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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

#81

Post by LogicFailsMe »

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?

Sure, you're still effectively working remotely by being in two different offices, but The vibes are totally changed and the seats are warmer now with all those asses in them! And yes, yes your boss is working from some expensive resort in Tahiti and the CEO is in an undisclosed location on his yacht, but they're totally on board!

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

#82

Post by subulaz »

mso3i wrote: post #67
closeparen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mystifying, but pretty much the entire tech leadership class has a deep conviction that taking Zoom calls on Airpods from your desk or a random corner of the office is the ideal way of working.

There is no tech leadership class. Things have to stay stable long enough for a leadership class to emerge. In tech that is not possible. They are just leaves in the wind.

i understood that reference... and, like Wash, feel like i'm "flying" a stone at gravity's whim while i pretend to be in control. tech leadership at a lot of corps do the exact same thing most days. a good reason to find your tribe asap, get out of corp, and assert some control.

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

#84

Post by pbreit »

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?

How do you know they are random or noisy?

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

#85

Post by OGEnthusiast »

It's unfortunate there wasn't more resistance by tech employees to RTO post-covid. It seemed like one of the very, very rare solutions to the systemic problems of housing and commuting in the US. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that WFH effectively doubles or even triples your total compensation when it means (a) actually affordable housing and (b) no time/money lost to commuting, especially if you have kids.

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

#86

Post by roadside_picnic »

paxys wrote: post #37
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?

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…

> Pre-covid - an entire working team is clustered in the same office

Just a reminder that there were plenty of great distributed teams long before Covid. I had had only a few "in office" jobs in my pre-covid career (and generally found collaboration better on remote teams, though goofing off has a bit harder to organize).

I also find it funny that somehow software engineers completely forget about the existence of open source software which worked in a more extremely distributed fashion than any remote company I've worked for at a time when IRC and email where the only tools for remote communication. Most of the most used and most successful software was written by globally distributed teams that only met face to face every few years if ever.

This timeline you are presenting applies only to large corporate jobs, where my experience has been "work productivity" always takes a back seat to organizational theater.

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

#87

Post by bradlys »

akudha wrote: post #61
bradlys wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A ton of teams are already distributed. The RTO makes no sense unless your team is already mostly in one office but that’s not how a lot of teams are. Tons of team are completely split up across multiple states/timezones. I think IG might be more local teams than distributed but I’m not sure.

One of the teams at my workplace has 5 members in 5 different offices. They’re still forced to come to office and attend calls via Microsoft Teams from their respective offices than from their homes. These are reasons I can think of - they want to prevent people from doing second job, they want to maintain commercial real estate prices (even if it is artificially propped up) or most likely, it is just the good old eg…

Ego/pet project/appearance of doing something as an executive is probably the main driver.

A lot of these decisions have very little quality data behind them.

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

#88

Post by paxys »

mso3i wrote: post #67
closeparen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mystifying, but pretty much the entire tech leadership class has a deep conviction that taking Zoom calls on Airpods from your desk or a random corner of the office is the ideal way of working.

There is no tech leadership class. Things have to stay stable long enough for a leadership class to emerge. In tech that is not possible. They are just leaves in the wind.

Not true anymore. Every large tech company is now filled to the brim with career managers.

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

#89

Post by op00to »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #27
eutropia wrote: post #14

Instagram chief orders quiet layoffs to please investors in 2026 fixed that title for you

You think this is the tech job market to leave your job, and then what? Try and get in at someone else about to return to office? Freelance? IDK about anyone else, but I haven’t considered a contractor since AI Coding hit hard, I had poor experience with contractors anyhow, now I’m not sure I see the point of rolling those dice again. It’s kind of a soft market unless you are working directly on AI models. So, is thi…

This is the exact tech job market to start looking and have interviews/offers scheduled so you're not screwed when layoffs happen.

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

#90

Post by jfindper »

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]

Or, just maybe I'm doing the daycare and social life and whatever in the spare time I have from no longer commuting (~2 hours extra a day for me).
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