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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

#941

Post by novok »

itake wrote: post #378
yallpendantools wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you quit (because of, say, RTO) then you quit. It's a fairly standard deal between you and your employer. If you get laid-off, employer has to give you a severance package for any number of reasons (local labor laws, agreement with the union, corporate PR). This is not a standard deal and is, simply put, more expensive than if the employee just quit of their own accord. In both cases, employer gets the benefit of…

Yes… but they are asking why now? Why did Microsoft start with traditional layoffs and then transition into RTO layoffs years later?

Market dynamics. Everyone is doing some form of RTO now. If you're the only RTO place, then hiring and retaining the people you want will be more difficult. It's a big game of chicken.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#942

Post by saghm »

danaris wrote: post #906
saghm wrote: post #882

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the key thing IMO; it's not "return to office" when quite a lot of the people never were in that office to start with. With the rate of turnover in most of these companies and the amount of time they were hiring for positions remotely, it's more "forced relocation, transfer, or 'voluntary' quitting without severance" for a large number of people. You can't return to a status quo that never existed for you.

I mean...you don't have to "voluntarily" quit without severance. You can tell them, in writing, "I am willing and able to continue to perform the tasks I was hired for. If you insist that it be somewhere else, then you can fire me."

You could, and then presumably still not be paid severance despite being fired, and then have to decide whether it's worth trying to fight them legally. I don't pretend to know the right choice for everyone, but when presented with this exact choice, I pretty quickly realized that it wasn't going to be worth the effort. It sucks, but given the option to spend energy on fighting this battle or saving it to put towards finding a new job to support myself and my family (or trying to do both and likely burning myself out from trying to take on more than I could reasonably handle), it wasn't much of a choice. Sometimes being right doesn't mean that you don't lose.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#943

Post by aeternum »

yallpendantools wrote: post #292
aeternum wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This theory is often-quoted but doesn't make much sense. Big tech including Microsoft already did multiple rounds of layoffs. Why not just do another round?

If you quit (because of, say, RTO) then you quit. It's a fairly standard deal between you and your employer. If you get laid-off, employer has to give you a severance package for any number of reasons (local labor laws, agreement with the union, corporate PR). This is not a standard deal and is, simply put, more expensive than if the employee just quit of their own accord. In both cases, employer gets the benefit of…

Pretty much every big tech company was still providing severance for those who decline RTO.

Maybe they don't have to but there's sufficient murkiness that it's probably cheaper to just give the severance than go to court.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#944

Post by int_19h »

aurareturn wrote: post #851
jon-wood wrote: post #839

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s absolutely all being done on vibes. The execs don’t have some super-secret productivity dashboard giving them a breakdown of employee output by work location. Maybe, if they’re really on the ball, they have employee profit contributions divided by that, but that would then immediately show all the support staff as unproductive.

I agree that a lot of smaller companies would do it on vibes. I don't think Microsoft would.

You are talking about a company that shipped Windows 8.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#945

Post by int_19h »

mrweasel wrote: post #688
bilekas wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Backdoor layoffs. It's always backdoor layoffs. If they really appreciated and needed you at the company, they would cater for your needs when you're delivering your work.

If it's layoffs aren't there a very real risk that the most talented people, who enjoy working from home will simply leave, while the less talented returns to the office because they'll have a harder time finding new jobs? So you're doing backdoor layoffs, but you're laying off the people you'd most likely want to keep, leaving the company with the less experienced/talented people.

Have you seen some of the people whom they laid off in the recent waves of overt layoffs? There was a lot of talent unceremoniously dumped there.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#946

Post by int_19h »

ThrowawayB7 wrote: post #908
bilekas wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Backdoor layoffs. It's always backdoor layoffs. If they really appreciated and needed you at the company, they would cater for your needs when you're delivering your work.

Back in the real world, "Microsoft Layoffs Continue Into 5th Consecutive Month": https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/microsoft-la... There's no reason to covertly plot convoluted "backdoor layoff" schemes when they're openly doing layoffs on a regular basis. "Backdoor layoffs" is a silly meme loved only by the sort of people prone to falling for conspiracy theories.

On the contrary, if anything, it's evidence in support of the point. It shows that Microsoft desires to trim its employee rolls. Now if you do a proper layoff, you have to pay people quite a lot of money. So if you can make at least some of them leave on their own, that's substantial savings.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#947

Post by int_19h »

dragonwriter wrote: post #572
freddie_mercury wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is hilarious that people think the second largest company on the planet, with a market cap over $5 trillion, spends even one second worry about the profit margins of commercial real estate companies, makes any decisions based on that, or is somehow cowed by their alleged political power despite being much, much, much smaller than Microsoft.

I was very clear, I thought, when I said “RTO mandates are about...”, that I was not saying “All of these factors are relevant to Microsoft”. With Microsoft its probably mostly (3), with maybe some degree of (2), with (1) maybe, especially in the political salience, being a plus in the eyes of some decision-makers but not really driving the decision. There are firms (and public agencies) where the relationship betwee…

With Microsoft specifically there's also the fact that it made a massive investment into rebuilding a large chunk of its campus in the last few years (IIRC it began before COVID). They demolished some of the oldest buildings - the ones that were done back when every senior engineer was entitled to an office of their own - and replaced them with "open office" cubicle farms.

Now, I would imagine that there are quite a few in the top management who originally signed off on that expense. Probably the same people who were talking about replacing offices with cubicles since 2015, which means Satya and his inner circle. So now they've spent a lot of money, they have to do something to show to the board that it wasn't wasted. Which means filling those buildings with employees, whether they like it or not.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#948

Post by int_19h »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #894
lloeki wrote: post #743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> aren't there a very real risk that the most talented people, who enjoy working from home will simply leave, while the less talented returns to the office because they'll have a harder time finding new jobs? a.k.a Dead Sea effect

Leave to where? All the other FAANGs and tech companies seem to be doing RTO as well. There's no "dead sea effect" because the less talented are also being flushed out by layoffs specifically targeting low performers. And the job market is so bad right now that there's absolutely no shortage of fresh talented folks to hire.

NVIDIA is very remote-heavy with no plans to RTO.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#949

Post by int_19h »

thedevilslawyer wrote: post #518
neves wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's just one solution: unionize. As you can see, your bosses already did.

Unionization will never work, since immigrants would want protections no union would provide.

Such as?

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#950

Post by thunderfork »

aurareturn wrote: post #863
thunderfork wrote: post #807

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[dead]
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