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Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

businessinsider.com

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Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#481

Post by themafia »

bsimpson wrote: post #447
moralestapia wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

At most tech companies, you can work 5 hours per week or 100 and your salary remains the same. If they see you working 5 hours per week and don't think you're productive enough, they can fire you, but you aren't paid any more for working more hours. That's what "salaried" means. It's why you've never heard someone getting paid "time and a half" for working weekends in tech.

> It's why you've never heard someone getting paid "time and a half" for working weekends in tech.

It depends on the state. In California there are minimum salary requirements, that are adjusted every year, that must be met to be an exempt position. Otherwise you are required to pay hourly.

It's honestly one of the nice features of the state.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#482

Post by [deleted] »

j-bos wrote: post #402
steveBK123 wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way these people think - if employees like it, it must be a perk/benefit. Therefore with the current job market we don’t need to be generous with it. Related - JPMorgan is opening a new HQ with a big nice gym, and plan to charge employees to use it, lol. Thanks I’ll just leave the building Jamie.

No way, they're going to charge for the gym in the office? That's like something out of the onion.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#483

Post by themafia »

sugarpimpdorsey wrote: post #22

The only thing I hated worse than going into the office was our remote employees, who never seemed to be available when you needed them, had their status set to Away (or wouldn't respond for hours if they were green). It was a privilege, people abused it, and now it's over. And managers were the worst offenders.

> It was a privilege

Hardly. It was COVID. It forced companies to do the most logical thing they could in a world of high speed internet. Many of them refused to read the writing on the wall and assumed it would return to normal one day. They made no efforts to internally reorient themselves around this new work strategy.

> people abused it

Other than your anecdote what evidence is there that this is true? Has the economy faltered? Is there any second source for the data which shows _any_ impact _at all_?

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#484

Post by non_aligned »

t-writescode wrote: post #442
non_aligned wrote: post #441

I've seen this from both sides, and I think there's about the same amount of bad-faith arguments on both sides. Now, line workers have less power here than the execs, so I'm inclined to side with the former group, but... the whole thing is a bit of a mess. You can essentially divide IC employees into three categories. First, those who are about as productive from home as they are from the office, but are on average h…

You missed the people more productive at home because they have less overall life stress, no pain of commute, disabilities which make commute painful or hard, etc. And I suspect that’s a *LOT* more people than you’re giving credit. To be very clear, I’m in that group, and probably so. Several engineers I’ve worked with are in that group, as well. I suspect it’s actually quite common in software.

I honestly don't think this shows in the data. As a software engineer, I really want to believe it, but I think we're prone to confusing well-being with productivity. We feel better about the work, but if you try to quantify it in any imaginable way, it's not there. Not in launch velocity, not in the number of pull requests, not the number of design docs created, bugs fixed, etc...

Of course, all of these metrics are individually goofy, but in aggregate, they give you some approximation of productivity.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#485

Post by bluedevil2k »

grepfru_it wrote: post #422
userbinator wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 D…

That’s absurd - the guy’s worth $130B, you think he cares about the not-even-pocket-change that would come from owning the land that a Twin Peaks is on? Dell’s RTO is purely a silent downsizing.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#486

Post by selkin »

danaris wrote: post #459
steveBK123 wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way these people think - if employees like it, it must be a perk/benefit. Therefore with the current job market we don’t need to be generous with it. Related - JPMorgan is opening a new HQ with a big nice gym, and plan to charge employees to use it, lol. Thanks I’ll just leave the building Jamie.

> if employees like it, it must be a perk/benefit. Or, for those who have bought into the utterly toxic mindset that employees are always trying to get as much out of the company as possible for as little work as possible, "if employees like it, it must be a scam on us ."

Many hold that mindset because that is what they do themselves, and hence believe others must be the same.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#487

Post by craftkiller »

NewJazz wrote: post #388
pm90 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lol you missed the weather... Bay area weather is much more moderate than in the Midwest.

That's an understatement: Bay area weather is magical. It is the same all year round. You don't need "winter" and "summer" attire, your plans never get rained out, and you never have to deal with snowstorms. The downside is sometimes it rains ash.

Personally, I had to leave because the pizza out there is unbearable but damn I miss the bay area weather.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#488

Post by wombatpm »

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…

Are they requiring VP approval for zoom meetings? Requiring zoom meetings to be restricted to office network IP addresses?

I’m the kind of employee that would comply, not answer my cell phone and require people to leave voicemails on my desk line, call out people who are multitasking, and actively call out managers who attend meetings via zoom.

RTO with back to back zoom meetings all day is a waste of everyone’s time and energy.

Make management show us the benefit of all this RTO collaboration.

Oh, and I’m done checking email and teams after hours. Not safe to do so while driving.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#489

Post by themafia »

milesvp wrote: post #64
sublimefire wrote: post #16

It mentions this was based on some “data” (in emailsto employees) that it will yield better output but I somehow doubt it. I wonder what happens with the stock. It sort of makes it worse for the teams that are distributed and harms collab between sites in different zones like Europe/Asia and US/Europe. When you are working from home it is easy to stay later or start earlier and join calls. If you are in the office th…

It’s a common thing here on HN to believe that remote is superior for productivity, and I’m always reminded of Richard Hammond’s observations about open door vs closed door coworkers. He noticed over time that the closed door workers were more productive. He also noticed that the closed door workers were less impactful in their fields years later. His were observations in R&D settings, but I suspect they can be extra…

> the closed door workers were less impactful in their fields years later

What evidence is there that the open door is the cause and not the symptom? People are individuals. They're not "interchangeable worker units."

> People who don’t interract with peers don’t course correct enough

I can think of a dozen ways to address that without forcing people to open doors they'd rather leave closed.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#490

Post by gedy »

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’…

So pay me enough to afford a home nearby so I can work in the office. Hell, I'll wear a suit too. Oh, I can only get enough to commute in from an exurb 1+ hour commute each way? Buzz off.

Been working since the 80s, and no company has ever paid me enough to buy anything nearby. So I gave up 15 yrs ago and now work full remote where I could afford something.

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