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Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

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Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#51

Post by st1x7 »

ghaff wrote: post #37
lnsru wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re describing my situation. I have no dedicated room for my home office, just table with my own decent monitor and company’s decent workstation plus some hardware from the office. My place looks ugly with all that equipment, but it’s still better than punching a card daily in the office. Moving to a cheaper area is too good to be true.

Or you get a coworking space (in normal circumstances) and it's just a cost like commuting is for a lot of people.

That sounds like all the downsides of an office with none of the benefits. Plus additional expenses.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#52

Post by maxerickson »

popotamonga wrote: post #17
ahelwer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're single and willing to pay over $500/month you can get some pretty okay health insurance. Families throw a huge wrench in that plan though. Currently I'm just using COBRA. Nothing crystalizes support for medicare-for-all faster than ten seconds looking at the public health insurance marketplace.

How come its so expensive? The top top insurance in my european country is $100 and a pretty good is 30.

Healthcare spending in the US averages out to about $11,000 a person: https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Sta...

Insurance is expensive because medical care is expensive. Medical care is expensive because of a litany of policy failures.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#53

Post by ghaff »

gghhjj wrote: post #15

A lot of info is missed here as well. Sales orgs (quite a large part of Microsoft) must still work from the office (with exceptions) and cannot relocate as they need to meet customers - including the technical sales. Even though they've worked fine from home and were in fact MORE productive. So a lot of nuance is missed, and the application of this isn't as broad as it is suggested.

I can't speak to Microsoft specifically but a lot of outside sales (i.e. people who sell directly to enterprise accounts) are already typically at least mostly remote in practice. They may have a desk somewhere but the typical sales manager is going to start asking questions if they spend too much time in the office instead of meeting with customers.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#54

Post by mgkimsal »

tuna-piano wrote: post #32
popotamonga wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come its so expensive? The top top insurance in my european country is $100 and a pretty good is 30.

Well for many reasons (good and bad) healthcare is more expensive in the US than any other country. But why is healthcare bought individually more expensive than healthcare an employer buys for all their employees? One is real and one is hidden. The hidden price difference is that most employees think they pay $200 per month in health insurance, but actually their employer is paying $600 and chips in $400 so the empl…

> When an entire employee base gets health insurance together, the people needing expensive care and the people not needing any care all average out together.

Often/usually, the people needing very expensive care aren't employed in the first place, as they're often not able to work, or at least not able to work in a company with employer-provided health insurance in the first place.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#55

Post by mgkimsal »

tuna-piano wrote: post #24
x87678r wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

health insurance is my big wish. 20 hrs/wk with health insurance I'd work for 1/3rd my salary. EDIT: I have a family like most people. EDIT2: I'm thinking about how insurance isn't as expensive as giving up more than that in salary, but maybe I need the security of steady work on the resume, sick leave and a job to lean on if things get tough.

Depends on the state, but seems like if you're single, the individual plans in most states are around $3-500 per month with a ~$6k out of pocket max. This means annually: -$4,800 in premiums -$11k maximum health costs

And for 2 people - $10k/year.

That 'maximum health costs' also doesn't really factor in the time having to deal with insurance companies chasing up decisions they make (or don't), and for money/income lost due to no work. Insurance for that - short term disability insurance - may add another $100/month on the the equation.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#56

Post by vsareto »

mc32 wrote: post #7
PeterStuer wrote: post #5

The nuance you might not get from just the title: "Microsoft will now allow employees to work from home freely for less than 50 percent of their working week, or for managers to approve permanent remote work. " In order for true relocation to be an option, that 'manager approval' must be unequivocal, unrevocable and transferable, when, as happens very frequently at Microsoft, the worker gets a new manager.

Remote work is possible, but it’s not for everyone. Some people are good at it; they adapt well and remain productive. But... as Marissa Meier found out, some people are utterly bad at it, or some take advantage of the privilege of self management and milk the system. So they will have to measure and gauge to see the balance of benefits and detriments of permanent change.

Companies have been milking workers as well. It's not surprising it comes back to them.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#57

Post by mc32 »

vsareto wrote: post #56
mc32 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remote work is possible, but it’s not for everyone. Some people are good at it; they adapt well and remain productive. But... as Marissa Meier found out, some people are utterly bad at it, or some take advantage of the privilege of self management and milk the system. So they will have to measure and gauge to see the balance of benefits and detriments of permanent change.

Companies have been milking workers as well. It's not surprising it comes back to them.

?? That’s a total non-sequitur and has no connection to the other. Slackers will slack against themselves (hire a responsible home contractor vs one who slacks off and one who shows up whenever and does things half arsed). So it’s not about revenge or getting something back (that might be a motivation for some malcontents, but most slackers aren’t malcontents.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#58

Post by ghaff »

raxxorrax wrote: post #44
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #4

IMHO companies need to either embrace WFH fully or not at all. This current "we're kinda mostly WFH but not really sometimes" is the worst, as you have archaic processes still in place from pre WFH days that are still enforced, and most importantly, if management is in the office and you're not, over time, the colleagues who will be in the office will seem to get really lucky in regards to promotions and opportunitie…

I don't think that rents are the motivation behind this and instead I believe they want to get new heads and make work at Microsoft more attractive. I get what you mean with either/or, currently you just don't know who is available on a day to day basis, which can ruin any planning. One the other hand I would like to see mixed models like having 2 WFH days per week where I can work without the usual office distractio…

If you still have to come in multiple days per week you now still need to live within a reasonable commuting distance of the office and preferably have a decent home office. Less of an issue if the office is in a suburban office park. More so if it's downtown in a city.

If it's one day per week, it's probably more tractable because you can probably put up with a pretty long commute if need be if it's just once a week.

So the details matter.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#59

Post by cmiles74 »

mc32 wrote: post #35
cmiles74 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quality of management will be the same regardless of if the employee is working from the office or at home. The person who was allowed to "milk the system" in the office, surely, will be allowed to do the same when they are working from home. It seems unreasonable to me an employee's manager would change their behavior based on where the employee happened to be working. I don't believe Marissa Meier demonstrated…

Simply put. Some people need “structure” (that can be in the form of peer pressure, accountability, visibility, etc). Without it they flounder. At work if someone is not mainly on their job, people will eventually come to know them as slackers. Working from home allows quite a few slackers to fly under the radar. It has parallels in learning. Some people are self paced self learners and can learn remotely. Some need…

My question is why would they perform better at the office? In your example their performance is the same and they become labeled as "slackers" by their co-worker and management. If we allow these people to perform poorly in the office, shouldn't we also allow them to perform poorly when they work remotely?

If a manager is not providing adequate structure at the office, it seems unlikely that this would change regardless of where the employee is sitting. Those that need structure and do not get enough of it will flounder no matter their work location.

I disagree that it is more difficult to detect those employees who are less productive when the employee is working from home. On the contrary, I suspect their lack of productivity would be even more glaring and obvious then in the office.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#60

Post by UncleMeat »

ck425 wrote: post #39
dudul wrote: post #2

This article seems much more nuanced than the title. Looks like it's mostly part time WFH, modulo specific authorization from one's manager.

Is it common for companies not to have this already? Both places I've worked so far have had this. There's an office and everyone has a desk and is presumed to be in the majority of the time but if you want to WFH you just did and let your team know. There was an understanding that for certain events you should try be in the office (big planning/roadmapping meetings, retros and manager 121s) but otherwise it was at w…

Often you need more than manager approval. At Google, you need VP approval for permanent remote work (hopefully for now - we will see if things change).
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