I wonder why people with requisite entrepreneurial skills aren't setting up enough remote-(only|friendly) businesses. Clearly, there's a demand for such roles. With RTO policies implemented across the globe, I imagine there'll be a surplus of high-quality talent for hiring as well. This seems like clear case of market inefficiency.
Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
501–510 of 969 posts
Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
#502This is going to lead to these abstract discussions of subjective perceptual "productivity" as it always does, but by the actual economic definition of labor productivity, revenue per employee, Microsoft has gone from $143 billion with 163,000 in 2020 ($877,000 per head) to $282 billion with 228,000 ($1.24 million per head) so far this year. They've become the 2nd largest company in the world by market cap, in large…
How much of that is product engineering and how much is leasing access to capital during a GPU demand spike?
Why does it matter? You're just describing another case where losses get spread around but gains are claimed by those at the top.
Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
#503Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
#504Commute time should be salaried time. Then the whole office/home work discussion could be taken with the true costs involved.
> Commute time should be salaried time. Salary means you're paid a fixed amount per pay period, regardless of hours worked. So including commute in your hours worked wouldn't change your salary, which is by definition a fixed amount. Did you mean that commute time should be paid hourly at an additional rate?
I'm salaried but my contract specifies 'expected hours' from 9-5 or 8-5 with an unpaid lunch.
Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
#505Maybe they don’t even want to rely on Microsoft Teams internally anymore…
MS Teams for video teleconferencing...good. On a Windows PC, and using MS365, by far the easiest to set up ( or change ) a meeting and fewest issues with cameras across multiple devices. (Webex and Zoom are close seconds, Google Meet is a distant last due to constant camera issues.) MS Teams for IM...okay. Too much white space and too hard to find conversations that I know I've had recently. Very much prefer Slack. M…
Does MS Teams support dual video inputs yet? I refuse to do the whole "click through a powerpoint clumsily while in edit mode with private DM notifications popping off in the background" thing I see too damn often so I use the OBS Virtual Cam. Zoom picks this up easily. Last I ran Teams (admittedly two years ago), if I tried to do the same, it would just set my camera feed to the virtual cam.
Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
#506Earlier quoted context omitted.
Okay, great. You can work from the office. Don't dictate to the rest of us that we have to work the way you work best
They work better with you sitting next to them /s
You /s, but that's actually a fair point
- Some people work better at home, away from the office
- Some people work better in the office, with their co-workers around them
Those two facts are at direct odds with each other. It's unfortunate, but you can't give both groups what they want.
Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
I have found the same with remote. Cameras ON is a huge improvement in how much people are in on the game. Constant communication, frequent ad hoc meetings, screen sharing. Its totally doable, but most people don't do it. There is no feeling worse than presenting an idea to a meeting room of 10 people with all cameras off, and when you ask a question you get crickets. Too many people are phoning it in.
Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
#508Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> cameras on 100%
i hate the idea of camera on 100% of the time.
I am not presentable when WFH. That's the point.
I might also be on the toilet - which otherwise is dead time!
Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
#509Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
#510Earlier 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…
Those lazy employees need that strict supervision!
Maybe these c suites and other employee hating assholes are projecting their own lazyness. Or maybe they think they are so superior compared to ”common” people that the ”common” people must be lazy trash.
I don’t know, but it is weird to assume most people won’t do their job without ”strict supervision”. Like super weird.
(Btw, anecdotally, most people I know work more efficiently from home with fewer breaks)