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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

#701

Post by rob74 »

aurareturn wrote: post #635
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’…

(4) In person teams outperform remote/hybrid teams. I'm surprised this was not mentioned as a possibility.

What's also not mentioned is that in multinational companies, especially since remote working became more widespread and attracting talent more difficult, teams are often made up of people from different locations anyway. So you won't have an in-person team, you'll just be joining Zoom (or in M$'s case, probably Teams) calls from the office rather than from home.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#702

Post by wiseowise »

aurareturn wrote: post #641
odie5533 wrote: post #93

Top employees, ones that can easily get jobs elsewhere, are just going to leave and find ones without RTO. Employees that don't feel confident in their abilities to perform in the job market are going to show up in the office to keep their job.

Or maybe top employees see their remote coworkers slacking off and want everyone in the office. /unpopular opinion

If you “see” anyone else as a top employee - you’re not a top employee by definition.

Literally all, without exception, top employees that I saw in my career never gave a single shit about anyone else besides themselves.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#703

Post by valleyjo »

noremotefornow wrote: post #612

I have worked for 7 years in the office and 7 years remote, and for me the 7 years remote were not as enjoyable. I like the routines and processes that I adhere to more when I have a separate work location; I find it more difficult to adhere to those same processes when I can roll out of bed and walk to my computer half asleep and zone in on work. For example, I find it much more likely I’ll consistently shower, get…

I strongly prefer RTO for myself personally. I can’t stand working from home. I believe the solution is have a shorter commute and live closer to the office (even though I live far away, I am trying to convince my wife to move). I have mixed feelings about forcing RTO because I know some strongly prefer WFH. Maybe 2 or 3 days is the best middle ground. Personally I miss when everyone was at the office 5 days a week.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#704

Post by sokoloff »

zurfer wrote: post #689
nlitened wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With WFH the following things become very difficult and/or ineffective: 1. Onboarding and growing junior employees. 2. Managing/coordinating people 3. Doing/coming up with something innovative 4. Making sure an employee is not working another job in parallel With RTO, companies try go get back the ability to do these things, at the expense of employees’ commute time

Thanks for sticking the head out ;) I'm really not sure where 1 to 3 come from? 1 and 2 are about spending time with people. 3 can't also be true, just look at all the innovations that OSS has created (at least 90 perc. remote collaboration). Number 4 is a real problem and a symptom of the biggest problem imo, which is that it's hard to build trust online/remotely.

Things that are inherently "about spending time with people" are very likely to be more effective in a higher bandwidth, more natural setting (read: in-person).

On the spectrum from postal mail, e-mail, text/instant messaging, phone calls, video calls, in-person discussions, the quality of "spending time with people" is increasing as you go farther down the list.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#705

Post by regularfry »

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…

Commercial real estate value is directly connected to occupancy. If I own an office building which was valued ten years ago at $10M (to pick a random number) and today is valued at half that because nobody's going in, that's a direct $5M loss on my accounts, and any loans outstanding secured on it are potentially now underwater. Not only that, but it also weakens the rent I can demand from the tenant not just because the value of the building has dropped, but because they demonstrably don't need all that space any more.

Microsoft is almost certainly a special case in a number of ways, but the incentives are absolutely there for commercial landlords to try to force their tenants' hands.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#706

Post by navane »

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…

Workless

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#707

Post by wiseowise »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #681
bluedino wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our company recently started RTO. The first 10-15 minutes of every meeting for the first month were people complaining about it. The first 10-15 minutes of every meeting for the second month were supervisors reminding people everyone they need to do it. The third month, people started coming in, and now everyone complains about how there's no parking, no open hotel desks, no open meeting rooms, and teams are scattere…

Just find a corner for it why do you need a "room"

Because such as important meeting as “daily standup” and “whothefuckknowswhat sync #69” deserved a room, what if there’s a very important discussion?

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#708

Post by xdfgh1112 »

reenorap wrote: post #396
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 remain baffled by executives' obsession with RTO It's because although many people do work well in RTO, the vast majority don't. And the various TikTok videos showing "Day in the life of a remote worker" didn't help the cause either. I worked at a fully remote company during the pandemic and trying to get people online was almost impossible. They would disappear for hours and I would be blocked by them and it was…

Yeah there is this big lie that most people work the same amount when they have a ton of distractions and can slack off whenever. Not my experience at all. Nobody wants to lose their WFH so everyone pretends productivity didn't change. If what was true you'd never see this RTO push. Offices cost money!

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#710

Post by jajko »

dddgghhbbfblk wrote: post #594
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.

They care insofar as the collapse of commercial real estate is cited as a social harm of WFH by the elite classes outside the business that push RTO. It's not an explicit decision making factor, just something that's in the background that has contributed to the overall idea that "RTO = good" These decisions are all being made by vibes, after all, not by a cold rational analysis

If I would be a commercial real estate mogul, I would invest at least hundreds of millions into covert PR campaigns in various media (including here on HN) to nudge the perception via exactly these sort of claims. And who wants to be seen as anti-business, right?

Just follow the money, it usually works very well. Sometimes, people are just dumb on their own and/or as a group but I don't think thats the case here. Tens of billions if not more in lucrative real estate is at stake.

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