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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

#551

Post by cyberpunk »

yepitwas wrote: post #533
whateveracct wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Shit I would fucking love a cubical vs the open plan wall of noise and chaos that’s our brand new office. Sigh.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#552

Post by hobs »

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;…

Do you live in Socal, like the person is implying? You make >500k a year and still live in a pretty small house then? And if so, like basically no one in the united states?

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#553

Post by grafmax »

thedevilslawyer wrote: post #514
gedy wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To be fair, we're the highest paid profession, and the work isn't that difficult either.

The owners of the companies we work for are making more money than us, off the value we create through our work, simply by through ownership itself. How’s that for compensation vs difficulty?

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#554

Post by vhcr »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #400
Aurornis wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This question isn't very revealing because it almost entirely depends on this one variable: > maybe I am even in a privileged position financially; but at this moment in my life I would rather quit my job Someone closer to retirement with a lot of savings and low expenses will have a completely different answer than a younger person with low savings and a family. The second variable it depends on is their current sal…

>Someone closer to retirement with a lot of savings and low expenses will have a completely different answer than a younger person with low savings and a family. Maybe this is the way companies rid themselves of older workers who push back on things. The FIRE movement is huge in tech, and I imagine a not insignificant number of people have RTO as the last straw where they pull the ripcord. Personally, for me? There's…

This study found the opposite.

https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/charting-remot...

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#555

Post by hobs »

anon22981 wrote: post #510
chii wrote: post #480

Earlier 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…

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 mo…

Because they know they are creating unfulfilling low paying jobs with shitty objectives, who wouldn't fuck off in that scenario?

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#556

Post by intended »

xtracto wrote: post #303
Aurornis wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This question isn't very revealing because it almost entirely depends on this one variable: > maybe I am even in a privileged position financially; but at this moment in my life I would rather quit my job Someone closer to retirement with a lot of savings and low expenses will have a completely different answer than a younger person with low savings and a family. The second variable it depends on is their current sal…

You got the underlying reason for my question almost in passing: I've been involved in hiring Software devs from US and LatAm for several years in different management positions. I wondered how feasible would be for say, a company in Mexico to compete on hiring a dev in the USA at a lower cost (normally, a Mexico dev is between 1/3 to 1/2 the price of a US one), by leveraging the value of [allowing] working Remote. E…

Will work.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#557

Post by Robdel12 »

Ancalagon wrote: post #305

MSFT employees - better make sure not to work from home anymore considering your jobs can’t be done from there. Close your laptops at 5pm, do not re-open them until you are back in office at 9am the next day.

Hell, leave the laptop!

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#558

Post by tpxl »

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…

Daily reminder that if a manager can't tell if their employees are effective working from home, that manager is incompetent. There are a million ways to check if someone is actually working, and butt-in-seat isn't one of them.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#559

Post by whstl »

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…

A previous company I worked at has a satellite office with one single employee, and mandates office 3 days a week.

The excuse is that “people in bigger offices will feel bad if we open an exception”, so they’re spending a few thousand a month on real estate to make some poor sod miserable.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#560

Post by jenadine »

Anon1096 wrote: post #238
tokai wrote: post #66

Commute time should be salaried time. Then the whole office/home work discussion could be taken with the true costs involved.

As a salaried employee there is no "salaried time." You're paid for your output not the time spent on it. This goes especially true for Microsoft where lots of people put in far less than a 40hr workweek. Literally no one bats an eye at arriving at the office late so if you want to start your commute at 9 and include that in your "working hours" no one would care.

The employer want to pay for the output. But the employee want to be compensated for their time and the quality of it.
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