Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026 • Hacker News Board

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

#441

Post by smokedetector1 » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 4:37 PM UTC

will4274 wrote: post #429

wkat4242 wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You cannot measure everything with numbers. Many things in life cannot even be ordered[0]. Lives are different. Yes, some are just worse/more challenging than others, but in general people and their experiences are wayyyyyyy too complex and multivaried to be projected onto the real line. Only by narrowing your understanding and experience of life to measurable phenomena like bank account balance can you actually do the comparison you're looking for. And then you've all but ruined your life.

To address your point, GDP per capita is not a good metric capturing happiness, for several reasons. Most trivially, because it does nothing to reflect the distribution of wealth. A country could (purely hypothetically ;) ) have massive GDP per capita but the benefits flow mainly to the top.

Even putting that aside, a culture with massive GDP but where the citizens don't have the time, peace, values, and social structures to enjoy life is not a happy society.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_order

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

#442

Post by Xss3 » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 6:15 PM UTC

amrocha wrote: post #325

bambax wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody was ever prohibited from coming to the office. If you like it, do it. But forcing people to come to the office when they hate it, is counter-productive.

I disagree, and clearly most companies opting for some kind of RTO are on my side. The biggest benefit of an office is collocation. People need to be forced to come to an office or they won’t do it, and team efficiency will go down. Even if you think you’re performing well, the entire team suffers for it. Miscommunication happens. People get blocked for longer. Juniors can’t get the mentoring they need. If you disagr…

The people that do the actual work dont want to be in the office surrounded by the slackers that for some reason 'require' other people around them to work. Theyre leaches. They drain energy me.

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

#443

Post by footy » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 6:51 PM UTC

will4274 wrote: post #429

wkat4242 wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The inverse of the Gini coefficient is a good measure.

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

#444

Post by rfwhyte » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 6:57 PM UTC

I'd wager two things:

1) Mosseri himself will still continue to enjoy the benefits of a flexible / remote enabled work / life balance that he is now denying his employees. Standard rules for thee not for me type BS that is typical of "Executives." I've worked for a couple larger corporations / organizations, and at both it was painfully obvious that the rules for us rank and file types categorically did not apply to the senior leadership. We were expected to "Tighten our belts" and "Do more with less" while the executives were flying around the world in their corporate jets going to "Conferences" and "Galas" or whatever, while spending the companies money lavishly on their own personal comfort. It's the same with remote work, executives love it for themselves, but deny it to the regular employees who actually make their lifestyles possible.

2) Mosseri himself, and members of Instagram's board and / or major shareholders have significant investments in commercials real estate.

The bottom line for me is this whole "Back to the office" nonsense is 100% driven by the wealthy capitalist class being heavily invested in commercial real estate. I, though no fault of my own have known a couple billionaires reasonably well in the past (Both from the same family), and they were both heavily invested in commercial real estate. The CEOs and their investors who keep prattling on with their BS about "Productivity" or "Collaboration" are the same people who own most of the commercial real estate, and all they actually care about is protecting the value of their investments, as if everyone starts working remotely, there wouldn't be much need for all these fancy corporate campuses and office parks, and the value of their investments would decline as result.

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

#445

Post by OkayPhysicist » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 7:28 PM UTC

bradlys wrote: post #108

paxys wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pre-covid - an entire working team is clustered in the same office and have desks near each other. People collaborate via in-person meetings, hallway conversations and general proximity. During covid - hiring is mostly remote since companies figure they don't have to be constrained by geography anymore. Employees work at home and collaborate over Zoom meetings. It's difficult at first but everyone adjusts. Productivi…

None of these executives are using data driven decisions. It’s said as much in the memo. It’s vibes based. I suspect there’s more at play with this. Maybe they’re expecting attrition from this and that’s their actual goal. They never reveal their core intentions.

The real underlying reason is easy. You know how to really excel as a developer, you pretty much have to be in for love of the craft? Management's the same way, but instead of a focus on building software, it's a focus on fulfilling a sense of power. People who are motivated by the pursuit of power put more effort into achieving positions of power, until basically any position of power is filled by the power hungry. It's a fundamental failure of every hierarchy. Sometimes there are temporary exceptions, but over time everything reverts to the mean.

In office, managers get to look out over their little fiefdoms. It's a physical space, with physical people, and it's theirs. And their competitors (other managers) can see their domain, and understand where they stand in the pecking order. In WFH settings, the whole thing becomes far more abstract. The manager's desire for elevated position isn't met, and they become paranoid that their competition can't see their status.

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

#446

Post by amrocha » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 8:02 PM UTC

Xss3 wrote: post #442

amrocha wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, and clearly most companies opting for some kind of RTO are on my side. The biggest benefit of an office is collocation. People need to be forced to come to an office or they won’t do it, and team efficiency will go down. Even if you think you’re performing well, the entire team suffers for it. Miscommunication happens. People get blocked for longer. Juniors can’t get the mentoring they need. If you disagr…

The people that do the actual work dont want to be in the office surrounded by the slackers that for some reason 'require' other people around them to work. Theyre leaches. They drain energy me.

Do you make it a habit of calling your coworkers “slackers” and “leeches”?

Maybe that’s why your coworkers are so bad. If everywhere you go smells like shit maybe check your shoes.

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

#447

Post by munksbeer » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 8:07 PM UTC

will4274 wrote: post #409

footy wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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…

> Tbh, I'm sure I'm going to get down voted to hell, but it's pretty amazing how many highly educated and otherwise intelligent Europeans just... don't believe in economics anymore when economics says their lives are worse than their peers in America. It's one of the major touch points of anti intellectualism in this forum.

Immigrant from a developing nation, living in the UK here. I very much notice this attitude on hn, and elsewhere. Europeans (I include the UK obviously) are extremely protective of the idea that the welfare state here automatically makes everything better than life in the US. It's a bit easier to be objective when you live here but you're not actually from here.

I love the UK. It has been my home for over 20 years. I love the fact that there is a safety net that mostly, sort of, works. But I also know people from my original country who have moved elsewhere. Some who actually lived in the UK, then moved elsewhere. Some of those to the US, where they have really accelerated their earnings and their comfort and in some respects, quality of life.

I think there is no doubt that the material comforts that most people enjoy out of life will be improved just by working the same job in the US. Obviously there are non-tangibles such as living in a society where people can't carry guns, one of the things I appreciate about the UK compared to the US. Or also knowing that poorer people living just a few streets away from you can enjoy the same facilities I do (to a large extent), and are mostly going to be ok in life. I like living in Europe, where we're exposed to so much culturally. Etc.

So I can see both sides of this, but I am definitely on your side of the fence with regard material quality of life. My salary is high in the UK, I'm in the top percentile of earners, but without any family money, I'm never going to lead an extravagant life here. I'm going to struggle to retire early like my US peers would be able to.

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

#448

Post by munksbeer » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 8:11 PM UTC

dreis_sw wrote: post #440

pavel_lishin wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely agree with you about (1), though this can be somewhat mitigated by having a good culture of agreeing to hop into impromptu video calls. (2) feels weird to me; if the work is getting done, is there an issue? Does it matter if I spend 4 hours or 2 hours on a design doc, if the result is a good design doc?

(2) At the office, it's harder to pretend that work took longer than it actually took. If you're done with the design doc in 2h, with colleagues sitting all around you, what can you do to pretend that it took you longer? Mess around with Confluence, pretending to work? You might as well move on to the next design doc, or find something useful to do meanwhile. At home, you can just pick up the Xbox controller and say…

> And we all pay for it.

That's a very confident statement to make. My company is very much happy with remote working. 50% of my team aren't even in the country. Most other teams are the same. I don't feel like I'm paying any price for that.

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

#449

Post by munksbeer » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 8:16 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #160

kirykl wrote: post #5

The whole memo just reeks of not trusting your employees.

A lot of the anti WFH wave comes from companies discovering that they actually can't trust some employees to do much work from home.

> A lot of the anti WFH wave comes from companies discovering that they actually can't trust some employees to do much work from home.

Personally, I think a lot of the anti WFH types thrive in an office environment because either charitably, they get energy from being around people and work better, or less charitably, it helps them build their careers because they're great at being noticed in that environment.

In the charitable case, that's great for them, but could be harmful to WFH types, who thrive when they can work remotely and their focus times click more easily (for various reasons).

In the less charitable case, (which I suspect is a lot of people who are passionately anti-WFH), well, this needs no real explanation. They're just being selfish for their own career.

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

#450

Post by will4274 » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 10:11 PM UTC

footy wrote: post #443

will4274 wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The inverse of the Gini coefficient is a good measure.

In a country where everybody is dead, the inverse of the Gini coefficient is infinity.