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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

#81

Post by bluedino »

roadside_picnic wrote: post #73
sugarpimpdorsey wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remote work used to be an earned privilege. Then COVID hit and everyone got a taste of it. Including the folks who discovered they could get paid to stay home and play video games and jackin' off during work hours. In a way you could say this group ruined it for everyone. But that's usually how these things go. The hammer comes down on everyone because otherwise it leads to uncomfortable questions like "why does HE g…

> play video games and jackin' off during work hours. Most of the hardest working remote people I've known, and I've worked remote at over 5 companies across two decades, often don't work standard hours. I honestly don't see the problem with someone gaming at 2pm if they're also making sure shit gets deployed at midnight. I also have found that anytime I show up in an actual office it's hilarious how little work actu…

> I honestly don't see the problem with someone gaming at 2pm

It depends on if other team members need to be able to reach out to this person at 2pm

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#82

Post by rgblambda »

titanomachy wrote: post #42
christhecaribou wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet here you are, perpetuating the “crabs in a bucket” mentality that continues to be a blight on our industry.

A manager who’s not doing their job and is never reachable can be pretty demoralizing. That same manager would probably not be great in person either, but at least you’d know where to find them. As long as a company is able and willing to move out or correct low performers quickly, remote work is fine.

>but at least you’d know where to find them.

In my experience, managers of that calibre tend to fuck off to a meeting room first chance they get and hide there until around 4 when they slip out.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#83

Post by pm90 »

milesvp wrote: post #64
sublimefire wrote: post #16

It mentions this was based on some “data” (in emailsto employees) that it will yield better output but I somehow doubt it. I wonder what happens with the stock. It sort of makes it worse for the teams that are distributed and harms collab between sites in different zones like Europe/Asia and US/Europe. When you are working from home it is easy to stay later or start earlier and join calls. If you are in the office th…

It’s a common thing here on HN to believe that remote is superior for productivity, and I’m always reminded of Richard Hammond’s observations about open door vs closed door coworkers. He noticed over time that the closed door workers were more productive. He also noticed that the closed door workers were less impactful in their fields years later. His were observations in R&D settings, but I suspect they can be extra…

Richard Hamming. And the essay is here: https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html.

As you point out, Its important to note that Hamming makes this observation specifically in the domain of research which requires a lot of collaboration between people, and is enhanced by interaction with other people doing research. Most standard software engineering jobs don’t require that kind of research activity (although it does require some; product development is a creative process).

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#84

Post by dml2135 »

SilverElfin wrote: post #27

Terrible. Especially given that the Seattle area has terrible traffic and also issues with safety on public transportation (like many other cities in America). What is the point exactly of getting workers into an office just so they can be on Zoom calls (or Teams, in this case)? This seems a lot like what Amazon was accused of - a way to shake out some workers and get them to quit when they cannot rearrange their lif…

I would challenge you to find statistics that show that any public transit system in the U.S. is more dangerous than driving.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#85

Post by bluedino »

drowning_sushi wrote: post #52

50-75% of the employees at MS HQ regularly work out of the office. (Source: I live close by). This mandate is not at all surprising given MS invested heavily in new, revamped offices, which they had started before the pandemic. How did folks who relocated to other areas not see this coming.

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 scattered across offices and there's no meeting rooms so all the meetings are still on Teams.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#86

Post by thr0waway001 »

sugarpimpdorsey wrote: post #22

The only thing I hated worse than going into the office was our remote employees, who never seemed to be available when you needed them, had their status set to Away (or wouldn't respond for hours if they were green). It was a privilege, people abused it, and now it's over. And managers were the worst offenders.

At our company some people outright admitted on a survey sent out to employees that they would go out and run errands during work hours.

Like, how stupid do you have to be to kill your golden goose of life work balance?

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#88

Post by mlnj »

kokanee wrote: post #37
sugarpimpdorsey wrote: post #22

The only thing I hated worse than going into the office was our remote employees, who never seemed to be available when you needed them, had their status set to Away (or wouldn't respond for hours if they were green). It was a privilege, people abused it, and now it's over. And managers were the worst offenders.

Interesting. I've been remote for 5 years across three different companies, and if anything I've had the opposite experience: my remote coworkers are far more responsive than my on-site coworkers, who are always in meetings, in transit, having in-person chit chat, or taking a break.

Have had the same experience over the last 5 or so years and that too working in early stage startups.

Everyone is free to get their personal lives in order and in turn they organize and execute everything with much more dedication than i've every seen them in a corporate environment.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#89

Post by neilv »

> Microsoft's new approach is the latest sign of the company increasing performance pressure on employees. It has fired thousands of employees deemed low performers this year and introduced a new performance improvement plan meant to exit low performers more quickly.

Claims who? These also sound like typical sketchy headcount reduction tactics.

Also, it's throwing employees under the bus, because the company is tarring them as low performers, at the same time as the company dumps them onto a hostile job market. Those employees should talk to lawyers.

> > Importantly, this update is not about reducing headcount.

MS had to mention that in the memo, because that's what everyone reading it was thinking?

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#90

Post by butlike »

sugarpimpdorsey wrote: post #22

The only thing I hated worse than going into the office was our remote employees, who never seemed to be available when you needed them, had their status set to Away (or wouldn't respond for hours if they were green). It was a privilege, people abused it, and now it's over. And managers were the worst offenders.

Abused it in which way? Don't touch the money-makers. And if you're in the office, don't daydream about 'improvements' you could make that touch the money-makers in a vain attempt to quell your anxiety about not appearing to do anything of value.
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