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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

#421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...yes? Is that supposed to be a hard question? No, seriously, literally what does Apple or Google have over Boeing as a company to work at? Compensation? If money is all that matters to you, then there are several Web3/AI/etc startups offering absurd cash comp that you can go and throw yourself at.

literally what does Apple or Google have over Boeing as a company to work at Smarter coworkers. Better engineering culture. Better benefits. More time off. Bosses with engineering chops. More flexible schedules. Less likely to get laid off. Perks like free food/massages/events. Equity so as the company grows your pay increases automatically. Large bonuses. Are you actually serious you'd rather work at Boeing?

> Smarter coworkers.

Doubtful, we can see the products that come out of them these days.

> Better engineering culture.

Doubtful, we can see the products that come out of them these days.

> Bosses with engineering chops.

Doubtful, we can see the products that come out of them these days.

The rest of your list is just "money" written over and over and as I've already said, if that's all you care about, that's your prerogative but let's not pretend that makes somewhere a "good place to work".

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

#422
post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

No, at work where we have tens of thousands of people.

Sport is a voluntary thing, people just join it when they want (I guess, I'm not into sports, not watching nor playing).

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

Yes we have great quality of life. It's not all about money.

In fact I asked to move to a country where the wage levels are much lower, to have a better quality of life. Here around the Mediterranean the weather is better, people enjoy life more and take it slower. There's much more things to do in my free time that I enjoy. When I'm back in Holland I hate it, people are so materialistic. Always talking about their new car, how big their TV is lol. I don't even own any car or motor and my TV is tiny but I'm much happier here.

Also diversity is just a thing we do, we're not all about that. I am because I voluntarily spend part of my work time on it (LGBTIQ in particular). For most people in the company it's a message here or there, one little training per year and maybe a talk from one of us at the town hall meetings which are optional.

There's other similar programs in the company about sustainability and ethics.

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

#423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

I don't think you understand my point of view and also smokedetector1's with whom I wholeheartedly agree.

Economics and money is just numbers. It's not a measure of happiness in life. I just want to have enough money to not worry in life, I don't care about having much more than others. Doing a job I enjoy in a place I enjoy is worth much more to me. Would Elon Musk, the richest guy in the world be happier than me? I don't think he is, he's always angry about something. I wouldn't want to trade places with him. Having that kind of money is a burden, never being able to just walk around and discover a new town without a security detail, or partying until 6am without journalists capturing everything I do.

A big house doesn't make me (much) happier. A car definitely doesn't, driving really stresses me out (and I have a lot of driving experience having lived in many countries). We have great public transport here and that's enough for me because I live in the city.

And economics isn't really an exact science in my book. It's a social science, psychology based on human constructs. Which are different here in Europe anyway (more socialist). We chose to make the world work like this but it could be different too. More fair.

I moved to a lower wage country to have a better life and I'm a lot happier now. I will never be rich but I don't care. It's not a race to be the top, I want everyone to have a good life.

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

#424
post #286

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.…

“I signed a cushy RTO contract, and I’m still not following its terms”

Well really most people don't where I work. They don't make a big deal of it because the office would be overloaded.

Except the people that are super socially oriented or want to escape the family at home (I don't have one anyway), they go more than required, and keep everyone else from their work with constant chatting.

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

#425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, I have quit a remote company because it wasn’t for me. I deliberately live somewhere with a good commute.

These are choices I made for myself. If you can’t make the same choices that’s fine, but don’t come in to every thread about RTO and start saying that I’m a lazy irresponsible disrespectful person because I prefer to work in an office.

I’m not saying every company needs to be like this, but that companies like this should be allowed to exist without you remote work zealots belittling everyone who works there. Go work somewhere else!

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

#426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

literally what does Apple or Google have over Boeing as a company to work at Smarter coworkers. Better engineering culture. Better benefits. More time off. Bosses with engineering chops. More flexible schedules. Less likely to get laid off. Perks like free food/massages/events. Equity so as the company grows your pay increases automatically. Large bonuses. Are you actually serious you'd rather work at Boeing?

> Smarter coworkers. Doubtful, we can see the products that come out of them these days. > Better engineering culture. Doubtful, we can see the products that come out of them these days. > Bosses with engineering chops. Doubtful, we can see the products that come out of them these days. The rest of your list is just "money" written over and over and as I've already said, if that's all you care about, that's your prer…

Not sure how it is in Nigeria, but in America people think much more highly of Apple products than recent Boeing planes. So by the logic of "Doubtful, we can see the products that come out of them these days.", Boeing does much worse on that metric than Apple.

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

#427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do know there are several productive companies that are entirely remote, right?

Instagram ragequits remote working. Atlassian is a dumpster fire, they run shit engineering since about 3 years. Give me the secret sauce to being productive with remote employees. Maybe some have found it, but apparently paying above the employee ask, offering to double the salary in case of success, sending them to conferences and spending a lot of human time with them gives me the “evil employer” category on most…

>offering to double the salary in case of success

have you doubled anyone's salary? if not, it can come across as an empty promise you won't fulfill

>sending them to conferences and spending a lot of human time with them

do they want and benefit from these things? or do they distract them from their productive work?

>in most cases, the employer has to eat a shit sandwich.

not really, you were able to fire who you wanted to fire easily. it also seems that you didn't consider other factors for why the employee didn't work out. does your interview process poorly select for people who will do well in the role? are there other possible explanations for low productivity than the employee having a second job?

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

#428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

literally what does Apple or Google have over Boeing as a company to work at Smarter coworkers. Better engineering culture. Better benefits. More time off. Bosses with engineering chops. More flexible schedules. Less likely to get laid off. Perks like free food/massages/events. Equity so as the company grows your pay increases automatically. Large bonuses. Are you actually serious you'd rather work at Boeing?

> Smarter coworkers. Doubtful, we can see the products that come out of them these days. > Better engineering culture. Doubtful, we can see the products that come out of them these days. > Bosses with engineering chops. Doubtful, we can see the products that come out of them these days. The rest of your list is just "money" written over and over and as I've already said, if that's all you care about, that's your prer…

So wait, your argument is that you actually think Boeing has a better engineering culture and smarter coworkers, than cream of the crop prestigious and high paying software companies.

You're just that certain that the vast majority of engineers don't care about money, and aren't competing to get in there? And instead work at Boeing. Where you think the engineering culture is better...even though their software has a reputation of being awful.

You must know a lot more than everyone here. You should really enligthen us. All those terrible products that all those people are using from Apple and Google.

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

#429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

I don't think you understand my point of view and also smokedetector1's with whom I wholeheartedly agree. Economics and money is just numbers. It's not a measure of happiness in life. I just want to have enough money to not worry in life, I don't care about having much more than others. Doing a job I enjoy in a place I enjoy is worth much more to me. Would Elon Musk, the richest guy in the world be happier than me? I…

You can measure happiness with numbers. You can measure anything with numbers. I've welcomed you to provide your favorite happiness metric. But instead you insist that happiness cannot be measured in numbers. Anti-science attitude on display.

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

#430

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…

> 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…

In addition to your 1.) It's also a power demonstration as in: no matter how far you have to travel/commute, we're the ones paying, so you come when called. Since commutes are rarely paid for, that makes clear who's king. Same goes for open office spaces: the conditions and their effect on you don't really matter to the king.

There's a 4. in that these measures sometimes serve the purpose of reducing headcount without having to publicly announce layoffs.

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