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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

#531

Post by fogzen »

nonameiguess wrote: post #113

This 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…

Great point. MS employee productivity as measured has improved. But who cares about facts anymore.

This drove me nuts during all the hullabaloo about DOGE. People would confidently state that the Federal government is inefficient – while data showed the opposite! Federal workforce has remained largely the same since 1950, while administering more services, for more people, with a much larger budget. As measured, the government workforce is more productive than ever.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#532

Post by thedevilslawyer »

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…

35-50% is the ballpark when I surveyed amongst friends.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#533

Post by yepitwas »

whateveracct wrote: post #523
dragonwriter wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RTO mandates are about many things, but actual business value of being in the office to the business doing the mandate is low on the list. Among the things it is about: (1) Executives with emotional attachment to certain leadership styles that are enabled by physical presence, (2) Interest in the investor class for the commercial real estate market. The business impacted may not be invested in it, but the businesses’…

This is dead on. In software especially, we have established ways for distributed individuals to collaborate (FOSS). RTO is meant to coddle the waterfall-addicted executive class.

It's pretty funny to watch e.g. some little FOSS console game system emulator—an actual toy, or at least, a project in service of a toy and of game-playing, to a large extent, but also technically more challenging than a lot of corporate work—or maybe some FOSS MMO server re-implementation coordinate development across continents with nothing but IRC, email, and Github (if that, LOL) and do it efficiently with little friction and volunteers working in their spare time and zero people with a dedicated "project manager" title, while companies pretend they need this whole fucking edifice of communication systems and people sitting in cubicles in particular places just to shuffle a few gigabytes of spreadsheet data around with Python or whatever.

Yeah. No you don't. You're, somehow, a fraction as competent and professional as some teens and 20-somethings making toys in their spare time, if you do. Definitely deserve seven-plus figure salaries for that.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#534

Post by thedevilslawyer »

penguin_booze wrote: post #501

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.

Or they have tried and failed, and market is working as intended. I'd argue this is the case since there have been a surge of companies the past 3 years, and barely a handful are remote, and none at large scale.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#535

Post by yepitwas »

missedthecue wrote: post #498
losteric wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 am…

I don't get why the various tax incentives and such (plus stealth layoffs) aren't enough to explain it.

I've seen companies do some weird shit for those "X workers at location Y at least Z hours per year" tax incentives. I'd believe it's a major motivator for RTO (though probably somewhat behind the layoffs motivation)

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#536

Post by QuantumFunnel »

danaris wrote: post #455
losteric wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Well, then show the evidence. If this is a shareholder action, of a publicly-traded company, then (IIUC) shouldn't that be publicly-available information somewhere?

This is probably better evidence than any public filing

https://wolfstreet.com/2025/09/01/office-cmbs-delinquency-ra...

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#537

Post by cdaringe »

terminalshort wrote: post #529
dragonwriter wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RTO mandates are about many things, but actual business value of being in the office to the business doing the mandate is low on the list. Among the things it is about: (1) Executives with emotional attachment to certain leadership styles that are enabled by physical presence, (2) Interest in the investor class for the commercial real estate market. The business impacted may not be invested in it, but the businesses’…

2 and 3 aren't real. Nobody gives a damn about their shareholders other investments, and no one company has the numbers to save them anyway. And nobody is dumb enough to do RTO as a layoff proxy because anybody with a brain knows you're going to lose the people with options, who are exactly the people you don't want to lose. 1 is spot on.

I disagree. Corpo finance doesn’t see names and value, they see cost. Talent can be purchased. They can’t purchase cost reductions

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#538

Post by LtWorf »

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…

It's just a way to do layoffs…

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#539

Post by titanomachy »

dmitrygr wrote: post #343
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…

Come join GM (formerly Cruise) ADAS org. We are hiring. Work is pretty cool at every level from kernel and drivers to userspace linux to frameworks, to ML. And, as long as you are >50 mi from detroit, you are going to be fully remote. Pay is good. People are good. Jobs are posted on GM's jobs site, or reach out to me, if you'd like, and i'll connect you to the right people.

Looks cool. You work on this as an IC? And you genuinely like your job? What part of the stack are you in?

Fellow ex-Googler, looking for an interesting systems programming role.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#540

Post by LtWorf »

scubbo wrote: post #496
closeparen wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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;…

Ah, you live on a park bench?
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