Marc Benioff: “I don’t work well in an office” • Hacker News Board

Re: Marc Benioff: “I don’t work well in an office”

#91

Post by flakeoil » Sat, Sep 16, 2023, 1:02 PM UTC

salawat wrote: post #39

flakeoil wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stolen? You were paid for and took the job you knew was a certain distance and commute away from your home. I believe employees have to start to get used to being paid less when working remote. People who work in an office or factory have to be rewarded for this commute. Some jobs cannot be made remote. I assume a lot of people working remote also like the fact that they can do the laundry, clean the house, do some e…

>People who work in an office or factory have to be rewarded for this commute. Last I checked, no one paid me" for my commute time or comp'd the wear on my vehicle. If those hours* spent in traffic should have been counted on the clock, then golly gee, I have invoices yo get written! Seriously, I get it. There should be something for it, but there never will be. Wage theft. Management will do anything possible to get…

Well, most people took the job as a being-in-the-office job (before the work from home took off). Which means you took the job + commute for that salary. If you then suddenly don't have to go to the office it's not such a stretch to think you could/should be paid less.

As it's probably easier to hire someone to work remote than hire someone who has to go to the office, the salaries will probably over time be less for work from home jobs anyway (for the same type of job).

It's funny how people feel so entitled to their salaries and that management is there to rip people off. I get it for warehouse people, but for tech workers, come on.

Re: Marc Benioff: “I don’t work well in an office”

#92

Post by DiggyJohnson » Sat, Sep 16, 2023, 1:42 PM UTC

this15testing1 wrote: post #28

Gigachad wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Think of how much time is stolen from you in a daily commute Not that much. And I just read hacker news while sitting on the train which I was going to do if sitting at home anyway.

oh right, gigchad speaks for all people on earth who obviously have the same commute and transport options

They never implied that. Your insult is completely out of place.

Re: Marc Benioff: “I don’t work well in an office”

#93

Post by lovich » Sat, Sep 16, 2023, 1:53 PM UTC

robertlagrant wrote: post #25

lovich wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s odd because the the brand of WFH that most people I’ve met want is identical to what they do in the office sans the commute. That being that they hop onto a zoom meeting with people who are in other physical locations or they are working independently and the office is just a distraction. Another commenter mentioned that people were setting up a straw man against your words but I can’t agree. You keep implying…

> You keep implying that it’s rational for c levels to be working remote and then implying that regular employees only want wfh because they are just anti social. Why change what was said? The statement wasn't about "c levels" - it was one person who is on the road a lot meeting customers. Like a super senior sales role. That's different to team/collaboration-based roles where colocation might (just before you change…

Then you should specify that you believe the role is effectively a senior sales position instead of referring to them as a ceo, hence you talking about c levels. If you think all ceos are in this situation then you effectively are referring to c levels.

If you want to season your comments about regular employees with “might” you should also do that from the get go. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt as this is hacker news and not Reddit, but opening up the position by stating

> Meanwhile, the brand of WFH HN folks want is to not leave the house and interact with real humans in person.

Doesn’t give the impression that you have a nuanced take on the matter and came off like you were categorically against regular employees working from home

Re: Marc Benioff: “I don’t work well in an office”

#94

Post by nunez » Sat, Sep 16, 2023, 2:12 PM UTC

If you have a job where you're constantly travelling (for sales calls, customer meetings, relationship building, etc.), then, yeah, having to report to an office when you're back at home base doesn't make any sense.

I have a job like this (presales; previously consulting). I'm usually on the road/in the air every week and, COVID aside, have been for the last seven years. An office hasn't made sense for me in a long time.

However, the co-CEO saying this just after pushing an RTO mandate feels really out of place. Many will definitely not get the nuance.

Re: Marc Benioff: “I don’t work well in an office”

#95

Post by aaomidi » Sat, Sep 16, 2023, 2:14 PM UTC

nunez wrote: post #94

If you have a job where you're constantly travelling (for sales calls, customer meetings, relationship building, etc.), then, yeah, having to report to an office when you're back at home base doesn't make any sense. I have a job like this (presales; previously consulting). I'm usually on the road/in the air every week and, COVID aside, have been for the last seven years. An office hasn't made sense for me in a long t…

The nuance?

There’s no nuance here. There is not a single way in the universe that __everyone else__ needs to be in office but his job is so special that he has to WFH.

Re: Marc Benioff: “I don’t work well in an office”

#96

Post by unforeseen9991 » Sat, Sep 16, 2023, 2:19 PM UTC

thelastknowngod wrote: post #86

sgt101 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as the accommodation strategy needs a refresh this changes. If you can reduce the office footprint you can save money. Bringing people in often means increasing the footprint post wfh. Wfh will win where it actually succeeds because it saves money. If it doesn't work then only companies that bring people in will succeed. My feeling is that about 75% of the non manual non hospitality economy will go WFH

I kinda feel like the comparison between an on-prem vs cloud. For the longest time, big, old companies clung onto their data center spaces. No new start-up would ever dream of that though. They would be cloud first from inception. It's probably going to be the same for new companies vs old ones.

The push to cloud happens even when it makes no sense for customers at all. I'm in the mergers and acquisitions consulting space for IT and there are a lot of very mature, stable non-it companies that can save millions going colo vs cloud when we spin them off but the push is ALWAYS to cloud, regardless of the costs.

It's now a selling point when buying a company that the infrastructure is cloud based, even if it's IaaS that has been stable and unchanging for 15+ years - and they require the staff to maintain the servers regardless of where it's hosted.

Re: Marc Benioff: “I don’t work well in an office”

#97

Post by robertlagrant » Sat, Sep 16, 2023, 2:27 PM UTC

lovich wrote: post #93

robertlagrant wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You keep implying that it’s rational for c levels to be working remote and then implying that regular employees only want wfh because they are just anti social. Why change what was said? The statement wasn't about "c levels" - it was one person who is on the road a lot meeting customers. Like a super senior sales role. That's different to team/collaboration-based roles where colocation might (just before you change…

Then you should specify that you believe the role is effectively a senior sales position instead of referring to them as a ceo, hence you talking about c levels. If you think all ceos are in this situation then you effectively are referring to c levels. If you want to season your comments about regular employees with “might” you should also do that from the get go. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt as this is ha…

> Then you should specify that you believe the role is effectively a senior sales position instead of referring to them as a ceo

I've made one comment where I did that (although of course we need to call him a CEO because that's his job title). What are you talking about?

Re: Marc Benioff: “I don’t work well in an office”

#98

Post by somsak2 » Sat, Sep 16, 2023, 3:10 PM UTC

adverbly wrote: post #89

This is quite an editorialized title... it makes the CEO look like they have an extreme viewpoint, but in reality it sounded like the CEO had a pretty based and nuanced take: never enforce remote, and recognize that different kinds of work require more in office than others. The only thing that I disagreed with was the "we don't want to lose our stars" mentality. Your mentality should not be about pushing people as f…

I guess "drops a bomb" is a little over the top but the rest of the title are just facts. Salesforce really did ask people to come back, and he did indeed say he doesn't work well in an office.

Re: Marc Benioff: “I don’t work well in an office”

#99

Post by somsak2 » Sat, Sep 16, 2023, 3:14 PM UTC

mpeg wrote: post #79

tiffanyh wrote: post #71

Just remember ... the CEO role of a major company is radically different than any other job. What Marc calls "work", you and I can't relate too. He's spending a disporportionate amount of time talking to investors, talking to customers, talking to his Board. I wouldn't be surprised if he's traveling 100 business days a year as a result. Which if you're not at home because you're traveling for work, or if you are at h…

Yes, when he says he doesn’t work well in an office people here are reading he wants to work from home. In reality, he’s probably thinking he’d rather be on the road than stay in his SV ivory tower. Two stories about Benioff you might find interesting; when we were selling our startup there were two bidders on the table, Google and Salesforce. Google sent out minions, Larry and Sergey were only reachable via email/ca…

Salesforce is 1/10 the size of Google. SF should have much more time for an aquisition of the same size.

Re: Marc Benioff: “I don’t work well in an office”

#100

Post by strip_e » Sat, Sep 16, 2023, 3:28 PM UTC

Some in my company argue that remote is the way to go but when it comes to traveling to another office on another continent, it suddenly becomes so important to meet colleagues in person and they stay here for weeks or months, all while making weekend hops to vacation destinations.