Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 969 posts

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#421

Post by bluGill »

linguae wrote: post #394
bluGill wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad I live in the midwest. Every story I hear about working in the bay area makes me wonder why anyone would.

For highly-specialized engineers and researchers, there’s often only a tiny handful of companies they could work for that offer jobs in their specialties. For example, if you’re a compilers expert, there are only so many companies that hire compiler developers, whether it’s working on a commercial compiler like Microsoft Visual Studio or contributing to an open-source project such as LLVM (Apple is a major contributo…

There are plenty of other cities with enough job options that isn't something you only get in the bay area.

for the intel emplopees I doupt there is anyone else in the us who needs them. Maybe one or two to a military contactor but most have to find a new spectialty. I wish them luck. Fortunately specalists are mostly easy to retrain.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#422

Post by grepfru_it »

userbinator wrote: post #410
grepfru_it wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like Dell. Michael Dell owns a lot of commercial real estate, especially around main campus hq. More employees in the office, better returns on his commercial real estate. That’s my opinion anyway

How does that make sense? "Now that my employees don't need to occupy the space all the time, rent out (possibly parts of) the office for even more $$$" would be how I'd think if I were in his shoes.

What?

Around Dell campus in Austin is a Home Depot, a hotel, a Chili’s, a strip mall with various shopping outlets and what not. You can walk there from the front door. The idea is that all the employees can walk there for lunch, they will buy things on the way home, it’s just extending economic foot traffic to the tenants of Michael Dell’s commercial properties. Now they won’t go out of business! More money for Mr Dell!

This is my theory at least. The foot traffic has increased greatly since the RTO mandate

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#423

Post by wfhrto »

tjr wrote: post #414
moralestapia wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And if I’m dressed professionally, I get more done and I get better responses from others than when I’m wearing shorts and a tee shirt. Are you a butler? No offense. No one in tech would give two f...s about what you're wearing when you push git commits.

For some people, what they wear has an impact on their own performance. It's not necessarily about how others perceive them, and it's not necessarily logical. Some people work better with music, or with a window to look out... some people work better in fancier attire.

> music

> window

> fancier attire

one of these things is not like the other

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#424

Post by bluGill »

pm90 wrote: post #386
bluGill wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad I live in the midwest. Every story I hear about working in the bay area makes me wonder why anyone would.

It’s extremely pretty, there’s great food, lots of tech jobs, you meet diverse and interesting people, great public transit (for the US). There are many reasons for living in the Bay Area.

You can find the same in Minneapolis with a better cost of living. (At least the other reply mentioned weather). there are more people in the bay area, but in minneapolis you can find more people in minneapolis than you have time to meet.

there are many other cities in the us that likewise have a great tech scene. The bay is not unique - it has a little more but it isn't unique-

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#425

Post by keeda »

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…

In addition to the other comments (yes, very much a powerplay) it is also likely that employers simply realized remote work is a huge perk they had not accounted for, and RTO is simply a means of renegotiating:

https://www.tiktok.com/@keds_economist/video/746473188419558...

The video presents a compelling theory that post-Covid employers realized that employees CAN be productive remotely, but also put a pretty high premium on being able to do so -- studies show employees are willing to take a hit to bonuses, pay and promotions to keep that perk.

So the current coordinated RTO push is basically a renegotiation of salaries to account for that perk, especially now that it is very much an employer's market... which, BTW, is also the outcome of another very coordinated effort across the industry: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45192092

Edit, some recent studies:

- https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/charting-remot...

- https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/tech-workers-take-much-lowe...

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#426

Post by pasttense01 »

linguae wrote: post #394
bluGill wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad I live in the midwest. Every story I hear about working in the bay area makes me wonder why anyone would.

For highly-specialized engineers and researchers, there’s often only a tiny handful of companies they could work for that offer jobs in their specialties. For example, if you’re a compilers expert, there are only so many companies that hire compiler developers, whether it’s working on a commercial compiler like Microsoft Visual Studio or contributing to an open-source project such as LLVM (Apple is a major contributo…

But only a small percent of people work in those highly specialized jobs.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#427

Post by notepad0x90 »

Why don't they just pay people less if they think WFH causes less value to the company? Give them an option to RTO or take a pay cut. Why would you want people who don't want your company to succeed anymore working for you? I can't imagine anyone used to 3-4 years of WFH (and liking it) wanting the company to succeed after RTO. If they stay, it's probably because they don't have a choice and they'll probably be the least motivated and minimally productive employees.

OTOH, I've noticed the "disruptors" of yesteryears are now full-on right-wing jerks whose mission is to preserve wealth instead of create wealth by doing new and disruptive things. This tells me one important message if nothing else: There is no shortage of talent for the perceived wealth-creating opportunities. The gold rush is over.

I fear this is less about ZIRP and more about complacency (in general) and would-be investors and VC's not having faith in the possibility of high ROI investments.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#428

Post by malfist »

SoftTalker wrote: post #403
ponector wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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…

The funny thing is, I get more done at the office than at home. And if I’m dressed professionally, I get more done and I get better responses from others than when I’m wearing shorts and a tee shirt. I’d prefer to work from home wearing pajamas but I can sympathize with why my employer wants me in the office and may even have a dress code. Be glad you didn’t work in the development office of a bank in the 1990s, you’…

Okay, great. You can work from the office.

Don't dictate to the rest of us that we have to work the way you work best

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#429

Post by goalieca »

losteric wrote: post #384
ghostpepper wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they are going to push for office collaboration, at least organize the teams so all the team members are actually in the same office. As far as I can tell this is what apple does, and it actually makes a lot more sense than "you must be in some office but we don't care where".

I’m sure geographic consolidation is the end state, we’re just taking incremental steps.

Many companies with > 1500 employees were not consolidated in the decade before. Especially those which had grown through acquisition.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#430

Post by MontyCarloHall »

somanyphotons wrote: post #355
peab wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% this. remote work is great for some people, but it's definitely taken advantage by a others. And those who take advantage ruin it for everybody. I literally have friends who have bragged about how good their mouse jiggler is.

> mouse jiggler Are they really collecting stats on mouse movements? If they were they'd surely detect these predictable movements

It keeps your Slack/Teams/etc. status as online. These apps will display your status as away if they detect that the computer appears idle (i.e. no mouse/keyboard inputs).
Post reply on HN