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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

#411

Post by Yoric »

eastbound wrote: post #273
ChadNauseam wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not about productivity at all. > WFH forces employers to compete. It gives a lot of power to employees, because they can [...] work fewer hours, moonlight for multiple companies, etc Probably "working fewer hours" and "moonlight for multiple companies" has negative effects on productivity that employers would like to avoid.

I’ve hired remote employees, made them come, offered stimulating work, 5% above their requested pay with mentions that I could double it in one year, but I could never get them to the smartness and clarity of analysis they had during the interview. After 6 months they were clearly winging it in I fired both the employees and the manager. This “remote employees don’t moonlight” is a union trope.

I've been fully remote for 5 years, partially remote for 15. Being remote removes many sources of stress for me. I don't moonlight.

The one thing that decreases my productivity, in some positions, is bad management. Of course, that was already the case when I was fully office-based.

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

#413

Post by munksbeer »

amrocha wrote: post #328
vladvasiliu wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your initial post was about there being choice. Now it appears that the upside of the office is the others being there. I can understand that some people like the physical distinction between "work" and "home". My boss is like that, and he would actually go to the office during covid when no one else would be there. He lived alone in a comfortable apartment, so there wasn't even a question of loud kids / no space for…

No, it was never about choice, you misunderstood. Yes, offices have downsides, but they also have benefits. To get the benefits the majority of a team needs to be in the same office. Having tried both, I prefer working in an office with coworkers around. The growing consensus seems to be that large companies agree with me. Are you saying you know more about employee productivity than Meta and Amazon among others? If…

> If you’re unhappy and want to work remotely feel free to quit and go work in a remote company.

Couldn't this equally apply to you? Feel free to quit and go work in a fully office present company?

Your commute is a 15 minute bicycle ride, you want to force everyone else back to the office because you have a nice easy commute and you personally prefer it. And you're glad that this is now happening across the industry, again, because you prefer it.

Yeah, that's completely selfish.

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

#414

Post by seanmcdirmid »

amrocha wrote: post #378
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My last office job was in an old converted garment factory. Lots of space, we had our own desks. It was really nice. Sharing a table with someone is not as nice, and office mates are rarely tolerant of my model M keyboard.

So you’re the reason the office is noisy hahaha Hope you can find something that suits you!

Since I've been WFH for last 5 years I'm probably not the reason, although I get criticism on video conferences when I start typing without muting my microphone first.

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

#415

Post by will4274 »

smokedetector1 wrote: post #410
will4274 wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... their lives are objectively better, so, I don't really know what to tell you. It's true that poor people in America live less well that poor people in Europe (though if European economies continue to lag, this may stop being true in my lifetime), but Meta employees in America have really good lives. They have massive houses, retire young with huge savings, and send their kids to elite private schools. And per…

What you are describing is only one way of living a comfortable life. It is not an "objectively better" life than someone who has enough money to meet their needs and finds balance and joy in other places. For example, more fulfilling work, more opportunities to vacation, more peace of mind in a more communal society, better access to nature. Money only "objectively improves" your life up to a certain point. Another…

Is GDP per capita a good measure or individual wealth in a country? If you don't like GDP, is PPP a good measure? If not PPP, what measure do you like? How have those measures changed over the past 20 years? How much did America's value on that measure change in the past 20 years? How much did Europe's?

When I speak of "science", I'm only speaking about using numbers to measure and compare. As it turns out, it doesn't really matter which metric you use. GDP, PPP, you name it - America went up substantially more than Europe over the past 20 years. A continent that used to be an economic peer is now a few notches poorer. If the trend continues, by the time I'm old, Europe will be poor compared to America, full stop. Just another region full of third world countries.

You can read https://ecipe.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/ECI_24_PolicyBr... if you like or find your own sources. All the ones I've found say the same thing about the last 20 years. But if you can find some that say Europe is improving its economic standing compared to America, I'd be interested in reading them! I'm very open to having my mind changed by evidence!

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

#417

Post by pb7 »

wkat4242 wrote: post #259
JuniperMesos wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diversity programs do not universally benefit white collar workers.

Not directly but they do create an open and fair working environment for all. Once you leave room for discrimination and bullying, everyone suffers because it makes company culture harder. And it's not just about "quotas". That's an extreme-right talking point. Diversity done properly doesn't involve quotas. Those are just a way for companies that don't actually care about it to have an easy 'fix' to get their number…

[flagged]

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

#418

Post by pb7 »

wkat4242 wrote: post #365
will4274 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And it's not just about "quotas". That's an extreme-right talking point. Diversity done properly doesn't involve quotas At Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Meta, diversity programs were implemented as soft quotas. All this talk about "diversity done properly" is just so much noise when approximately all the largest companies aren't doing it that way.

Soft quotas are not great but at my work (also a huge multinational but headquartered in Europe) we just use stats as a guide. Obviously if a country has 30% people of a certain ethnicity and in your employ it's 2% you're doing something wrong. We use that to measure hoe effective we are at combating bias and prejudice, what works and what doesn't. I wonder if that's sometimes regarded as a 'soft quota' but it should…

>Obviously if a country has 30% people of a certain ethnicity and in your employ it's 2% you're doing something wrong.

Do you apply this to everything? Like say, a sports team?

>The world is much bigger than the US and big tech.

Anything impressive to show for it? Because it really seems like all this focus on diversity is your downfall not your strength.

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

#419

Post by angoragoats »

rob74 wrote: post #285
prmoustache wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reading all of these takes stating WFH leads to poor productivity simply doesn’t make sense to me. I don't think it is related to poor productivity. I think it is related to a combination of these 3 points: 1) perceived less of control from the management perspective. 10-15years ago companies were all in on "we need metrics on work being done". Let's face it, process induced metrics have often very little relevance…

The RTO decisions are about making changes to prove that you have power over your employees, and also about attrition: if you don't like the soul-crushing routine of having to come to the office three or five days a week when you could do your job just as well or better working from home, there's the door!

I wish more people working for these companies with short-sighted RTO mandates would explore suing their employer for promissory estoppel. There were real guarantees along the lines of “in-office work is never coming back” made verbally by CEOs when COVID began. If employees made financial/legal decisions based on these false promises, the company should be held liable.

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

#420

Post by angoragoats »

nodoodles wrote: post #253
rustystump wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am pretty sure that 99% of the anti rto is exclusively due to the god awful soul crushing commute. 5 days a week an hour each way 10 hours of death each week. There is no authoritarian “shift” this has been business as usual for the last 100 years. Stupid business but business nonetheless

Only a 100 years — the whole history before that was working in the vicinity of a home, it does feel natural to return to that. Instead of anvils, we hit keyboards and instead of swords produce alignment, but either way it brings food to the table and allows flexibility in work-life?

What the heck does “produce alignment” mean? I don’t produce alignment, I produce software which solves problems for people.
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