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

491–500 of 969 posts

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#491

Post by wpm »

chii wrote: post #480
steveBK123 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend is CTO of a smaller company say ~250 people, and RTO constantly comes up in the C-suite. He is only able to fend it off by pointing out that they do not pay as well as their larger competitors, so the remote flexibility is a recruiting advantage. He describes the push for RTO from the rest of the C-suite as basically a combination of unspecific vibes that it must be bad if employees like it, and of course..…

> unspecific vibes that it must be bad if employees like it I read it as the feeling that they know somehow that the employees are not putting in 100% of their attention at home on the work assigned. And i do believe it to be true - lots of people claim that WFH means they can "do the laundry" and/or go to the post office. The fact is that there's very few self-starters and intrinsically motivated employees. Most are…

> Not to mention the fact that it is indeed much harder to have collaborative discussions that are spontaneous and unplanned in a WFH setting, compared to the office.

This is a culture thing that is easily fixed by mandating cameras on, buying everyone good microphones, and a consensus that you can ping someone with a question, go back and forth, and know that you aren't imposing by throwing a /zoom into the Slack DM and saying "let's just meet about this".

My team is small, sure, but we are cameras on 100%, we know to pause a sec after someone stops talking for latency, and have a spoken agreement "fuck slack just open a room i'll hop in". We have met in person numerous times and each time it feels identical to work in person as we do remote.

When I meet with other teams, people are in their fucking cars driving, cameras off the whole time (but chewing into the mic), can't figure out how to share their screen (still!), like, no shit that isn't productive, you're putting no effort into it!

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#492

Post by [deleted] »

xtracto wrote: post #278

Just out of curiosity, how much compensation would people be willing to leave on the table in lieu of "Remote" work? (this is different to, how much would you ASK to go from remote to a new in-office job). 10%, 25%, 50%? I've worked remotely for 5 years now, and there is NO way I would return to an office based job. I even have moved to a small town where there are practically 0 tech jobs; and at this point there's N…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#493

Post by wpm »

reaperducer wrote: post #225
Mobius01 wrote: post #139

I work in a large company that mandated 4-day RTO last year. Even taking a completely objetive point of view on the situation leads to the conclusion that something else is needed. We spend our days at our desks, on Zoom calls. People won’t get up to join in person - mostly because the conference rooms are all blocked by “special projects”, but mostly due to the offshoring of positions and distributed workforce post-…

I suspect the C-suite has noticed the discrepancy between attendance and occupancy The solution is to downsize your physical plant. My company has a ton of faults, but every time one of these stories hits the HN front page, I thank God that my company remains committed to work from home. So much so that it recently sold its last building, and the few dozen employees whose roles require them to be physically present h…

>The solution is to downsize your physical plant.

My company did this, then pulled 3 different departments into a 3d/w RTO they didn't even have the space for. Whoops!

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#494

Post by RoyTyrell »

ponector wrote: post #222
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…

>> 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…

I think it is a mix between power play and real-estate. During Covid and late-Covid, management had to let people wfh/remote, and companies were either mass-hiring or mass-layoffs. Insecure management felt like they had their "power" stripped away, and now between the uncertain economy and some being embolden due to the current potus admin, they want to "put workers in their place".

One of my coworkers is a contractor for a local IT/engineering firm, and another client recently lost one of their principle engineers due to him refusing to RTO and quit. Now the VPs he reported under are bad-mouthing him, saying he was "never any good", "screwed everything up", and "not a team player" - which everyone else knows is BS. The employees are just keeping their heads down trying not to get noticed - morale is bad. Management has even noticed and reversed their recent more formal dress code for a Jeans (and a Food Truck once a month) Friday. Needless to say no one is impressed.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#495

Post by selkin »

bottd wrote: post #474
bsimpson wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have yet to experience a role where workers are allowed to deliver while clocking less than 40 hours. 5 hours per week on salary is only if you do not tell management.

Or are management.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#496

Post by scubbo »

closeparen wrote: post #362
dan-robertson wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big difference between feudalism and modern societies is that in feudalism, you expect to earn much less than the value of the land you inherit and pass on (or the custom or right of your family farming the land) whereas in modern societies most people will earn much more in lifetime earnings than they would inherit or pass on. This results in far more social mobility and much more freedom in praxis. I don’t think…

A West Coast software engineering career is barely worth the land underneath a house from which you could reasonably commute to it. We're getting there.

This is just straight-up false? My current home - not the land, the home entire - cost just under 3 years of my salary, or under 2 years of my total comp, and I can go door-to-door in 35 minutes on public transit or 20 by car. (and I'm under 40 and still getting good reviews, so can reasonably hope for my pay to increase considerably in the second half of my career)

Don't get me wrong, that's still way too expensive; but your exaggeration is _way_ off the mark.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#497

Post by dymk »

ajryan wrote: post #387
dymk wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many employees do you think msft has that don’t live within that 50 mile radius? I’d bet it’s an incredibly small percentage. They chose 50 miles because it’s big enough to cover almost everyone. I’m within that but my commute is two hours one direction.

Redmond only

The 50 mile radius touches Olympia, and that's a conservative centering on building 92. It's basically everybody that they hire in western Washington.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#498

Post by missedthecue »

losteric wrote: post #416
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…

> Big corpo is a modern feodal state, where CEO is an emperor, c-suites are kings, managers are barons Why do people forget about board members and shareholders? There's a lot of overlap among the rich. I doubt Satya "wants" to RTO. I would suspect board members / shareholders with real estate interests are forcing the policy. (eg Vanguard holds 10%, with Blackrock close behind). Big corpo is a feudal state, in the s…

I do not understand the real estate investor conspiracy theory. Why would it be better for vanguard if Microsoft paid rent to a real estate firm that managed office space, earned an X% profit margin, and then got taxed on the earnings before they were attributed to shareholders?

It makes much more sense to take a bath on the office investments and have Microsoft pay the difference in dividends or buybacks. The net amount to vanguard is higher than paying insurance, building and grounds maintainence, janitors, utilities, management fees, and property+ income tax before seeing your first dollar.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#499

Post by wombatpm »

bluGill wrote: post #424
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.

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-

8 years in the Twin Cities from Chicago originally.

People are nice, but everyone who I ever interacted with in stores or outside of work was from somewhere else. The natives just weren’t up for making friends or casual conversation.

Despite the cold, Winters in Minneapolis are 100 times better than winters in Chicago.

Food in Minneapolis can’t hold a candle to Chicago or New York.

Public transportation barely works even if you have a government job where you can leave exactly the same time everyday. You still need a car for everything else.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#500

Post by wpm »

xtracto wrote: post #278

Just out of curiosity, how much compensation would people be willing to leave on the table in lieu of "Remote" work? (this is different to, how much would you ASK to go from remote to a new in-office job). 10%, 25%, 50%? I've worked remotely for 5 years now, and there is NO way I would return to an office based job. I even have moved to a small town where there are practically 0 tech jobs; and at this point there's N…

I'd have to do the math on what the commute would cost me in time and financial cost.

I don't own a car. I have no plans to buy one. If I "needed" one for a job, that would be brought up at the salary negotiation. Sorry, I'm not going to pay for a car I don't otherwise need and lose $15K a year for something decent. What a scam!

On the time, well, it just depends on what they're going to pay me. Divide by work hours per year. Add 2 hours a day. Add that to the offer. I don't work for free. I don't travel for free. When I need to fly somewhere I get free ground transport, free meals, free flights, free hotel, but because we put "we're forcing you to travel 10 miles a day for no reason" in a little special box called "expected" we can force you to spend your own salary on it. *Scam*. It's all a big scam. They're subsidizing their bottom line with your time, your money, and your air.

I worked a terrible job in high school because I could walk there. There was no point in going someplace else that paid more because I would've burned all the extra money up in gas.

Post reply on HN