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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

#861

Post by cutemonster »

jajko wrote: post #777
oblio wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those numbers were so convincing they have been shared with employees... 0 (ZERO) times.

Why would they share that... come on lets not be naive here. Do they always justify every bigger decision to whole world? It just creates friction surface for various people to catch on. C suite is there to set directions, not to explain themselves to their employees. Its like getting refused during interview process. Sharing actually why makes no sense for hiring people, no gain and potentially a lot to lose. I don'…

Orders and rules without explanation or motivation, damages morale and loyalty.

That's a reason to publish any statistics they might have (at least internally)

> It's like getting refused during interview process

Not at all! Those rejected, disappear. But grumpy employees are still there, but less productive

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#862

Post by snapcaster »

yepitwas wrote: post #533
whateveracct wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is dead on. In software especially, we have established ways for distributed individuals to collaborate (FOSS). RTO is meant to coddle the waterfall-addicted executive class.

It's pretty funny to watch e.g. some little FOSS console game system emulator—an actual toy, or at least, a project in service of a toy and of game-playing, to a large extent, but also technically more challenging than a lot of corporate work—or maybe some FOSS MMO server re-implementation coordinate development across continents with nothing but IRC, email, and Github (if that, LOL) and do it efficiently with little…

Isn't the thing you're ignoring just passion? I find it a small miracle that any company accomplishes anything. it's a ground of hundreds or thousands of people, almost none of whom want to be there and don't care about the product or company, that despite this still somehow accomplish things

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#863

Post by aurareturn »

thunderfork wrote: post #807
aurareturn wrote: post #780

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The evidence is that more companies are returning to old pre-covid policies than companies that are going remote only. They can't all love commercial real estate that much right? Not all executives invests in office buildings.

This might be evidence of a belief, but that's no evidence that be belief is rational.

Would you sit in an airplane designed and built by a full remote workforce?

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#864

Post by cptskippy »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #254
Mobius01 wrote: post #139

I work in a large company that mandated 4-day RTO last year. Even taking a completely objetive point of view on the situation leads to the conclusion that something else is needed. We spend our days at our desks, on Zoom calls. People won’t get up to join in person - mostly because the conference rooms are all blocked by “special projects”, but mostly due to the offshoring of positions and distributed workforce post-…

Executives have done all manner of things which reduced productivity. Hoteling alone must have cost billions in lost focus. They’re suspicious of work from home because employees like it. If they were concerned about productivity they’d make deals where you can work from home but have to work 10% more hours or something to make up for whatever imagined productivity was lost.

That feels like a made up reason because you don't want to accept the two obvious explanations:

1) Mandating RTO is a compliance check that allows you to fire people with cause and avoid other more costly downsizing efforts.

2) Justifying a lease.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#865

Post by aurareturn »

cutemonster wrote: post #856
aurareturn wrote: post #784

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rationale is that there is no upside and pure downside for releasing these metrics to the public. It opens them up to scrutiny. The evidence is that there have been more RTO calls than companies switching to pure WFH post-Covid.

If more people eat hamburgers than vegetables, you'll start saying that that's evidence that hamburgers are more healthy?

It'd be evidence that people enjoy eating hamburgers more than vegetables.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#866

Post by xylophile »

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…

The executive class is entirely based on personal branding. If you're not changing anything, it's like being a TikTok influencer without posting any new videos. It doesn't matter what you post really, and often the more controversial you are the better. If you play your cards right, you're not an "idiot" for making the company worse, you're a "bold and innovative thought leader".

You often see the same thing from ambitious managers. Aka, "managers gonna manage".

The other part of the equation is pure politics and PR, which at least does provide some real value to the company (if only temporarily, and at long-term net negative). Amazon made it pretty clear that their RTO was all about maintaining their relationship with politicians.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#867

Post by whoamii »

sabellito wrote: post #786
Anon1096 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I disagree completely with that, at least for software engineers. The work queue is infinite, measuring output with any sort of precision is almost impossible for a lot of the work (maintenance, actually necessary refactors, security, mentoring juniors, managing stakeholders, etc etc etc). There's no "I've finished my work for today". I'm not saying that I like it, or that it's a good thing, but in my understanding e…

All of what you mentioned is quantifiable.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#868

Post by cutemonster »

hobs wrote: post #549
terminalshort wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 and 3 aren't real. Nobody gives a damn about their shareholders other investments, and no one company has the numbers to save them anyway. And nobody is dumb enough to do RTO as a layoff proxy because anybody with a brain knows you're going to lose the people with options, who are exactly the people you don't want to lose. 1 is spot on.

You couldn't be more wrong, no evidence supports your assertions. https://fortune.com/2024/07/24/return-to-office-mandates-lay... https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/its-offi... https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/12/why-rto-mandates-are-layoffs... You are very ignorant of the real world.

Wow, thanks for the links!

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#869

Post by oblio »

regularfry wrote: post #696
oblio wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

KDE was supposed to run on Windows, starting 15 years ago. Linux was supposed to flawlessly support laptop sleep and hibernate, 20 years ago. Gimp was supposed to support 32 bit colors (I think) 15 years ago. Etc, etc. The money is there so that things that are desired happen mostly on time.

The question is who they are desired by.

Not by the developers, obviously.

"That's what the money is for."

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#870

Post by dh2022 »

pharrington wrote: post #797
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?

May you explain why ruthlessly profit driven CEOs of megacorporations don't care about the commercial value of the real estate they own?

Because who are the profit driven CEOs (are there any other CEOs?) sell their buildings to? The value of their building affects the profit via the depreciation expense. Which is to say the more buildings you have for RTO the bigger the expense-and thus the lower the profit for the profit maximizing CEOs.

From a profit only perspective RTO makes sense only if the cities gave businesses tax breaks tied to business occupancy (the city’s math is they will get some of these taxes back when employees go and spend money in the city). And maybe cities are threatening to stop these taxes back until RTO.

In Microsoft’s case though people only spend some money at the cafeteria-because there is nothing else to spend money on their campus. How big could that tax break could be?

This RTO request from Microsoft does not make much sense.

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