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Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

businessinsider.com

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Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#71

Post by vjvjvjvjghv »

5 days is stupid. I am fully remote and I can see how face time is important. After a few years remote I am definitely feeling a little detached from the company. But 5 days makes no sense. I think 2 or 3 days in the office is perfect. You get the opportunity to talk to people and you have days where you can fully focus.

Most ridiculous is to have to come to the office and then talk to your distributed team members over Teams or Slack. Even more fun is to have them spread around the globe in different time zones .

Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#72

Post by decimalenough »

KaiserPro wrote: post #58

Another winning call from Mosseri After shitcanning the london office because he wanted to move back home(800 people gone) hes now doing the RTO, because as we know all the cool kids love working in the office. The problem with instagram is not where people are working, its the culture of piss poor direction setting and no user experience advocates. Well none that are being listened to. There are too many grand initi…

> Don't get me started on the horror that was instagram for kids

Please do get started. Is this an actual thing they/you were building?

Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#73

Post by [deleted] »

parliament32 wrote: post #63
paxys wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the employees most likely to quit will be ones with responsibilities that make it difficult to do the commute 5 days a week - kids to pick up from daycare, health issues to manage, a social life in the evenings, travel plans - basically the exact category that a company like Meta would want to replace with a younger, more exploitable bunch.

[flagged]

[deleted]

Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#74

Post by dexwiz »

kvirani wrote: post #70
dexwiz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interviewed there in 2024. Said no because they said I would have to commute from SF to Menlo Park 4 days a week. They explicitly said I could not work from the SF office before I even asked.

Do you think that was a hiring manager specific preference or an overall HR policy thing? Shitty nonetheless.

It was before matching so I am guessing overall HR policy.

Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#75

Post by wmeredith »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #64
kkolybacz wrote: post #16

"We're also offering the option to transfer from the MPK to SF office for those people whose commute would be the same or better with that change." So wait, you'll be able to switch offices even though your team might be in the second one? What's the benefit of working remote from your team but next to random, noisy people?

> What's the benefit of working remote from your team but next to random, noisy people? You'll cross-pollinate across functions. Or at least increase the chances of that happening. Not saying that's worth the tradeoff. But my time in the office often finds serendipitious value in random off-team conversations, not scheduled time.

This is the huge benefit of in-person work. Personally I've not found it worth the tradeoffs, but it cannot be discounted.

Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#76

Post by carlm42 »

parliament32 wrote: post #63
paxys wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the employees most likely to quit will be ones with responsibilities that make it difficult to do the commute 5 days a week - kids to pick up from daycare, health issues to manage, a social life in the evenings, travel plans - basically the exact category that a company like Meta would want to replace with a younger, more exploitable bunch.

[flagged]

It's called a work-life balance. I know, crazy idea.

Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#77

Post by toomuchtodo »

kobieps wrote: post #49
paxys wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pre-covid - an entire working team is clustered in the same office and have desks near each other. People collaborate via in-person meetings, hallway conversations and general proximity. During covid - hiring is mostly remote since companies figure they don't have to be constrained by geography anymore. Employees work at home and collaborate over Zoom meetings. It's difficult at first but everyone adjusts. Productivi…

I literally had a customer decline a meeting today with this as the reason: "Couldnt find a proper space to conduct the meeting"

Literally doesn’t matter to the people making these decisions. It’s unfortunate.

Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#78

Post by gorgoiler »

I know better than to think I might have anything useful to add to the WFH debate, but buried further in the memo:

”More demos, less [sic] decks”

I love it, but I’m surprised that an org of that caliber needs to say it out loud. Even the top tier people get bogged down in PowerPoint limbo, I guess?

Nothing is more compelling than, as they say in show business (ie that Bill O’Reilly meme), than saying “f*** it…”:

  (╯°□°)╯
  ┳━━━━┳  WE’LL DO
          IT LIVE!

Re: Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026

#80

Post by roadside_picnic »

kkolybacz wrote: post #16

"We're also offering the option to transfer from the MPK to SF office for those people whose commute would be the same or better with that change." So wait, you'll be able to switch offices even though your team might be in the second one? What's the benefit of working remote from your team but next to random, noisy people?

> What's the benefit of working remote from your team but next to random, noisy people?

The illusion of control? I mean we can pretend we don't know what this is about (well it's probably also about encouraging a reduction in force), but we do know right?

By far the people who bemoaned working from home the most were people whose job doesn't typically involve any actual "work". Not saying that there weren't exceptions, but the vast majority of working engineers I knew rejoiced in finally getting heads down time, while everyone whose job is primarily "performance for leadership" hated how difficult it was to perform visible theatrics on a camera.

Especially in large orgs "leadership" and "team success" are largely about optics. Being seen working in the office late is so much more important than getting any actual work done. It's only in small companies where actually shipping something has any value at all.

What I don't understand is why we still pretend like this is a mystery. Recognizing this I've completely avoided working for large orgs, and continue to enjoy remote work we're I can be valued for the results of what I build (well there's always a little theater) over office productivity performativity.

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