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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

#931

Post by neilv »

JustExAWS wrote: post #905
neilv wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no defamation case anywhere in this situation. They said they were terminating lots of people for poor performance, while terminating lots of people. And there's plausible reason to suspect, given the frenzy of headcount reductions going on, that it wasn't actually for poor performance. > Why is it that the "I'm not a lawyer, but" comments are always giving the worst legal advice? Why are a couple people o…

I literally just got let go from AWS two years ago in the midst of hundreds of layoffs. Absolutely no one cared why I wasn’t there anymore or even asked. I had four interviews and three offers within two weeks. Even more relevant, one of my former coworkers at AWS who was now a director at a well known public non tech company knew I was going through the focus -> PIP process and encouraged me to stay until I made it…

I'm glad that worked out for you. In this other case, a company publicly announced that people were being fired for low performance.

Even if the colleagues of a given person knew/suspected that the person was a good worker, everyone else hiring at other companies doesn't, and they heard what the last employer said.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#932

Post by JustExAWS »

neilv wrote: post #931
JustExAWS wrote: post #905

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally just got let go from AWS two years ago in the midst of hundreds of layoffs. Absolutely no one cared why I wasn’t there anymore or even asked. I had four interviews and three offers within two weeks. Even more relevant, one of my former coworkers at AWS who was now a director at a well known public non tech company knew I was going through the focus -> PIP process and encouraged me to stay until I made it…

I'm glad that worked out for you. In this other case, a company publicly announced that people were being fired for low performance. Even if the colleagues of a given person knew/suspected that the person was a good worker, everyone else hiring at other companies doesn't, and they heard what the last employer said.

You don’t think that everyone in the industry who hires doesn’t know how these things work?

Absolutely no one who interviews or screen candidates think less of someone who gets laid off these days. There are tens of thousands who have been laid off in the industry since 2022.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#933

Post by yepitwas »

wpm wrote: post #929
yepitwas wrote: post #916

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't edit this more but to temper this: I don't mind camera-on for 1-on-1 conversations, I don't mind camera-on while actively participating in larger meetings, that kind of thing, that's fine. Camera on all the time so someone could just pop in and start watching at any moment, even not during a call? Terrible, absolutely terrible. Camera on for larger meetings the entire time, even when I'm not participating? To…

>Camera on all the time so someone could just pop in and start watching at any moment, even not during a call? That's not at all what I meant. I don't think it was how I typed it, I grant it could be, but you might want to read my original comment again. I am not advocating for just sitting there in your Zoom Personal Room, camera on, all day every day. That would be insane. But for synchronous work with others, a ca…

One hour with a camera pointing at my face is like one hour of someone staring into my eyes. It’s exhausting and feels gross.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#934

Post by scubbo »

hobs wrote: post #552
scubbo wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just straight-up false? My current home - not the land, the home entire - cost just under 3 years of my salary, or under 2 years of my total comp, and I can go door-to-door in 35 minutes on public transit or 20 by car. (and I'm under 40 and still getting good reviews, so can reasonably hope for my pay to increase considerably in the second half of my career) Don't get me wrong, that's still way too expensive;…

Do you live in Socal, like the person is implying? You make >500k a year and still live in a pretty small house then? And if so, like basically no one in the united states?

> Do you live in Socal, like the person is implying?

Apologies, I saw "A West Coast software engineering career [...and...] a house from which you could reasonably commute to it" and assumed they meant San Francisco, which is accurate for me (I live in Berkeley, and my office is in the FiDi of SF). I had thought that the Bay Area was both more expensive and more tech-centric than SoCal, but I could be wrong there.

> You make >500k a year and still live in a pretty small house then

Just under 300k, but yeah - it's 3 bed 2 bath, so not huge but not tiny either. And I've saved enough over the ~5 years of living here to be looking at building a 3-4 room extension onto it into the yard next year.

> And if so, like basically no one in the united states?

Again, I didn't claim that my situation is a) typical, or b) ideal - housing in the Bay Area is far too expensive, and it's perfectly valid and reasonable to prefer living elsewhere for any number of reasons. I'm just pointing out that /u/closeparen's statement was a _wild_ exaggeration (if they did indeed mean Bay Area like I assumed and not SoCal. If they did, I have no data to contribute!)

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#935

Post by timmg »

beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #752
timmg wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 concl…

The interesting thing is that "Darwinism" will sort it out for us in the long run. If the execs are right: more work gets done in the office, those companies will do better; if people are happier and more productive at home, those companies will tend to do better.

I guess we can just wait and see :)

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#936

Post by Thiez »

mvdtnz wrote: post #903
Thiez wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a CL? What are "significant revisions pushed in comparable products" and what does it measure?

"CL" is a Google-ism for a code change ("change list"). What we'd normally refer to as a pull request I suppose. Googlers like to think the whole world is in on their lingo, but CL is a very unusual acronym outside the Googlosphere.

So they are seriously saying that Google developers on average went from about 70 PRs per year to less than 10 PRs per year when working from home? That seems such an absurdly large decrease that it's hard to believe.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#937

Post by slv77 »

blacklion wrote: post #714

It is funny to see how in one (IT) culture there is two narratives, often supported by same people: 1) Office is bad, people more productive working remote from their homes, and corporate C-levels issue and enforce RTO, which is silly and anti-productive. 2) All jokes about Zoom/Meet/Teams, with all these «Each meeting consists of “are you hear me?” questions», etc. Maybe, I'm unique (I'm sure I'm not), but I was twi…

People have different preferences, some people are going to be more productive at home and some less. Some people simply can’t work from home.

I think the challenge is that leadership isn’t coherent when it comes to RTO:

1. Leadership has largely abandoned the notion of geography when hiring or building teams. Building geographic centers of excellence where all team members with the same function working closely together used to be a thing. Leadership wants the flexibility to pick the best talent, at the best prices, on short notice but also wants ad-hoc collaboration. Workers are rightly confused when every meeting they have in an office is on Zoom. 2. Leadership has largely abandoned the notion of timezone alignment and structured working days. Leadership wants to hire talent across the globe which requires more cross-timezone collaboration and non-standard-work hour meetings. That wasn’t possible when at 5PM to 7PM everyone was commuting. It also isn’t reasonable to expect people to hold a rigid 8AM to 5PM in-office schedule and then take 2 hours of meetings from 6PM to 8PM. 3. Leadership is complains that office space is both essential to productivity AND too expensive to spend money on. Employees home setups in terms of working space, noise isolation, connectivity and configuration are now more productive than what is offered in-office. When leadership took people from dedicated offices, to cubicles, to open seating and then to “hot desking” it was justified that commercial real estate was scarce, expensive and required the sacrifice of productivity to manage costs. Now that it is plentiful and cheap? Leadership is saying that RTO is needed for productivity AND that they will continue to reduce spending on office space per employee.

The only way to mentally reconcile that is to either assume that leadership is incompetent or that they want to return to 18th century sweat shops and envy China’s 9x9x6 culture. I can see why mid-level management is struggling getting compliance which is why they are relying on badge swipes.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#938

Post by thinkharderdev »

dh2022 wrote: post #871
thinkharderdev wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal pet theory (based on no evidence other than personal experience) is that, if your job is in senior management then your day-to-day work is going to meetings. And spending 8-10h on zoom meetings every day is unbelievably soul-crushing.

But here is the thing-almost all meetings are on Temas. Because Microsoft campus is so spread out managers do not have time to go from building to building to meet other managers. Azure for example is spread out over 10 building just 8n Redmond. Never mind connecting with teams in Bay Area, Atlanta and India. All of these mangers spend their meetings on Teams. Again I do not have a good explanation for RTO.

Is this also the case for senior executives?

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#939

Post by wpm »

yepitwas wrote: post #933
wpm wrote: post #929

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Camera on all the time so someone could just pop in and start watching at any moment, even not during a call? That's not at all what I meant. I don't think it was how I typed it, I grant it could be, but you might want to read my original comment again. I am not advocating for just sitting there in your Zoom Personal Room, camera on, all day every day. That would be insane. But for synchronous work with others, a ca…

One hour with a camera pointing at my face is like one hour of someone staring into my eyes. It’s exhausting and feels gross.

That's weird.

Sorry.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#940

Post by wpm »

cebert wrote: post #652
thedevilslawyer wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I .. I .. I.. I.. I.. In all seriousness: you've outlined what you need. Perhaps you should reflect on what any collaborator needs.

Why does anyone need to see my face. Work is transactional. Few if any coworkers are actually your friend. We’re getting paid to get a job done.

Because I need to see if how I'm explaining something is hitting. I need to see if you are listening. I need to know you're actually there and not distracted.

It's a job. Not a confessional booth.

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