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Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

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Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#441

Post by unsui »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #273
rtpg wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This conversation, when I've had it with people, usually ends up with the same conclusions: people would like to see their coworkers face-to-face like.... a couple times a month. People have deep relationships with others without needing to see them 5 times a day, after all! I think the difficulties around relationship building in this time are deeply linked to whether you are able to socialize "through a computer" w…

It is an interesting question. I have two new team members we added 2 months ago. Neither is very technical and, admittedly, it can get challenging sometimes, because pre-WFH, I could have just showed them what to do instead of spending 20 minutes trying to explain what I want them to do. I could technically grab a screen, but.. apparently, neither learns well that way and just yesterday I had some really odd issues…

I've found the opposite.

As a developer, WFH actually facilitates things like pair programming and peer review. Especially for introverts like myself, it is much easier to do a screenshare of your IDE and review code in a group than try to sit next to each other or review code on a big screen in a meeting room. This has become a thing for us now (let's jump on a zoom and i'll show you quickly), for anything that's too complex to slack.

The ability to easily screen share and record sessions as needed means I can get the big picture in the initial live session and review the details later via recording as needed (especially those nitpicky code details nobody remembers the first time around).

I will miss this when we have to go back to the office.

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#442

Post by __turbobrew__ »

biztos wrote: post #391
__turbobrew__ wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my experience as well. Companies are aiming for equality of outcomes even though WFH and office employees work in different environments. I think it is totally fine for an employee to make the decision to work from home and obtain greater freedom at the cost of worse promotion outcomes. The problem is that if employers say “hey you can work from home, but you are less likely to get promoted than your peers wo…

Wouldn't it be simpler to declare everything "hybrid" and then you don't have to track who's in the office, even though you expect there will be stuff like better promotion outcomes for people who spend more time face-to-face? Nowadays presumably you have someone making sure your promotions aren't lopsided enough to look discriminatory anyway.

> Wouldn't it be simpler to declare everything "hybrid" and then you don't have to track who's in the office.

That doesn’t fix the issue. Even if everything is declared “hybrid” there is still going to be an “in” group of people working in the office most days and an “out” group of people working from home most days.

> Nowadays presumably you have someone making sure your promotions aren't lopsided enough to look discriminatory anyway.

Having objective performance evaluations which are agnostic to WFH would be ideal but I am not sure if they are realistic. You are working against human nature and tribalism: it is much easier to have favourable opinions of those you interact with regularly. Not to mention that very few work places actually have objective measurements of employee performance, it is mostly all optics and how well the employee sells themselves.

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#443

Post by johannes1813 »

tills13 wrote: post #325
johannes1813 wrote: post #165

I've been back in my company's office in person (medium-sized tech company) for the last week with a small subset of employees before we all go back, and I've become pretty convinced that these hybrid models will not go well. Even while wearing masks and social distancing, I feel far more connected to the others that work in the office, and whether it's fair or not, personal connection and trust play a huge role in c…

TBH your personal experience has no bearing on mine. I can't help but feel like people with _opinions_ like yours are going to ruin it for the rest of us who are orders of magnitude more productive at home. "But I can't socialize"... I don't care. I would rather not work in tech anymore than return to an office full time.

I also think my point was about companies/organizations as a whole rather than individuals. Remote might be optimal for lots of individuals, maybe even the majority, but my guess is that the conditions it creates will cause an organizational problem. I don't think incentives between employees and companies are necessarily aligned here.

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#444

Post by heavyset_go »

darth_avocado wrote: post #126

It’s interesting, because I’m currently interviewing with them and I definitely am hearing a lot of expectations of coming to the office at least a couple days a week. Which is pretty much in line with what the expectations were pre pandemic.

Bring up the content of this article.

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#445

Post by jpeter »

dreyfan wrote: post #75

I currently have 10 fully remote engineering jobs. The bar is so low, oversight is non-existent, and everyone is so forgiving for under performance I can coast about 4-8 weeks before a given job fires me. Currently on a $1.5M run-rate for comp this year. And the interviewing process is so much faster today, companies are desperate, it takes me 2-3hrs of total effort to land a new job with thousands to chose from.

The new hacker news challenge: get a remote job at all FAANG companies

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#446

Post by baby »

johannes1813 wrote: post #165

I've been back in my company's office in person (medium-sized tech company) for the last week with a small subset of employees before we all go back, and I've become pretty convinced that these hybrid models will not go well. Even while wearing masks and social distancing, I feel far more connected to the others that work in the office, and whether it's fair or not, personal connection and trust play a huge role in c…

I personally felt more connected and more aware of what everyone was doing when we switched to remote because people had to overcommunicate and write docs instead of having private conversations I wasn’t invited to.

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#447

Post by baby »

johannes1813 wrote: post #443
tills13 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBH your personal experience has no bearing on mine. I can't help but feel like people with _opinions_ like yours are going to ruin it for the rest of us who are orders of magnitude more productive at home. "But I can't socialize"... I don't care. I would rather not work in tech anymore than return to an office full time.

I also think my point was about companies/organizations as a whole rather than individuals. Remote might be optimal for lots of individuals, maybe even the majority, but my guess is that the conditions it creates will cause an organizational problem. I don't think incentives between employees and companies are necessarily aligned here.

You can work in an office and be good at communicating by writing docs.

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#448

Post by baby »

Igelau wrote: post #170
johannes1813 wrote: post #165

I've been back in my company's office in person (medium-sized tech company) for the last week with a small subset of employees before we all go back, and I've become pretty convinced that these hybrid models will not go well. Even while wearing masks and social distancing, I feel far more connected to the others that work in the office, and whether it's fair or not, personal connection and trust play a huge role in c…

> But I'm saying this as a young person excited to work in person, so maybe others (parents, those with long commutes) feel it's still worth it. Parent of three, going on four. Get me out of here!

Why don’t you wework?

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#449

Post by baby »

akramer16 wrote: post #437
dreyfan wrote: post #75

I currently have 10 fully remote engineering jobs. The bar is so low, oversight is non-existent, and everyone is so forgiving for under performance I can coast about 4-8 weeks before a given job fires me. Currently on a $1.5M run-rate for comp this year. And the interviewing process is so much faster today, companies are desperate, it takes me 2-3hrs of total effort to land a new job with thousands to chose from.

I'm a tech culture reporter at Protocol and I'd love to talk to you about this, if you're down! I'm at akramer@protocol.com or @anna_c_kramer on Twitter, and happy to provide my Signal over email if that's preferred. Let me know if you'd be interested in chatting.

It’s a joke

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#450

Post by baby »

digbert wrote: post #26
danbrooks wrote: post #2

Clearly great news for Facebook employees. For reference, the previous policy was that only level 5+ could request to work remotely.

> Clearly great news for Facebook employees. For some Facebook employees, definitely. Personally, I think I'll be finding a job elsewhere now.

We have a manager using a throaway account here. Of course you’re not going to find a job elsewhere.
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