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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

#751

Post by _heimdall »

lupusreal wrote: post #728
holowoodman wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Trump is probaby too senile to even know what RTO is, and even if he does, I'm pretty sure he doesn't own Microsoft's office buildings. And the premise that Microsoft would let themselves get bullied into RTO, causing a lot of their best employees to quit, without raising a public stink about it? Far fetched. This is the doing of Microsoft's own leadership, not Trump.

It surprises me when I see people call Trump senile given how far Biden got before most people were willing to acknowledge it at all.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of things you can justifiably call Trump. He just doesn't seem senile in any way similar to those in my life I've watched go down that road.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#752

Post by beezlebroxxxxxx »

timmg wrote: post #631
whinvik wrote: post #586

Threads like these are always one sided with people against RTO. What I would really like to see is arguments from the other side. Can someone steelman RTO. Preferably with evidence, anecdotal or otherwise.

I don’t know the reason, nor do I have proof of anything. But: to me this is a great time to consider Occam’s Razor. Executives seem to (mostly) universally want people to RTO. Why would they? They obviously have lots of data. If it was bad for productivity, why would they do it? Answers seem to be things like “power trip” or “need to justify real estate”. I’m pretty sure most companies would save money by giving up…

I'm sympathetic to your reasoning, and I actually think your conclusion about how people wfh is probably true (a minority finding it wildly more productive) but the problem I see is that most execs don't understand what a lot of their employees do on a day to day basis, nor do I think they could properly understand the data even if they had it as a result. And, if they did have it, why don't they show it if the conclusions are so self evident?

In reality I think it's much simpler: the work that executives (and some upper level managers) do relies on a certain amount of theater. They need to be seen (in person) and they to be seen doing work (in person). That's part of the "deal" with being an exec --- you need to be able to act the part. Then, they just assume that's how it should or needs to be for everyone else.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#753

Post by cmiles74 »

aurareturn wrote: post #697
nemomarx wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they not use those metrics internally as part of the RTO policy then? Surely they would be picking particular stats out to highlight the benefits of RTO, talk about how well everyone is doing afterwards, etc.

Because they don't want the public/employees to misconstrue those metrics? Maybe they don't want employees to know how they view productivity? Surely if they're presented with solid evidence that WFH increases productivity, they'd keep it. Execs make millions in bonuses if the performance of the company hits certain goals. It's baffling that people here still talk about real estate conspiracy theories.

If there were clear metrics showing that in-person teams “out perform” remote teams, we would be hearing about it constantly. The supposed rationale for keeping such data secret sounds far-fetched to me.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#754

Post by dalyons »

timmg wrote: post #631
whinvik wrote: post #586

Threads like these are always one sided with people against RTO. What I would really like to see is arguments from the other side. Can someone steelman RTO. Preferably with evidence, anecdotal or otherwise.

I don’t know the reason, nor do I have proof of anything. But: to me this is a great time to consider Occam’s Razor. Executives seem to (mostly) universally want people to RTO. Why would they? They obviously have lots of data. If it was bad for productivity, why would they do it? Answers seem to be things like “power trip” or “need to justify real estate”. I’m pretty sure most companies would save money by giving up…

If everyone had this clear unambiguous data, you’d think at least one of them would have shared it by now now. Just one!

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#755

Post by _heimdall »

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.

Its a possibility, but I've never come across data that supports either approach reliably outperforming the other.

I've also never seen a company that actually tracked that well enough to make a decision like RTO based on their own data.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#756

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

ghaff wrote: post #237
wongarsu wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With tradesfolk you can choose who to call, and somebody from farther away will charge more for getting to your door. With workers that is not a consideration today (in most roles), but if companies had to pay for travel time it absolutely would be. But that leads to uncomfortable questions about moving. If you get children and move to an area with a better school, can and will your work now fire you because your com…

I think my contractors have generally had a general service area. And, if you're out of it, they're probably not interested. Now, mind you, I often don't have a super-itemized bill. But I'm not sure I've seen a commute time/cost line item.

Yeah, I can't recall anyone ever putting it down explicitly as a line item, but a number of them will tell on the phone you there's a minimum charge for coming out. For some reason locksmiths seem to always do this.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#758

Post by dijit »

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.

> This goes especially true for Microsoft where lots of people put in far less than a 40hr workweek.

No offence, but this shows in the products.

It's a standard expectation for managers to see you physically located in the office for 40hrs per week in semi-flexible arrangements (if you're lucky).

You may forget that as tech workers we are incredibly privileged with the way our office life is compared to others typically, that we can sometimes come in late and leave early: may be another "perk" (like remote work) which goes away in time or during the next squeeze.

So it's a poor defense, as it's not reflected in other similar industries, nor is it relevant when we're discussing flexibility being reduced by the same company doing the flexibility reduction.

You are definitely paid for the "hours" in your contract and not the output, if you were paid for output some workers would be able to work harder to make more money by creating more things; as it stands you get the same money if you do 80hrs or 40hrs or 20hrs at any level of effort. You're not paid for time or output, you're paid to be "of service".

Maybe you get more money at promotion time (maybe), but pay is certainly *not* linked to compensation.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#759

Post by _heimdall »

dragonwriter wrote: post #513
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…

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’…

I always assume a different option, though (3) is likely part of it for Microsoft right now as well.

When leadership decides their velocity is too slow for whatever reason, they look for deck chairs to move. RTO is one big deck chair they can move and many will assume it will improve performance and velocity.

The problem is that I've never seen anyone actually prove that out for RTO with solid data. And that goes both ways, I haven't seen anything to prove that remote-first is universally better for performance.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#760

Post by hshdhdhj4444 »

alchemism wrote: post #723
freddie_mercury wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The City of Philadelphia sent all of its workers back to the office with an explicit statement from the Mayor about struggling commercial office real estate in the city center. They may not be "running the country" but they are definitely heavyweight players in the market.

Umm, yeah, because city executives whose “organizations” are funded by local taxes, especially commercial real estate taxes care about it.

That says nothing about why CEOs of thousands of private firms who have nothing to do with real estate firms would care about those other companies’ profits.

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