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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

#571

Post by randomfool »

intended wrote: post #550
terminalshort wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

3 is real, this is what was behind Amazon’s RTO mandates. Its designed to ensure that people decide to quit.

From a source closely involved with this- Amazon tracks many productivity metrics of employees and was seeing very significant differences between in-person and remote people, which drove the decision.

Source left since so I don’t know how much productivity has improved.

Advice to new grads: get into the office 5 days a week for at least a few years.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#572

Post by dragonwriter »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #528
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’…

It is hilarious that people think the second largest company on the planet, with a market cap over $5 trillion, spends even one second worry about the profit margins of commercial real estate companies, makes any decisions based on that, or is somehow cowed by their alleged political power despite being much, much, much smaller than Microsoft.

I was very clear, I thought, when I said “RTO mandates are about...”, that I was not saying “All of these factors are relevant to Microsoft”.

With Microsoft its probably mostly (3), with maybe some degree of (2), with (1) maybe, especially in the political salience, being a plus in the eyes of some decision-makers but not really driving the decision.

There are firms (and public agencies) where the relationship between those factors is very different in driving RTO mandates.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#573

Post by freddie_mercury »

dragonwriter wrote: post #572
freddie_mercury wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is hilarious that people think the second largest company on the planet, with a market cap over $5 trillion, spends even one second worry about the profit margins of commercial real estate companies, makes any decisions based on that, or is somehow cowed by their alleged political power despite being much, much, much smaller than Microsoft.

I was very clear, I thought, when I said “RTO mandates are about...”, that I was not saying “All of these factors are relevant to Microsoft”. With Microsoft its probably mostly (3), with maybe some degree of (2), with (1) maybe, especially in the political salience, being a plus in the eyes of some decision-makers but not really driving the decision. There are firms (and public agencies) where the relationship betwee…

No CEO cares about commercial real estate profits. It isn't a factor in any major company decision.

Why not extend the baseless paranoia and say it is because they want to see auto company profits go up? And also support petroleum companies?

Or is it just real estate that is boogeyman secretly running the country behind the scenes?

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#574

Post by lnsru »

cyberpunk wrote: post #551
yepitwas wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I feel you. Have my own office right now. Its worth more than €25k salary. It’s really hard to apply somewhere else and go back to noise and chaos in open office even for more money.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#575

Post by aprilthird2021 »

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…

> I still have no idea where it comes from.

I work at a company that tracks productivity in many ways and even the screentime of each employee.

I'm quite sure remote employees or even hybrid employees on their WFH days, spend less time on the screen or doing things productivity trackers track compared to in office colleagues.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#576

Post by cubix »

craftkiller wrote: post #487
NewJazz wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol you missed the weather... Bay area weather is much more moderate than in the Midwest.

That's an understatement: Bay area weather is magical. It is the same all year round. You don't need "winter" and "summer" attire, your plans never get rained out, and you never have to deal with snowstorms. The downside is sometimes it rains ash. Personally, I had to leave because the pizza out there is unbearable but damn I miss the bay area weather.

> sometimes it rains ash

When the sky turned orange in 2020, my wife and I were just done. Also, there's something to be said for living in a place with four seasons, and a sense of time passing by.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#577

Post by c12 »

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…

Based upon the recruiters messaging me, if I gave up my remote job for one that required in-office attendance I would get an immediate 30% pay bump.

That would however, demand an hour and half commute each way and that would impact my ability to take my children to school and be involved with family meals. Back when I did have a hour commute each way it was costing me £2,800 a year in fuel, plus £2,220 in parking fees, plus about the same again for lunch out with colleagues.

So yeah, i'd get a 30-40% pay bump, but a large percentage would be consumed by additional costs with no benefit to my performance.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#578

Post by Thiez »

brg wrote: post #451
taway1874 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, so it's not that hard but try and follow along. Did the employees say they have the data to prove it? No! Did mgmt. say it? Yes! So let's ask mgmt. first to disclose said data. Got it?

In at least one case it wasn’t released by management because it was absurdly embarrassing. Productivity compared between 2019 and 2023 had statistics similar to the following; average yearly CLs decreased from approximately 70 to under 10, significant revisions pushed in comparable products changed from 26 to 4, meeting time increased by a multiple, email volume decreased similarity. All this with significant increa…

What is a CL? What are "significant revisions pushed in comparable products" and what does it measure?

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#579

Post by thedevilslawyer »

grafmax wrote: post #553
thedevilslawyer wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If you believe that is the case, it is very simple to use some of that pay to buy a slice of that ownership via your preferred brokerage application.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#580

Post by c12 »

vel0city wrote: post #360
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…

Where's the office? The bike ride through some parks like my last? A ten minute drive in surface streets? A 20 minute rail ride away? A half hour drive on crowded highways? I'd go back to the office a bicycle ride away without issue. I like a nice office, and it's nice being able to separate the work space from the home, it's like I gained a room of my home back. I'd probably require a lot of benefits or a good bit m…

You make a great point. I would enjoy going back to the office if it involved a 15 minute bike ride.
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