever).

Yeah but RTO takes real time and money. Sure you can earn a paycheck, but if you're commuting 2 hours a day total, you're still losing those 2 hours until they fire you. And that kind of stinks. And that's assuming you don't need to move. Moving for a job you hate is the worst.

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

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech workers used to not be average people.

This is the propaganda they used to keep us from organizing in our best interest.

Right, they want you to believe that each of us is a special little snowflake so we can crab bucket each other.

Of course, simultaneously, they treat us as completely fungible. Every engineer is like any other in their eyes.

Such a perfect contradiction should surely spark introspection in employees... you would think.

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

#354
post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With DEI you had to care about the same "structural issues®". It wasn't exactly employee representation and much more of a HR tool to sanction mostly low level employees. Usually I don't care about race and sex at work and I am not sad that DEI is gone. Creates room for issues much more relevant to work. Like working hours, salaries, holidays, health insurance and general work benefits. Stuff that matters.

Applying those things equally to people regardless of skin colour, gender identity, sexuality or any other line along which people have historically been discriminated against isn't important?

DEI explicitly took ‘we don’t do that’ off the table, by proactively discriminating based on those factors.

And at first, when the pie is growing, that doesn’t threaten entrenched groups as much, so it mostly can happen.

In a zero (or negative) sum game world (layoffs, hiring freezes), what do you think is going to happen?

People with power will use the same tools to protect themselves or even acquire more power, and those without power will be ground under the same gears.

I’ve seen it happen in every major society - from India to Chile to Europe to the US.

In the US it’s getting particularly out of control (in both directions) for a number of factors - and very high publicity - but it’s way more blatant almost everywhere else in fact.

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

#355
post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With DEI you had to care about the same "structural issues®". It wasn't exactly employee representation and much more of a HR tool to sanction mostly low level employees. Usually I don't care about race and sex at work and I am not sad that DEI is gone. Creates room for issues much more relevant to work. Like working hours, salaries, holidays, health insurance and general work benefits. Stuff that matters.

That's because you are not impacted I assume. If you are from the DEI bucket then there is nothing more important. Every few years they come out with a study where all they do is change the name on resumes. Having a black sounding naming still, in modern day, greatly reduces your chances of getting an interview. Except, during the most current rendition of this study found that wasn't true at all at companies that ha…

Sure. And those with power will protect their groups first - or lose that power.

Which has been playing out for years now.

And DEI took the ‘we don’t go racist/sexist/etc’ off the table, as the various groups were being blatantly racist, sexist, etc.

So now it is being used against those groups.

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

#356

Oof my employer still lets us WFH 3 days. We actually signed a new contract for it just after the pandemic. They can't have everyone in the office anyway since they closed half the floors. If they mandate this (not sure where they'd find the space!) I'll just refuse to sign the new contract. I'm in Europe so none of that "at will" stuff. If they want to let me go they'll have to give me a package for 15 years worked.…

That's nice but... These American Meta employees make twice or three times your salary (assume average Europe tech wages). The package you'll get for 15 years work will make up that difference for the past 6 to 12 months. I don't know many Americans who would half their salary to get your benefits.

this is such a weird response to me. Those American Meta employees may have more money, but it's not enough money to stop working and their lives are objectively worse. What's the point of money then?

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

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What's the benefit of working remote from your team but next to random, noisy people? People have been asking that since companies started phasing out WFH after the pandemic. I left my last company when they made me go to the office when I worked for a dispersed team, I was the only one in this office and the rest of the team was dispersed across multiple timezones. Every team meeting was literally a zoom meeting, a…

That timezone thing really threw one of my client's management for a loop. During covid they expanded some of their India and Philippians office presence and depending on what you're working on, you need to have regular communication with some of those folks. When they did full RTO they were trying to "make" some of the staff (engineering and management) come in at 5am so they could meet with the offshore staff befor…

You really love to see it. Its a wild waste but someone is going to eat crow eventually. You know I would like to see one of these trend followers literally eat a crow, wings and feathers all of it.

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

#358
post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually, having people at the office often works like peer pressure in that people at least pretend to work around their co-workers. Something which doesn't exist at home.

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

#360
post #180
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stap into any office? It’s full of random people, and it’s full of noise. I’ve not seen places where the knowledge work wasn’t set together with the noisemakers.

I feel a lot of the noise complaints are due to open plan offices. I've worked at a cubicle farm before. Partitions were high enough to avoid being able to see people in a sitting position, but high enough that you can still stand up and ask your neighbor a question. The cubicles were spaceous, had ample desk space and didn't feel claustrophobic or "caged in" at all. If anything, it felt like I had my own little spac…

A cubicle had more space than I got in most jobs. In one I even ended up switching headphones because the sound leakage from my headphones was too loud for others
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